20
Earl Shaw’s Flying Circus
Sutter Creek, California * June 8, 1940
If they keep on like this, one of them’s bound to break his neck,” Ava’s mother commented.
“Hah—both of ’em will, is more like.”
Ava and her mother were standing in the middle of an empty, flat field, each of them with one hand cupped over her brow to shade her eyes as she stared up at the sky.
“They are awful fearless,” Cleo said, nodding her head and watching with wide eyes. “And it does seem like more danger than it’s worth.”
Louis and Harry were at it again. Even now, when they were merely practicing, the two boys couldn’t resist competing. It was Harry who first upped the ante. From the time of their very first wing-walking adventure, Ava noticed that Harry was the better stuntman; you could see from the ground that he was more agile and more sure-footed—not that she would ever risk hurting Louis’s feelings by saying so aloud. Harry had started the rivalry off when he danced on the wings in a jokey way. Soon he was doing push-ups on the wings, hanging off the side of one wing, even climbing down to the landing gear. Determined not to be outdone, Louis matched Harry trick for trick—though it was clear to Ava that Louis was enjoying the escalation far less than Harry.
Harry was a born daredevil, but Louis was determined to make himself one.
“I wonder what drives ’em to compete like that,” Cleo said. “Some kind of powerful spite between them . . .”
“They used to be friends,” Ava commented.
Her mother looked at her, surprised.
“I wouldn’t have suspected that. How do you know?”
Ava shrugged. “Just something Louis mentioned.”
“My word,” Cleo murmured, staring up into the sky as the two biplanes made another low pass overhead. “Well, there’s certainly something more complicated than friendship between them now. I wonder what happened . . .”
Ava didn’t reply. The two women continued to set up the place where the barnstorming act would camp for the night, pausing occasionally to glance nervously into the sky. Fools will be fools. Ava didn’t want to watch, but there were moments when she felt powerless to look away.
While the competition between Louis and Harry struck Ava as reckless and unnecessary, Earl Shaw relished his good fortune. The stunts Louis and Harry did were so hair-raising that folks were beginning to talk. Word traveled on ahead of them as they moved from town to town, and all that gossip meant bigger crowds and more money in Earl’s pocket than he’d ever seen before.
More money was a good thing—in some ways. Ava knew that when Earl was feeling kingly, he quickly set about spending. He also suddenly found his way into an awful lot of poker games. He drank more and, once drunk, grew moody and snappish with her mother.
What worried Ava most of all was Earl’s growing nonchalance toward the law. So far, Louis and Harry hadn’t asked why the flying circus didn’t travel closer to the larger towns and cities—but of course Ava and all the others knew the reason. Ever since their run-in with the sheriff outside Los Angeles some years back, they all understood the necessary balance the circus needed to strike: Make enough noise to turn a little profit, but not so much noise as to attract the eyes of the law.
But as Earl’s wallet grew fatter and fatter, his sense of caution waned. They had traveled throughout the Sierra Nevada foothills, but soon they were circling in closer and closer to the city of Sacramento than they had ever dared to before. Ava was further shocked when Earl went so far as to have handbills printed up. EARL SHAW’S INCREDIBLE FLYING CIRCUS IS PROUD TO INTRODUCE OUR ALL-NEW, SPECTACULAR, DEATH-DEFYING WING-WALKERS!!! it shouted in large, heavy type at the top. The idea was, Earl explained, that Ava would post the handbills at each stop, and their crowds would easily triple in size.
“Isn’t that awfully bold?” Ava asked, looking the handbills over with surprise.
“Bold? Bold brings us business!”
There’ll be no passing ourselves off as crop dusters if the cops get ahold of that handbill, Ava thought, but bit her tongue. Earl Shaw was not a man who took kindly to criticism.
And so Louis and Harry continued to pursue their crazy stuntman competition, Ava posted handbills, and “Earl Shaw’s Incredible Flying Circus” grew into more of a spectacle than ever before. Earl was certainly right about one thing: The number of spectators they entertained quickly doubled, and then doubled again.
At least Earl’s good mood meant he was not disposed to stingily complain about the flying circus’s increased consumption of gasoline. It seemed to Ava that the two biplanes were constantly buzzing in the air now. Fetching more gasoline was becoming a constant occupation. Louis and Harry perpetually wanted to try out new stunts, and Buzz and Hutch were happy to oblige, their interest in aviation refreshed by the presence of the two young newcomers.
Ava was washing laundry with her mother early one morning when Castor and Pollux both came in for a landing. She hadn’t seen them take off, but now, as the planes touched down on the dry yellow grass, Ava noticed something unusual: It appeared Louis and Harry were the ones doing the flying.
So, she thought, Buzz and Hutch have been giving them lessons.
She felt a twinge of something. Was it jealousy? The thought of flying terrified her, but it was starting to entice her a little bit, too. Like standing at the edge of a cliff and having that curiously strong inkling to jump.
She watched the four men tumble down from the biplanes, shouting and laughing and peeling off their caps and goggles. She could hear a little of what they were saying. She listened while pretending new interest in the washboard before her.
“Way to go, Eagle! I’d say you earned your wings!” Hutch said to Louis, clapping him on the back. “You, too!” he added, clapping Harry on the back in turn.
Ava glanced up from the washboard and saw Louis and Harry exchange a rare, sheepish smile.
“Looks like you’re taking pilot lessons from Buzz and Hutch,” Ava remarked later that day. She’d asked Louis to help her gather kindling for a fire, and he’d obliged, always eager to avail himself to Ava.
Louis’s eyes lit up.
“That was Harry’s idea,” he said. “But . . . it seemed like the kind of chance that don’t come along every day . . . so I figured, Why not?” He paused and summoned a nonchalant expression. “We ain’t learning anything fancy. Just the plain ol’ basics of aviation.”
“I heard them calling you ‘Eagle,’” she commented. “What is that? Is that your new nickname?”
At this, Louis blushed. At the same time, a proud expression crept into his features.
“Aw, that’s nothin’, really. Buzz and Hutch insisted that all pilots had to have a call sign.”
Of course, Ava thought, call signs. “And yours is ‘Eagle’?” she asked.
He shrugged. “With all that wing-walking business, Hutch said we ought to name ourselves after birds. Buzz laughed at that and said that if we were birds, we’d have to be two very different-lookin’ birds, you know, on account of our nationalities . . .”
Ava saw where this was headed. “So you’re the American eagle?”
“I guess so.”
“And what is Harry?”
“Well, then they tried to think of a Jap bird, so . . . after a while, they started calling him ‘Crane.’”
“‘Eagle and Crane,’” Ava repeated, frowning, suddenly lost in thought. “And does . . . does that bother Harry much?”
Louis looked down at the ground and shrugged again. “If it does, he don’t let it show.”
“Sounds like Harry.”
“It’s all in good fun. Buzz and Hutch don’t mean anything by it. And anyway,” Louis continued, “Harry is a Jap, after all.”
Something in Louis’s tone troubled Ava.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, frowning.
Louis looked at her, surprised.
“Nothing much,” he said. “It’s just a fact, ain’t it? Harry’s a Jap, no two ways about it.”
Ava didn’t reply. She busied herself with gathering more kindling. Something still nagged at her about the tone of Louis’s assessment, but she was hard-pressed to put her finger on what it was.