Murphy’s Saloon * February 28, 1941
It took some time to locate Buzz and Hutch and successfully wire each of them a message. Eventually, Louis and Harry were able to track them down: Buzz had picked up charter work in Oakland, and Hutch had gone to stay with some old Army buddies in Portland, Oregon, while he decided what to do next. Harry invited the two pilots to Newcastle, and Harry’s father paid for a pair of train tickets. Puzzled yet curious, Buzz and Hutch both made the trip.
The five of them gathered in a back booth in Murphy’s Saloon: Louis, Harry, Buzz, Hutch, and Ava. Cleo remained behind on the Yamada property, learning to prune fruit trees. Her mother was happy, Ava realized. Cleo, for all her glamour, loved working in the orchards. She should’ve been a farmer’s wife all along.
The remaining former members of the flying circus sat in the dark gloom of the bar, arrayed about a sticky wooden tabletop. It was afternoon, but the only sunlight in the establishment came from a series of small windows cut into the walls just under the eaves, making their faces glow in an almost eerie manner.
“All right, fellas,” Hutch said, once they had settled in. “You boys got us down here. Wanna tell us what this is all about?”
“We were able to get Pollux back,” Harry said.
“Well, Harry’s father was,” Louis corrected, a stickler for the details.
“We’re getting a barnstorming act together,” Harry continued. “A new one, a real one . . . bona fide and legal . . . without Earl.”
“It’ll be different,” Louis said. He cleared his throat. “No more living off chump change from taking poor farmers and their families up for tourist rides.”
“I don’t get it,” Hutch said. He appeared interested yet wore a frown. “How will you make your money?”
Louis and Harry exchanged a look.
“We’ve been talking,” Harry continued, “and Louis has some ideas for more of a true spectacle. We’ve been talking about putting on a straight stunt show.”
“A stunt show?” Hutch repeated.
“Yeah . . . it’s kind of a themed variety act of sorts.”
Buzz raised an eyebrow. Both pilots looked confused but intrigued.
Harry turned to his friend. “Louis?” he prompted.
Louis cleared his throat. He produced a notebook he’d been nervously clutching and placed it on the table.
“All right,” he said. “Well, to start with, you oughta know we won’t be doing this in any old farmer’s field. The law says we gotta use official airstrips, which we can lease for a price. The good news about that is now we can charge our spectators for a seat in the bleachers just to watch.”
“Instead of making our money on individual tourist rides,” Harry said, “we’ll be selling tickets to see our act, more like . . . well, more like a show. Like a tented circus, or something you would ordinarily pay to go see.”
“Who’s going to pay just to watch us monkey around with one airplane?” Buzz asked. “One airplane ain’t much, and folks don’t go nuts for airplanes like they used to.”
“Louis might just have an answer to that,” Harry said, and nodded at his friend to continue.
“To really draw the crowds,” Louis said, a tinge of nervous embarrassment in his voice, “what I’ve been thinking is that we need to put together something unique . . .”
Inside the pages of his notebook, Louis had diligently sketched out a hodgepodge of influences: He’d dissected and diagrammed several comic-book heroes, with special emphasis on flying ones such as Superman or Flash Gordon, who traveled in a rocket ship. He’d mapped out legendary performances by the Flying Wallendas and other famous circus acrobats and finally, with Harry’s help, he’d broken down and analyzed a number of Harry Houdini’s most celebrated escape acts.
“What we’re gonna do,” Louis said, hesitantly at first, “is some of . . . well, some of all of this.”
“’Fraid I don’t follow,” Hutch said, staring at Louis’s handmade illustrations.
“Well, all of these, they all tell a story, they all give their audiences a thrill of danger,” Louis replied. He glanced at Harry. “They pull off something that should be impossible and make them puzzle over a magic trick.”
As Louis continued to talk, his embarrassment was overcome with enthusiasm. He went on to explain that they were going to make it a themed show and wear costumes—the new name of the barnstorming act was to be Eagle & Crane. The act involved an airplane and an automobile, which Hutch and Buzz—if they signed on—would keep in constant motion throughout the show. Meanwhile, Louis and Harry, dressed in costumes inspired by Louis’s comic-book heroes, would perform on the wings as “Eagle” and “Crane.” There was a loose narrative—a battle between good and evil—but really the true spectacle was in the colorful nature of the costumes, in the choreography, and in the story.
He tapped his pencil on one page of the notebook.
“We want to include the automobile‒airplane transfer we been doing,” Louis said. “But we also want to try some other things we ain’t tried yet, too: parachute jumps and more stunt aerobatics in general . . .”
Buzz and Hutch both raised their eyebrows with surprise but looked interested as they nodded and made a closer study of Louis’s sketches and schematics.
“And,” Louis said with an air of show-stopping finality, “we’ll end each performance with one last trick . . .”
“Oh?” Buzz prodded.
“A sort of tribute to the Great Houdini, really,” Harry explained. “Louis and I been talking about a way to combine all our favorite things, our areas of expertise. Just look at what he’s come up with . . .”
Louis flipped the page in his notebook to reveal a detailed diagram of the planned feat. Hutch and Buzz leaned in for a better look. Together, they studied the elaborate sketch. Hutch stroked his chin, his eyebrows raised with an even mixture of dubiousness and awe. They gathered from the details in the drawing that one of the two young men would be rigged up in a straitjacket and dangled upside down from the landing gear, whereupon the Stearman would fly in low circles for the audience while the man performed his escape.
“I sent away for the straitjacket and it arrived last week,” Louis said proudly. He grinned at Harry. “We’ve been practicing a little already how to escape it—on the ground, that is.”
Buzz gave a low-pitched whistle.
“Awfully ambitious of you, fellas,” he said. “This is the kinda stuff Hollywood stuntmen do. Are you up for it, Harry?”
A flicker of a frown passed over Louis’s face. He knew Buzz had directed the comment at Harry because he’d assumed that “Crane” would be doing all the most perilous stunts. It was true, but nonetheless the assumption nagged at Louis.
“I think we’re up for it. Right, Louis?” Harry said.
Louis nodded. He and Harry resumed their detailed explanation of how the show would go: They had decided it would be carefully choreographed and scripted. They needed to hire a good announcer to take care of the latter part. Ava would ask her mother, Cleo, to sew some costumes.
Buzz, Hutch, and Ava all listened and looked on and asked encouraging questions, but Buzz’s comment had subtly brought into the open an unspoken truth. He had stated aloud what all of them already knew: that Harry was by far the better stuntman. Louis could sketch and dream and plan all he liked, but Harry was the true daredevil; Eagle & Crane needed Harry. Without Harry, Louis never would have stepped foot upon a single airplane wing.