“I don’t understand,” Ava’s mother replied, laughing nervously and shaking her head.
“A flying circus!” Earl said. “I’m talking about a flying circus!”
“But . . . do you know how to fly?”
Earl waved a dismissive hand. “We’ll find a couple of pilots, pay them a cut of the profits,” he said, then added as though thinking aloud, “A small cut, that is . . .” He walked over to the airplanes and began to circle them, rubbing his chin and thinking of the best way to plumb every penny he could from the two mechanical wonders. Together they were, without a doubt, the largest windfall Earl had ever chanced upon.
Ava and her mother drew closer, both of them trying to get a better look at the biplanes. In the moonlight, she could see one was red and the other was blue. CASTOR and POLLUX, their names glittered in gold lettering. They seemed so still and heavy; Ava stared at them, slightly awed to picture them flying high in the sky.
6
Earl Shaw’s Flying Circus
California’s Central Valley * 1935—1939
As it turned out, Earl was blinded by optimism when he declared, “There’s money in airplanes.” The second he laid eyes on the biplanes he’d won, his mind carried him back to his younger years and the first time he’d seen a flying circus. People had crowded around, waving dollar bills at the pilots, begging for airplane rides.
“Where was this?” Ava asked. She was curious about Earl’s past. It seemed he had traveled all over the country.
“Hush now, child! I’m in the middle of a story,” Earl replied, and launched again into a detailed account of the enormous riches he was sure the flying circus had made that day.
“Barnstorming,” he said, shaking his head in admiration of the memory. “Going from town to town, flying stunts and offering airplane rides. They call that barnstorming, and the folks who do it are called barnstormers.”
Earl couldn’t know how dated his memory was and how much barnstorming had changed over the years. The novelty of airplanes had worn off for some folks, and new federal regulations had put the kind of informal flying circuses Earl was remembering out of business. Moreover, Earl hadn’t considered how the Depression had taken its toll on the barnstorming business, too. He was only thinking back to that day he’d seen a pair of pilots mobbed by admirers clamoring for rides, the flying circus looking like it was making money hand over fist. If he had known better, maybe he would’ve sold the pair of Stearman Model 75 biplanes straightaway. Earl had always maintained a fondness for quick cash. Since he didn’t know better, his heart was fixed on the idea of running his very own flying circus and raking in all the profits that came with it.
The first people to hint that Earl’s notions weren’t entirely accurate were the pilots Earl hired. They were a couple of characters—two fellows who went by the names “Hutch” and “Buzz.”
“I dunno how much money you’re countin’ on us makin’ . . . I kin fly the stunts you’re describin’ and take folks up for rides, but it’s gonna be up to you if we get a fine,” Hutch said when Earl approached him.
“Fine? Why would we be fined?”
Hutch explained. Earl listened and looked slightly cowed, but quickly hid it once Hutch was done talking.
“Of course,” Earl said, as though nothing Hutch had said came as a surprise. “You worry about the flying. I’ll worry about the rest.”
He hired the two pilots and the group began to travel together, with Earl determined to make a go of it.
“Those are awfully funny names,” Ava remarked when Hutch and Buzz first introduced themselves. Those were their call signs, they explained to Ava. They laughed and told her: Pilots typically went by nicknames. Hutch’s was simply short for his full last name, Hutchinson, while Buzz had earned his name due to the fact that he’d developed a reputation for buzzing the flight tower wherever he went.
Hutch was the older of the two pilots and had flown for the Army. He was middle-aged, with touches of gray at his temples. He was more rugged than handsome, and ambled like a cowboy. Kind but stern, Hutch didn’t smile too often, but when he did, crinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes and lent him an oddly charismatic, Santa Claus air.
Buzz was in his mid-twenties, with dark blond hair he meticulously combed into a slick side sweep. He’d worked here and there as an instructor, but, according to him, wanderlust and “skirt chasing” had kept him from holding down a solid regular job. It was easy to see Buzz was a ladies’ man: His head nearly swiveled off his neck whenever a pretty girl walked by. There was a little swagger to his every movement; it was visible even in how an airplane moved while under his control.
Hutch and Buzz already knew how to fly a decent repertoire of aerial stunts: barrel rolls and loop-the-loops, spiral dives and harrowingly tight fly-bys. Once they showed him what they could do, Earl insisted the flying circus hit the road without further delay, still full of the idea that barnstorming would make him rich. So the group set out, heading west back to California. They traveled from town to town, attracting whatever impromptu audience they could by flying stunts, with Earl trying to convince as many members of the crowd as he could to purchase a scenic ride in the clouds.
Earl was almost immediately disappointed by the size of his profits. By the third town, he had to face the reality that his expectations had been overblown. He grew irritable and began to snap at Ava’s mother in particular.
“We’re making more than we were with Pandora’s Wonder Tonic,” Cleo ventured one evening, trying to cheer up her husband.
“Barely,” Earl sneered. His head jerked in her direction and his eyes narrowed. “And what do you know about it, anyway? Keep your nose out of our business matters. You know nothing about it.”
Those first few weeks, Earl talked regularly about quitting and selling the biplanes—which he had decided he should’ve done in the first place. But then, around the time they passed through Sacramento, something changed and he seemed to settle down. Ava guessed that he had come around to seeing her mother’s point: that they were making slightly more than they had with the Wonder Tonic and a steady income was nothing to scoff at, given how the rest of the nation was doing.
Soon they fell into a routine as they moved from town to town. Hutch and Buzz scouted the next location from above, circling back and signaling to Earl as he towed the caravan with an old Model A down below. When they found an empty field that fit the bill, they landed the two biplanes. Eventually, Earl, Cleo, and Ava caught up, motoring along in the Model A.
If the field belonged to a local farmer, Earl typically worked out a deal to pay the farmer a little money to use it—an expense he almost always grumbled about later, despite the fact that it was unavoidable. By trial and error, he learned to vary the price of the rides they offered; a handful of customers at a cut rate was better than no customers at all. To no one’s surprise, Earl was very good at sizing people up and guessing what each town could afford to pay.
* * *
During those early days, both Hutch and Buzz urged Ava to come up for a scenic ride. She was vaguely panicked by the thought of soaring into the sky in one of the two heavy metal contraptions that seemed more likely to be earthbound. But she was also tempted. She felt something within her issuing a morbid but exciting dare.
“Bah!” Earl said, if he was within earshot when Hutch and Buzz began to rhapsodize about the pleasures of flying. “The girl isn’t a paying customer,” he pointed out. “She doesn’t need adventure; no reason to frighten the child! Unless . . . of course . . . you’d like to pay for the wasted fuel yourselves?”
Ava did not push for an airplane ride; she was both fascinated and terrified of the idea anyway, a true mix of emotions. After a while, Hutch and Buzz stopped inviting her to go up for a quick flight. The days and weeks and eventually months went by. She had a good head for numbers, and Earl put her in charge of the cashbox. Day in and
day out, she sold scenic airplane rides . . . without ever having taken one herself.
* * *
They passed their first summer season of barnstorming without incident. But Earl’s frustration returned as fall gave way to winter. Cold, rainy weather left them without any business, sometimes weeks at a time. They traveled south again, seeking the sun. By early spring, Earl was desperate to see his bottom line tick upward again. Up to that point, the flying circus had taken care to stick to smaller farming towns.
“You’re gonna wanna stay at least a few miles away from anyplace that has an airport or airbase,” Hutch had advised, early on. “It ain’t worth attracting the attention.”
Earl had heeded this advice, but now he was itching to push his luck. From his time selling Pandora’s Wonder Tonic he knew that the population of Los Angeles had exploded over the past three decades; Earl couldn’t help but be tempted by all those potential passengers willing to pay a buck to say they’d gone up in an airplane. They began to circle in closer and closer to the city.
Just as Earl had hoped, sales indeed increased, until something happened. They were in El Monte, a little town on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Hutch and Buzz had flown a few stunts, and once a small crowd had gathered, they set about taking passengers up for scenic rides. Everything went smoothly and they were almost in the clear—they had already taken the last paying tourist up, the crowd had dispersed, and they were preparing to make camp for the evening—when a sheriff’s car came rolling onto the empty field Earl had paid a local farmer to borrow.
The gentleman who stepped out of the car was well over six feet. He adjusted his hat against the midday glare and strode toward them with purpose. He introduced himself. It just so happened that he, Sheriff Thompson, had been a former Army pilot himself. He also happened to know about a little something called the Air Commerce Act.
“I been hearing in town that you folks put on an air show here today,” he said.
“Air show?” Earl roared, as though surprised.
“I hope you know,” the sheriff warned, “putting on an unlicensed air show would be illegal in these here parts . . . I’d be obligated to report ya.”
“Oh, no,” Earl said, shaking his head and waving his hands gracefully. “No, no—you have it all wrong, I assure you . . .”
The sheriff raised an eyebrow.
“We’re just crop dusters!” Earl said with sudden, joyful vehemence. It was the cover story Buzz and Hutch had suggested he use should this very situation arise. His eyes slid involuntarily to his two pilots now, and each gave a tiny nod as if to affirm his tactic. “Lots of orange groves around here,” Earl continued. “We thought to avail ourselves to the local farmers . . .”
“Crop dusters, huh?” The sheriff aimed a skeptical look at the two colorfully painted biplanes over Earl’s shoulder and shook his head. “Sorry, but I gotta advise you to push on through these parts,” he said with an air of finality.
“But—” Earl began to protest, but the sheriff raised a hand to silence him.
“Look, let me put this in plain English for you: I’m giving you a chance to clear out of here without any further hassle. I’d take that deal if I were you, you understand?”
Earl backed down. He nodded. “Well, sir!” he replied. “We’re only trying to make an honest living in the midst of these hard times; any man can understand that, these days! But if we’re not wanted, then we’ll go . . .”
“Good,” the sheriff replied, satisfied. “Then you’ll be moving on . . . I’ll be back around on patrol later this evening and I won’t expect to see you here. Good afternoon.” He touched the brim of his hat and strode back to his car. As he walked, he called over his shoulder, “For the record, fellas, crop dusters don’t tend to fly circles over the only fallow field for five miles in every direction!”
With that, the sheriff pulled the door to his Ford shut and started the engine again.
They had all witnessed the exchange: Ava, Cleo, Hutch, and Buzz. No one said anything. Ava looked at Earl; he looked deflated, but also angry enough that she half expected clouds of steam to shoot from his ears.
“Well?” Earl demanded, glaring at the group as the sheriff’s car kicked up a cloud of hazy dust in its trail as it pulled away. “Useless pack of beggars! Don’t just stand there twiddling your thumbs! Pack everything back up!”
They did as they were told.
* * *
Later that night, once they had made camp in the San Gabriel Mountains, Earl was still angry. It was a setback. Ava knew it would be at least another day or two before they felt safe enough to try a new town, fly stunts, and sell rides. Earl couldn’t stand to lose the money.
That evening, after the group had eaten supper, Ava’s mother and Earl retired to the caravan, while Ava remained by the fire with Hutch and Buzz. Earl had been so agitated by the sheriff’s earlier eviction he had barely eaten—a bad sign, Ava knew. She was dreading joining them in the caravan, for she suspected Earl was bent on picking a fight. Picking a fight was an inaccurate way to phrase it, because Cleo never argued back, really. Sometimes she never even spoke. Earl was capable of working himself into a lather all by himself.
Sure enough, as Ava sat around the fire with Hutch and Buzz, the sounds of Earl’s angry voice began to boom from within the caravan. It got louder and louder, drifting toward them through the balmy night air.
Buzz’s head jerked in the direction of the caravan, as though contemplating an interruption. Hutch shook his head at him, signaling to Buzz to stay right where he sat.
“I’d keep out of it,” Hutch said. “It sounds like he’s just blowin’ off some steam.”
“What if he keeps at it or gets worse?”
“Then I’ll step in and have a word with him. But you just stay where you are, Romeo.” He paused and waited for Buzz to contradict him, but Buzz didn’t. “Don’t think Earl hasn’t noticed the way you been lookin’ at his wife.”
“Aw, shoot . . . I look at all women that way.”
“Maybe so, but he ain’t gonna thank you for getting in his business now, tryin’ to play the hero.” Hutch poked the fire with a stick. He glanced at Ava with gentle, apologetic eyes. “That business is only between a man and his wife. Let’s just let him yell hisself out for now. It’ll pass.”
The dying flames danced back to life and the fire threw off a steady wave of cheek-warming heat. Eventually, Hutch was proven right: Earl yelled himself out and the caravan returned to a quiet, still state. Once everything had been silent for a half hour or so, Ava got up, brushed herself off, and went to bed, stepping lightly, careful not to wake her mother or—worse—Earl.
* * *
The next morning they traveled north, away from the city of Los Angeles. Having learned their lesson, they restricted their travels to the smaller, more rural towns.
“Like I say: Make enough noise to scare up some business, but not enough to scare us up a hefty fine,” Hutch repeated.
Earl was frustrated but seemed resigned to the truth in Hutch’s assessment. He was more mindful about keeping a quiet profile and kept them moving quickly from town to town, never lingering to bask in the attention they drew. The barnstormers carried on, carefully making a humble living. The days turned into months and eventually years, and Ava grew up as she always had, ever since the day her father died: with a jarring tempo, in starts and fits, like an airplane engine sputtering to life.
7
Newcastle, California * September 16, 1943
The walk back into town is long and sweaty. By the time Agent Bonner makes it back to the sheriff’s office, his shirt bears two large rings beneath his armpits. He passes by his Bureau car, still parked where he last left it, directly out front. He pushes his way through the front door of the office and steps inside.
It is ever so slightly cooler inside the building. The walls are painted hospital green, and
the blinds are drawn against the September glare, while an oscillating fan lazily churns the air, the rhythmic whooshes of air making a sound like waves lapping a beach.
“There you are,” Deputy Henderson calls from across the room, rising from his desk. The sheriff’s office is mostly one simple room, and there are three desks: a large one for the sheriff, a smaller one for the deputy, and an even smaller, unoccupied one for the woman who works as a part-time secretary. Life in a one-horse town, Bonner had uncharitably thought during his first encounter earlier that morning.
“We lost track of you at the crash site,” Henderson says. “Wondered where you’d got off to.”
“I accompanied Louis Thorn back to the old Yamada house,” Bonner replies, shooting a look across the room, to where Sheriff Whitcomb sits hunched over a stack of paperwork on his large desk. Whitcomb doesn’t look up. Neither Whitcomb nor Henderson apologizes for not making a better effort to locate Bonner and offer him a ride back into town. Not that Bonner wants to pick a bone with either of them.
“It seemed like a good idea to go ahead and pursue an interview with Thorn,” Bonner continues, allowing this indifference to roll off his back. “You know . . . get his impressions of the crash while they’re fresh.”
“Sure, that makes sense.” Henderson nods.
Bonner hears the sheriff grunt from across the room.
“What was that, Sheriff?” Bonner calls to Whitcomb.
“Learn anything useful?” Whitcomb replies without looking up from his desk.
“Maybe,” Bonner replies.
When the sheriff grunts again, Bonner ignores him. “May I use your telephone to make some calls? Bureau business, of course.”
Eagle & Crane Page 5