Nessie’s death was like that piece of yarn that—with a small tug—unravels an entire sweater. As it turned out, in addition to betting away the western parcel, Ennis Thorn had accrued quite a lot of debt while he was still alive, borrowing against the farm, and Nessie had been holding that debt at bay, diligently robbing Peter to pay Paul with a persistent, steady hand. But in the wake of the Great Crash, her careful system had collapsed. The amount owed was substantial, and involved a partial mortgage of the property—a fact she’d kept hidden until her sudden death. If the Thorns could not pay, the ranch would soon fall into foreclosure.
This turn of events only meant one thing for John Thorn, and that, simply put, was that he could work as hard as he might for the rest of his life, and the best result he could hope to achieve was to hang on to what remained of the property and scrape by. In short, he and the rest of the Thorns were sentenced to a life of poverty.
What little traces of mirth John Thorn ever possessed died the day he learned his late mother’s secret. He fought hard to keep the ranch from falling into foreclosure, but a certain resentment had set in for good. Just as in the days and weeks that followed Black Tuesday, there was no one who John Thorn might blame.
But then one day, while sitting on the porch with his eldest son, Guy Thorn, John’s eyes fell on the dust being kicked up on the horizon, and a sudden realization occurred to him. The Japs. There it was: a single automobile belonging to what John Thorn now saw as a greedy, prosperous foreigner, driving along a lane in the distance, speeding toward a homestead that was stolen, on a parcel of land that did not truly belong to him.
“Damn Japs,” John muttered, loud enough for his son to hear. Guy startled, not expecting his father to say anything, let alone the words he heard now. Guy had been reclining on his elbows, and now he straightened up, attentive to his father’s sudden proclamation.
“Damn Japs,” John Thorn repeated. “Did I ever tell you the story about how those dirty Japs stole our land from my father?”
Guy shook his head, too intimidated and awed. His father rarely spoke, and he never told stories.
“Well, now . . .” John said. He began to repeat the words his father, Ennis, had spoken many times, and in that moment a strange thing happened: When Ennis had told it, the story had merely been an Irishman’s drunken yarn, but as John repeated it, it suddenly bore the ring of truth and the weight of fact. Such is often the way with family stories: They become more “factual” with each repetition, with each generation further removed.
Either way, among the facts Guy Thorn learned that day was that it was the Yamadas’ fault the Thorns were in such a state; it was the Yamadas’ fault that they were not rich and prosperous; and that, because of Kenichi Yamada, the Thorn family never received the true bounty promised to them by California’s gold hills.
Once learned, it proved a difficult lesson to unlearn.
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 bo
th 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.
21
Earl Shaw’s Flying Circus
Sacramento, California * June 16, 1940
As Earl grew bolder and bolder, the barnstorming troupe circled even closer to the city of Sacramento. Eventually, they came so close as to put up camp in Florin, a little town that brushed up against the very outskirts of Sacramento itself.
Florin turned out to be home to a sizable “Japantown.” A large number of the Japanese residents owned land and made a living as strawberry farmers, and the biggest house of worship in town was a Buddhist temple.
As they strolled the small main street, Buzz teased Harry openly: “Feel right at home here, eh?” Ava watched Harry’s face, curious to know his reaction. But there was little written on his face to read; Harry’s expression was calm and relaxed, but also stoic, indecipherable. One thing was plain, though: There was no jibe Buzz could make that Harry hadn’t already heard.
They camped in Florin for several days, performing stunts and selling rides. Sometimes, in the late afternoons and evenings, Buzz and Hutch thumbed a ride into Sacramento, hankering for some entertainment.
“Say, why don’t the two of you come along and have a beer with us this evening?” Buzz suggested to Louis and Harry after a day spent barnstorming for a packed crowd. “Hutch knows a place where they won’t give you any trouble about your age.”
Louis and Harry looked at each other, exchanging a slightly wary glance. They’d performed stunts together, they’d camped near each other, but both boys had carefully and purposely refrained from any kind of behavior that might be described as openly friendly.
Louis had always had the impression of the capital city as an incongruous mixture of farmers and politicians, denim coveralls and polka-dot bow ties, both groups constantly arguing over land and water rights. Though not much famed for its nightlife, it nonetheless promised to be livelier than any of the towns they’d traveled through over the past two months.
“I suppose I’d be tempted by a beer,” Harry replied, breaking the stand-off.
“Yeah, all right,” Louis agreed.
The four men changed into clean clothes and successfully thumbed a ride from a farmer headed into town in a large pickup truck. The bar Hutch had suggested turned out to be a floating barge on the river; getting to it required a boat. The farmer dropped them off in the old town, and they climbed down the steep embankment of the levy under the Tower Bridge. For fifty cents—a sum invented and negotiated on the spot—a local fisherman transported them in a small trawler upriver to the establishment in question.
Down that close to the water, a humid breeze cut the otherwise bone-dry Sacramento air. The river carried the gamy scent of thick silt, a fragrance of frog, and the musk of duck. Cattails and blackberry bushes knitted themselves together to form a border of dense underbrush all along the riverbanks. Stars began to emerge in the inky sky. Crickets chirped. Small bats began to appear like black cutouts against the glow of the rosy-purple twilight, making their strange, erratic, frenzied dashes through the air.
Louis stood at the port bow of the small vessel as it slowly prowled the river, watching the dull green water ripple away in tiny waves and swirl in eddies. He contemplated—with no small measure of disbelief—his new life, his new role as “stuntman” in a flying circus. He’d been able to send some money home. His brother Guy had disapproved of Louis’s decision to join the barnstorming group at first—especially when Guy learned Harry Yamada was involved—but he had softened up since, sending word that the money was appreciated, that it was actually helping. It was really incredible, when you took a step back to consider it all. Louis thought about what he would be doing if he were back home on the Thorn ranch.
But then, Louis already knew exactly what he’d be doing: His brother Guy would be ordering Louis around. Louis would either be completing chores or attempting repairs on their family’s sadly run-down property—or else Louis would be sent to go pick in other people’s orchards and farms. During most summers, all the Thorns took whatever work they could, harvesting whatever they could. They regularly hired themselves out to work in other families’ orchards, pruning and harvesting as the seasons demanded. And no matter how diligently Louis worked—no matter how devotedly any of the Thorn children worked—the Thorn ranch still struggled. Guy would stalk around the property with his mouth set in an angry line, fretting gravely about the price of apples, about the price of milk and eggs, talking to their mother, Edith, in hushed tones, late at night—always, always warning her about the possibility of foreclosure.
Without the flying c
ircus, life would have gone on like that. Probably forever.
Louis had to admit: If Harry hadn’t begged Hutch to fly barrel rolls and a loop-the-loop during that first tourist flight, Buzz never would’ve offered to fly Louis through the same, and Louis never would have accepted. If Harry hadn’t boldly announced his intentions to wing walk and dared Louis to follow suit—if Harry hadn’t negotiated with Earl that the two of them go on getting paid to wing walk—Louis had to admit he wouldn’t have tried half the things he’d tried if it weren’t for Harry.
It was certainly something to think about.
When they reached the barge, the trawler pulled up to the landing and idled as the four of them, Louis and Harry, Buzz and Hutch, shuffled off the fishing boat and onto the floating dive bar. The establishment had no name. Louis was fairly certain it had served as a speakeasy during the nation’s dry years. Now it was celebrating the legality of liquor, and was plenty wet. It also served the kinds of dishes most easily dredged up from the river—boiled crawdads and sautéed catfish—with wild onions and potatoes. As they boarded the barge they heard the twanging sounds of several guitars and a banjo—Dixieland jazz. It was, in short, a riverboat honky-tonk.
They stepped into the tin-sided building that rose from the middle of the barge and looked for a place to sit for a beer. Men sat around a single large, rectangular bar, in the middle of which stood a barkeep and cook tending to the patrons. A small band responsible for the music they’d heard drifting out over the river strummed away in the far corner. People looked up from their drinks as they entered the room.
As they stood there, Louis noticed Harry shuffling his feet with an agitated air. Louis realized the reason for Harry’s nerves: As Louis looked around the room, he saw that every single face was white, and a large number of those faces were frowning in Harry’s direction. This happened a lot wherever they went; Louis recalled the way the maître d’ had scurried out to intercept Harry on the night Earl had taken them all out for a night on the town.
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