Eagle & Crane

by Suzanne Rindell

  Louis’s stomach twisted, suddenly remembering it all: the fact that Guy was dead, the fact that he had nearly shot Harry in the head, the fact that he was, technically, still harboring two escaped Japanese internees on property that was his in legal name . . .

  The men neared the top of the stairs, arriving at the front porch. Louis took a deep breath and pushed through the screen door. It closed with a slap behind him.

  “May I help you fellas?”

  Only minutes later Louis Thorn watched in disbelief as the Stearman puttered out of gas, stalled, and plunged from the sky.

  69

  Newcastle, California * September 24, 1943

  Having finally put the pieces together, Agent Bonner hurries out of Murphy’s Saloon and immediately jumps into the Bureau car parked out front, intent on racing over to the former Yamada residence as quickly as he possibly can. It is nighttime but not completely dark; the moon is full. It casts a ghostly silver glow over everything and cuts clear black shadows onto the ground of every structure, creature, and leaf. As Bonner pulls up the drive, he spots a single plume of smoke rising into the air. It, too, catches the moon’s light, undulating white, silver, and black as it rises up to the heavens in a column.

  On instinct, Bonner knows the plume is Louis Thorn’s doing.

  He kills the engine and steps out of the car. He can smell the burning. He does not bother approaching the house and knocking on the front door. Instead, he walks around the farmhouse to the source of the smoke, a short distance behind the barn. He wonders if he might find Louis and Ava together—and possibly Cleo Shaw, too. But when he rounds the corner of the barn, he sees only a single figure standing vigil over the flames that are steadily consuming the old wooden caravan.

  “Agent Bonner,” Louis greets him.

  Louis has his back to the F.B.I. agent, but it is plain he knows exactly who it is without having to turn around.

  “Where is Miss Brooks?” Bonner asks. He stands beside Louis. Together they stare into the flames. The fire crackles as though it is breaking down the bones of the caravan—presumably the site of two deaths: Earl Shaw’s and Kenichi Yamada’s. There is something else in the flames, too, something that has been thrown in more recently than the rest of the burning mass. Bonner can just barely make out a letter, rapidly curling into blackened tar, and something else—perhaps a parachute.

  “She’s gone,” Louis says, answering Bonner’s question. “She left with her mother.”

  “I suppose you don’t know where she’s gone or when she’s coming back,” Bonner says.

  “Don’t reckon she is coming back.”

  Bonner points to the items burning in the caravan. “And I’m guessing she wrote a letter exonerating you . . . She left the parachute she used and explained how she did it.”

  I figured it out before then, Louis thinks quietly to himself.

  “You didn’t know she had learned how to fly the Stearman.”

  “I should’ve figured Harry had been taking her up,” Louis answers, his voice far away, thoughtful. In the flickering light Bonner thinks he sees a shudder of pain cross Louis’s face.

  “But they kept it a secret from you,” Bonner replies, recalling the letter he has just read, sitting at the bar—a personal love letter from Ava to Harry. In it, she confessed some of her fondest memories together, and Bonner was surprised to learn that Ava—who was supposedly afraid of flying—not only trusted Harry enough to go up with him, she also learned to fly herself.

  “They kept a lot of things secret from me,” Louis says now.

  Bonner looks at Louis’s face more closely and cocks his head. “Are you glad or disappointed to know that Harry is still alive?”

  Bonner’s brain worked hard to put together the rest of it, but it came down to that photograph. The names painted in gold lettering on the two biplanes in the background, CASTOR and POLLUX: the twins. When he remembered an old astronomy lesson—the constellation Castor and Pollux, the two famous twins that made up Gemini—it unlocked something in Bonner’s brain. So did seeing Earl and Harry standing on either side, both of them about the same height and weight, both of them with black hair—not that the hair mattered so much; they had singed most of that away when they burned the body. They had still taken a huge risk, nonetheless. The coroner examined Kenichi Yamada’s body but hadn’t done much with the charred mess believed to be Harry Yamada’s body. Bonner knew a closer examination from a more seasoned coroner might have revealed the body’s racial identity—it possibly still could, although he also knew that was unlikely. In devising her plan, Ava counted on everyone to assume the second body was Harry’s. Moreover, she relied on the notion that no one would care enough about the deaths of two Japanese men to probe very deeply. She had been right about that: Bonner thought about his last conversation with Reed, and the order he’d been given to close the case without further ado.

  Bonner guessed that Cleo Shaw had been the one to pull the trigger on Earl, and that accounted for why she was so jittery, so fragile and on edge. She had shot her husband—in self-defense possibly, but still, it was bound to shake a woman up.

  Bonner’s mind lined up the rest of it. He’d had the bruises all wrong, but that was only because he’d been shown the wrong two sets of bruises: the ones on Louis’s face and the ones on Kenichi’s corpse. He’d assumed they’d gotten into a scuffle together, but that was utterly foolish. He knew now: The bruises on Louis’s face had come from a fight with Harry. Kenichi’s bruises had come from Earl.

  And then there was Ava, who supposedly did not know how to fly the Stearman. Her letter to Harry—a letter he never had the privilege to read—was full of reminiscences of secret flying lessons. When her mother shot Earl, and Kenichi died, Ava knew exactly what she could do about it.

  He had to admire her boldness—not only to mastermind the body switch, but also to pull it off. She had guts.

  “Are you glad, or disappointed, to know that Harry is still alive?” Bonner repeats his question.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Louis says, his voice firm.

  Bonner looks at Louis and smiles with quiet respect.

  “I wondered,” Bonner remarks. “I wondered if you would protect them—both of them. I guess now I have my answer.”

  Louis doesn’t say anything.

  For a long time, both men stand together in silence, watching the caravan burn. Louis’s eyes fall on the parachute. He hadn’t really needed to burn that . . . it wasn’t proof of anything, really. But the parachute had always belonged with the plane, and now they were all united in fire.

  Louis wonders which of them had used it. Ava, he thinks. It must have been Ava. She would have insisted Harry not be anywhere near the crash, which would inevitably draw more attention from law enforcement. Besides, Harry was not in top form; Louis thought he’d felt some ribs crack when he attacked Harry the night before. Louis’s shame deepens when he remembers the fight. He knows Harry held back, restrained himself, let Louis rage.

  No; it had to have been Ava who’d flown the Stearman with its fuel line punctured. She was small enough and light enough to fit in the cockpit with the bodies loaded up. Just as dawn was breaking and the plane was nearly out of gas, she must’ve parachuted away, leaving the biplane flying at a high altitude, eventually to putter and run out of fuel and crash. She was lucky no one saw her. Louis tries to imagine the moment she jumped, the courage it demanded. He has always known Ava was strong, even belligerent in the face of fear, but even so, he is impressed.

  “What will you do?” Louis asks Bonner.

  “You mean, will I send the F.B.I. out looking for Haruto Yamada?” Bonner asks.

  Louis doesn’t speak at first, then nods.

  “No,” Bonner says. He lets out a sigh, and as he does, a pressure lifts from his shoulders. “My supervisor ordered me to close this case, and that’s w
hat I intend to do.”

  Louis turns to Bonner. In the firelight, their faces are mirrors—one half in shadow, one half glowing with the orange flames of the fire. But it is more than that. They bear the similarity of brothers.

  “Why?” Louis finally asks.

  “When I first took this case, I only came here because I wanted to meet you. I didn’t know anything about the Yamadas. I only noticed the name of the town, and your last name, Thorn. I figured, in the worst case—if you’d taken it upon yourself to hide some Japs, I’d help you by turning a blind eye.”

  Louis starts in surprise. “I don’t understand,” he says.

  Bonner looks at him. “There’s a reason your brother Guy and I might look alike,” he says, turning to take in the sight of the foothills in the moonlight. “My grandmother grew up here.”

  Louis doesn’t speak, and Bonner can see he is struggling to make sense of it all.

  “She didn’t talk about it much,” Bonner adds, “on account of the fact that her family hit a rough patch, and she fell into awful poverty here. She wound up working in a . . . well, shall we say, house of ill repute.” Bonner waits a beat. “She moved to San Francisco to have her son—my father. Much later in life, when he asked, the only things she told him was the name of the town where he’d been conceived, and the name of his father: Ennis Thorn.”

  “We share a grandfather . . .” Louis murmurs. It is not entirely crazy to think such a thing is possible, but it is a fact that, in his wildest dreams, he never would’ve guessed.

  “Yes,” Bonner answers quietly. Louis mulls this over. Finally he speaks.

  “You have no idea what it was like, every time you came around asking questions, the fact that you look . . .” His throat catches and he pauses. “It was like having my brother’s dead ghost haunting me,” he finishes. His voice is frank, without a hint of melodrama.

  “This case became something else for me, too,” Bonner says. He considers explaining—confessing, really—about the Minami family, about how it changed the way he felt about the camps, about the Yamadas, and about how badly he needed to know whether Louis had sabotaged that plane. But he realizes it doesn’t matter; Louis already feels the weight of these things. So instead Bonner simply stands beside Louis. Together they watch the caravan burn.

  “You’ll really leave Harry alone?” Louis ventures, the first direct acknowledgment of the fact that Harry is still alive.

  Bonner shrugs. “No one cared much about Haruto Yamada’s death,” he says. “I won’t concern the government with what remains of his life.”

  They stand staring at the flames a little while longer. Finally, Bonner shoves his hands in his pockets and shakes his head. He walks away, heading back in the direction of his car. No handshake, no farewell. Louis knows Bonner is not coming back, that they will likely never see each other again. He hears the car engine starting up and shifting into gear, and then Bonner leaves, taking the ghost that has been haunting Louis along with him.

  Dawn glows in the sky—not red, but a surreal, pure greenish blue. The sun will be up soon.

  Satisfied, Louis goes to the well, fills a bucket, and begins to pour water on the fire, until slowly the charred remains of the caravan begin to let off a distinct hiss.

  70

  Two weeks pass, and the time for Guy Thorn’s memorial service arrives. It is a memorial service and not a funeral because there is no body, no coffin to inter. The Thorn family has been informed: Guy’s remains will be buried alongside other sailors killed in action, in a marked grave in an American cemetery in Manila. The Navy has assured them that it is a very honorable place to be buried. Louis’s mother, Edith, had to ask Louis to help her look up Manila on a map. When her finger found the distant island nation of the Philippines, she began to cry.

  “He’s so far away,” she said, weeping softly.

  “We’ll make a place for him here,” Louis replied. “We’ll make a place out near the orchards—the spot where Guy liked to stand and oversee picking season.”

  He proceeded to have a marble marker made. The marker was expensive, and Louis had to dip into profits from the Yamadas’ orchards to pay for it. He felt funny about it at first, but as more days pass, so does the funny feeling. In a war filled with so many tragedies, it is difficult to think the dead would begrudge anything that might help to alleviate the suffering of the living. And in remembering the kindness of Kenichi Yamada, Louis remembers that the man did not have a resentful or uncharitable bone in his body.

  On the morning of the memorial, Louis wakes up and puts on his nicest clothes. Then he walks the familiar route from the Yamadas’ old farmhouse over to the Thorn property. It’s a crisp, sunny October day and the Thorns’ apple orchard glows with the brilliant colors of turning leaves. Louis wishes Guy could be there to see it.

  The service itself is brief and to the point—the way Guy would’ve wanted it. Though there is nothing to bury, they dig a hole nonetheless and fill it with mementos. Lindy MacFarlane adds hers last, and as she drops the simple gold ring Guy gave her in the hole, Louis can see the embers of anger still smoldering in her face. Louis recognizes her anger instantly, because it is the same fiery fury that followed him like a shadow in the days after he was informed of Guy’s death.

  The local undertaker, who regularly arranges such things with a stonecutter up in Auburn, handled the marker Louis commissioned, having it chiseled and delivered. Louis is surprised to see the undertaker at Guy’s memorial—but then, most of the town of Newcastle and nearly half of the towns of Penryn and Loomis have turned up, too. Guy was well known and, despite his stern, overworked demeanor, was also well liked by most folks. But after the service, the undertaker approaches Louis, and Louis learns the undertaker has a secondary mission to address as well.

  “It’s about the Yamada boys,” the undertaker says. “After the autopsy, the bodies were cremated. I’ve got ’em now, but Sheriff Whitcomb says I’m to hand the ashes off to you, seein’ as how there’s paperwork naming you the executor of anythin’ they got left . . .” The undertaker trails off, plainly embarrassed. Louis can’t tell if the undertaker’s embarrassment is due to the fact that he’s discussing the remains of two Japs at the funeral of a serviceman killed by the Japanese, or if he’s simply humiliated to be saddled with ashes that have been essentially orphaned at his funeral parlor.

  “I’ll pick them up tomorrow,” Louis says quietly.

  The undertaker looks relieved.

  * * *

  The next day, Louis fulfills his promise. The undertaker hands over two cheap-looking wooden boxes. The boxes are significantly smaller than Louis expected, but then, Louis immediately realizes how foolish it was to have any expectations at all. He thanks the undertaker and takes the two boxes back to the former Yamada ranch.

  Once there, he hardly knows what else to do with the ashes. He winds up taking the two boxes inside and placing them on the mantel. He doesn’t know why he does this, except for an abstract idea that funeral urns belong on a mantel. Cremation is exotic to him; everyone Louis has ever known has gone into the ground. And besides, the wooden boxes are not proper urns, anyway.

  He sits down and stares at the boxes, musing on how out of place they look. One box is stamped YAMADA, KENICHI. The other, YAMADA, HARUTO. The box with Kenichi’s ashes sends a numb pang to his heart; it is difficult to think of calm, rooted Kenichi—after the years of work he had put into the soil of his farm and orchards—as having been transformed into something that might now blow away in a gust of wind. Louis sits with a quiet apology in his heart. It is a big apology to carry, because it is bigger than himself. It is an apology for his family’s grudge against the Yamadas, an apology for the ugly spirit of a nation that put Kenichi and his family in a camp—an apology from Louis, too, for doing nothing to stop any of it.

  Louis sits and meditates on Kenichi’s ashes. But then Louis’s eyes move to t
he second box, and the second name, and they stumble. He reads the name again and then again, pondering. The box says HARUTO, but of course it is not Harry inside the box, Louis realizes. Louis has known this since the day Bonner confronted him, when Louis put it all together. Ava has confirmed everything in her note.

  Louis did his duty, burning the caravan and all the evidence it contained.

  But now Louis realizes he hasn’t allowed himself to fully absorb the larger truth: Harry is alive. And, contemplating this now, Louis realizes something even more significant: The immense relief he feels. The gratitude.

  The pain Louis feels over Guy’s death, the hurt he feels over the fact that Ava chose Harry for her lover, the grudge he has all his life been expected to inherit—all of these can exist, and still none of them completely cancel out the relief Louis feels to know his friend is still alive. Perhaps, even, they cannot completely snuff out the small but resilient flame of hope Louis feels that he may someday see his friend, even joke and smile again.

  He looks again at the boxes. What to do with them? Louis feels sure that Kenichi Yamada’s ashes belong on the Yamada property. He remembers the two urns, still hidden out in the barn. We will find a place for these when the time is right, Harry promised his father. Louis realizes Harry has both new and unfinished business with the dead.

  The other box, though—what will any of them ever do with that? Louis rises to his feet and lifts the second box from the mantel.

  A fake Harry in place of the real one. As Louis stares at the box in his hands, the faintest hint of a smile creeps into the line of his lips. He has to admire the feat they’ve pulled off: It is the ultimate magic trick.

  But now Louis decides to see if there isn’t a little more magic left in the exchange—one more turn to the trick. This last reveal is only meant for the three of them: Louis, Ava, and Harry.