The Catch Trap

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Tommy made his first successful crossover three days later. Then after three more weeks of performances left Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kansas behind them, one morning Mario beckoned Tommy up while Angelo was still in the catch trap. Angelo called to him: “Come on over, young Tom. Let’s see if Matt’s managed to teach you anything!”

  Tommy almost froze to the platform, in sudden stage fright, but Mario gave him a light tap on the shoulder.

  “Go ahead. Try a jackknife—nothing fancy.”

  Tommy swung out, making the “jackknife bend” so that he swung by his knees from the bar. Then he let go and tumbled, wrists extended, toward Angelo. He missed; his body twisted ungracefully as he plunged into the net, and he heard Angelo’s harsh laughter.

  “Ha, ha! You look worse than Matt the first time he went for a triple!”

  Tommy clenched his fists, his eyes smarting with humiliation. He had hurt one knee badly in his fall; he had landed all wrong. Mario was laughing, too, standing on the pedestal above him. Tommy started to shout that Angelo’s swing was shorter than Mario’s—then he realized that the one thing he could never do was to make excuses. He rolled out of the net, trying not to favor the knee he had twisted.

  “Sorry. Can I come up and try again, Angelo?”

  And after a heart-stopping silence, Angelo shouted roughly, “Sicuro! Come on, then.”

  He knew, then, that he was accepted. They worked him mercilessly, pounding hard at his mistakes, but a few weeks later, when he made his first successful return to the platform after going to the catcher—the true flying return—Papa Tony said, looking him over with a frightening scowl, “Well, Mario, you may as well begin teaching him Elissa’s routines.”

  From that day, except when they were actually performing, he was one of them. He joined them at the top of the rigging for the regular morning practice instead of working with Mario alone. He stood on the platform with them at rehearsal and learned to handle the bars—catching the returning trapeze and dropping it again for the flyer, moving it out of the way of a returning flyer. But Mario had said, Don’t be in a hurry . . . .

  Now Mario had said, We asked Big Jim to come down some morning this week. That meant he was seriously considering allowing Tommy to appear with them, before long, in performance. Daydreaming on the high platform above the flyers, he had lost track of the present until Mario reached up and tapped him lightly on the arm.

  “You still with us, up there? Come on down and try the duo routine.”

  This was something they had begun practicing only a few days before. Papa Tony had already descended and crossed to the far end of the rigging, where he was unfastening a second catcher’s trapeze. Tommy scrambled down beside Mario, helping him fasten up the ordinary trapeze out of the way and pull down the slightly wider bar they used for the duo routine. He stepped carefully into position at Mario’s left shoulder. His hands were sweating slightly; he reached out for the resin bag tied to one of the uprights and rubbed his hands around it.

  Papa Tony and Angelo were swinging head down, side by side, timing their swings identically like mass-produced clock pendulums. Mario and Tommy, side by side, their hands resting lightly on one another’s shoulders for balance, waited; then Mario muttered, “Now!” They caught the bar, four hands slapping like one on the rough tape. Simple as this was, Tommy remembered the hours of practice it had taken—a split-second difference of timing, and the bar slipped sidewise and their swing went out crooked.

  This was a good day; they went out together, hard, smooth, and straight, then flipped off the bar together. His hands slapped on Papa Tony’s wrists and he felt the jolt in his shoulder muscles, half hearing Angelo’s released breath as Mario’s weight came against him.

  Tommy counted in his mind as they swung. One, the swing. Two, they flipped out together, a sickening launch into empty space that still, always, caught his stomach with a little flip of fear: Did we get off the bar straight? Did a gust of wind blow it sidewise, with nobody to catch and drop it? Three! His hands went around the bar and he heard the slap of Mario’s palms beside his, the weight balancing. Four, their four feet hit the platform and their four hands made a fast balancing motion that looked like a stylish flourish, inviting applause.

  Tommy straightened, hot and shaking, sweat rolling down his temples. Somebody shouted from below, “Nice work, kids!” On the ground, Big Jim Lambeth—the boss, and he really was big, six-foot-three and broad to match—and Margot Clane were laughing and clapping their hands. Mario gave Tommy an exuberant little squeeze before releasing his shoulder. He muttered, “Buon’ ragazzo,” and Tommy, who knew Mario never lapsed into his mother’s native tongue unless he was either furious or delighted, felt himself swelling with pride.

  On the ground, Jim Lambeth was talking to Mario. “It was your idea to make a flyer out of the Zane kid, wasn’t it?”

  “And the kid’s idea. He’s worked darn hard, Jim.”

  “Okay, try him whenever you’re ready. That duo routine looks good. Some small town where it won’t matter if he’s nervous and messes it up.”

  “He won’t,” Mario said confidently, “and I’d like to start him in San Angelo, okay? He’s got pals there.”

  “Okay by me. Only, one of you better talk to the kid’s family, huh?”

  Tommy, digging his bare toes into the ground, felt a strange little lurch in his stomach. His father would understand how he felt. Only it wasn’t his father he was worried about; it was his mother, and his father usually did what his mother said. Even at fourteen he had an unfocused notion that maybe his father had taken up training lions and tigers to get his own way sometimes.

  Tonio Santelli said firmly, “I will speak to Elizabeth Zane myself.” Tommy relaxed. He couldn’t imagine anyone—even his mother—arguing with Papa Tony.

  Later Tommy picked at his lunch, though his mother had fried a chicken. He sat at the table in their trailer, nervously chewing an oatmeal cookie, while his father stretched out on the sofa, smoking an after-dinner pipe. But when Papa Tony knocked on their trailer door, his father got up and invited him to come inside. Then he sent Tommy away, declaring: “Listeners never hear any good of themselves. Go do your work with Ma Leighty, and I’ll talk to you later.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Ma Leighty’s trailer was parked where it always was, just beside the performers’ entrance to the ring. Ma Leighty—everyone from Jim Lambeth to the smallest child with the show called her Ma—was wardrobe mistress for the circus acts. She had once, they said, been a famous bareback rider. She was seventy now, and not even an elephant could have supported her huge bulk in comfort.

  Tommy had been four years old when Ma first dressed him up in a miniature Uncle Sam costume and set him on the back of the most sedate of the ponies. He couldn’t remember; he’d only been told about it. Ever since he could remember, he’d been wearing different costumes, in the parades and in the “spectacle,” the opening walkaround of costumes, called “spec” in the show. Most of the wives and all the children of the performers, even the workhands, put on costumes and marched—or rode ponies, horses, or wagons—in the spec; this made the small show look bigger than it was. The year Tommy was ten, he had started helping Ma Leighty sort and care for the costumes.

  A veteran this year, Tommy enjoyed being in charge of the younger children. But today he fidgeted, his mind back in the trailer, until the old woman said sharply, “Tommy, what’s gotten into you today? Keep your mind on your work! You’ve put the Chinese hats with the wooden shoes!”

  “I’m sorry, Ma,” he mumbled.

  Margot Clane, collecting the pink gauze skirts for the aerial ballet, pulled herself up into the trailer. She was a small, sun-tanned woman. Her faded reddish hair was done up in curlers, and she was wearing patched dungarees and a man’s faded shirt.

  “Tommy, I saw you this morning. You looked pretty good. Listen, Tom, I came looking for you this morning, but you were up on the rig with the Santellis, and then Lambeth came along a
nd I forgot about it. Betsy Gentry slipped on the ladder when she came down last night. She hurt her foot; she’s gone to have it X-rayed. I’ll go on for her this afternoon, but that makes it awfully hard to get changed in time for the balance act. If her ankle is broken, you’ll have to turn out and rehearse with us tomorrow, probably go on with us for a few days, okay?” She didn’t wait for his answer, just went off with the aerial ballet costumes over her arm.

  Tommy scowled angrily. Nobody ever asked him, damn-darn it! They just told him. He didn’t mind going on with the aerial ballet, but if he was going on with the Santellis sometime this week he ought to rehearse with them instead!

  In the distance there was a short rhythmical toot which sounded—to an outsider—like someone in the band warming up for the show; to the performers it was the thirty-minute warning that meant the box office was open and performers should start dressing for the matinee. Tommy picked up the rack of spec costumes and went off toward the spare wagon that served as a dressing room for the male extras.

  For the next half hour he was busy buttoning smaller boys into costumes, checking hand props against the typed master list on the wall, good-naturedly taking bubble gum away from a few of the kids. In the other half of the wagon, Little Ann Clane, Margot’s daughter, and Ellen Brady, whose father was the bandmaster, were doing the same for the little girls. Tommy lifted the smallest children to the backs of ponies or onto floats, his mind not on what he was doing. He took his own place on the jungle float, jerking his leopard skin straight and taking the end of the chain which held the monkey. Next year I won’t just be making spec, I’ll be flying.

  Nothing was said, between matinee or night show, or afterward, about Papa Tony’s visit, and Tommy knew better than to ask. After the night show the whirlwind routine of the teardown commenced, but Tommy was asleep in his family’s trailer before they pulled out. He had no idea where they would wake up; he never did.

  By eleven the next morning, the anonymous vacant lot of the unknown new town had been transformed into an exact replica of the former one, every trailer parked in the exact same location, each rigging put up in the same place, the ring laid out where it always was. This town had an oil refinery instead of a cotton gin, and smelled to high heaven. But the town was just a backdrop to the lot, part of the scenery. Like all circus children, Tommy had been brought up on the story of the performer who lost his watch in one town and the next day had everyone in the show turn out to look for it, forgetting that yesterday’s lot was thirty miles away.

  Tommy was waiting for the Santellis at the foot of the flying rig when Margot came in search of him. He felt his heart sink.

  “How is Betsy’s foot?”

  “Not good. It’s all taped up and hurts her pretty bad. You’d better come and practice with us—you haven’t been on for a month or so.”

  Angelo had arrived at the end of the flying rig. Tommy ran over and explained, and Angelo nodded. “I’ll tell Matt. So we skip the duo this one day, what difference?”

  Tommy felt flat, deflated, as he lined up with the nine girls in the aerial ballet. He knew all of them, of course; Lambeth was a family show, and acts stayed with them year after year. Now and then a fine performer moved up to one of the big shows—Sorenson, Woods-Wayland, even Starr’s—or a drunken or incompetent performer would be fired; some such mishap had created a vacancy for the Santellis. But as a rule the show was the same, year after year.

  Aerial ballet! He’d started doing that when he was ten years old! Large fixed trapezes, like steel ladders, were mounted in spangled steel circles; ten girls in ruffled ballet costumes climbed a rope—known as a web—to the ladders, and did simple gymnastics there, in time to the music. There were even webbing loops to slip one foot into, so nobody could come loose in a spin, and a ground man held the web taut and steady at the bottom.

  Tommy slid into the circle beside Little Ann Clane. Up in the bandstand somebody put on a record of the music the aerial ballet used in their act. Tommy counted to himself as they began the measured climb, with a pause every fourth beat for a kick and spin. He knew the routine perfectly.

  “Hold it, hold it! Left leg raised!” Margot shouted, and Tommy scowled, concentrating, then realized that it was the girl next to him who had missed. Tommy could have gone through the routine, he supposed, by watching Little Ann. She was a small, snub-nosed girl with shining hair twisted, for rehearsal, into two short pigtails. She went through the routine with sleepy confidence, as if she were only half awake. She was a year older than Tommy and had been doing acrobatic tricks in the ring with her mother since she was six years old.

  “Marie, tuck your elbows in! Little Ann, keep your hands in line with your body—don’t flop all over the place! Tommy, what do you think you’re doing? Five counts, and don’t stare off to the side! Zelda, watch that foot.” It was a sound Tommy seemed to have heard all his life, Margot’s light voice shouting, counting.

  He stole a look at the girls as they were coming down. They all had blonde hair, natural or bleached, and most of them had their hair in curlers or rags or pigtails. They were wearing assorted shorts, halters, romper playsuits. He thought he must look awfully funny in the middle of all those girls.

  When they had all gone, Margot called him over. “I spoke to your mother already. She said okay.”

  “Don’t you think I’m going to look awful funny, one boy in with nine girls?” In the three years he had been doing it, the thought had never occurred to him before.

  “With the wig on, nobody’s going to know if you’re a boy or a girl or a chimpanzee in skirts.” Margot surveyed him, her head cocked to one side like an alert bird. “If it was up to me, I’d have had you in the ring regular, six, eight years ago, like Little Ann. Only Beth wouldn’t hear of it. I wish I knew what Tonio said to her. Okay, as soon as you get out of your spec costume at the matinee, you come over to the girls’ trailer and I’ll have the costume and wig ready for you.”

  Tommy said a polite, “Yes, ma’am,” then ran off toward the flying rig. But the Santellis had finished and gone.

  The crowd that afternoon was like any other matinee crowd, preponderantly children; Tommy could not imagine why it seemed somehow different and hostile. Today he left the after-spec costume checking to Ellen Brady and ran over to Margot’s trailer, a long red-and-white one which doubled as a dressing room for the girls in the aerial ballet. When Tommy knocked, she came to the door with her arms full of pink tarlatan. Somebody had the radio on, blaring out the war news.

  “You’re too big this year to dress in a trailer full of girls,” she said. “Go back to your own trailer and put this on, then come back and Ann will fix you up.”

  He went to his family trailer, his arms scratching against the stiff tulle. Last year I used to go on in the web act without thinking twice about it. Why am I so mad about doing it now? Sullenly he pulled on the costume, jerking at the tulle skirts. There was a pink satin bodice, which fit him very badly, and a worn pair of pink ballet slippers. The net scratched and pricked his legs. He felt foolish walking across the lot in the pink outfit, but though the backyard was full of people, they were all busy with their own work. None of them paid the slightest attention to him.

  Margot had gone, but Little Ann was waiting for him, and Betsy Gentry was there, a small, faded, fortyish woman, her lame foot strapped in bandages. She motioned him to sit down and bend his head. She fixed the wig into place, cautioning him to be careful in the spins. “If it should fall off while you are at the top there, you will look a proper fool, my boy.” She had a very faint accent. Tommy knew she was not American, but didn’t know where she had come from. He had never cared before. Now, suddenly, he was curious; but this was no time for questions.

  “That waist of yours, it will be falling off in a minute. Hand me one of those makeup towels, Little Ann, dear, and I’ll fix it.” She began to stuff the towel into the bosom of the pink bodice, but Tommy shoved her hand away. “Quit that,” he muttered. “I’d rat
her let the darn thing fall off!” He, was enormously embarrassed. He didn’t want to look like he had a bust, for goodness’ sake! Always before this they had given him one of the little girl’s costumes, with a straight top, not one with a shape like this.

  “Your shoulders are too broad this year,” Betsy said, exasperated. “Fasten it with a safety pin then, Little Ann.”

  Fastening the safety pin, Little Ann whispered in his ear. “What’s the matter, Tommy? Don’t be nervous—you could do this stuff in your sleep!”

  “I’m not nervous. I just feel like a dumb jerk in this thing!”

  “Mother says not to say jerk,” Little Ann chided primly.

  “Why not? All the kids do. It’s not a bad word.” Tommy looked into the mirror. He felt skinny and awkward, his shoulders too wide, his face pale under the straw-colored wig. Little Ann, her hair brushed out into ringlets, looked cute in the pink costume. He just looked like a dope.

  “You want some lipstick or something?” Little Ann asked.

  “Drop dead!” he yelled at her. “What the heck do you think I am, anyhow?”

  “Well, you need something,” Little Ann argued. “What’s the matter with you, Tommy?”

  “What I need is a bag over my head,” Tommy muttered.

  “Let him alone, Little Ann,” Betsy said firmly. “And you, Tommy, no one will be knowing or caring what you look like, not at all.”

  “What I look like is something out of the freak show on the midway!”

  “No such thing,” Betsy said. “You are only one of ten, and unless you do something which is a real disaster, which you won’t, nobody will be looking at you at all. Run along now, both of you.”

  He stood beside Little Ann in the “back door,” the performers’ entrance, wishing he were invisible. Tom Zane, senior, still wearing the pith helmet and white suit he wore in the big cage, paused briefly and looked Tommy over from head to foot. He didn’t speak, merely raised the end of his styling whip in salute and went on.