The Catch Trap

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “There’s our music,” Little Ann said. “Two minutes.” She was patting her hair into place. “Just watch me if you get lost— Hey, Tommy, what’s the matter?”

  “I just feel kind of funny. Like I’m going to be sick.”

  She grabbed his hand in hers. Like his own, it was hard and callused from handling trapeze bars, dried with resin. “Sure you do,” she said. “Everybody does. I always do, but you’ll get over it. Mother says it’s stupid for you not to be in an act regular; then you wouldn’t get the jitters when you have to. I mean, you were brought up on the lot and everything. Mother told Aunt Beth—” Abruptly she broke off, squeezed his hand, and let go. “Okay, we’re on,” she said, and began to run toward the rigging.

  As he and the nine girls fanned out under the webs and ladders, Tommy stole one quick look at the audience. The sun was full in his face as he began climbing the web toward the spangled metal circle fifteen feet above him.

  Not until the drumroll and spatter of applause six minutes later, when they were all on the ground again, did Tommy have time to think about how he felt. As they came out of the ring, he stumbled on one of the ribbons of the ballet shoes and fell against a clown who pushed him away without anger. Back in the performers’ entrance Margot gave him a quick pat on the shoulder and said, “Fine, fine, just watch your beats a little closer next time,” and ran off toward the balance act, which was forming up in the back door. Tommy went to take off the pink costume and wig.

  He went on again in the night show, and later that night, while the workhands were striking the show and breaking up the lot for the long haul to San Angelo, Margot knocked at the door of the Zane trailer. It was dim inside, for the power cable to the generator truck had already been unhooked. By the light of a kerosene lamp Tommy was helping his mother cram dishes inside the cupboards.

  “Come in, Margot,” Beth Zane invited. “There’s some coffee left—got to drink it up or throw it out.” She poured some into a paper cup.

  Margot stood and sipped the bitter black coffee. “I want Tommy in the aerial ballet until Betsy is all right again. I’ll see that he gets paid something, too.”

  “Aunt Marge,” Tommy blurted, “I was supposed to go on with the Santellis tomorrow in San Angelo, remember?”

  “Well, we need you and they don’t. I’ll talk to Tonio.”

  “Mother—” Tommy appealed, but Beth stood with her back to him, rinsing the coffeepot. “Do as you’re told, Tom Junior.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said dejectedly. There was nothing else to say.

  San Angelo, as they set up their show in the rodeo grounds outside town, looked smaller than last year, dirtier, dustier, bleaker. Tommy found it hard to imagine he had actually lived here from October to May last year, gone to school, known the local streets, made friends. Now it was just another town.

  The Santellis had turned out early to supervise the setting of their rigs. Angelo was at the top of the rigging, checking guy wires with a spirit level, but Mario, checking the net by the time-honored method of jumping up and down in it, stopped in midbounce to say good morning.

  “Hey, something wrong, kid? You look like you lost two bits and found a nickel.”

  Tommy told him what Margot had said, and Mario shook his head. “Tough luck.”

  “Yeah, I really wanted to—”

  “I mean tough luck Betsy breaking her foot, stupid! Look, there’s going to be other towns. I’ll talk to Papa Tony, but maybe coming on twice in one show would be a little bit too much. There’s plenty of time.” He must have seen the bitter disappointment in Tommy’s face, for he added with offhand kindness, “Sure, I guess it’s tough luck for you, too, but even if you didn’t get started till next year, we could still bill you as the youngest aerialist in America. Hey, Angelo,” he called, “Think we can bill Tommy, next year, as the youngest aerialist in the United States?”

  “Not a chance,” Angelo shouted down. “That guy in Bloomington has a nine-year-old flying!”

  “I’m not as young as all that,” Tommy said, nettled.

  “No, and Josie isn’t the oldest performing elephant in America, either, but it looks good on the posters. Hey, your act is waiting for you. Scram,” he added, turning away, and Tommy, fighting angry misery, ran to join the web act in rehearsal.

  Before the afternoon show, while the crowds were waiting for the box office to open, Tommy went outside to locate his friends. He saw them from a distance and, ducking under the rope barrier, he called:

  “Jeff, Nancy! Over here!”

  “Hi, Tommy! Good to see you, pal.”

  “Town’s still here, I see.”

  “Heck, no, it blew away last dust storm,” Nancy Marlin said. She was taller than Tommy this year and had bobbed her hair. He decided it looked better that way than in plaits. “What you been doing all summer?” she asked.

  “Just traveling, like always. What you been doing?”

  “Getting in shape for football this fall, mostly,” Jeff said, “and they got a new swimming pool here in town. You going to school here this winter?”

  “I don’t know. I guess not; Dad says it’s too dry here for the cats.”

  “Too bad. I figured we’d be going out for football together,” Jeff said. “You’re small but you handle yourself good.” He was looking past the rope barrier into the bustle behind the lot. “What all’s going on back in there?”

  “Want to come inside and look around?” Tommy offered.

  “Will they let us?” Nancy asked.

  Some youngsters were being firmly edged back from the barrier, but Tommy said with a small surge of arrogance, “Sure, they’ll let you if you’re with me.” He had made a point earlier that day of asking permission. Jeff and Nancy still looked skeptical as Tommy led them toward the barricade, but when the man there recognized him, nodded, and allowed them to duck under the rope, the skepticism gave way to respectful grins.

  Tommy took them first to his family trailer to exchange courtesies with his mother, then led them around the backyard and the ring already set for the matinee. They wanted to see everything, were curious about everything, and Tommy, as he answered their questions, felt the morning’s accumulation of frustration drain away. It was good to be looked at with respect, admired, not ordered around without ever being asked what he wanted!

  “Are you in the show?” Nancy asked. “I’ll look for you in the parade, the Grand March, whatever they call it.”

  “Spec. It’s short for spectacle.” Tommy started to tell then about the jungle float, then remembered he was in an aerial act, even if not with the flyers. He pointed out the swinging metal ladders of the aerial ballet. “I’m in the web act. Not regular, but one of the girls hurt her foot and I’m filling in. I wear a wig, though.”

  “Up there?” They were obviously impressed. “How do you get up?”

  “Just climb up the web.” They did not understand, so he repeated: “Up that rope. Like in the school gym. It’s easy—I bet you could do it, Nancy. Lots of the girls in the act are about your age.”

  “I’d be scared,” she said, and looked at him with awe. Jeff seemed impressed, too.

  Tommy grabbed the rope and swarmed up. One of the workhands, setting rigs at the far end of the ring, came over and shouted, “Hey. you kids, keep off that rigging! Oh—it’s you, Tommy. Okay, but you keep the other kids off, you hear me?”

  “It’s okay, Bill, I was just showing them how easy it is,” Tommy said, swinging upside down in the small metal ladder in the circle, hanging briefly by his heels.

  “Please come down,” Nancy begged in a small voice. “It makes me dizzy to watch you.”

  Tommy slid down the rope. “It does look kind of easy at that,” Jeff remarked, but he sounded impressed. “I didn’t know you were an acrobat—aerialist—whatever it is.”

  “This isn’t a real aerial act,” Tommy said scornfully, “but all summer I’ve been working with the Flying Santellis.” He led them over to the flying rig. “I
was supposed to go on with them tonight, only they needed me for the web act.”

  “Oh, go on,” Jeff scoffed. “You, up there?” He was looking with awe at the dizzying upward stretch of the cobwebby aerial ladder. “You? Way up there?”

  “Sure,” Tommy said, but he realized suddenly that they did not believe him. It was his first experience with the way in which a truth, however stated and however sincere, can sound like a lie. He was almost relieved when it was time to take them out front to their seats and to dress for spec.

  When it was time for the aerial ballet, today he felt surer. He knew the wig would not fall off when he spun or hung head downward, that he would not make any foolish mistakes in counting. Betsy was walking today, but her foot was still tightly bandaged. For the first time he wondered how old she was. She had been with the show for as long as he could remember. It seemed funny that anyone should still be doing this simple act at her age.

  “Your wig’s a little crooked.” She gave it a tug, smiling companionably.

  “How’s your foot, Betsy?”

  “Some better,” she said, “but the doctor told me to give it a good rest. And Margot says that all things considered, you are doing very nicely. So you can have the experience; it will do you no harm.”

  Margot chuckled. “You’re like an old fire horse, Betsy, always wanting to rush off to one more fire.”

  “And proud of it,” Betsy agreed. “What else would I be doing? Running a mitt camp on the midway, maybe?”

  “There’s your music,” Margot said sharply. “You’re on, girls!”

  Tommy was sure enough of himself today to take a quick second look at the audience from the top of the web, to look for Jeff and Nancy in their seats. He had arranged to meet them after the show and go downtown with them. He felt calm and relieved, getting into his street clothes, and just a little proud of himself. If he’d made any mistakes today, they hadn’t been big enough for Margot to tell him about. He was feeling a little cocky as he walked up to Jeff and Nancy, who were standing just inside the gate.

  “Sorry I kept you waiting,” he greeted them.

  Jeff laughed, and it was not a pleasant laugh. “Hey, Tommy,” he said, “you make a real cute girl.”

  Nancy’s giggle was shrill. “Where are those cute blonde curls, Tommy? Or maybe we ought to call you Tammy?”

  “And oh, those pink ruffly skirts,” Jeff cooed.

  “Cut it out,” Tommy said uneasily. He didn’t mind being kidded, but he had the notion, somehow, that they were hitting below the belt. “Let’s go and get that soda. Where we going, Walsh’s?”

  Nancy asked, “Are you always a girl with the circus, Tommy?”

  “No—no, of course not.” Tommy wondered why they were making such a fuss about it. “Only, like I say, one of the girls hurt her foot, so they let me fill in today.”

  “Let you? They couldn’t make me,” Jeff said. “They couldn’t pay me to put on those ruffly skirts and blonde curls and go out in front of all those folks!”

  “Oh,” Nancy said, with a high sweet giggle, “I think he makes a darling girl. Hey, Jeff, you reckon they’ll put Tommy in the girls’ gym class this winter?”

  Tommy realized, too late, that they were not just joining in a good joke. They were deriding him. “Quit that,” he said angrily. “Somebody had to work the act while Betsy was hurt! If you think it’s so darn funny, I’d like to see you do it!”

  “Oh,” said Jeff in a falsetto, “I think you were real cute! Hey, Nancy, we’ll have to get all the kids down here tonight—the fellows will have to see this! Beauties of the Big Top, they call it? Hey, Beauty of the Big Top—” He sidled up to Tommy and said in a suggestive whisper, “Hey, cutie, you like a date? How’d you like to be my girl?”

  Tommy felt a blind rage surging up over him, wiping out sanity. He rushed at Jeff and hit him.

  The next thing he knew, Pick Leighty was hauling them all apart. Tommy had a long scratch below his left eye, and his mouth was swelling from a blow, but Jeff’s nose had begun bleeding, and one eye was shut. He had the last word, sneering, “Hey, you fight real good for a girl!”

  “Go on, now! You town kids get off the lot!” Pick gave Jeff an angry shove and scowled at Nancy. He bent and picked up her hair ribbon and threw it at her. “Nice manners for a young lady, a guest on the lot!” he said scornfully, pushing Jeff toward the gate. But as they walked off, he turned his anger on Tommy.

  “I’m ashamed of you, young Tom! Ask, like a special favor, can you bring your pals on the lot, and then you get into knock-down-and-drag-outs in the backyard! And fighting a girl, too! If I was your father, I’d give you a licking you’d remember for three seasons! Come to think of it, when that eye swells up, you won’t need no licking!”

  Tommy stared at the ground and slunk away. His mouth was puffy and tasted of blood, and his knuckles were sore. He felt as if he were going to cry, but his eye hurt too much to shed tears.

  He had boasted of being an aerialist, an acrobat. And all he was, was a girl dancer, a silly-looking thing, in foolish pink skirts and a blonde wig. Probably everybody in the stands was laughing at him because they could see he was a boy dressed up in girl’s clothes. And Jeff had seen his shame. Jeff would tell all his school friends, kids he’d known and liked, that he worked in the circus in a blonde wig and pink tarlatan skirts!

  Maybe it was his own fault for bragging that he worked in the show! Maybe he deserved it! He lagged across the lot, sunk in self-disgust. His mother was putting supper on the table when he finally slouched in. She frowned at him.

  “You’re late,” she said. Then, “Tommy, have you been in a fight? Your mouth, your eye—”

  “No, ma’am,” he fibbed, crossing his fingers behind his back. “I hit my head on a—a corner of the ladder.”

  “And you skinned your knuckles on a corner of the ladder, and split your lip on it, too?”

  “Leave him alone, Beth,” Tom Zane, said from the sink where he was washing his hands. “You can’t expect a boy to tattle about a fight. Come get washed for dinner, Junior.”

  Tommy only poked at his plate, but his mother’s sharp eyes noticed that, too. “Aren’t you eating anything?”

  He had to lie again. “I had a couple of hot dogs at the grease wagon.”

  “You shouldn’t fill yourself up with that junk,” his mother scolded.

  “Never mind. He can have a bite after the night show,” his father said. Tommy guessed what his father was thinking: that Tommy was edgy about the show tonight. He was, but not in the way his father thought. What was making him sick was the knowledge that he would have to put on that awful pink gauze costume and go out, dressed up as a girl, in front of the whole town, people he had gone to school with last year. He muttered an excuse to his mother and hurried after his father, finally cornering him near the wild-animal cages. He knew it was a major crime to disturb his father with any personal matter just before a show, but his pain and confusion were so great he risked it.

  “Dad, I got to ask you something. Do you think—do you think they laugh at me because I wear a girl’s costume in the web act?”

  Tom Zane was checking his whips and props, laying them out for the performance. “Why should they? A performer wears what they tell him to wear.”

  “Dad,” he said, “do I have to go on with the web act?” His father turned and stared. “Now, you listen here,” he said. “For the last two years every other word out of you has been trapeze, trapeze, trapeze. Now you got started in the show, you do what they tell you, you wear what they give you, and you don’t argue about it. Confound it, son, I’m busy now! Scram!”

  He scrammed. His father’s words might have been some comfort—A performer wears what they tell him to wear—but they did not banish the memory of Jeff’s mocking face, the lewd suggestiveness in his words. How’d you like to be my girl? He felt sick. And his father hadn’t even been listening!

  There was one person he could ask. Mario. He wondered if Mario
would have agreed to put on a pink costume and blonde wig and go on with the girls. The idea was ridiculous; for some unknown reason it made him feel a little sicker. But the long dark rigging truck, which had the words the FLYING SANTELLIS emblazoned across the full length of the truck, and which the Santellis used as a dressing room before the performance, was dark and deserted. He even sought out their house trailer, something he had never ventured to do before, but it too was dark and there was no answer to his knock. They must have gone to have dinner in town, Tommy thought as he turned away into the shadows, his throat aching.

  It wasn’t fair! Papa Tony had promised he could start with the flying act in San Angelo, where he had friends, but instead he was all fouled up in a ballet act wearing pink skirts, with all his school friends seeing him as a girl and making dirty cracks!

  He wandered disconsolately through the backyard, not knowing what he was looking for. A couple of the little girls with the show were jumping rope outside their family trailer. A clown, his face already made up, was sitting in a trailer door combing the hair of a poodle and putting a ruff around its neck. Ellen Brady, outside the large trailer that held her family—she had four younger brothers—was taking down a long line of washing, tights and diapers and rompers all mingled. He knocked at the door of Margot’s trailer, and Margot put her head out.

  “Hi, Tom, you’re early. Want to take the costume with you?”

  He blinked in the light from the door. “I came to ask, how is Betsy’s foot? Okay again?”

  “Well, she thinks so. I don’t. What’s the matter, Tom? Not feeling good? Come on in.”

  He stepped up into the trailer. Betsy was there, her foot propped up, and Little Ann was eating a sandwich, a towel around her hair. He said shakily, “Aunt Marge, the kids here in town—they all know me here. I can’t go on in a girl’s costume! I just can’t do it!”

  Little Ann put down her sandwich. “But that’s silly!” she protested. “They’re just a lot of townie kids, civilians. What do you care what they think?”