The Catch Trap

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “I have to have a reason these days?”

  Tommy shrugged.

  “You’re late, Tommy. What happened?” his mother asked.

  “I had to talk to the coach. I’m not going to be on the basketball team.”

  “What happened, son?” Tom Zane asked.

  “Coach said—I guess there’s some rule about it—I was a professional acrobat. So I’m not eligible or something. I didn’t tell him—somebody must have heard about it. He said it wasn’t fair to the other kids.”

  “You see?” Elizabeth Zane said over her son’s head.

  “I see one thing,” Tom retorted, staring at his wife with an outthrust jaw. “I see that if he’d gone to school over near winter quarters where everybody takes circus people for granted, instead of treating them like freaks, he wouldn’t have to go through this. Did you really want to be on that team, Tom Junior?”

  Tommy looked straight into his father’s eyes. “No, Dad. I guess not.”

  His father didn’t answer. “Run and get your coat. I want to take you and your mother for a drive over to the grounds. King got so old we had to shoot him, and Lambeth bought a new cat for the season. I’m not working him yet.” He fished in his pocket. “Letter for you. It came to winter quarters.”

  Tommy took it, surprised. He never got letters, and it was too early for his usual Christmas card from Little Ann.

  It was a colored picture postcard, mostly blue ocean and sand. On the message half of the card Mario had written, “I’m giving lessons this winter in tumbling and acrobatics at, of all things, a ballet school. Most of the boys are not as easy to teach as you. Angelo says hello and see you soon.” It was the first time he had seen Mario’s handwriting. A square, very small hand, the downstrokes very straight, every t carefully crossed with a neat horizontal bar, it looked more like drawing than writing. He put it in his coat pocket and went out to the car.

  The smell of winter quarters—the mingled odors of animals, canvas, hay, sawdust, and dung—was familiar to Tommy, and gave him a curious, homesick feeling. He drifted around the darkening grounds. Only a handful of performers stayed with Lambeth at winter quarters; most of them traveled with indoor circuses or stage shows.

  Tommy dropped in at Ma Leighty’s trailer and showed her Mario’s card. It made him somehow feel less lonely. In the ring barn, a strange riding act was working on harness. He finally returned to his parents, finding that Big Jim Lambeth had come out to join them. His mother was scratching old Lucifer through the bars with a stick. It made Tommy cringe. He simply didn’t like cats.

  Lucifer had been born with the circus—Tommy had heard the story a hundred times—and like most cats in captivity had to be taken immediately from his mother; caged lionesses usually killed their cubs. Beth Zane had raised the huge kitten on a bottle; he had slept on her bed until he was half grown.

  Everyone with the circus knew that Beth had a way with animals. When Tommy was very small she had worked in the big cage with his father, opening and closing the cage drops, sometimes running the animals through their tricks. She could handle the cats as well as her husband, although when Tommy was six or so she had stopped working in the ring. Old Lucifer was her special pet. Tommy wasn’t afraid of Lucifer, not exactly, but he hated to see his mother so close to the bars. As for the other lions, Lady and Big Boy, he hated them.

  He knew, of course, that of all the big cats, lions were the least dangerous, that most of their snarling and pouncing was cleverly contrived by his father to make them look fierce and give a good show. And of course he knew that the dangerous cat was not the one who sat up and roared—that was just high spirits, like the tail-wagging of a dog—but the one who put its ears back and crouched. But he never watched his father working; it made his toes curl up and his stomach twist inside.

  “Well, what do you think of the new one, Tom Junior? I’m going to call him Prince.”

  Tommy looked at the ground and scuffed it with his shoe. Prince was a young male, tawny-gold with great golden eyes and a golden-tawny ruff. As Tommy glared at the beautiful cat, he opened his great mouth and yawned, displaying enormous teeth, then sheathed his claws and spread them playfully. Tommy felt the skin on his back tighten all the way down to his toes.

  “Dad, he’s beautiful, but he isn’t—safe. You aren’t going to work him, are you?”

  His father laughed. “Now, Tom Junior, do I try and tell you how to fly?”

  Lambeth came and towered over Tommy. “How’s the world’s youngest aerialist? You going to be flying this season?” he demanded.

  “I guess that’s up to the Santellis.”

  Tommy sensed that his mother was angry, although he didn’t know why and didn’t know how to ask. Elizabeth Zane remained silent all the way home, and when they arrived, his parents sent Tommy to do his homework and talked on, in carefully lowered voices, till very late. Even in his sleep, he seemed to hear the sound of their voices, the tones of conflict still penetrating his dreams.

  November wore away. A few days before Christmas, Tommy came home to find his father’s car in the drive and his mother’s face swollen as if she had been crying.

  “What’s the matter, Mother? Dad—Dad, you haven’t been drafted or anything, have you?” In the last months of the war, even men in their thirties, even men with children, were being called up. His father shook his head. “No, if they’d been going to draft me, they’d have done it two years ago. My eyes aren’t good enough for the Army. No, there’s just something we have to talk over with you. Sit down, son.”

  “Dad, what’s the matter? What’s wrong? Mother . . .”

  “Your father will tell you.” His mother looked away from him. Tommy sat down uneasily on a chair.

  “Relax, son,” Tom said finally. “No trouble, nothing’s wrong. But a letter I got today, it upset your mother. Tell me, did any of the Santellis say anything about their plans for next year?”

  “Why, no. Though Mario said he’d see me next year, so I guess they’re going to be with Lambeth. And he said I might be appearing with them once in a while. That was all. Why? Has anything happened? Aren’t they coming back to Lambeth?”

  “Mario sent you a note—I’ll give it to you later. Son, I want to ask you something serious. Do you really want to be a flyer?”

  “Why, sure, you know I do.”

  “No, wait, son, not like that. I mean, are you perfectly sure that’s what you want to do? Or have you just been fooling around, doing it for fun?”

  Tommy squirmed, uncomfortable because his father looked so grave. Before Tommy could answer, he went on, “Maybe I made a mistake. Maybe I should have made you settle down somewhere, go to school, boarding school. Live someplace all year round.”

  “Dad, for goodness’ sake, I couldn’t live that way!”

  “Tommy, Tommy, Tommy, most people never live any other way! I ought to have known you’d catch the fever! I let Margot teach you tumbling, mostly to keep you out from under people’s feet. And when you started talking about flying—well, I thought you’d get sick of it before you ever got off the ground.”

  “How’d you think—”

  “Oh, a lot of kids get the notion they’d like being a circus star. I thought, when you found out how hard it was. you’d quit. So did Tony Santelli. He said if you were just amusing yourself, the sooner you got sick of it, the better. He told Mario not to go easy on you, but to work the pants off you. You surprised everybody by keeping it up.”

  Tommy opened his mouth and shut it again, but his father said, “Go ahead.”

  “It isn’t just that it’s fun, Dad. It—well, it is fun, of course, but mostly—well, it’s something I want to do and I can do, and the more I work at it the better I want to get—”

  “I know what you mean,” his mother broke in abruptly, “but here’s the point, Tommy. If you’re just in it as an amateur, now’s the time to drop it. You’ve had your fun. They even let you appear with them a few times. Now what?”

 
“Mother, I don’t understand. I’m not nearly good enough for a flyer—I’m not good enough even for a spare part. I’ve just started. I can’t quit now!”

  His father sighed. “You’re right, of course. As an amateur you’re pretty good. If you want to be a professional, of course, you’ve hardly begun. But—but I don’t want you to wake up someday—oh, say, when you’re college age—and find out there’s nothing you’re good for except to be an acrobat.”

  “Well,” said Tommy, puzzled, “what else is there that I might want to be?”

  He saw his mother meet his father’s eyes with a curious, resigned look. “I guess that answers that,” Tom nodded thoughtfully. “Okay, son . . . today I got a letter from Tonio Santelli. He said what I’ve been telling you: They want you in the act next summer.”

  “Dad—”

  “I know how you feel. But there’s a hitch. He wants you under contract to him, personally, for three years. He says it will take at least that long before you’ll be worth anything much to the act. You’ll get a small salary—that part is all right; it’s perfectly fair, what he offers—and this year, at least, they’ll be with Lambeth, so you’ll be living with your mother and me on the road. But here’s the catch, and your mother—no, Elizabeth, I’ll handle this—your mother asked me to say no to them without even telling you: They want you in California next week.”

  “Next week?”

  “Yes. Right after Christmas. You’ll spend the winter with them—you’ll live with Angelo’s sister; she keeps house for the family, I think—learning, getting ready for the season.”

  “Leave you and Mother?”

  “Yes. He says otherwise you’d be out of form by the time the season opens, the tour would be half over before they could use you full-time in the act. He wants our answer this week, otherwise they’ll have to find another man in California.”

  “Oh, Dad, please, I’ve got to go! I want to—I want to be the one!”

  “I can see Tony’s point, of course. They’ve given you a lot of time and gone to a lot of trouble working with you. Now they have to know, once and for all, if they can count on you as a real part of the act.”

  His mother cried, “But you’re so young, Tommy. Not—not even fifteen—”

  Tommy got up and went to his mother, and held her around the waist, feeling her shaking all over with sobs. “Mother—Mommy, don’t, please, don’t cry—can’t you see? Mother, I’ve been working so hard. In fact, I was thinking just the other day how I ought to spend this winter working, rehearsing, not laying off like this. If they get somebody else, I’m finished—I’m through before I ever get started. Mommy, Mommy, I can’t go if you’re going to cry like that, but I’ve got to, can’t you understand?” He was almost crying himself.

  She raised her head. She was not crying now. Her eyes glowed blue, and for a moment it seemed to Tommy that they had the incandescent glare of arc lights.

  “Tom Junior,” she said very quietly, “look at me. Now. Before God, Tom, this isn’t a game. Is this what you want?”

  He swallowed hard, trying to steady his voice. “I’m sorry, Mother. I know you don’t like it. But you know it’s what I wanted. It’s all I ever wanted.”

  “Then”—he saw the muscles move in her throat as she swallowed—“I won’t say another word. Go ahead.”

  Tommy’s father came and put an arm around each of them. He said, “All right, Tom Junior. You’re old for your age, you’ve got a good head on your shoulders, and you work hard. I’ve watched you doing workouts on your own, and at your age that takes a lot of doing. You’ll go to school out there, but after this year you’ll have to get your schooling the best way you can—under your own steam.”

  “Dad, I don’t care whether or not I finish high school.”

  “But I do,” his mother said quickly. “Promise me, Tom.”

  “Look—Dad, Mother—”

  “We won’t even discuss it,” his father said flatly. “You finish high school. Somehow. Nobody can get along without a high school diploma these days. And after the war’s over, it’s going to be worse.”

  Tommy bent his head. “Yes, sir.” He still couldn’t see it, but compliance here might be the narrow thread on which it all hung.

  “One more thing. It made a good joke for one week last fall, but they want to bill you as Tommy Santelli.”

  “Well,” Tommy said, “the act is the Flying Santellis.”

  “And you want to be one of them? Not Tom Zane, Junior?”

  “Oh, Dad—” he said helplessly, then realized his father was laughing.

  “All right, Son. Here’s your letter from Mario; take it along and read it. But be sure, Tom, because this is probably going to mean the rest of your life, and once I write Tony, you’ll have to go through with it. It will be a legal contract.”

  “I want to go,” Tommy said steadily.

  He woke in the night, not sure, wondering if he could really leave his parents. A stray glimmer of moonlight hit the photographs on the wall. As clearly as if it were day, memory showed him the faces. Mario, Angelo, himself, grouped carelessly around the aerial ladder. He remembered the day Little Ann had taken the picture. It had been her birthday. It had also been the first day Mario had managed to do a triple in rehearsal without losing control and falling. And then, on his way back to the bar, Tommy had dropped it a fraction of a second too fast; it had hit Mario’s elbow, numbing his arm, and he had had to drop off. Tommy had been almost frantic with dismay, knowing he had spoiled what should have been a triumph. Papa Tony had yelled at him for five minutes straight, punctuating it with explosions at Mario, and then stormed away. Tommy, almost in tears, came down from the rigging, and Mario looked up and grinned, still nursing his elbow:

  “Relax, kid. You’d better learn Italian. Most of that was aimed at me.”

  Angelo, bending to put on his shoes, looked up briefly. “Next time you do that, Matt, go straight to the net. You were so damn dizzy you couldn’t have got back to the bar even if Tommy had dropped it right. Your timing was shot to hell.”

  Mario spread his hands with a rueful laugh. “O, Dio mio, what a family I have! I finally manage to do a triple and they raise hell about the way I get back to the bar!”

  “Yeah,” Angelo had said gently as he bent over and twisted his fingers into Mario’s curly hair, pulling his head up. “You think I don’t know that? But I don’t want you breaking your neck either, ragazzo. One in the family’s plenty, huh?”

  They had forgotten about Tommy; or they took him so much for granted that he felt as if he belonged. And at that moment Little Ann had come along, finishing up a roll of film on her new camera, and snapped their picture.

  It never occurred to Tommy, as he lay staring into the dark, that such persistence as his, with time, would surely have brought him into a flying act of some kind, sooner or later. To him, flying still meant Mario.

  A week later the contract arrived and his father read and explained it to him. “In effect,” Tom Zane told him, “this means that Papa Tony is your legal guardian until you’re eighteen, and has legal control over you.”

  “Why is that necessary?”

  “Various reasons. Among other things, anyone your age not living with his own parents has to have a guardian. This way he can sign contracts for you, and sign up his whole troupe without making out a separate contract for you that I’d have to countersign. But he can’t farm out your contract to anyone else because it stipulates, right here, that whenever you’re not living with your mother and me, you have to live under his roof and under his personal direct supervision. What they call in loco parentis—in the place of your parents. About money—all the money you earn, except for a little pocket money—I fixed it so it gets put in a bank in your name, and fixed up so nobody can touch it, not even your mother or me, not even you till you’re twenty-one.”

  “My gosh, Dad, don’t you trust him with my money?”

  “If I didn’t trust him with your money I certainly w
ouldn’t trust him with my son,” his father said, “but I want you to have something to start with when you’re grown up. Anyhow, you can’t legally handle money until you’re twenty-one.” He hesitated and smiled, but there was a serious glint behind the smile. “Hard work and nothing but pocket money—and you know how Tony treats his family. Last chance, son; still want me to sign it?”

  Tommy nodded. His father signed his name, and then Tommy took the pen and wrote under his father’s signature his own full name: Thomas LeRoy Zane, Jr. Suddenly he wondered how it would feel to be Tommy Santelli.

  Christmas Eve, it hit him with delayed shock. All week, shopping for the things he would need, he’d been too excited to take it in. His father was sprawled in a chair, smoking a cigar from a box Jim Lambeth had given him for Christmas. His mother was humming a Christmas carol in a small, sweet voice. Tommy wanted to cry. He started to jump up, cry out, beg his father to write and tell the Santellis that it had all been an awful mistake, that he didn’t want to go away from his parents.

  His father shifted his weight in his chair, met his son’s eyes, and Tommy had the feeling that his father was reading his mind. He’d worked around animals so much that Tommy always felt his father knew, without being told, everything that was going on.

  “Better enjoy being lazy while you can,” he said through a yawn. “Won’t last long.”

  The words Tommy had started to say vanished without a trace. A few days later, packing his new suitcase with his clothes, he didn’t believe that he had ever hesitated or doubted.

  On New Year’s Eve, in a pouring rainstorm, he climbed aboard a bus for Los Angeles. His mother and father stood watching as the bus pulled away, and as he waved good-bye, Tommy knew, without quite understanding, that he was waving good-bye to his childhood.

  He felt a little sad as the bus pulled away and their faces were lost to sight. Even the house was gone, for his mother was moving to winter quarters with his father. It had been just another temporary place, anyway, not really home, as they had always been. He felt oddly suspended in the middle of nowhere. But he was too young and too resilient to be sad for long. By the time the bus hit the highway, he was sound asleep and dreaming.