Tommy put out his arms in the darkness and wound them around Mario. He said, his face buried in Mario’s shoulder, “I never had a brother. I used to pretend you were really my big brother. Like Papa Tony said.”
“Did you?” They hugged each other in the darkness, and Tommy was glad Mario could not see his face. He said, through the lump in his throat, “I used to be afraid you’d get sick of having me tagging around after you like—like a puppy.”
“Scared, I guess,” Mario murmured against his neck. “You were so damn young, and I was afraid I couldn’t—couldn’t keep my hands off you. Like that night we drove home from the beach. God, I sweated blood! I figured you were going to run right in the house and tell Lu or somebody I made a dirty pass at you.”
“I wouldn’t. I never would. If I was sore at you I’d’ve told you, not anybody else—I figured you knew that.” Tommy hesitated. “Mario, can I ask you something? How did you get to know you were like that? Homosexual?”
Mario was silent for so long that Tommy wondered if the question had offended him after all, but at last he said, “Okay. I was a couple of years older than you, I guess. Sixteen. You got to remember I was raised Catholic and every time we had any kind of thoughts about—about sex we learned we had to go confess them—‘impure thoughts’ is what they taught us to call them—and the priest would bawl us out and give us rosaries to say and tell us to pray for purity, or something. Well, I tried making the grade with a couple of girls, and it was just a big nothing—I mean, they seemed to like it all right, it went the way it was supposed to, I guess, but I figured it was one of those things, like drinking beer or sitting up all night, that sound like something big till you’re old enough to do them, and then they’re nothing special after all. After a while I figured I had a low sex drive and let it go at that.” He hesitated and laughed a little.
“It was the year I cracked this wrist, the one that’s giving me trouble now—remind me, I’ve got to go hunt up a doctor tomorrow. Anyhow, I had to lay off for six weeks at the beginning of the season. I had to hang around, doing nothing, driving Lucia crazy. She was traveling with the act again, looking after Liss, but not flying, of course—she was still pretty lame—just working spec and Wardrobe and managing us. She said I could go home to L. A. until my wrist healed up, but I wanted to stay with the show. Well, anyhow, there was a route man with the show—hell, I can’t even remember his name. Harry something, Bennet. No, Bennicke—that was it, Harry Bennicke. He asked if I’d like to travel with him one week, advance man, scout out the lots, put up the paper, locate the folks you have to give the ducats to—that stuff. Okay, I went along, we shared a hotel room. I had a pretty fair idea by then what the score was from a couple of things he said. He gave me a drink or two, but it wouldn’t be fair to say he got me drunk. Anyhow, I found out there was nothing wrong with my sex drive—I’d just been playing in the wrong league, is all.” He rubbed his wrist thoughtfully. “Anyhow, that was how it was. He wasn’t a bad guy, I guess. And I was glad to know what it was all about. And after that—well, things happen. Only there’s never been anybody I cared a lot about.”
Tommy hugged him. “I wish you’d told me.”
Mario smiled in the dark; Tommy could hear it in his voice.
“What for? Anyway, this is something any red-blooded American male would die before he’d admit, but I think I must have sort of a low sex drive anyhow. And I use up so much—so much energy on the bars that there’s not much left over. I think—” He was silent, finally finishing diffidently, “I think maybe people have just so much—just so much drive, and if you use it all up for what you’re doing you don’t have much left over. People whose work doesn’t satisfy them, or doesn’t take enough out of them, they keep hunting for things to put in the empty place. Sex, the drive to make lots and lots of money, and all like that. Most people are sort of—oh, empty inside. Hollow. I read a thing in college about hollow men, and I thought, even then, that most people are like that, all hollow inside, and they keep trying to fill up the hollow with sex because they haven’t got anything else inside.”
Tommy asked shyly, “Is that why you start up these things when you’re bored or—or not satisfied with how things are going?”
“Yes, yes, that’s it exactly!” Mario sounded excited, as if he’d just discovered something. “When I’m blue, or feeling way down low, or miserable—and it doesn’t seem fair to other people to use them to get rid of my bad moods. Seems like sex ought to be something more than that. Only damned if I know what!”
Tommy ventured hesitantly, afraid to intrude, afraid to spoil this moment of rare self-revelation, “Maybe the—the bad moods come because you’re thinkin’ too much about how you feel. Maybe—I’m not very good at thinking things out—but maybe you need to be with people more, to stop thinking so much. I don’t mean just sex, I mean getting into touch with other people, close— Oh, heck, you know what I mean, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I guess so. And I know something else, too: If we stay awake all night talking, it’s not going to improve our work tomorrow. We ought to get that nap.” He put his arm around Tommy’s shoulder briefly, then took it away again. “Get some sleep, kiddo.”
Tommy settled down obediently. He was keyed up, turning over in his mind everything Mario had said. Half eager, half reluctant, he had almost expected something more. It took some getting used to. He felt puzzled and a little alarmed, and through it all was a quite inexplicable tenderness.
“I’m glad you told me, Mario.”
In the darkness, Mario found his hand again and squeezed it. But he said nothing. They were both silent, in that suspension of contact which inevitably follows talk too personal, confidences that have touched on points too intimate. Tommy was conscious of this gap, this constraint. In making this kind of confession, Mario had to some degree placed the future of their relationship in Tommy’s hands. Now the burden of any change or development lay with Tommy, and for a moment Tommy resented that.
He realized, hopelessly confused, that Mario had withdrawn again. It was always like that. They’d be together—close, friends, like brothers—and suddenly without any warning Mario would be a million miles away, on the other side of some invisible barrier. Even now.
He had as yet only the vaguest notion of the confused scruples that made Mario await his lead for anything further. He curled up on the mattress, feigning sleep. After a long time he felt Mario touch his shoulder, but he did not stir, pretending unawareness, and Mario moved away again. Tommy did not know if he was relieved or sorry. He escaped into sleep finally, to curious empty dreams of climbing ropes and ladders to the top of a huge rig, only to find there was another one far above, and another one above that . . . to swing on a trapeze whose ropes seemed to be fastened nowhere and whose bar felt in his hands curiously like living flesh; Mario was catching at the far end of the rig, but his hands were always just beyond reach, and Tommy fell through endless space and then fell again . . . . Tommy started, woke up sharply, and stared into darkness, sweating with the terror of the fall. Mario was breathing quietly, deep asleep at his side. Tommy moved close and put an arm around him, but Mario did not stir. Tommy put his head down on Mario’s shoulder and escaped back into a deeper level of sleep where there were no disturbing dreams at all. None at all.
CHAPTER 13
The Lambeth Circus moved up through Texas and north into New Mexico, and Tommy grew hardened to the routine of the Santellis. They worked him hard and mercilessly. As the youngest man in the act, he had all the odd chores formerly pushed off on Mario. It was his job to brush and air the capes, to see to the laces on the flying slippers, to deliver clothes to the laundry in any town where a two-day stand made it possible to have washing done. They sent him out with Buck on rainy mornings to test the security of ropes and nets; it was his duty to make the final check before every performance, to make sure the bars were dry, neatly wrapped and taped. He did not realize for another year that Angelo or Papa Tony had always
unobtrusively checked his work; they impressed on him that he alone was responsible for their safety, and after a time it grew to be second nature. It was to last all his life.
He began to grow away from his parents; he appeared now in their trailer only to sleep and eat. Those who had been with Lambeth for years still spoke of him as “Tom Zane’s kid,” but to all the newer acts he was “Tommy Santelli, the kid in the flying act.” By the end of June he was answering to that name without a second thought.
One night in early July he stood behind the performers’ entrance, wearing the prop man’s red coat, which he wore in the first half of the show, watching his father work the cats. Now that he was a performer himself, he began to see the complete control and discipline of this act that had been so much a part of his childhood. It still frightened him.
Tom Zane caught the hoop that Big Boy jumped through, whacked his styling whip on the floor of the ring, and the lion sailed through, alighted with a soft snarl, and padded negligently back to his seat. Tom Zane tossed the hoop through the bars; the cage boy caught it, rolled it out of the way, and Tommy let his breath go. Then, as his father wheeled, keeping his eyes fixed on Prince, snapping the whip against the floor, Tommy felt the old, sucking twist under his breastbone. Fear. Tommy knew that most of the snarling and pouncing, most of the whip snapping, was contrived to impress the audience. “Lions are lazy,” Tom Zane had told him all his life. “They are well fed in the ring; they think of the act simply as something they do before dinner.” He had tried often enough to encourage Tommy to take a turn as cage boy. But the very thought made Tommy feel sick, and finally Tom Zane had stopped talking about it.
Even now, safely outside the cage, there was a cold, sick tightness in him. He didn’t really like watching. Even when the lion Tom Zane was working with was old Lucifer, whose paws Zane solemnly shook in the ring, who would playfully roll over, as he was doing now, and let Tom Zane sit on his huge rug-like belly, Tommy felt sick—and his mother had raised Lucifer by hand on a bottle. When the lion was Prince, he noticed that even his father moved with extra caution and kept his eyes fixed on the big cat. Tommy remembered what he had heard his father say so many times: “No big cat is ever ‘tame.’ They are trained, sometimes; but always, they are wild animals; and always, they are very dangerous. Even old Lucifer, if I did something to frighten him or upset him, could forget his training and turn on me. It would be my fault, not his. But I would be dead.”
He turned away his eyes as, one by one, the cats leaped over his father to go up to their seats. Zane posed at the center of the pyramid of lions, two on either side, and Tommy drew a deep breath, watching the cage boy working with the drops. He had tried that job just once. Then his father had admitted that cat men were born, not made, and abandoned his hope of having Tommy follow in his footsteps.
The tableau broke up as Tom Zane snapped his whip and, again one by one, the lions jumped down from their poses and ran back to their places. The cage boy lifted the drop, and one by one the big cats ran, at their peculiar swaying lope, back toward the door. Tommy suddenly heard Pick Leighty gasp, “Oh, my God!” and saw him start to run. Prince had gone through the cage door, then suddenly turned, before the cage boy could close the drop on him, and run back into the ring. He laid back his ears and moved slowly, snarling, toward Tom Zane. He ignored the shouted command, even the whip snapped near his muzzle. Tom Zane never actually touched his cats with the business end of the whip, and it wouldn’t have hurt them if he had. It was their fear of the noise of the whip that he used to keep them under control—that and the tidbits he fed them. He shouted again, but Prince came on. Pick Leighty and Angelo were running toward the ring now. Inevitably, with a leap Tommy could feel all the way down to his toes, Prince sprang. Tom Zane jumped to one side, picking up the chair he used to fend off an occasional unruly animal, backing and circling; but as the lion’s weight came full against him, he went down.
The band had struck up the noisy entrance cue for the next act. Angelo and Pick were inside the cage. Tommy ran toward the entrance. His father was on his feet now, blood splashed along his white ducks. Prince was snarling, switching his tail.
Someone caught Tommy by the shoulder. “For God’s sake, don’t go out there, Tom!” Mario spun Tommy around hard, facing away from the ring. A dozen prop men and roustabouts were clustered around the big cage, shielding it from the audience, and the performing elephants were being hustled into the ring. Tommy struggled for a better view and saw that his father was down again. His mother hurried toward the entrance, and Tommy came to his senses, the sickness in him condensing into something bleak and cold. He caught his mother around the waist.
“Mama! Don’t go out there, don’t—”
“Tommy, what’s happened?” She looked very white, and for the first time, in sudden shock, he realized fleetingly, I’m taller than she is. He held her against him, shielding her as Mario had done with him.
“Don’t look,” he said. “You can’t do anything. Prince jumped him—” He was still seeing the horrible red splatter on the white ducks.
“No, let me go,” Elizabeth Zane said quickly. “I must go, Tommy. I can handle the cats better than Cardiff can, and if I don’t get there now they’re likely to shoot Prince—”
She freed herself quickly from his hands and began to run past the performers’ entrance and out into the ring. It had not been a full sixty seconds since Prince made his first leap. There was a tense, ominous noise in the stands, audible over the gay clamor of the band. Tommy could see his father now. He was in the safety cage, with Angelo, and his mother was in the big cage with Jeff Cardiff. Together they were forcing the cat back toward the drop, Cardiff with the chair, Beth Zane with a steel bar braced in her hands. Tommy took a step toward the ring. Angelo and Pick Leighty were helping Tom Zane to his feet. The whole top of the white costume was blackish-crimson, red strips dangling down that could be torn cloth or flesh, and his bent head flopped horribly. He took one step and collapsed in Angelo’s arms.
Tommy realized that Mario was gripped him with rough fingers that felt like steel on his arms.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Mario said through his teeth. “You’ve got maybe ten minutes to get dressed for the act!”
“Mario, it’s my dad! He’s hurt, maybe he’s dead—”
“I don’t care if half the county is dead out there, you’ve still got to be on the rig in ten minutes! Move!” He gave Tommy a rough shove, and Tommy stumbled back into the darkness of the lot.
He stepped up into the rigging truck, his mouth dry. He felt muddled and disoriented. The familiar smells were all around him—metal, damp cloth, resin, sweat—but they seemed new and strange, making his stomach tighten with something like nausea. Mario had already shucked his shirt and shoes. Tommy pulled out his tights, mechanically checking the tags at the waist. This was Angelo’s pair. He got another, and it was his. He was beginning to realize that even if he had seen his father lying dead on the cage floor, he would still have to get himself into those tights and be up on the rig in eight minutes.
He put one foot into the tights, then leaned against the wall, shaking all over, a sick taste in his mouth. At the moment he hated Mario, calmly smoothing his tights up over his bare legs.
Mario turned and glared at him. “If you’re going to throw up or anything, go outside and get it over with before we get into the ring. Damn it, kid, move! They’ll stall the cycle act a couple of minutes if they can, but we’ve got to be ready! Get going, damn you!”
There was still a hard fist clenched under his breastbone, but the shaking had vanished in cold anger. He set his mouth and hauled up the legs of the tights. Angelo jumped up into the rigging truck, his shirt half off already. He skinned his trousers off in one movement, then jerked up his tights; they snagged and he swore, bending to ease them up. Tommy’s hands were damp; he dried them carefully, doused them with alcohol, and dried them again to get rid of the last traces of sweat. Angelo came and
stuck out his wrists.
“Matt, get a hunk of tape on here, will you? Tommy, your dad isn’t dead—they took him to the hospital in Albuquerque. He needs to be stitched up some, but he’s going to be okay. Fix this up, will you?”
Mario gestured roughly with his elbow, and Tommy fumbled in a drawer for the roll of adhesive tape. There was a long streak of blood on Angelo’s arm.
“Want me to catch tonight, Angelo?” Mario asked.
“I’ll be okay. Just get some tape on it for now.”
Tommy stood by numbly as Mario wound the tape in smooth folds around Angelo’s forearm. Somebody was always getting hurt. Tommy himself went through every day of his life now with a sprain or a bruise or a rope burn somewhere; once his elbow had hurt steadily every day for two months.
But the ripping claws, the long strings of bloody cloth . . . or bloody flesh . . . .
“Tommy, dammit, get your mind on what you’re doing,” Angelo snarled. “Stick out your hands.”
Tommy managed to say thickly, “Sorry. You’ve got blood on your face . . . .”
“Matt, throw me a wet washrag. Tom, clench your fists or this stuff will cut when you grab the bar,” Angelo reminded him. He finished the strapping, then thrust the roll of muslin at Tommy. “Here. You fix up Matt’s bad wrist. I’ll get the capes down.”
The Catch Trap Page 24
