Tommy obeyed silently. Halfway through, Mario glanced up. “Easy, damn it, that’s too tight!”
“I’m sorry—” Tommy heard his voice begin to shake.
Mario looked up with a fierce glare. There were beads of sweat around his hairline. “You want a good kick in the pants, dammit?”
“Easy,” Angelo said. “Go easy on the kid, Matt.”
“Easy, hell! Tom, you get yourself straightened out or I’ll take you apart, hear me? You’ve got sand in your hair. Here.” He picked up his own comb and ran it quickly through Tommy’s hair.
Papa Tony jumped on the rigging truck. He was already in costume, being one of the very few performers with Lambeth who had no extra chores in the first half of the show. He grabbed his cape in one quick moment.
“Come on—we’ll be late,” he said, and at the same moment one of the clowns stuck his head in the door.
“Santellis? Ready?”
Papa Tony lifted his chin proudly.
“The Santellis are always ready. Andiamo, ragazzi.”
Mario took Tommy’s elbow and steered him toward the entrance. Tommy, through the sick daze in his mind, sensed something fierce, emotional, in the way they walked this time, clustered, close. The Santellis are always ready. For the first time, dimly, he had a hint of the way in which, someday, the knowledge that he had a show to do—right now, no matter what—would hold him steady through personal crisis, tragedy, death. The Santellis are always ready. And he was one of them. He lifted his chin and walked along at Mario’s side, trying for the same calm arrogance.
The band crashed into their entrance music, the spotlight came to catch them at the edge of the ring, and Tommy drew in a deep breath. Automatically he put his fingers to his neckline and felt, with a flicker of surprise, the little St. Michael’s medal there. He had not the slightest memory of transferring it from the neck of his sweater. The lights burned at his eyes. Then he was standing on the platform beside Mario, and his stomach felt tight and twisted, but that was a familiar sensation. He reached up for the bar, and felt it, hard and real and heavy in his hands. Now came the reality of Mario’s white-wrapped wrists lined up next to his, the thin swaying ropes on the catch straps where Papa Tony and Angelo swung for this trick, his body arching higher and higher; everything else was vague and distant, and the world reduced itself to a thin flying line, a knife-edge of reality under his soaring body . . . .
Somehow the act was over: the final drum roll, the two-and-a-half, the storm of applause, Mario bowing in the usual way. Tommy felt dazed again as he slid down the ropes to the ground.
Back in the rigging truck, Angelo said, “Both of you, get dressed as fast as you can. You’ll have to drive, Matt. I don’t think I can manage.”
Jim Lambeth stepped into the truck. “Angelo, you all right?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Angelo said briefly, and Tommy saw, with renewed, sick horror, the blood that had seeped out beneath the tape on Angelo’s arm.
“What happened, Angelo?” he whispered.
“You didn’t see? He pulled your father right out from under Prince.”
“It’s probably okay,” Angelo said, “but I better get a tetanus shot or something—a cat’s claws are always septic. Anything I can handle there, Jim?”
“Yeah. Find out what Beth wants to do,” Lambeth said. “All she was worried about was that we shouldn’t shoot that goddamn cat. Take it easy, Angelo. We’ll get your rigging down and stowed.”
Tommy sat numbly between Mario and Angelo in the Santelli car. For once, Angelo said nothing about Mario’s driving. They had to ask at a gas station before they found the hospital. In the merciless lights of the hospital corridor they looked like three roughnecks; they had pulled on old pants over their tights. Angelo still wore his costume top, a prop man’s coat bundled over it. The crisp, neat nurse stared, drawing back ever so slightly.
“Mr. Zane? The case they brought in by ambulance from the circus grounds? Just a minute, please; I believe he is still in surgery. Come this way.”
She led them to a waiting room across the corridor. Tommy saw his mother there, pale and tired-looking, a great bloodstain across the front of her dress. She jumped up and ran to him.
“Tommy, Tommy, Tommy—” she whispered. He held her against him, feeling her shaking and crying. After a minute she quieted.
“Angelo, it was good of you to come.”
“Well, I had to come anyhow to get my arm looked at.”
“If it hadn’t been for you—” she said and took his hand in both of hers, holding it. Angelo shook his head in embarrassment. “Okay, okay, Beth, forget it. How’s Tom? What happened, anyhow? How bad is it?”
“Prince clawed him three times—once down the arm, then twice across the ribs. He lost a lot of blood, and there’s a cut over his eye—” She broke down helplessly and began to cry. Mario took her by the shoulders and put her gently into a chair.
“Tommy, you stay here with your mother. Elizabeth, I’m going to go and get you some hot coffee. Angelo, you find somebody who can look after that arm for you.”
Tommy sat beside his mother in the waiting room. After a time Angelo came back, with a thick bandage on his forearm. Mario brought coffee, handed Tommy a cup without asking. He took a sip, but it was bitter and he put it on the floor almost untouched. He said, “I knew that old cat was a killer.”
Beth Zane looked up, surprised and protesting. “Oh, no, Junior, it wasn’t Prince’s fault. Tom knew he had a sore tooth; he hit him by mistake on that side with his hand. Prince was scared, that was all, scared and hurt. They’re just like babies, you know.”
“Some baby,” Tommy muttered. He had heard this before.
It seemed a year before the doctor finally came in.
“Mrs. Zane?”
All four of them jumped up together.
“Mrs. Zane, you can see your husband for a second now, and again, for just a minute, in the morning.”
“How—how is he?”
The doctor glanced at them, and again Tommy was conscious of how much they looked like ragamuffins, his mother in her shabby coat, the great bloodstain on her dress. “He’s pretty badly hurt, of course. He has a broken radius bone in his arm and four broken ribs; I think the—the lion rolled on top of him. The arm was pretty badly chewed up, of course, and the big shoulder muscle is torn. We had to take over eighty stitches in the shoulder and chest, and there was surgery on the muscle, too. The eye is worst. We can’t be sure until the swelling goes down, but the eyelid is badly torn. We may be able to save his sight, but, to be honest with you, it looks very bad. There’s always infection with any wound from an animal’s claws.”
Angelo crossed himself.
The doctor said gently, “You should go home, Mrs. Zane. Let your sons take you home.”
Beth shook her head. “They can take Tommy back to the grounds. I’m staying. Angelo, make sure Tommy gets back all right.”
“Sure.”
Tommy began to protest, insisting he should stay with his mother, but Mario took him firmly by the arm and marched him out to the car.
“Want me to drive, Angelo?”
“Hell, no! The arm’s fine—I’ve had worse from a house cat!” He waited impatiently while they climbed in.
Tommy felt the hard, twisting sickness again. When he had been with the show for twenty years, would he be able to walk into a lion’s cage, casually save a man’s life, then go through his own turn with a deep claw mark on his arm that he hadn’t even mentioned?
His teeth chattered, and Mario looked across him at Angelo and said, “Speed it up a little. The kid’s having a chill.”
“No wonder,” Angelo said. “Miracle he held together this long. You were damn rough on him, Matt.”
Mario put his arm around Tommy. “Listen, Tom. I had to talk tough or you’d have fallen apart. And if you went to pieces, the other performers would have fallen apart. And if they got upset the audience would have known and we’d have had a
panic. I’ve seen that happen in a show where there was a bad accident. Once the folks knew you were going to carry on okay, everything started to run smooth again. You can let go now, if you want to. Now’s the time, when it’s all over.”
Tommy said, “I’m just so—so—so damned cold. I must’ve—must’ve got chilled in—in the hospital—”
The circus lot was perfectly dark and still, but as the car turned in, Jim Lambeth jumped down from the ticket wagon. “Angelo, you okay? Tommy, how’s your dad?”
He heard them out, then gave Tommy a brief pat on the shoulder. “Good kid. Mario, you get him to bed. The kid’s a trouper.”
Tommy heard the accolade, but was too cold to understand. Angelo drew up in front of the Zanes’ trailer; Mario got out with Tommy.
“I’ll stay with the kid. You get some sleep, Angelo.”
“I’m okay,” Tommy protested, but Mario ignored him, shoving him through the trailer door. It seemed somehow unfamiliar, the lights still burning, his mother’s sewing basket lying where she had left it with a pair of his own tights stretched over a darning egg, his father’s shirt hanging over the back of a chair. Tommy’s teeth were clenched against chattering; the cold seemed to have gone through to his very bones. He had forgotten what it was like to be warm.
It seemed to him that he had been holding his breath against the cold, aching tightness for hours and hours. Mario went into the house trailer’s bathroom and put a hand against the hot-water heater. “Thank goodness we’re on a lot where they have good hot-water hookup. You get out of your clothes and take a hot shower—as hot as you can stand it. And get into some warm pajamas.”
“Look, Mario, I’m all right, I said—”
Mario gave him a rough shove. “Just do as I tell you once without givin’ me a hard time, willya? Just be glad we’ve got a good water hookup and we’re not playing under canvas where all you get’s a bucket of cold water! You catch cold, it won’t help anybody. Now move, dammit!”
Under the hot, pounding rain of the shower Tommy felt the physical cold subside. But the tightness in his chest was an ache, growing and growing. He pulled a sweater over his pajamas. Mario was in the kitchen part of the trailer.
“Better now? Where does your mother keep her coffee? I’ll fix some supper—or breakfast or whatever. You’ll be better with something hot inside you.”
“In that canister. I don’t want anything. If I eat I’ll be sick.”
“Okay, okay, go crawl in bed if you want to. But I’m about starved. I never eat a lot before the night show, and I’ve been up all night. Mind if I fix myself a bite?”
Tommy felt suddenly ashamed. “No, of course not. Let me help. Eggs all right? That’s about all I’m sure we can find.” He bent and pulled out a frying pan. “There’s a couple dozen here. How many you want? Hadn’t you better get out of your tights, too? You told me, often enough, about catching cold.”
“Right. I’ll do that.” When he came back, Tommy had slices of bacon draining on a paper napkin and was starting eggs. He saw Mario smile and vaguely wondered why. By the time the eggs were on the plates, Tommy realized he was hungry. He sat down and Mario slid into the breakfast nook beside him. He picked up the cup of coffee. Its hot fragrant steam, the heat of the cup in his hand, seemed to dissolve the hard, aching lump in his throat, and he saw the plate of eggs through a burning mist.
Mario slid an arm around his shoulders.
“Okay, kid,” he said in a whisper, “steady. If you’re going to get the shakes, this is the time for it, when it’s all over with. Come on, drink up.” He took the cup to Tommy’s mouth.
“Never mind if it burns your mouth. Get it down, that’s the fella.”
Tommy gulped, swallowed, sniffled, started to choke, and gulped again. Half laughing, half crying, he took the cup in his own hand. “I’m—I’m okay now. You don’t have to—have to feed me like I was a baby—”
“Then you start getting on the outside of those eggs, ragazzo.”
“Okay.” Tommy picked up his fork. They ate in silence. The first dim gray light was coming in from outside.
“Listen,” Mario said. “Wind. Or is that rain?” It was a harsh rushing noise outside. “You’re closer—reach me some more coffee.”
Tommy brought the pot closer and tipped it over Mario’s cup. Suddenly he began to laugh. “Look—your wristbands are soaked! You forgot to take them off when you washed up.”
“I must have had something else on my mind.” Mario pushed his plate away. “Get some sleep, kid. I’ll stay with you.”
“I’ll be all right alone now.”
Mario chuckled. “Relax! I’m not babying you, kid, but Papa Tony and Angelo are probably sound asleep by now, and I’d catch Billy-be-damned if I woke them up! You don’t mind if I catch a nap here, do you?”
“‘Course not,” Tommy muttered. Mario went to the door of the trailer and looked into the graying sky. There was no light except the central spot, never darkened, on the lot. In the distance somewhere a tethered animal stamped softly.
“Rain,” Mario said. “No performance tomorrow—today, that is. Get to bed, young’un.”
Tommy pulled out the sofa that was his bed. He could not face the dark emptiness of his parents’ room. He lay stiffly on his pillow, and as he shut his eyes the picture he had been holding away from his consciousness all that evening returned with an awful clarity: the horrible red bloody strings hanging down, his father collapsing into Angelo’s arms like a marionette when someone lets go the strings . . . .
. . . over eighty stitches . . . We may be able to save his sight . . .
Mario put out the light. The sofa bed creaked slightly as he sat down on the edge to pull off his boots. He stretched out in his clothes.
“Going to sleep in your clothes? I can get you a pair of Dad’s pajamas.”
“It’s okay. It’s almost morning, anyhow.”
Without warning Tommy felt his breath catch in his throat and knew, shamefully, that he was going to cry.
Mario turned over. He said in a whisper, “Listen, kid, take it easy. People are always getting hurt around the show. You know that. Here, put your head on my shoulder.” His arm went around Tommy in the darkness. “That’s better.”
Suddenly, weary all over, Tommy felt the aching weight dissolve, and he fell heavily into sleep.
When he woke the trailer was full of gray and rainy light, and he was alone. Outside there were sloshing steps, the sound of a car’s engine turning over, protesting, a battery whining and gears grinding, the plaintive eerie call of an elephant protesting some bit of routine, the suck and clop of a horse’s hoofs, a baby crying somewhere in another trailer. The familiar sounds of the backyard on a rainy morning.
Then, just outside, through an open door, came the sound of Mario’s voice, cold and angry as he had never heard it:
“Angelo, if I had a mind like yours I’d wash it out three times a day with green soap! The kid was half sick with shock; I didn’t think I ought to leave him alone. That’s what it was, and that’s all it was! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what do you think I am?”
Angelo muttered something. Mario, not pacified, snarled, “So okay, okay, you want to tell the whole goddamn backyard about it? Go on, you go help Papa Tony, I’ll manage! Unless you think you gotta check up and ask Tommy—”
“I just might,” Angelo said, and a minute later he came into the trailer without knocking.
“You awake, Tom?”
“Yeah, I guess so.” Tommy sat up, blinking. “What’s the matter, Angelo? Something wrong?”
Angelo stared at him for a moment, then shook his head and said, “No, but Big Jim canceled the show for this afternoon—it’s raining like blue hell out here. We’re pulling out for the next town around noon. Get some clothes on, kid. We’ve got to see if your father can be moved.”
Tommy hurried into his clothes and found some milk left in the icebox. He drank a glass, without bothering to eat anything. Outside, the rain had
beaten the ground into soupy muck, with puddles of water standing where the ring walls had been. Most of the family trailers had already gone.
Jeff Cardiff, Tom Zane’s cage man and assistant trainer, came up to Tommy as he crossed the lot.
“You going in to see your dad at the hospital this morning? Tell him not to worry, I can work the cats a few days. Unless your mother wants to.”
“Okay, I’ll tell him.”
“Is your dad going to lose his eye?”
“I hope not.”
“Tough on your mother. Especially now, when you’ll have to be moving on with the show and she’ll have to stay here with him,” Cardiff said. “Well, you give them both my best, Tommy. I’m going on with the cat truck.”
He went off, and Tommy stood in the soaking downpour, not even aware that he was getting wet. It had just hit him. He wasn’t just a performer’s kid, traveling with his family; he was a performer himself, under contract. He’d gone on the rigging last night not knowing whether his father would live or die; he would have to go on, this afternoon, to the next town on the route.
A work hand came up and said, “Tommy, I disconnected your folks’ trailer. We’ll have it hauled to a trailer park in town. Tonio Santelli told me you were going with them. You better get your clothes and take them to the Santelli trailer.”
Dazed again, Tommy obeyed, packing his clothes and practice tights. Angelo drove up in the Zanes’ car and motioned him inside. He sat beside Angelo, watching the windshield wipers flick back and forth, back and forth. Angelo’s hands on the wheel seemed steady and confident as ever. Only a small rim of bandage showed under his neat raincoat sleeve. He looked shaved, dapper, immaculate.
Inside the hospital, Tommy thought that at least today they didn’t look like hoboes or tramps. A painful quiver went through him as he saw his mother in the waiting room, still wearing the bloodstained dress.
“How is Dad this morning, Mother?”
“Holding his own. If there’s no infection, he should be out of the hospital in a week.” It was years before Tommy understood quite how Spartan a code was behind that optimism.
The Catch Trap Page 25
