The Catch Trap

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Angelo shook ash from his cigarette. “You’ll have to fight that out with him for yourself. I’m sorry to do this to you, Matt, I swear I am, but I keep thinking about Tessa. I’ve never really known her, and now I had it rubbed into me that something could go wrong, any day, and I’d never have the chance. I’m through, Matt. I’m going back to California and take Tessa out of that goddamn boarding school. I’m a family man and this is no kind of life for me. Say I’ve lost my nerve, if you want to.”

  “But what will you do?” Mario asked, and Angelo shrugged.

  “Damned if I know. I’ll find something. Stunt work, maybe.”

  “That’s more dangerous than flying.”

  “Then I’ll wait till I lose my nerve on that, and quit that, too! All I know is, I’m through flying. I handed in my notice to Woody tonight. He offered me a raise, and Coe Wayland as an assistant, and I turned him down flat.”

  “Angelo, look,” Mario said, after a minute, “I’ll talk to Johnny. If I can handle him—”

  “That would be the easy way, Matt,” Angelo said. “I could blame it all on the kid. But I won’t con you. Even if this thing with Johnny had never come up, I still think I’d feel the same way. I’ve just lost whatever it was. I dunno, I can’t seem to—to manage it. Every time I catch you, it’s like you were going to do like Papa Tony, let go and fall and I can’t hold you. I lay awake last night for hours, in a cold sweat, just thinking about that fall Lucia took. Every time you come off the fly bar, or Tommy, or Stel, I can damn near see them picking you up off the ground.” His face looked pinched and gray. “I can’t take it no more, Matt.”

  “Oh, Jesus, Angelo,” Mario muttered. “Look, this week has been rough. Real rough. Lay off a day or two, let Jock fill in, get a rest. Pull yourself together, and see how you feel then, okay? But don’t do anything like this in a hurry. Look, Angelo, I know how you feel—”

  “Do you? I wonder,” Angelo said. “I don’t think so.”

  “You really mean this, Angelo? You’re going to do this to all of. us? Not just me, but the—the whole family?” Mario swallowed hard. “How the hell can you do this? What are we going to do? What about Tommy’s contract? What about the Flying Santellis?”

  “I hate to say this, Matt, but I really don’t give a damn,” Angelo said, and lit another cigarette. “It’s not like you were all teenagers. You don’t need anybody to hold your hands. Even the kid’s old enough to look after himself.” He gave Tommy a curious, hard, hostile glance. “Listen, Matt, I spent my whole life worrying about the goddamn family. I want to think of myself for a change, and Tessa. My family.”

  “Angelo, for God’s sake!” Mario pleaded, and Tommy felt that he was near tears. “Don’t do this to me—don’t do this to all of us! Look, you’re my—my catcher, the only one I ever worked with. How can I do triples without you, or—or anything? I always said, you’re the anchorman for the Santellis, you’re the one keeps the whole show on the road—”

  “Matt—kid,” Angelo said, holding out his hand, gripping Mario’s. “It’s not like I want to hurt you, kid. Not any of you, but specially not you. Johnny and Stel—sure, I know they’ll get along. But you will, too, some way or other. And I’m not going to spend the rest of my life trying to fight Johnny and hold things together. I thought I could, but I’m just not cut out for it, and I’m not going to try!”

  Mario stared at him, bitterly, hurt and betrayal in his voice. “Papa Tony spent his whole life trying to bring back the Flying Santellis. He built us up again from nothing, and before he’s even cold in his grave, you run out on it, on everything he stood for! You lousy—” But he didn’t finish, just sat staring at Angelo, his face drawn with pain and dismay.

  “I might have known you’d throw that up at me,” Angelo retorted, and ground out his cigarette under his heel.

  “Okay, Matt,” he said at last, “I never thought I’d tell anybody this. I thought I wouldn’t say it to the priest in confession. Come to think of it, I never did. But something’s happened to me since they picked my father up off the tanbark dead. Damn it, I never wanted to fly in the first place.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Mario demanded.

  “Just what I said. I never wanted to fly. It’s why—why I couldn’t ever really—really understand Terry. Papa Tony never so much as asked me. He just said, when I was about twelve years old, ‘Well, Angelo, you’re getting to be a big, strong boy; we teach you to fly.’ I just did what I was told. It was the family business, just like we’d been fixing shoes or selling macaroni. And then when I was starting to get pretty good—you wouldn’t remember; Lu hasn’t said much about it. When Lucia knew Liss was on the way, maybe they told you, she threw a fit. She’s so quiet now, you wouldn’t believe it. She raved and screamed and cried and stormed half the night—it took Papa and Joe and Matthew more than six hours to get her calmed down even a little. Next day at the flyers’ table in the cookhouse, Papa said to old Luciano, ‘Lucia’s going to be out of the act for eight, nine months. What we going to do to replace her?’ And old Lucky Starr, he said Cleo could take over Lucia’s spot in the show, and then he said, ‘That boy of yours, that Angelo, he can move into Cleo’s spot.’ Okay, I didn’t argue. Things were bad enough, with Lucia making all kinds of crazy threats—we were all scared she’d run off and do something—something desperate. She said she’d throw herself under the train. That kind of thing. Nonna was traveling with us then, and she couldn’t do anything with Lucia. And Cleo was just seventeen and scared to death about moving into the star spot So I didn’t want to make things any worse, and Matt had his hands full handling Lucia.”

  Tommy wondered, not for the first time, what kind of man the elder Matthew Gardner had been, to be so shady, to let himself be so wholly absorbed into his wife’s family. Papa Tony had said once, Our family eats people up alive. Had Matthew, Senior, been weak, as are many men who marry strong and domineering women?

  Maybe that explains why Johnny felt the way he did about Stella, when she got pregnant. Like he was doing her a favor, letting her not have it. Angelo was still talking with tense, concentrated bitterness, twisting an unlighted cigarette between his fingers.

  “So a few years later, after Matt died—and they went through this with Lucia every year or so, you realize—well, they needed another catcher. So I was it. And when Joe and Lucia had their accident and Lucia broke her back, we all thought the act would break up. I told Papa Tony then I wanted to quit, get into some other line of work. And Papa said I was all he had left, was I going to run out on him, too? He simply couldn’t take it in, that there was anyone alive who wouldn’t rather fly than eat.”

  Mario said slowly, “Yeah. It was you kept Lu and Papa from beating Mark into shape.”

  “That’s right. The only real bad fight I ever had with Lucia. I decided you kids were going to grow up the way you wanted to. and Lu wasn’t going to put the screws on you kids the way she and Papa put them on me. It was me arranged for Mark to stay in Frisco with Grandpa Gardner, and go to school there, and it was me talked Papa Tony into letting you go to college, only you queered that deal yourself,” Angelo said, and his mouth twisted in an odd grimace. “The best goddamn brain we had in the family and you wanted to knock it out doing triples!”

  “Angelo, for God’s sake—”

  “Okay, okay. But anyhow, all you kids are grown up now, and this is my last chance—maybe the only chance I’ll ever have to get started in some other line of work, before I’m too old to be anything but a bum when I finally get smashed up and grounded.”

  Mario sat staring at him. “You felt like that all along, and yet you went through all that hell teaching me the triple, knowing I could have broken both our necks—”

  “I didn’t teach you the triple, you rascal,” Angelo said, and his hand went out affectionately to cover Mario’s, “I just put up with you while you taught it to yourself. Yeah, I know, ragazzo, you love flying, and Tommy’s got the bug just like you. So o
kay, okay, it’s a free country. If that’s what you want to do you keep right on doin’ it till hell freezes over. But you count me out, okay?”

  Johnny and Stella, of course, had to be told, and Angelo broke it to them the next day after the matinee. They both looked badly stunned, guilty.

  “Angelo, is this because of that fight we had?” Johnny demanded. “I knew I ought to keep my big mouth shut—”

  Angelo shook his head. “No, Jock, that wasn’t a fight, just an honest difference of opinion. Maybe it helped me make up my mind a little, though. If I stayed on we’d just have more rows.’”

  “But—Uncle Angelo—won’t you even stay till the end of the season?”

  “No. I thought of that. But Woody says he’ll put Coe Wayland on as relief catcher—Wayland wants to get back into flying.”

  “Uncle Angelo—look—would it make any difference if I promised, if I guaranteed you wouldn’t hear one damn word of static out of me, or Stel, for the rest of the season?”

  “No, it wouldn’t. Don’t blame yourself, John,” he said, not unkindly. “I just decided I’ve had enough flying. Not many people get a chance to start over when they’re my age.”

  To Johnny he refused to elaborate, and they finished out the week in a more or less hostile silence. In Kansas City, in a blinding rainstorm, Angelo played his last show, packed his trunk, and left, causing a ripple of curiosity in the whole circus, but he refused to have the slightest fuss made over his departure.

  “What are you going to say to Lucia?” Mario wanted to know. He and Tommy accompanied Angelo to the bus station, where they stood waiting for the California bus, staring out into the pouring rain. Angelo shrugged, hoisting his suitcase—his trunk would be shipped on by rail express.

  “I’m a big boy now. Lucia can like it, or she can do the next best thing.” His face was closed and bleak. He held out his hand. “No hard feelings, Matt?”

  Mario hesitated, and he looked angry and grim. Finally he drew a deep breath and sighed. “Okay, Angelo. No hard feelings.” They clasped hands.

  “Thanks.” Angelo saw the bus driver climb up inside the coach and turn on the lighted sign that said Los Angeles express. He turned briefly to Tommy. “Good luck, kid.”

  Tommy, still bruised and wrathful, stared sullenly at the older man. How could Angelo do this to all of them, especially Mario? But finally, as Mario had done, he stuck out his hand. “Good luck, Angelo.”

  “See you both in October.” Angelo drew Mario roughly to him and kissed his cheek. “Take care of yourself, Matt, and don’t you take no lip from Johnny.” He patted him on the shoulder, grabbed his suitcase, and sprinted for the bus. Mario stood watching him climb aboard, but Tommy was watching Mario’s face, cold, withdrawn, angry.

  How the hell could Angelo do this to Mario? I can see he wouldn’t have any special feeling about Johnny, the way Johnny’s been acting. But, my God, the way Mario feels about him . . . Tommy felt, in confused anger, that he could have killed Angelo without a moment of regret. The bus jerked, swayed, and pulled away from the station. Mario watched it go, his mouth pressed tight.

  “Well,” he said at last, “we got a show to do.”

  “You want to catch the bus over there for the circus lot?”

  “Hell, no. Stand around in this rain and catch pneumonia? We’ll get a taxi.” But he did not move; he was staring at the entrance of a bar across the street from the bus station. “Maybe I’ll have a beer first.”

  “Don’t be a dope,” Tommy said. “You got a show this afternoon.”

  Mario sighed, then chuckled. “Okay, kid. Okay. Let’s call a cab and go on out to the lot. Though if it keeps on raining like this, there won’t be any show worth mentioning, anyhow.”

  The rain had cleared by the matinee, but they stood together in a little knot beneath the performers’ entrance, trying to keep their flying slippers out of the mud. It was Mario who voiced the thought in all their minds. “Well, we’re on our own.”

  Johnny said, “It just occurred to me. With Angelo gone, there’s not a single Santelli in the Flying Santellis anymore. Not one. Three Gardners, a Wayland, and a Zane.”

  “Well, kids, that’s show business,” Coe Wayland said with his rough laugh. “Just the way the breaks run in this business.” Tommy noted that the big man’s shock of ginger hair was ill-combed, that his green tights seemed not quite to fit him. He forced himself not to criticize. After all, he thought, with a charity he did not realize was snobbish, he isn’t really one of us.

  Mario said, “I don’t know about you, Jock, but I’m still a Santelli. And Papa said Tommy had a right to use the name.” He glowered, a strange, dispassionate, almost hostile stare, at Stella, tiny and pert beside Johnny, her fair hair pulled back into a tiara studded with green rhinestones. Tommy found himself wondering, Where did they get a Santelli costume for Stella? Did Lucia send it when they moved Stel into the act?

  Johnny scowled. “You mean Stella and I don’t have a right to call ourselves Santellis?”

  Mario shrugged. “I didn’t say that. It was you made that crack about there not being any Santellis left in the act.” Tommy thought he sounded as if he wanted Johnny to argue, but Johnny didn’t,

  “Wayland, you know the routine—”

  “Sure, sure,” Coe Wayland said impatiently, jerking at the muslin strapping on his wrists with strong teeth, “I was catching when all you kids were in rompers.”

  “I was going to say,” Mario said coldly, “that we haven’t had a chance to practice the triple. Do you think you can hold me on it?”

  Wayland put his hands on his hips. He ran his eyes insolently up and down Mario’s full height. “Sure, big fella,” he said at last, with an offensive grin, “you ain’t as hefty as all that.”

  Stella giggled; Johnny gave her a dig in the ribs with his elbow. “Listen, you big jerk—” Tommy began, but Mario gave him just the eyelash-flicker of a repressive frown and he subsided.

  Mario said, “I was thinking about you, Wayland. I’ll end the show today with a double-and-twist if you’d rather.”

  “Don’t you worry about me,” Wayland said. “Of course, if you don’t think you can do the triple without your”—he hesitated—“your husky boyfriend to catch for you—”

  Mario seemed about to explode, but he mastered himself and said, “You don’t know our signals yet. I usually signaled to Angelo at the last minute which one I was going to finish up with, depending on a lot of things—the light, how I felt about it, and so on. I don’t like having to make up my mind to it ahead of time. Today I’ll finish up with the double-and-twist, and tomorrow we can work on signals, okay?”

  Coe Wayland shrugged. “Any way you say. You want to do your triple, go ahead.”

  “I want to get used to working with you, first. If you catch me off center you’re likely to rip your shoulder out, and if you tear mine, I’ll break your goddamn neck.”

  Wayland looked bored. He said, “Cut the comedy routine, pretty boy. You call the catches, I’ll catch them—it’s just as simple as that. You watch the fancy tricks and let me worry about my end of the rigging, okay?”

  Mario bit his lip and turned away. Angelo’s cape was not quite long enough for Coe Wayland, and looked awkward. As the band crashed into their entrance music, Mario put his arm through Tommy’s as if seeking some kind of reassurance, and Tommy squeezed it.

  “And in the center ring—The—Flying—Santellis!”

  “Take it easy, Mario,” Tommy whispered. “Andiamo.”

  Mario drew a long breath, then grinned down at him. “Okay,” he said under his breath, “we’re still here.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Kansas City. St. Louis. Oklahoma City. Dallas. Houston. Tommy was carefully scraping an accumulation of mud from the troupe’s flying slippers one morning in the men’s dressing tent, and remembering what Papa Tony had said at the beginning of the season, that you can tell what state you are in only by the color of the mud . . . .

&nbs
p; “It’s true,” he said out loud to Mario, who was sitting on his trunk in the dressing tent, reading a pulp magazine, “Look how that yucky gray stuff from Missouri sticks to everything. And this mud from Oklahoma’s red, real red like bricks—is it what they make bricks out of, Mario?”

  “Damned if I know,” Mario said, his face still buried in Planet Stories. “Could be, I suppose. Who cares?”

  Tommy finished his work, laying out the costumes for the show that afternoon, and wandered out into the backyard. What state were they in? Muggy heat lay like a pall over the city, and he smelled sharp, acrid chemical stink like an oil refinery somewhere. He was tired of the long season, tired of the circus train, the lack of privacy. The small lame dwarf who had the Woods-Wayland concession for Billboard accosted him, and Tommy bought a copy, flipping by automatic habit to the route lists to see where Lambeth was playing. Then he remembered.

  I wonder if Jeff Cardiff took over the cats. He always wanted to. He paged slowly through the newspaper, looking for any item of interest. The Fortunatis were doing a special indoor show in Boston. Must be nice and cool up north there. He drank a glass of some sugary concoction, more ice than drink, from the grease wagon, and walked back to the tent, chewing the ice. It was the slack morning hour; all around the tent, performers were reading, mending costumes, writing letters. A card game was going on in one corner. Tommy passed Coe Wayland’s trunk and the burly catcher slammed down a trunk lid, jogging Tommy’s memory.

  Oh-oh, that’s not good. I thought he’d quit drinking when they put him on to catch for us.

  I better ask— He curtailed the thought; he could no longer speak to Angelo about it. Anyway, he said to himself fiercely, it’s none of my business. It’s a long time till the show; he’s got a right to do what he wants to on his own time. Mario was still absorbed in his magazine. This one showed a man being strangled alive in purple flowers like an enormous Venus’ flytrap. Startling Stories. Well, the cover looked like it. He couldn’t imagine what Mario got out of that stuff, but he read it every chance he got. Tommy sat down on his trunk to read Billboard.