“My God!” Mario sat back on his heels. He was naked to the waist, his hair standing up all over his head. “What happened, Jake?”
“You haven’t heard? Woody got a phone call last night, and I called my brother—he’s working in Boston where they were.”
“Jake, what happened? We’ve had our own troubles, and we haven’t heard anything!”
“Cleo,” said Jake. “She missed the net in a double, and they think her back’s broken. They don’t know for sure that she’s going to live.”
“Jesus Christ,” Mario whispered, and the brown shoe-polish brush fell unheeded on his pile of clean white T-shirts. Tommy bent to retrieve it, feeling numb. Cleo! he thought, in horror.
“That’s right,” Jake said. “You know them. Personally, that is. I never met them.”
“Jim Fortunati is my cousin,” Mario said, “and Cleo was with the Santellis for years.” He sounded dazed. “She’s hurt bad?”
“That’s what I heard. Nothing official—you know what rumors are. But she is in the hospital, and you know how insurance is for flyers, like not at all, so we’re taking up a collection to help Jim with the hospital.” This was routine for aerialists. Mario dug into his pants pocket and pulled out a couple of bills. “That’s for me and Tom. Johnny and Stel will probably want to give something separate.”
“Coe Wayland gave me two bucks,” Jake said, lowering his voice. “Last of the big spenders, huh?” He glanced at the corner of the bill Mario had handed him, said, “Hey—thanks!” and hurried away.
Mario sat on his trunk, shoes forgotten, staring straight ahead. He did not seem to hear when Tommy spoke, and Tommy didn’t blame him. He picked up the shoe brush and finished them himself, put a gloss on Mario’s riding boots, and put them all away in the trunk. Cleo Fortunati, who had laughed, and petted Liss, and told them stories about Barney Parrish; Cleo, lying in a hospital with her back broken. He told himself fiercely, It happens. What was it Barney Parrish said? You’ve got to have an open mind about breaking your neck. But that made him think of Cleo, too, telling that story in the Fortunati trailer. He blinked hard, swallowing again and again. Papa had been with them then. And Angelo. His own parents had been alive. Cleo had known his mother. You’re the image of Beth. His eyes were stinging.
Mario was still motionless on his trunk.
“Mario, the cookhouse flag is up. You want to go eat now?”
“I’m not hungry, Lucky. You go ahead if you want to.”
“I’ll stay here if there’s anything—”
Mario scowled at him. “Damn it, no! Go get your dinner, kid. Just leave me alone, willya?”
Wretched, Tommy went off to the cookhouse. The only seat at the flyers’ table was beside Coe Wayland, which didn’t suit him at all. The waiter put a plateful of meat and potatoes in front of him, and he ate mechanically, without tasting.
“Hey,” Wayland said, “Where’s Fancy Dan?”
“Huh?” Sunk in misery, he had hardly heard.
“Your big brother. The boss man. Where is he? Dieting for his handsome waistline, maybe?”
“Lay off,” Tommy said. “He just heard about the Fortunatis. Cleo’s an old friend of his mother. He’s upset about it.”
Wayland’s coarse, handsome face was suddenly serious. “That’s a bad thing, yeah,” he said. “I don’t know the Fortunatis myself, but it’s real tough luck. It may not be so bad as they say, though, Red. These things, they always get exaggerated.”
Tommy realized against his will that the burly man was trying to be friendly. He’s actually trying to cheer me up. He found himself resenting it. He didn’t want to think better of Coe Wayland. He didn’t want to admit that the man was human. But against his will he found himself thinking, Sure, he’s a flyer, too. When any aerialist gets hurt or killed. every flyer is going to get upset, even him; it makes you realize it could happen to anybody, any time.
Mario had managed to pull himself together by the matinee. With ironclad Santelli discipline, he did not mention the Fortunatis, but as they climbed the rigging, Stella at their side, Tommy saw the tenseness around Mario’s jaw line and realized that he was tight as a guy wire. Normally, at the top of the rigging, Mario was filled with exuberance. Against his will, Tommy remembered that day at winter quarters of the Starr Circus, when they had gone through their act for the Fortunatis. Then, resolutely adjusting his hands meticulously to balance Mario’s on the bar for their duo routine, he pushed it all away again.
When you’re flying, nothing matters. Nothing. Nothing except “did I get off the bar straight?”
Side by side they swung, but with the clock inside himself, Tommy knew, It’s not right—we’re ragged . . . . They managed to make the double catch, to get back without losing momentum, but as they dropped off on the platform again, he lost balance and fell heavily against Stella. Mario snarled at him, “Watch what you’re doing, ragazzo!”
Then Mario was readying himself for the triple.
That day in the rehearsal tent at Starr’s, Cleo ran to Mario, hugged and congratulated him. Papa Tony was so proud. And now Papa Tony is dead and Cleo, perhaps, dying . . . Tommy saw the momentary flicker of dread and horror across Mario’s face. He wanted to cry out and beg him not to do the triple today, not today . . . .
Mario took the bar in his hands, swung out, flipped off the bar, whirled over into the first somersault—Oh, God, he’s going to miss!- made a ragged grab, missed Coe Wayland’s hands, and went down, horribly limp. There was a hushed moan of dismay and horror from the stands. Mario managed to roll over on his back, but it was a clumsy fall and a clumsy landing. Instead of climbing again for the second try always allotted him for a missed triple, he shook his head and signaled them down. Tommy, swinging out for the elaborate somersault into the net which ended the act, felt the ache of sympathy and grief for Mario; he hated missing a trick in the ring. He shouldn’t have tried it, not today.
He whispered through the applause, as they left the ring, “You okay, Mario?”
“Yeah. Came down on that bad wrist of mine, is all,” Mario replied, his face drawn and gray.
“I’ll have Johnny look at it when we get back to the tent,” Tommy said. “He’s good at that stuff.” It was all he could do.
Johnny came and worked for a long time, trying to loosen the muscles in Mario’s tight shoulders and strapping his wrist into a bandage, and for once he did not make bad jokes. Mario shivered with reaction, sitting with a blanket around his shoulders; he had been badly shaken by his fall. Tommy went out to the grease wagon to get him some coffee, and brought him back a sandwich, too. Mario stared at it with loathing. “I’m not hungry.”
“You didn’t eat any dinner, either,” Tommy protested, almost in tears. “You’ve got to eat, Mario.”
Johnny laced Mario’s wrist guard over the bandage. He said, “Come on, Signor Mario, don’t throw us a fit of temperament now, huh? What the hell would Angelo say if you started acting that way?”
Mario drew a long shuddering breath, and took a gulp of coffee. He picked up the sandwich in his uninjured hand; suddenly he grinned, only the shadow of his usual grin.
“Okay, okay, kids,” he said, and bit into it. By the time of the night show he seemed reasonably normal, and although he did not attempt the triple, his wrist still giving him considerable pain, he did a double-and-twist and accepted the applause with his usual gaiety and verve. But after the show, on the train, he lapsed again into bitter, brooding silence. Tommy longed to climb down into his bunk and comfort him, but something in Mario’s withdrawn, cold face kept him from attempting it.
He lay awake for a long time, listening to Mario’s breathing—He isn’t asleep, either—and thinking, This season sure has gone to hell all of a sudden. Finally he could no longer endure the taut, watchful silence from below, and he leaned over the edge of the bunk and whispered, “Mario, you asleep?”
“Leave me alone, Lucky,” Mario said, not irritably but as if he were at the final edge
of endurance. “Just leave me alone, will you?”
Rebuked, Tommy lay down again in his bunk. For a moment he was angry—All right, God damn it, if that’s the way he feels, the hell with him!
Then, suddenly, he was desperately worried.
What was wrong with Mario?
What’s happened to him?
CHAPTER 27
Tommy did not sleep till daylight was coming in the windows, and he woke again when the train came to a stop on a deserted siding, hearing animal sounds of protest and the chuffing of a switch engine along the tracks in the railroad yard. He crawled down. Mario was sunk in exhausted sleep, so dead to the world that he did not even stir when Tommy, dressing in the confined space, banged into his bunk. He turned up late in the cookhouse, too, waving away his usual breakfast and drinking cup after cup of black coffee. The waiters were clearing the food away from the tables when one of them came and handed Mario a yellow envelope.
A telegram. What now? Apprehensive, they clustered around Mario as he tore it open. He sighed with relief and tossed it to Johnny.
“Good news for a change.”
Stella and Tommy craned their necks to read over Johnny’s shoulder! DAUGHTER BORN TO ELISSA SAN FRANCISCO 5:45 A.M. BAPTIZED CLEO MARIA RENZO. BOTH DOING FINE. LOVE JOE.
“Marvelous,” Stella murmured. “Liss told me she wanted a little girl. We’ll have to send her some flowers, Johnny.”
“Sure, babe. Anything you want,” Johnny said. “Cleo Maria, huh? That figures, the way Liss always felt about Cleo. Hey, when you send flowers to Liss, send some to Cleo, too, why don’t you?”
“Send a message along with the flowers,” Tommy suggested. “It might cheer Cleo up, knowing Liss named the baby after her.”
Mario took the telegram again and sat staring at it. “At least that’s over.”
“Over for this year,” Johnny said sarcastically. “She’ll probably have six or eight before she’s through, considering that stupid jerk she married. Well, if that’s what Liss wants out of life, I hope she enjoys it, that’s all!”
Mario stood up, knocking his chair over backward, and strode away from the table. He did not return.
Later, Tommy went to town with Johnny and Stella. They arranged for flowers to be sent to Liss, and to Cleo in Boston, with loving messages from all of them; Tommy insisted that Mario’s name must be signed, too. Then he had work to do, checking riggings, which kept him busy until the noon flag went up on the cookhouse. He finished his dinner early—Mario had not appeared at all—and went to the dressing tent. At this hour it was usually empty, but today Mario was already there. He had taken the capes out of the wardrobe trunk and was pinning them up to the canvas sidewall. As Tommy came up to him in the deserted tent—for most of the men were still in the cookhouse at dinner—Mario turned around, took Tommy in his arms, and pulled him close in a tight hug.
“Hey,” he said softly against Tommy’s ear, “we kinda got off the subject of Lawton, Oklahoma, didn’t we?”
For a moment Tommy was pleased; then, abruptly, dismayed. He pulled gently loose.
“There’ll be plenty of time for that,” he said, “but right now we got to get ready for the matinee.”
“We got time.” Mario drew him closer, with a teasing caress.
“You crazy or something?” Tommy’s voice shook. “Look, any minute there’s going to be three, four dozen men walking in on us.”
“Relax. They’re all in the cookhouse or out checking rigs. We got time enough for a quick—” He put his mouth against Tommy’s ear and whispered, and Tommy pulled away, shocked and angry.
“You’re out of your mind! Listen, you told me often enough, there’s a time and a place for everything, and you know this, right here, isn’t the time or the place, stupid!”
Mario stared at him, his mouth tight with anger.
“You’ve become real careful all of a sudden, haven’t you?”
“Somebody’s got to be,” Tommy said. “Come on, Mario, cut out the funny business. We been getting away with murder this year, but you know and I know there’s just so much we can get away with, and that kind of risk isn’t worth it.”
“Who the hell do you think you’re trying to impress? Or did you get religion all of a sudden?”
“Mario, what the hell has gotten into you? Get off my back, willya?” Tommy was really angry now. “So you’re all upset about something, God knows what it is this time, why the hell do you have to take it out on me, anyhow? Every time, every goddamn time you work yourself up into a rotten mood you take it out on me by picking a big fight, and I’m good and sick of being your doormat!”
“I got a better word for you than doormat.” Deliberately, sneering. Mario spoke an epithet Tommy had never even heard before. Tommy stared in shock and outrage, and Mario laughed, unpleasantly.
“You don’t like dirty words, do you? The word bothers you, doesn’t it? But it never bothered you to be a—” He said it again.
Tommy flinched as if Mario had struck him; in a way, he felt, Mario had struck him a blow that was worse than physical. He said, trying desperately to steady his voice, “Look, there’s a big difference between what goes on in our compartment on the train with the door locked, and starting up this kinda stuff in the dressing tent with the whole damn show about to walk in on us! What’s got into you, anyway? It was you who told me, often enough, how careful—” His voice faltered, died.
“I knew you’d throw that up to me someday, you little bastard!” Mario said. He grabbed Tommy’s arm and twisted it cruelly behind his back. Tommy yelped and tried to pull loose, but Mario inexorably forced him down toward the floor of the tent. Silently, savagely, Tommy struggled, but Mario shoved his face to the floor, kneeling on his back, holding his arm twisted behind him so that Tommy could not move.
“Say it! Don’t be so damn scared of it! You’re no goddamn better than I am! Say what you are, damn you!”
“What the devil—” Jake Davis and one of the clowns were standing in the door of the tent.
Mario snarled, “Butt out. This is a private fight!” and twisted Tommy’s arm so that he could not move a fraction of an inch without imminent danger of dislocating his shoulder.
“Say it,” Mario demanded under his breath, so low that the men standing in the doorway could not hear the words. “Say it, you goddamn self-righteous little queer, say it!”
“I’ll kill you,” Tommy gasped.
Imperceptibly Mario tightened the pressure. Tommy, feeling sweat starting on his hairline, pain ripping through his arm, heard voices beyond them, through a reddening haze.
To say it, he thought in confusion, would be to make something sick, something filthy of everything they had been to each other. He heard Johnny say, “Come on, Matt, beating up the kid again? Let go before you bust his shoulder!”
“Why, sure,” Mario said, with that intense, insane cheerfulness which came at the center of his rages, “soon as he says what I told him to.”
White with pain and humiliation. Tommy could just see the ring of staring faces—most of them looked amused. They seemed to think, from Mario’s laughter, that it was some kind of joke. Coe Wayland said with his high, harsh laugh, “Come on, Tommy, say uncle, tell him you’ll be a good boy.”
Johnny advanced uneasily toward them and said, “For God’s sake, you two cut out the comic routines. Let go the kid, Matt, you’ll really hurt him.”
Mario did not move. Finally, with a convulsive gasp of pain, Tommy gave in. He whispered, “Mario—let me go. Please.”
Mario muttered, “Say it, or I’ll break your arm.”
Tommy whispered, “Cocksucker,” and fell on his face in the dirt, almost sobbing, as Mario let go of his arm. How could he? What got into him? It’s like there was something inside him gets a kick out of hurting me.
Or is it really me he wants to hurt?
Mario was laughing out loud. The loose flaps of the tent, stirred by the light wind, let in a curious filtered sunlight, comi
ng and going on the handsome, rakish face above him. Tommy squeezed his eyes shut. Why, why, why? Mario had been sporadically cruel before, but never with this concentrated, sadistic intensity.
Like that night we picked up the two girls. Something gets into him. Suddenly, in despair, remembering how this had started, he thought, I’d rather they’d come in and found us really doing it. At least that would’ve been honest!
“What’s with you, big brother?” Johnny demanded. “I just heard the signal for spec. Come on, Tommy, get dressed—don’t you know better than to get into fights just before a show?”
Shaken, Tommy got up. He took out the board which, spread between his trunk and Mario’s, made the act’s dressing table, and set up the mirror on it. His shoulder felt as if it had been beaten with a hammer. He moved it cautiously, then more freely. He sat down on his trunk and started to take off his shoes. Mario went past him and Tommy hissed, “You son of a bitch!”
Mario sat down, glowering. He threw Tommy the muslin-wrapped bundle marked T. SANTELLI, which contained his spec costume. Mario unrolled his own, took out the flowing robe he wore in the spec, and began to button it over his street clothes.
Johnny turned. “Hey, you better get into your tights, Matt, That won’t leave you much time to change for the tumbling act.”
Mario did not turn his head. “You worry about your own goddamn costume and let me worry about mine.”
“Look, Matt, I only said—”
“Why don’t you ride that fuckin’ camel yourself, if you’re so worried about it!” Mario snarled.
Johnny stripped off his pants, twisted the loincloth of his costume over his briefs, and began winding on his turban. “Okay, Signor Mario, but if they soak us all with a fine for missing a cue because you’re not dressed, it’s going to come out of your pay. Ready, Tom?”
As they were climbing into the top of the float, in the hurly-burly of assembling animals, floats, and scantily clad girls, Johnny muttered out of the side of his mouth, “What the hell was that all about anyway, Tom?”
The Catch Trap Page 49
