“Sure. I know. We got a show to do.” Johnny blew his nose on the bed sheet, lifted his head, and stared, dry-eyed and defiant, at Tommy. “Listen, Matt, if this thing with Starr’s falls through today, you going to take that triple of yours back on the damn mud-show circuit? If you do, you’re nuts!”
“I don’t know. That’s up to Papa.”
“You’ll wind up carrying the whole family!”
“Something wrong with that? Papa Tony carried us all long enough. And Angelo. You know what kind of hell I gave him working on the triple? First time I really got up the momentum for the third turn, I knocked him right out of the trap—could have killed him. We fell on the edge of the net—could have been Joe and Lucia all over again, two Santellis finished right there. He rolled around me, broke my fall—I knocked out two of his front teeth, and he didn’t even tell Papa Tony about it. If he had, Papa would probably have stopped me working on it for another year. You think I’d run out on the family, work with somebody else, after that?”
Johnny laughed. He was his cocky self again. “You going to get a thing about Tommy, too?”
Mario was lying on his side, his tense face making him look like an angry Pierrot. “Got one already, Jock. You and I could have done duo routines, but you were too much of an individualist.” He made it sound like a dirty word. “Seven o’clock, Jock. We better get up and shave and get ourselves together before all the girls crowd into the bathrooms.” He sat up, tossing back the covers.
“Seven o’clock, kids,” Angelo announced, flinging the door open. He saw Johnny and laughed.
“Well, I could’ve figured on that. I remember when you kids were all on the road—night before a big show, if I found one of you, I got you all. Wonder where I’ll find Liss this morning. In bed with Lucia, maybe? Oh, well, I guess you are grown up—anyhow, I didn’t find her in here for once!”
CHAPTER 21
They had borrowed Joe’s station wagon to drive down to the winter quarters of the Starr Circus, about fifty miles south. Papa Tony inquired at the gate for the Fortunatis, and they were directed to a large fixed rehearsal top near the center of the area. Inside, a group of aerial riggings had been mounted. High above their heads a number of small, brightly colored figures were flying back and forth.
They stood gathered together, watching. Mario pointed.
“That’s Jim on the board,” he murmured, “and Lionel in the catch trap, and—look, there’s Cleo making the pass.”
Liss gasped aloud as the woman whirled into a delicate pirouette before grasping the bar. She said shakily, “And we’ve got to show them what we can do?”
“Easy, easy” Angelo put an arm around her waist. “Matt’s no slouch, either. We’re okay.”
The woman on the fly bar had worked up into a high swing, pushing the trapeze high above the rigging, until she nearly touched, with her flying feet, the canvas above her head. At the topmost limit before the ropes buckled she flipped away from the bar, spun backward, and made two perfect somersaults down into the net. She made a neat turn to the floor, picked up a short white robe that lay nearby, and came over to them, knotting it loosely around her waist. Papa Tony took her hand with a courtly bow. “Cleo, my dear.”
Cleo Fortunati was tiny, smaller even than Tommy, with flaming hair, pulled away from her face, and warm lively eyes, “Nice to see you again, Tony. I’ll even admit I was showing off for you, just a little.”
The two men were climbing down from the rigging. They walked over to the grouped Santellis, and the taller of the two took Papa Tony’s hand in a firm grip. “How goes it, Uncle Tony? Starr will be along later; Lionel and I thought you might like some time to get used to the light and the rigs and so forth, if you’ve been working outdoor shows and fairs. I know you can work anywhere, but you told me the kids haven’t been under canvas at all.”
“That was thoughtful of you, Jim. It’s true, we’ve been working in small outdoor shows, parks, fairs; none of the kids but Angelo have worked under canvas for years.”
Jim Fortunati was an inch or two taller than Papa Tony, but he wasn’t tall. He had the lean, well-muscled body of a flyer, and his hair, thick and iron-gray, was winged dramatically with white at the temples. He was, Tommy thought, about forty-five. His brother, Lionel, was younger, and darker, with broad burly shoulders and a neat little curly mustache. He shook hands with Angelo, asking, “Are these all family?”
“That’s right,” Angelo said, and Tommy thought, It’s true. They really meant it when they said it. The depression that had settled down on him this morning, watching Mario with Johnny, suddenly lifted. He was a Santelli, too, in a special way. I don’t have to be jealous of Johnny, or anybody.
Cleo asked, in her warm, rich voice, “Why didn’t Lucia ride along with you, Tony? I’m dying to see her.”
“I know she’d have loved to see you, Cleo,” Papa Tony said after a minute, “but I think she felt the children might be nervous if she was along, watching them. She sent you her love. Surely Jim told you I have three of her kids in the act?”
Cleo’s face—triangular, snub-nosed, almost gnomelike—was bewitching when she smiled. “Now, let me see if I remember. Matt junior, of course—you were the dark-haired one. And Mark—no, that’s right, he didn’t fly, did he? Eyes, or something? Johnny, right? And, of course, my girl.” She put her arms around Liss and hugged her with enthusiasm. “Remember me, sweetie?”
Liss nodded. It was strange to see the vivacious Liss completely dumb for once, looking almost tall beside Cleo.
“But you’ve gotten so tall, you’re all grown up—good God, in one of Lu’s letters she mentioned that you were married and even had a baby. How old is he?”
“Two and a half,” Liss said shyly, Cleo hugged her again and released her. “I’d love to see him sometime. You should have brought him down with you—there are plenty of people around to keep an eye on him. Or are you like Lu, always looking for a good excuse to park the kid with somebody else?”
Mario said, “Hullo, Cleo. You look just exactly the same.”
“You certainly don’t,” she said, smiling up at him. “Aren’t you pretty tall for a flyer?”
“Everybody says that,” Mario replied with a grin. “But I manage.”
“I know. Lucia sent me some clippings.” She glanced at Tommy. “And this must be the protégé she wrote me about.”
“Oh, sorry.” Liss said, flustered. “Cleo, Tommy Zane. We call him Tommy Santelli in the act.”
Cleo gave Tommy her hand. It felt very strong and firm. “Nice to see you. We know anyone who comes here with the Santellis will be worth meeting, don’t we, Jim?”
Jim Fortunati frowned faintly as he took Tommy’s hand, not in an unfriendly way, but as if something puzzled him. “How old are you. Tom?”
Tommy glanced at Papa Tony, who nodded permission. “Sixteen, Mr. Fortunati.” Quite suddenly, overwhelmed, he realized that these were in fact the Flying Fortunatis, whose pictures he had clipped from magazines since he was five or six years old. He swallowed, abruptly losing his voice.
“Too young.” Jim Fortunati said. “Has he ever actually worked in the ring, Uncle Tony?”
“He was with us all last season, in the act,” Mario said. “With Lambeth. He’s a trouper.”
“Lambeth. I see.” Jim Fortunati was still frowning. “Well, Uncle Tony, I’ll take you up to meet Randy Starr. You never met him, did you?”
“No. just the old man—Luciano. Randy, he was just a kid.”
“Well, he’s running the show now, and there have been some changes. But he’s a good guy—you’ll like him. Cleo, Lionel, you look after them. Send a prop man around for their stuff, and show them where to get dressed.”
Cleo put her arm around Liss again. “You come with me, honey bun. You can change in our trailer; the women’s dressing tent is always a shambles. Lionel, you look after the men.”
Tommy and the others went with Lionel to the big men’s dressing tent, where he lef
t them to change into their tights. Angelo did stretching exercises to work out the kinks of the drive. As they gathered at the entrance to the big rehearsal top again, Johnny asked, “Is there anything so special, or different, about working under canvas?”
“Hotter.” Angelo said, “but you don’t have to worry about the wind, or the sun getting in your eyes.”
Liss came back and rejoined them, and Johnny grinned at her. “Hobnobbing with royalty, Sis? The queen and the peasant girl?”
“She knew I was nervous and wouldn’t want to be alone in a strange place. She was always good to me, and I’ve always loved her, you know that.”
“Just don’t let her give you stage fright, kitten,” Angelo said.
“No, indeed,” Liss replied with dignity. “She just makes me want to do a little better than my best.”
Angelo made them go up and get their bearings, had each of them take a couple of swings to limber up and familiarize themselves with the strange lights. Finally Papa Tony signaled that they were ready. Tommy could see the Fortunatis gathered below, shriveled by distance to doll figures in tights, Cleo’s blazing hair a spot of brightness even from this height. Practice on the other riggings had been suspended; a dozen or so strangers were grouped at the edge of the ring, watching them, with a dark, heavyset man who could only be the famous Randy Starr.
“You, Elissa, first,” Papa Tony whispered, and they began.
Tommy had never seen Liss work outside the practice room, where she always seemed nervous and tense, and he was surprised at the poise and skill with which she took the bar and swung out. She made the cross perfectly, returning with a graceful half twist. Then it was Tommy’s turn, a simple single. Papa Tony went over in a perfect double forward, and Tommy remembered what Mario had said once: There are plenty of people who still say the double forward somersault is as hard as the triple back.
Then Johnny joined Angelo on the second catch bar, and Tommy stood beside Mario on the platform, shoulders just touching, clocking off the pendulum stroke of the two catchers swinging. Far below, in the unfamiliar tawny light of the sun through canvas, Tommy could see the thin line of the net. Almost as if reading his mind, Mario whispered, “If you miss, Lucky, count three before you turn. That net’s a long way down . . . .”
“Go!”
They went through the routine perfectly, but when they had returned, Tommy sensed that while it was a good day and their timing perfect, still the precision movements that made this trick spectacular on the low outdoor rigging of the Lambeth Circus were less impressive on the higher rigging, across three rings. Then they were regrouping for the double midair pass. Papa Tony and Mario swinging off together, Tommy waiting beside Liss on the platform. Johnny called this a confetti act. Air full of flying bodies. Tommy felt a mad desire to giggle, lost it as they caught the bar on the backswing, Liss’s hands smacking square and solid beside his own. She slid her hands a fractional inch closer to his.
They swung out, the momentum of the heavy trapeze pulling them higher and higher; then, at the height of the swing, they let go simultaneously. For an instant the four bodies flew past one another in midair like birds; then Tommy felt his wrists mesh with Johnny’s. Then they were flying back to the platform, and the bar Mario had dropped for them . . . always, always, the same split-second lurch of fear, exhilaration, relief . . . .
But he and Liss were not timed to the precision of himself and Mario. If I was managing it, I’d have me and Papa go first—we’re the same size—then Liss and Mario. It would look better and balance better . . . . He turned off the thought, incredulous. It was the first time he had even thought of criticizing Papa Tony’s management.
Papa Tony gave them the flick of a nervous smile while the second catcher’s bar was being pulled up out of the way again.
“Sta bene, children . . . . Well, Matteo, this is it—it’s all yours.”
Mario looked tense, his slanted eyebrows drawn together. He wiped his palms with a handkerchief. Tommy moved aside; no one but Papa Tony was ever allowed to drop the bar for Mario’s return on the triple. Liss and Tommy maneuvered carefully around him, knowing that for Papa Tony they might as well have been in China. Angelo was picking up his swing, higher, farther, faster. Mario took the bar. Liss whispered suddenly, “I can’t watch—” and turned away, throwing her free arm over her eyes. Tommy patted her shoulder, but couldn’t take his eyes off Mario.
Mario swung out, driving his swing higher and higher, till for a moment it seemed to Tommy that he would strike the canvas and fly upward through the top of the tent. He flew off the bar, spun into the back somersault, the second—oh, God—the third spin, and straightened directly into Angelo’s outstretched hands. Liss gasped harshly and crossed herself. Papa Tony muttered something in Italian. Then Mario was back beside them again. He looked taut, and Tommy saw that he was shaking with tension.
One by one, Papa Tony motioned them to somersault into the net. When they were all on the ground again, Cleo ran to Mario and flung her arms around him. Jim Fortunati leaped over a guy rope to take his hand. “Good Lord!” he said. “Good Lord, Tonio, you mean this kid’s been doing that on the mud-show circuit? Hell, I do triples myself, but I haven’t seen form like that since—since Barney Parrish got grounded! Hey,” he demanded, “how long have you been doing that, Matt?”
Mario smiled, the relaxed, deprecating smile of sheer relief. “I can’t do it every time. I just felt lucky today.”
Randy Starr came up to them. He was a small, bald, moon-faced youngish man, completely deadpan. “Jim, I want to see Tonio, and the big boy who did that last trick, over at the silver wagon,” he said. He looked all of them over one at a time, and Tommy felt he was memorizing them all, taking in Liss’s braided hair, Johnny’s bleached curls, the frayed wristbands Angelo had found somewhere again instead of the new pair. “All Santellis? Let me see if I have it right.” He moved a stubby finger back and forth. “Tonio. Angelo. Mario. Gianni. Tommy. Elissa.” He touched his forehead briefly. “Good, I will remember,” he said, and Tommy knew, with a curious small frisson, that he would remember, that if he met any one of them, five or fifteen or thirty years from now, he would remember name, face, circumstances as clearly as he did this moment.
“Lucia Santelli. Fine flyer. Did a double pirouette. Splendid woman, too, great beauty. No trouble, either, no temperament. Girl looks a little like her. Your mother, Elissa? Thought so. Give her my best. Thank you, kids, thank you. Lionel, why don’t you show the kids around the lot after they get dressed?” It was a clear dismissal; he walked away with Papa Tony and Jim Fortunati, Mario trailing diffidently behind.
None of them talked much while they were dressing, though Angelo did say, as he knotted his tie, “Matt sure made an impression. Not much question about that.”
Johnny muttered, “But we sure didn’t. Not much question about that, either, is there?”
Out of courtesy to Lionel, who was showing them around the lot, introducing them to some of the great names of the Big Show, they refrained from discussing possible verdicts. Tommy met people who had been only names to him, faces clipped into his scrapbook. Dimly he knew that at any other time he would have been excited by this, but now all he could think of was Mario, talking to Randy Starr and Jim Fountain, discussing the fate of the Flying Santellis. When they returned to the Fortunati trailer, Cleo, now chic and pretty in street clothes, made coffee for them and sandwiches. Tommy was hungry, but the sandwiches tasted like sawdust. How long was it going to take them to decide? They were all fidgeting. The inside of the trailer was hung with snapshots and pictures of circus stars, past and present; Liss got up and began to wander around.
“Tommy, are these our parents?” she asked.
Tommy joined her, looking at the small picture of his mother and father posed with old Lucifer. He had seen the picture before, in his mother’s scrapbook; it had been taken before he was born. This one had his mother’s familiar handwriting scrawled across it: To Cleo, with lo
ve, Tom and Beth Zane. He told her yes, and Cleo stared at him.
“That Zane. I should have known! You’re the image of Beth, the red hair and all those freckles. Beth was working cats with Starr when I joined the show—one of the really good woman cat trainers. There weren’t many of them then. Actually, there aren’t many now. And you’re her son?”
Tommy went on looking at the photographs taped to the corkboard. One caught his eye. “Did you know Barney Parrish?”
It was pure awe in his voice, the legend, the great Irish aerialist, the “Flying Demon” who had first made the triple famous. But Cleo’s voice was laughing, matter-of-fact. “Goodness, yes. He taught me to fly.”
Liss said jealously, “I thought Lucia taught you to fly.”
“No, sweetie, though she did encourage me to learn,” Cleo said. “I grew up in Texas, and I never even saw a circus when I was a kid. My mother was an old-time strict Baptist, and she thought any lady who showed her legs with the circus was bound straight for hell fire, right then and there. But my daddy was a business manager for old Luciano Starr—Lucky, they called him—and when I was about sixteen, I visited the show and sort of fell in love with it.”
“You should have seen her,” Lionel Fortunati said. “A little bit of a thing—not half your size, Elissa—wandering around the lot, wanting to try everything, and everything she tried she was good at. Natural aerialist. Web act, aerial ballet, balancing traps, even the old iron-jaw act.”
Cleo nodded. “And when the show went on the road, first of May, I went with it. Mother was sure I was bound straight for the fire and brimstone, but I was sixteen and Daddy said I could, and that was that. Ma never did get resigned to it, though when the circus played Abilene I showed her the car where the girls slept—three to a bunk, and we had to sign in and out to leave the lot even with our own fathers—so she did get over thinking the show was some kind of traveling cathouse. Anyway, instead of going to nursing school, I traveled with Starr’s and did everything: aerial ballet, web—your brother, Joe, used to be like that, Angelo; he could fill in with the tumblers, ride a rosinback if he had to, even paint his face and flip around with the clowns. He could do a little of everything.”
The Catch Trap Page 39