The Catch Trap

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Mario put the magazine down and came up behind him. “Lambeth Shows is playing in Lawton, Oklahoma,” he read over Tommy’s shoulder. “Seems like there’s something I ought to remember about that town, but I can’t think what it is.” He gave Tommy a quick, secret smile that made Tommy feel simultaneously delighted and ready to drop through the floor.

  Tommy said, realizing that Johnny was kneeling beside his open trunk, watching them, “Yeah. There was a tornado there, or something, wasn’t there?”

  “Something like that, I guess.” Tommy knew his face was reddening, and he turned to put the Billboard into his trunk as Mario went on, slowly and deliberately, “Seems like I remember a couple of other towns in Oklahoma. It’s a great state, isn’t it? Couple of pretty nice things happened there.”

  Damn him, I wish he’d quit teasing me in front of other people!

  “Oklahoma,” Johnny said, “you can have it. Texas, too. They can wrap up Texas and Oklahoma and all those Bible Belt states and throw ’em down in the Grand Canyon for all I care. Anything else in Billboard, Tommy?”

  “Good picture of the Fortunatis. Cleo and Lionel are flying with an indoor show in Boston.”

  “Wish to hell we were,” Johnny said. “This heat’s beginning to get to me. When you finish with Billboard, can I have it, Tom? Stel clips out every picture of Cleo Fortunati she can find for her scrapbook. She’s got a crush on her, I think—she still gets sore when she remembers that Liss got to meet her and she didn’t. Listen, I’ve got to go and have a word with Coe Wayland, damn him. I’m getting fed up with that bastard.”

  “What’s he done now?” Mario inquired, while Tommy pricked up his ears.

  “Stinking jerk,” Johnny said, “I asked him what kind of pigpen he was brought up in, that he didn’t wash his tights now and then. This heat, he smells like an old billy goat, and when I can smell him even on the rig it’s too damn much! So, like I say, I asked him to wash his goddamn tights and take a bath sometimes, and the bastard asked me if I was a fag or something, that I couldn’t put up with the smell of a little sweat!”

  Mario shrugged. “He calls everybody a fag whenever he’s sore at them. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  Johnny laughed. “I told him he could ask Stel about that. You think I don’t know what kind of guy is all the time calling other people queer? Anyhow, I’m going to buy him a cake of Lifebuoy soap and tell him if he doesn’t use it I’ll throw him in the horse trough! Damn cheap grift show! Larry Wayland probably has the first damn nickel he ever made—why do you think he put Coe on with our act instead of hiring another catcher? Probably saved him a hundred dollars a week!” He went off between the line of trunks, and Tommy thought, Coe Wayland’s a pain in the neck, sure. But having him to gripe about keeps Johnny and Mario off each other’s backs.

  Mario bent over Tommy where he was kneeling by his trunk and murmured softly, just loud enough for Tommy to hear, “Bet you didn’t know I had such a good memory, did you, ragazzo?”

  “What you want me to say to that?”

  “Told you I was kind of a sentimental bastard,” Mario murmured. “Hey, how come your ears are turning red? You blushing, or something?”

  “Come on,” Tommy muttered, agonized, “cut it out, Mario!” No one in the dressing tent was looking at them, yet he was painfully conscious of the presence of the other men.

  Mario laughed and straightened up. “We’ll talk about that later.” he said, and walked out, remarking, “The cookhouse flag is up. Guess I’ll go eat.”

  Tommy remained, kneeling beside his trunk. Part of himself was pleased that Mario had remembered, too, reviving some of the enormous excitement and intensity of their first season together; in another part of his mind he was angry that Mario would tease him like that in front of bystanders, when he could make no reply that would not betray them or be too revealing.

  What the hell did he expect me to say?

  But between matinee and night show he made a discovery that wiped away anger and embarrassment alike. He said nothing in the dressing tent, nor while the circus train was being loaded after the show. When they were locked in their compartment and the train was pulling out, Mario put out the light and said in a voice Tommy could hardly hear over the noise of the rails under them, “Come down into my bunk, Tommy. Seems like you had something to tell me about Lawton, Oklahoma, huh?”

  ““Sure,” Tommy said, sliding down, “but something else I got to tell you first, Mario. Listen, you know Coe Wayland’s a drunk? He keeps a bottle of whiskey in his trunk—”

  “I know. He gave Angelo some. He’s not the only one—Lucia used to have some, in case somebody got a toothache or a cold or something.”

  “I’ve seen him drunk,” Tommy said stubbornly. “A couple of times. Not staggering drunk, but drunk. Smelled it on him, too. Last Sunday—”

  “Who cares what he does with his Sundays? If every performer who got drunk on Sunday was laid off, they’d have to close the show.”

  Tommy said stubbornly, “He was drinking tonight. Just before we went on the rig.”

  Mario sat bolt upright in his bunk. “Hey, wait a minute,” he said. “I know you don’t like the guy. I can hardly stand the sight of him myself. But is this straight, Tom? You’re not making it up or exaggerating because Wayland was nasty to you?”

  “What the hell do you think I am?” Tommy demanded in a rage. “I wouldn’t do that to anybody!”

  Mario frowned. “Sorry, kid. But this is important. You can’t just say things like that about any flyer. Either you back that up right now, or you drop it right away, for good.”

  “I said, he was drinking tonight. Just before we went on the rig. You know I went back to the tent just before the second half—”

  “I thought you were going to the donniker to take a leak.”

  “I did,” Tommy said, “and I guess somebody threw up in there, ‘cause the place stank, and I slipped in it and got some crud on my slippers. So I found some hay to wipe it, but it was on my socks, too, so I went back to the dressing tent to get a clean pair, and he was there drinking. He slammed his trunk shut and went out right away, the way he does, but he left the glass on the floor by his trunk, and I smelled it, and goddamn it, Mario, I know whiskey when I smell it!”

  Mario sat staring at him. He said, “You mean before he went up on the rig? Right before we started flying?”

  “Yeah.”

  Mario’s face had slowly drained of color. “Why didn’t you tell me right then?”

  “I didn’t know what to do,” Tommy said. “I didn’t want to get you shook up on the rig. I was scared, but I—by the time I got back we were ready to make our entrance and I didn’t know which would’ve been worse: to tell you or not to tell you.”

  “You should’ve told me,” Mario said. “I would have refused to go on with him.” He frowned and started pulling on his pants. “Get dressed, Tom.”

  “You going to go and talk to Wayland?”

  Mario shook his head. As Tommy skinned into dungarees and sneakers. Mario said, “Go along to the married couples’ car and ask Johnny and Stella if they want to come back to the privilege car and have a sandwich, or if we can go along to their compartment—Stel can’t come up here, to the men’s car, but we can go there, I think. Ask which they’d rather. I want to talk.”

  Tommy pulled on his denim jacket; the late-August heat gave way to a chilly wind after sunset. It was drafty between cars, and he shivered. In the married couples’ car he looked along the closed doors for the card that read JOHNNY and STELLA GARDNER, THE FLYING SANTELLIS.

  He knocked hesitantly. Stella, wrapped to the chin in a pink chenille housecoat, opened it, and said in surprise, “Tommy!”

  He relayed Mario’s message, and she said, “It’s okay for you to come here. I’d rather not get dressed again.”

  “Besides,” Johnny said behind her, “you try to talk anything over in the privilege car, you got two dozen guys listening in. If this is private family t
alk, we better do it here.”

  They gathered in the tiny compartment. Johnny vacated the bunk for Mario’s long legs and curled up in a tiny folding chair. Stella and Tommy sat on the rug that was part of their traveling furniture; it went down in their compartment every night, and Stella spread it, she had told him once, in front of her trunk in the dressing room. It was an old rug, fuzzy and shedding its nap, but looking at the rug, the folding chair, the embroidered scarf she had spread on top of her trunk, he thought, She’s made this into a kind of home. Like my folks’ trailer with Lambeth. He wondered if it was only women who thought of doing this kind of thing.

  Johnny offered cigarettes. Mario gave Stella a box of candy he had picked up somewhere, which she promptly passed around, and they sat eating crackers and cheese from little jars while they talked for a while about the performance and the long overnight run to Denver.

  “I hate Denver,” Johnny said. “Goddamn jinx town. That was where Joe and Lucia—”

  “Yeah,” Mario said, “and Tommy’s father got his arm clawed to ribbons there last year. Angelo got messed up, too.”

  Stella crossed herself. “Don’t talk about those things!”

  “Well, it’s for damn sure I’m not going to try a triple there,” Mario said. “Jinxes aside, the altitude or something does lousy things to my breath.”

  “That’s fine with me,” Johnny said. “I get rotten headaches all the time we’re up there, always did.”

  “Speaking of jinxes,” Mario said, “what do you think of Coe Wayland?”

  “Between you, me, and the lamppost,” Johnny said, “I can’t stand the bastard. But what the hell you going to do about it? He’s the boss’s brother and we’re stuck with him.”

  “Frankly, I’m nervous as hell about working with him.”

  “Well, Matt, like I say, he isn’t winning any popularity contests with me, either. But I don’t see how we can do one damn thing about it.”

  “Well, that’s helpful,” Mario said, “real helpful. We might as well have stayed in our own compartment. Jock, don’t be like that!”

  “Well, look, Matt, we can reshuffle the act so I catch you on the triple, if you want to. I’m not nuts about the idea—you’re a pretty hefty armful. But the only other thing to do would be to lay off a few days and restyle the act—not that it couldn’t use some restyling.”

  “That’s no good,” Mario said. “We need two catchers in the act; the duo routines are in our contract. We’ve got six weeks to go on the season, and Wayland’s a rotten, slipshod, dangerous performer, and a drunk.”

  They both turned to stare at him. Stella said, on a rising inflection, “A drunk?”

  Johnny snapped, “Don’t be a damn fool, Matt. Flyers don’t drink and live as long as Coe Wayland. So what if he liked a belt of whiskey now and then? So do I. We can’t all be total abstainers like you two! You think this ought to be a Sunday-school show?”

  “I said drunk and I mean it,” Mario insisted and glared at Johnny.

  Johnny returned the glare. “Listen, Matt, damn it, I’m no Wayland fan, either. But that kind of talk getting around—he’s working with the Santellis. You prove that, and we’ll do something about it. Otherwise I want it dropped, right now.”

  Stella said quietly, “I’ve heard something like that, Johnny. He went off on a three-day drunk once and Woody socked him with a fifty-dollar fine.”

  Johnny still sounded belligerent. “That doesn’t prove anything. Except, maybe, that he’s got sense enough to do his drinking a good long way off the lot.”

  “Tommy,” Mario said, “tell them what you told me tonight.”

  Tommy repeated what he had seen, and Johnny frowned.

  “Not good enough. If we could catch him in the act—but we’d need a lot more than that to take to Woody. I got a better idea. I been wanting to talk about restyling the act anyhow.”

  Mario looked grim. “Shoot.”

  “Don’t fly off the handle, big brother. You’re the star, and you deserve it—nobody’s saying you don’t. But without cutting in on your publicity—”

  “That’s below the belt, Johnny.”

  “Let me finish, willya? We could dress up the act a little, make it showier, without hurting anybody. Our routine looks so simple.”

  “That’s the artistry of it,” Mario said quietly, “to make the almost impossible look simple and easy. We don’t need showmanship; people who can appreciate the fine points of flying know what we’re doing.”

  “Oh, Christ, you and your talk about pure art! This is a circus, Matt, not the goddamn Ballet Russe! Whether you like it or not, we’re in show business. I’ve been thinking about Stella. She’s pretty spectacular. We could do something really great with her.”

  “Look, Jock, this is a straight flying-trapeze act. It’s classic. If you want the fancy stuff, why don’t you try and talk Woody into a specialty solo for her? Julie Lee’s getting to where she shows, and she’s going to be laying off fairly soon. Maybe Woody could work Stel into that spot.”

  Johnny flared, “You’re trying to say she’s not good enough for a center-ring act with the family name! You never made a fuss about Liss—”

  “Now, that’s enough of that!” Mario said, springing to his feet. “Let me tell you one thing, Jock: Liss is a flyer, not a showgirl! She did the duo routines with us, and a couple of simple picture tricks to pretty up the act a little, and left it at that. She didn’t have a glamour complex, or try to work the fancy special stuff into a straight flying-return act—”

  Stella opened her mouth and shut it again. Johnny blazed, “The Santellis built this act around a female star for years, and you know it!”

  “And Stel isn’t Lucia, either!”

  “Hell, Lu never was so much! She never did any of the big tricks! It was just showmanship, that same showmanship you say you despise, built her up to a star! What’s the matter, you think it would cut you down, having two stars in the family?”

  “Now, look, Jock—” Mario began, took a deep breath and let it out, and started over. “Look, I don’t need to worry about that kind of thing. What I do, I don’t think there’s anybody else could cut me out, showmanship or no showmanship. But there’s stuff that belongs in a straight flying-return act and stuff that doesn’t.”

  “Balls!” Johnny said. “You could use some showmanship yourself, if it came to that! I heard somebody say the other day, when you were doing a pirouette, ‘Why doesn’t he do something hard?’”

  Mario’s grin widened. “Shows how dumb they are. A pirouette’s about the hardest thing I do in the act.”

  “Yes, but goddamn it,” Johnny argued, “you make it look so damn easy, nobody even notices! We could style it so people would really be sittin’ on the edge of their chairs—”

  “I don’t need that kind of showmanship. Fake stuff, all of it!”

  Johnny slammed his hand down on the trunk. “Matt, I get so fed up, so goddamn fed up, with that modest and humble act of yours! It’s an act, and you know it as well as I do! Will you cut the crap for a while?”

  “Now, you look here—”

  Someone knocked, a peremptory sound, on the door of the compartment. Stella said, “Oh-oh, now you’ve done it,” and went to the door.

  An apologetic voice complained, “Stella, dear, could you people please be a little quieter in there? I just got Bucky off to sleep, and now he’s crying again.”

  “Sure,” Stella whispered. “I’m sorry, Vicky.” She turned, her eyes blazing. “Vicky Davis,” she said, “she’s got a teething baby. So will you please, both of you, get the hell out of here? And, Johnny, not one word out of you tonight—not one goddamn word! Hear me?”

  “Yes ma’am!” Johnny said, laughing.

  Mario whistled softly. “Hey, Stella, I’m sorry—”

  “And don’t waste time apologizing, either! Just get right out, right now!” She closed the door behind them with a perceptible bang, and Tommy and Mario looked at each other, behind amus
ement and chagrin.

  “Hey, who knows,” Mario muttered, “maybe we do have another Lucia in the family after all!”

  But by the time they were back in their own compartment, Mario had stopped laughing, and looked grimmer than ever. “We got started on Coe Wayland,” he said, staring angrily into the darkness beyond the window, “but all Johnny could think of to do with it, was to use it as a lever to bully me into getting Stella’s specialties into the act.” He climbed into his bunk and lay there staring at the window, his arms behind his head. “Now what the hell are we going to do?” But it wasn’t a question. Tommy climbed into his upper berth and lay there without trying to answer. There were times when he could coax Mario out of a bad mood—but this wasn’t one of them.

  Tommy went to Johnny the next day, and brought up Wayland again, but Johnny only scowled at him. He said, “Get me some proof. Something we can take to Woody. Then maybe we can do something. Until then, there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  Tommy kept his eye on Wayland, watching him until he was afraid the man would notice, but there was nothing definite, nothing he could prove. Then, on the third day of the Denver layover, something happened that drove it completely out of his head.

  They were in the dressing tent. Tommy had decided to send out the laundry, and the truck had just delivered the package marked Santelli. He was sorting out his own socks and dungarees and T-shirts from Mario’s and laying them into the bottom of his wardrobe trunk. Mario was kneeling in front of his own trunk, polishing his best shoes.

  “While I’ve got the polish out, want me to give yours a shine, too? No sense getting polish all over your hands while you’re working on the laundry,” Mario said. “Just throw them over here, will you?”

  “Sure.” Tommy handed Mario his good brown shoes. Jake Davis came down between the rows of trunks, and Mario lifted his eyebrows.

  “What’s up, Jake?”

  “I’m collecting for the Fortunatis. Most of the aerialists are giving something.”