The Catch Trap
Page 54
And it wasn’t Johnny. It wasn’t Johnny at all. It was Mario.
He looked thinner and older. He was wearing sun-faded reddish tights, and he was bare to the waist. His face was a dark inexpressive mask. He didn’t glance at the stands or at the squealing children. Tommy realized that his mouth was dry as Mario climbed the aerial ladder with style that made his two partners look clumsy. Tommy turned his face away from the ring, signaled to one of the pitchmen working in the bleachers, and handed him thirty cents for a cup filled with ice and some watery, faintly orange-flavored stuff. He sipped at it briefly, then put it down, promptly forgetting it again. The others in the aerial act were a squat catcher with the arm muscles of a gorilla, and a small, hard-faced woman with tightly curled, bleached blonde hair, in a red leotard, with tawdry spangles. The girl made a few amateurish crosses, and then Mario threw a double somersault that made Tommy stare—until he realized it was the catcher’s ineptitude which made it look clumsy. Then, on the return, Mario suddenly spun into a fast, elegant pirouette that made Tommy’s breath catch. But what, he thought, what is he doing here? The kids were squealing and applauding as Mario turned, with a flash of his old fierce grin, and swept a swaggering bow.
As the flyers disappeared through the exit gate, Tommy saw the catcher look up briefly at Mario; for a brief moment Mario’s hand rested on his shoulder.
Was that why? That clumsy, impossible novice . . . had Mario followed him into this miserable two-bit dog-and-pony show? Tommy hardened his jaw. He was tempted to walk straight to his car and drive away without stopping to speak.
Instead, he lingered till the squealing kids had cleared the midway. Then he walked slowly around to the backyard, among the snaked power cables, the parked trailers. A frowsy clown, dressed in street clothes but still in makeup, was sitting on the steps of a panel truck, petting a large dog with a ruff around its neck. Tommy stopped beside him.
“Where can I find the flyer? Gardner, that is?”
The clown’s painted grimace twisted into exaggerated concern. “I’m sure sorry, mister, but you just missed him. I just saw him leave for town; he probably went to get something to eat.”
“But—” Tommy began, then suddenly laughed, realizing the clown had made a natural mistake: He had thought Tommy was a civilian, one of the audience. “Don’t give me the iggy, greaseball. He wouldn’t hardly be out of his tights, unless he’s started filling in for a box jumper in the sideshow!”
Startled, the clown looked up at him, then laughed. “Reckon you’re right. But he’ll come gunning for me if you turn out to be a bill collector—or a process server.”
“Not collecting anything,” Tommy said. “I worked with him under canvas, a few years ago, in another show. Just dropped around to say hello.”
The clown pointed. “That’s his trailer over there. The green one.”
The green trailer was small—too small for a family—and looked battered and sun-faded, probably a prewar model. Tommy stumbled over the power cable as he stepped up and knocked on the door.
Inside he heard a familiar deep voice, a voice so unexpectedly casual that something twisted, deep inside him.
“See who that is, Jack, will you?”
Tommy thought, If that catcher answers the door, I say I made a mistake and disappear damn fast. Instead the door was opened by a boy of fourteen or fifteen, in blue jeans, dark hair falling in a heavy forelock over his eyes. He looked suspiciously at Tommy and demanded, “What you want?”
“I’m looking for Matt Gardner,” Tommy said. Then, on an impulse, he added, “Tell him his brother’s here.”
“Never knew he had one.” The boy turned around, raising his voice. “Matt, there’s a guy out here says he’s your brother. You got a brother?”
“Got a couple of them,” said the well-known voice, and then, very simply, without preparation or fanfare, Mario came and stood in the doorway. He was still bare to the waist. He had on crumpled, paint-spattered corduroy pants. “But I don’t know what either of them would be doing—” He broke off and stood squinting into the sun; then, abruptly, his eyes focused. He blinked a couple of times and said, “Tommy?”
“Hello, Mario.”
Mario didn’t move. He went on staring. “I—I almost didn’t recognize you.”
The teenager was looking at them curiously. “He is your brother, then, Matt? It’s okay?”
“Yes, sure, it’s okay. Come on in, Tom.”
Tommy stood diffidently on the single step. “Oh, I hate to barge in—”
Mario shook his head. “Nobody here, just me. I live alone. The Reddicks have their trailer over yonder.” He glanced at the boy. “Tommy, this is Jack Chandler—his father rides with the roping act. Listen, Jack, do you mind? I haven’t seen the kid in—good God, five years? Take off, will you, kiddo?”
“Sure.” The boy gave Tommy an uneasy grin, said, “Glad to have met you,” and went. For the first time since he had appeared in the doorway, Mario moved; he seized Tommy’s hand and held it, hard. “Now that fool kid will have it all over the yard inside ten minutes, that the lone wolf turned out to have a brother after all.”
“Well,” said Tommy, “you could always disown me.”
Mario was still holding his hand. He seemed suddenly aware of that, and let it go, with a small, nervous laugh. “Where have you been anyway, Lucky? How did you get here?”
“Oh, around. In the Army, mostly.”
Mario seemed smaller somehow, and thinner. There were little creases around his eyes, and his callused hands felt dry and cracked. He was tanned almost to Indian brownness. He was older, and though still handsome, he looked wary and guarded.
“Yeah, Angelo told me, last time I was home.”
“Joe told me you’d been married and had a kid.”
Mario’s mouth hardened. “That was all over a long time ago. Never mind that now. Did you see the show?”
Tommy could think of only one thing to say. “You didn’t do the triple.”
“With Paul Reddick catching?” Mario shook his head. “Come inside, won’t you?”
The trailer was a cramped, shabby, one-room affair with a sink and small stove at one end, a couch that opened up to a bed at the other. On the table was an opened sack of fruit; a half-eaten orange lay on the checked tablecloth. The crimson tights Mario had worn in the show were carefully hung up inside a plastic bag to keep out dust.
“Sit down.” Mario picked up the orange and removed a section. He offered Tommy the bag. “Have an orange?”
Tommy laughed. “It used to be chocolate bars,” he said. He took one and started to peel it.
“I have to watch my weight now. I don’t eat candy much anymore. Tom, where’d you come from, anyway?”
Tommy found anger boiling up inside him. “That’s a hell of a question to be asking me! Last I heard, you were headlining with the Fortunatis, not bumming around in a two-bit mud show!”
“I only worked two seasons with Lionel. Then I had a fall and we had to split up.” Mario threw the orange peel on the table and demanded, “Where in hell did you go, that night? My God, Tommy, Lucia was out of her mind worrying—where did you go?”
Tommy stared at the floor. It had been carefully swept clean of dust and dirt. The place had the familiar smell: coffee, cloves, resin, sweat. Mario had flung himself down astride a chair and was glaring at him. He was still bare to the waist, and Tommy remembered remotely, like something in another life, that there had been a time when Mario would not show his upper body, scarred by the rope burns and net burns he had gotten while working on the triple. His arms and shoulders were a mass of old scars, whitish against the suntan.
“Let’s save the postmortems a while, okay, Mario? I thought we might go somewhere and have a bite to eat. I’d kind of like to talk to you.’” And then another thought, born of his sudden flaring resentment of the catcher he had glimpsed, of the obviously worshipful teenager:
“Unless somebody’s waiting for you.”
He turned away. Tommy peeled the orange and ate it. Mario came back, in black slacks and a black high-necked sweater that was either the old one from the ballet school or its identical twin. He was dragging a comb through his hair, and Tommy could just see the faint salting of gray in the dark curls. Angelo had started to go gray early, too, he remembered.
They walked across the backyard to the parking lot. Tommy’s was the only car left there now. Once Mario put his hand briefly on Tommy’s arm, then took it away again. Tommy, looking sidewise, saw that Mario’s face looked pinched and pale, and the old, aching tenderness pulled at something deep inside him. It had taken all his determination not to put his arms around Mario. How could he? That was all past, years ago, the break final. Mario had changed, been married; Tommy himself had set the tone of their reunion, saying, Tell him his brother’s here. Mario had accepted him that way, and it was more than he deserved.
“This is my car.”
Mario whistled rudely. “What bank did you rob?”
“My own piggy bank. I spent what piled up while I was in the Army. You can’t spend much in the Army unless you gamble, or go for the frauleins.”
Mario opened the car door. “What—no frauleins?”
Tommy set his mouth and withheld the answer Mario was probing for. “Never learned their language. Watch your fingers.” He slammed the door and got in. As he thrust the key into the ignition, Mario reached out and caught his wrist, turning the hand over to look at the palm.
“No calluses?”
“I haven’t been on a flying rig since we split up. Where can we get something to eat around here?”
“There’s a cafe down the street. The folks with the show say the food isn’t bad. Of course, Abilene’s not what you’d call a gourmet town.”
For the first time Tommy heard a touch of the old whimsical irony. He kept his own voice carefully flippant. “After Army chow it’s bound to taste great.”
The cafe was small and smoky with the suspended grease of frying hamburgers. Tommy ordered a sandwich, but Mario said, “Just coffee. I’ve got a show in a couple of hours.” When the food came, he asked, “Is Army chow all that bad? I remember back during the war, we heard all the time how well fed they were, even while meat and sugar and all that stuff were rationed.”
Tommy shrugged. “Maybe they thought that we were supposed to get so tough we wouldn’t care what we ate. Army cooking was just one more way to make life tough for us while we were in training.” He bit into his sandwich. “Sure you don’t want something? Ice cream, milk shake?”
The booth was small, scarred, the table bare wood. Someone had put a nickel in the jukebox, and the loudspeaker blared the mournful sound of a blues guitar, accompanying a nasal, hollow voice:
I’m a rolling stone, all alone and lost;
For a life of sin I have paid the cost!
When I walk by, all the people say,
Just another guy on the Lost Highway.
“Damn hillbilly crap!”
Tommy shrugged. “Nice guitar.”
“Tom, where you heading? You’ll stick around a while, won’t you?”
“I’m sort of on the bum.” Tommy knew he would never mention to Mario that he had been looking for him. “I didn’t figure on finding you here.”
Mario’s mouth quirked up at one edge in the old grin.
“I didn’t really figure on finding myself here.” He glanced at Tommy’s wrists. “You look like you’ve kept in shape.”
“Like a damn fool, when they asked me my civilian occupation, I said acrobat, and they stuck me into the physical training program. I spent my first two years watching rookies do push-ups. Made tech sergeant. Then I put in for overseas duty and went to Berlin.” He grinned. “I tried to get into the MPs. They allowed as how I was tough enough but not tall enough.”
“You like the Army?”
“Not much. I got sick of being called Shorty.” Tommy found he didn’t want to talk about the Army. It was a blur of too many male bodies, crowding, too much noise, rough talk, and unwelcome discipline accepted with iron self-control because he had no choice—not the kind of discipline he had known with the Santellis, willingly undertaken because it was a way to accomplish something he wanted. Army discipline was meaningless, a way of warehousing men without trouble. It struck him suddenly that for years he had been a puppet blindly going through the motions, hardly alive. Now he was going somewhere again, even if it was only the Lost Highway that fellow on the jukebox had been caterwauling about.
“I’d rather not talk about the Army, do you mind? Tell me about you, okay? I talked to Joe in California. He said you hadn’t been home in years. What are you doing with a show like this?”
Mario picked up his cup and tasted the cold, bitter, black coffee. He made a face. “I was out of flying for a long time. Maybe you heard, Lionel tore his shoulder up, and I smashed that bad wrist of mine again, the one that always gave me trouble. I worked a carnival, wound up in Mexico, spent a year there— Look, kid, I’ll tell you all about it sometimes, but not now, okay? I got a show to do.”
“Sure, anything you say.”
“You talked to Joe in California? How are all the folks?”
“Okay, I guess. I didn’t see anybody else.” I sat out there in the car like a damn fool. Couldn’t get up nerve enough go ring the doorbell . . . .
Back in the lot at the edge of town, Mario said, “Put your car in the backyard; some of that crew of grifters go through the cars in the parking lot. And you better put your stuff in my trailer; there’s guys with this show would steal a blind man’s dog.”
Tommy obeyed, frowning in surprise. In his experience, circus people were honest, especially with colleagues.
He didn’t go out front to watch the show during the evening performance, though he did stand in the back entrance for a few minutes to watch the flying act. He was more puzzled than ever. When the show was over and Mario dressed, Mario said, “Lots of times the Reddicks and I have supper together, but with your car here, they’ll know I’ve got company and they won’t bother dropping in. I’m glad this is a four-day stand; our next run is day after tomorrow, over to Odessa. Want some supper? Still like bacon and eggs?”
“Sure, fine. Let me help, okay?” They were both glad to have something to occupy their hands. When they finished, they cleared away the dishes, but finally Tommy came out with what was on his mind.
“Mario, I can’t figure all this out. I thought you had it made. That’s why I left—so you could go with Starr’s, Center Ring. On top of the world. What happened? Why did it all go for nothing? Where’s your wife, your kid? And—and”—the important part tumbled out last—“how in hell could you let yourself go like this? Papa Tony would be turning over in his grave!”
The old Mario glinted, for a moment, in the set eyes. “What does it matter? The family was broken up for good. All I had left was you, and when you walked out—”
Tommy raised his head and threw five years of bottled anguish at him. “What the hell do you mean, I walked out? You mean when you threw me out!”
“That’s not fair, Tom. I begged you not to go. I only wanted to split up till the talk died down a little—”
“What was I supposed to do? Hang around your neck like some goddamn albatross while you were on your way to the top? Sit around and be your kept boy? Anyway, you got married—”
Mario said, with a snort of laughter, “That didn’t last long. Everything sort of fell to pieces, all at once. Me, Lionel, Susan—you remember Sue-Lynn Farris?”
“Sort of. A dark girl, kind of looked like Liss.”
“I never could see it, myself, but Angelo and Lucia thought so. Anyhow, it only lasted about a year. Then she filed for divorce, and we had a hell of a spill. Lionel wrecked his shoulder, I broke my ankle and racked
up this bad wrist again, and Susan got her face messed up some—I think she thought I did it to her on purpose. Anyhow, she walked out on me while I was in the hospital, and took Suzy, that was the baby. No wife, no daughter, no job—I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to fly again or it the wrist was wrecked for good. So I walked out into the blue, the same way you did.”
Tommy reached for Mario’s wrist, moving it gently between his hands.
“Looks all right now.”
“I was lucky. I broke that wrist before, when I was a kid.”
“I remember you telling me.” That night we rode in the rigging truck. There were a thousand things unspoken, never to be said. Tommy wished abruptly that he had never come here at all. “It did get all right, though?”
Mario shrugged. “Seems to. It hurts sometimes; I have to keep it strapped up all the time. You said you saw the folks? I was just wondering if anybody in the family’s still working. I never see a copy of Billboard anymore. Guess I’ve been kind of afraid to check up, find out.”
Is he telling the truth? Or does he want me to think he doesn’t know Lucia’s been running that ad, four years, going nuts to know if he was alive or dead? Tommy knew he would never know, as he would never know so many things about those lost years.
“Look,” Tommy said on an impulse, “the talk ought to have died down by now. I was wondering if maybe you—you wanted to go back to work as a team. We used to work together all right.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Mario whispered, “if we only could!”
“Some reason we can’t? You get on a blacklist again? Maybe with Starr’s?”
“No. I didn’t even jump the show. I sent in my notice, all proper, while I was in the hospital. I mean, my partner was smashed up and my wrist such a mess I’d have to lay off the rest of the season, anyhow; the act was finished. So I’m all clean with Starr’s—they even paid the hospital bill for me.”