“Matt, what the hell— You didn’t even know he was dead till Reeder told us!”
“Oh, I know. But I killed him, just the same.”
“You didn’t even recognize the guy when you met him! You hadn’t seen him since you were—what was it?—six, seven years old! What the hell!”
Mario clutched at Tommy’s hands so hard it hurt. “Don’t you remember what Bart told us? He said, when Parrish shot himself, he had nothing on him but his British passport and a newspaper clipping about some young flyer who did the triple and had been smashed up. That was me, Tom—I was the only one doing triples on the road that year. Susan and I were talking about it in the hospital; some ghoul came in and did the sob-story bit, about how I would be crippled for life, would never fly again, might never walk again—Susan and I were laughing about that newspaper crap! But Barney Parrish must have seen it, and took it seriously. And he shot himself because he knew he was the one who got us all started doing the triple! And he couldn’t live with that, and shot himself.”
“Mario, how can you blame yourself—”
“How could he blame himself? But he did, and it was his life,” Mario said, “and I never even knew. That’s why I have to do this now. Because now people think of him as a failure, a suicide. Now I have a chance to do something for his memory. This movie’s got to be made, Tom. I couldn’t stand to see it put on the shelf again. I want to do it for Bart, of course. And for the Santellis. But mostly I want to do it for”—he swallowed hard—“for Barney Parrish. Because of what he was. And because he meant so much to me, when I was a little kid. It’s because of him that I got where I am today. So I have to do this much for his memory, and if it means I have to take chances, then I just have to take chances, that’s all. It’s not like it was the first time in my life I ever risked breaking my neck!”
CHAPTER 15
For the first time in his life, Tommy was not glad to return to the Santelli house. This was the only settled home he had ever had; now, in a sense, it had been spoiled for him. He had the constant sensation that now they were watched, that every word he said, everything he did, was observed.
They had never worked harder. They consulted with Lucia about the details of the act which Barney Parrish and his brother had done, incorporating a few tricks now rare. Once Mario said wryly, “Randy Starr is missing a bet if he doesn’t call this act ‘The Flying Santellis Present Barney Parrish’!”
They were all edgy. Stella seemed constantly on the verge of tears, and Mario was tense, touchy, demanding. One trick Parrish had made famous was never seen now: a double somersault with a half pirouette at the end, a dreadful routine which demanded that Mario should come off the trapeze like a cannonball, make two somersaults, then change directions at that speed, going from a horizontal into a vertical spin, coming out of his tucked-up ball into an upright sidewise motion. Tommy was terrified by it. The flyer came at the catcher unevenly, and it was almost impossible to catch him without undue strain on one shoulder or the other. No one since Parrish had ever done this trick in the ring.
“Give it up, Matt,” he urged. “We’re playing around with the same kind of thing that wrecked Jim’s shoulder, and Parrish’s.”
But Mario was adamant. “Parrish did it. And that proves it can be done. And if it can be done, we can do it!”
Tommy thought, Yeah, he did it, and look where it got him. But he did not say it aloud. Still, he wondered. Was he feeding a death wish in Mario? Did Mario want to end like Parrish, crippled, broken? Was his inner guilt pushing him to destruction?
Angelo did this to him. He was all right again for a while. Only now Angelo’s after us all the time. Tommy knew that Angelo watched every move they made, and it made him self-conscious. Even when they were alone in their room, with the door locked, he was aware, unable to forget. When Mario touched him, he went tense, unyielding. Mario raged at him for this, but there was nothing he could do about it.
There’s only a few weeks till we go on the road with Starr’s. On the road, out of here, it will be better.
Bart was already filming the first scenes of the movie. Mario had told the boys that they might come in every afternoon for a while, to wind up what they had accomplished that winter. By some unfortunate coincidence, Angelo was not working just now. Every afternoon, without fail, he came down and stood watching them from the doorway, chain-smoking, his eyes never leaving them.
One afternoon Mario’s temper exploded. He walked over to Angelo and said, “Damn it, what happened to our old house rules down here, that nobody watches unless he’s invited?”
“Is there something going on down here that I shouldn’t see?” Angelo asked.
Mario, burning with wrath, said, “Nothing. But put out that cigarette.”
Angelo shrugged and put out the cigarette, but after, a time Tommy smelled smoke again and knew he had lighted another. Perhaps it was pure absentmindedness.
There was also something in the air, intangible, which made them feel sure he had dropped a word to Clay. The boy seemed defiant, and he refused to join Tommy and Mario unless his three young friends were there.
One afternoon, when they were all in the practice room, Tessa came running down the stairs, bursting in noisily and shouting, “Matt, you’re wanted on the telephone—I think it’s that man from the studio!”
By sheer luck, no one had been flying at the moment. Mario dived off the pedestal into the net, somersaulted down, and strode over to the girl. He loomed over her, glaring.
“Teresa Santelli,” he demanded, “how old are you?”
“Thirteen,” she said, hanging her head before his obvious wrath.
“And you grew up in a circus family, and you don’t have sense enough— Look, Tess, let me spell it out to you in words of one syllable. You never, never, never yell at anybody on a flying rig. And the next time you pull a goddamn silly stunt like that down here, I’ll—” He broke off, tightening his mouth, looking at Angelo standing in the doorway.
“You wouldn’t dare do anything to me,” she said insolently. “My papa wouldn’t let you!”
“Maybe not. But I’ll tell Lucia, and see what she has to say about it. Now, what the bloody hell did you come down here screeching about?”
She said shakily, near to tears now, “You’re wanted on the telephone. Lucia sent me to tell you.”
“Well, if we’d had an accident down here because of your damn yelling, it would have been a long time before that phone got answered, wouldn’t it? Now you get out of here!”
She sidled toward Angelo and said, appealing to higher authority, “Papa . . .”
Angelo looked angry; it was hard to tell whether his anger was for Tessa or for Mario. He frowned at them both indiscriminately. “He’s right, Tess. You mustn’t yell at people when they’re flying; it isn’t safe. I thought you had more sense than that. You’d better go up to Lucia and help her in the kitchen. But, Matt, I don’t want you talking to my daughter that way. If you have anything to complain about, tell me and I’ll deal with her.” Mario opened his mouth for an angry reply, and Tommy almost hoped for an explosion that would clear the air, but Angelo added, “You better go on up and answer the telephone, hadn’t you? It might be something important. I’ll handle things down here.” He looked up at the platform, where Bobby was snapping the belt of the mechanic around his waist. He said, “Here, I’ll hold the mechanic,” and took the heavy wooden handles in his hands.
Tommy, coaching from the floor, called to Bobby, “Okay, go ahead—” and the youngster swung out, came off the bar, and dived at Phil, in the catch trap. He missed, and Angelo braced himself and stepped backward, slowing the boy’s fall with the tightened ropes of the mechanic. The other boys laughed. Angelo let go the ropes and came toward the net, helping Bobby to unfasten the ropes on the leather harness.
“That’s not very smart, coming down on your feet that way. Not even when you have a mechanic on. You’ve got to make it automatic to get over on your back, so you
can’t fall any other way,” he said. Tommy, listening, thought, It sounds just like old times, when he was working with me. And the rest of us . . . Resentment mingled with a touch of the old affection and admiration.
“Clay,” Angelo said, “go on up and show him how they teach you to fall in this family.”
Clay scrambled up the ladder, took the fly bar in his hands, and swung out and upward. At the high point of his swing he somersaulted down toward the net, landing neatly on his back. He bounced to his feet, and Angelo said, “Nice—you’re learning fast.” Then he motioned the other boys down, and by the time Tommy came close to them, he was explaining the art of falling.
“You land on your back if you possibly can. If not, you tuck up in a ball and tuck your head way down between your shoulders, like a turtle going into his shell, like this—” He bent his head down to demonstrate. “That way, the main impact comes here.” He slapped Bobby between the shoulders.
“Like in tumbling, you never let the head take any weight?”
“The back of the head can take weight,” Angelo said. “The main thing is, never land on the front of your head. The neck is the weakest link in the whole spine.” He put one hand on the boy’s chin and pushed on his forehead with the other. “Land in the net on your face or your forehead, and your neck will go like a toothpick.” He hesitated and added, “If you ever find out you’re coming down on your face, break your fall with your hands. You’ll get your wrists broken that way, but better your wrists than your neck. You shouldn’t have to. But if you ever do, you have to be able to do it.”
Mario had come to the doorway. Standing there in amazement, he had listened to Angelo’s speech. “That’s how I broke this wrist of mine, the first time. But Angelo’s right—it would have been my neck otherwise. Thanks, Angelo. Well, have things come to a nice screeching halt down here? How come you’re all on the floor?”
“Lecture on falling,” Angelo said. “Hope you don’t mind.”
Mario laughed and shook his head. “No. A good half of your flying practice is falling practice. You ought to know, you watched me doing it often enough. Anyhow, that’s it for today, kids, and no lesson tomorrow, or day after; Tom and I have to be down in Anaheim.” When the boys had gone to change, he added, “That was Mason on the phone. He wants us tomorrow at six for makeup.”
“And they’re getting flying footage for the movie? What are you going to do? The triple, of course. What else?” Angelo asked.
“You’ve seen us working on the double-and-pirouette?”
“That one is murder. I don’t think anybody’s done it since Barney got smashed up,” Angelo said. “Joe wanted to do it, and Papa Tony wouldn’t let him. I hate to see you trying it, kid.”
Mario said dryly, “I didn’t know it mattered to you.”
“Damn it, ragazzo,” Angelo exploded, “you think I want you to break your neck?” He made an abortive movement toward Mario, as if to touch him, then stiffened and drew back.
“There’s no movie in the world worth that, kid. Lucia’s got enough trouble without you getting yourself killed, too.” He turned and went out of the practice room without another word.
~o0o~
The makeup men had set up a trailer on the grounds of the Starr winter quarters. After a long session Stella emerged with her hair dyed as red as Tommy’s, and Mario with his bleached to an uneven sandy color. Tommy felt strange and clumsy in the old-fashioned costume, and finally realized what it reminded him of: the old picture of the Flying Santellis, with Lucia and Joe and Cleo and Mario’s father. Mario was unrecognizable; neither himself, nor, quite, like the pictures of Barney Parrish.
Stella was twitching the clumsy-looking belt of the costume.
“Did women ever manage to fly in these bloomer things?”
Mari said good-naturedly, “You’ve seen enough pictures of Lucia doing it in that kind of outfit.”
Jim Fortunati came toward them as they went into the Big Top. “Santellis, ready? Good Lord, I don’t think your own mother would know you, Matt. You look great!”
Mario quirked up an eyebrow, and all at once Tommy could see the real Mario through the makeup. “‘Great’ is not the word I’d use, Jim, but suit yourself. How long before they need us?”
“Few minutes. Right now they’re getting some shots of Reeder with the audience—they brought down a load of extras all done up in nineteen twenties costume.” He gestured toward the bleacher seats inside the Big Top. It had been transformed into a circus of the twenties; even the audience had been transformed into a crowd of thirty years before. They waited outside the ropes that excluded everyone not actually on the improvised set. In center ring a fair-haired man in white and silver flying costume was waving to the audience while camera crews hauled enormous racks of klieg lights, placing them, shifting them, and replacing them.
Bart Reeder said behind them, “It’s like time-travel.”
Tommy turned, blinking. “I thought that was you, down in center ring—”
“No, no. That’s Willy—my stand-in. There’s three of us all done up like Parrish today,” Bart said, laughing. He was wearing the identical twin of Mario’s costume. His light brown hair had been bleached blond, and his slim, muscular body was shown to its finest advantage in the silvered costume. For the first time, Tommy was aware of Reeder’s tremendous prestige. Not Bart, his friend. Bart Reeder, the star of this movie.
Reeder said under his breath to Mario, “You look wonderful, Matt. If I had any narcissistic tendencies—making love to my own image is an entertaining idea.”
Mario said in a low voice, “When I was a little kid, I had an awful crush on Barney Parrish. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. You’re not an awful lot like him, really—you’re probably better looking than he was. But some way, in that outfit, you remind me of him. Maybe you move the way he did, or something. I look at you, and I see Barney walking toward me.”
Bart said, “I move the way you taught me, kid. Maybe you picked it up from him. The things that really mean a lot to us when we’re kids—” Abruptly he said aloud, the tender, intimate tone vanishing from his voice as if it had never been there, “Thank God for Willy down there. Ten minutes under those lights and I’m sweating like a pig.” And Tommy saw that Mason, the director, was approaching them.
“Ready, Bart? I want you back on the set for just a few more shots. Then you’ll be through for the day.”
Mario followed Bart with his eyes and said, “I feel so damned presumptuous. Wearing Parrish’s costume. Doing his tricks.”
“The one time he saw you, he thought you were wonderful. If he’s anywhere where he could know about it, I think he’d be proud of you. Think of it this way: you’re showing people what he was like. People who never had a chance to see him.”
A teenage girl with a clipboard came up to them.
“Ready on the set for the flying act.”
As they went toward the entrance, Tommy heard Mason exhorting the crowd through a public-address system.
“Now, you people, just behave naturally, do what you’d do at a circus—applaud, talk, move around . . . .”
But it didn’t feel to Tommy like a regular circus audience. And of course it wasn’t; it was a group of Hollywood extras earning their pay, except for a group of children in wheelchairs down front—probably borrowed for the day from an orphanage or school for the handicapped, to give them a treat and provide some normally reacting children for the audience. Probably not more than half of the audience had ever seen a regular circus, live. Even the applause had a slightly alien sound. Tommy felt the unfamiliar costume pulling at him in unexpected places, and he could not even tug at it, for the camera’s eye might be on him. With a strange sense of detachment, he began climbing the web. He felt subtly wrong and disorganized. The sight of the flyers on the platform, in the unfamiliar silvery costumes, added to his sense of strangeness.
Come on, damn it, he admonished himself, it’s just Mario and Stella in fancy costumes! He
ran mentally through the routine. Straight cross-over, Stella. One-and-a-half, Mario, Midair pass. And that damned double-and-pirouette. At least I don’t have to catch him on a triple today, but that one is bad enough. Later they’re going to want a lot of spare flying footage to splice into Bart’s scenes . . . .
He heard, somewhere beyond awareness, the unfamiliar music of the antique steam calliope they had set up outside. Later, he supposed, they would put in some music specially written for the movie. Stella, on the platform, was reaching for the bar. He lowered himself, head down, gripping the padded supports of the catch trap with his hocks, and the discipline of years took over as he began to swing, timing his swing with Stella’s.
Just like any other flying act.
And then the reflexes took over, which had nothing to do with conscious thought.
They went straight through the routine. After a break, they went through it again, for what the director called “protecting shots.” Then they were told that the afternoon would be spent getting falls, and as much extra footage as possible, for such last-minute use as the director might determine or the film editors might want. At noon, lunch was brought to them on trays. Bart joined them, still in costume, tucking a towel carefully around his silvered top.
After a time Bart began to talk with Mario of people and events before Tommy had known them. Tommy, listening without saying anything, thought that a listener would have had no trouble making a guess about the two men. Not that they were obvious. They weren’t. Is it just that I know them both so well, I can spot the overtones in what they say?
Takes one to know one, I guess. It had been some time since he had seen Mario free of the constant tension, relaxed, laughing; he could not bear to urge caution on him again, see bitterness replace the gaiety in Mario’s eyes.
Bart was telling Mario about the filming being done at the main studio.
“They have a rig set up on one of the sound stages, a fake rig about eight feet high, platform and fly bar, and a catch trap set up about the same height. We do all our work on that, and by the time they get through editing and splicing, they tell me, everybody out front’s going to swear I climbed up there”—he gestured at the one in center ring—“and dived right off into a triple. I feel like a fake, knowing they’re going to put my face on that!”
The Catch Trap Page 77