"That ought to do it for today," Mario called across to him, "Tired?"

"Not especially." Tommy pulled himself to a sitting position on the catch bar, wrapped his arms loosely around the ropes. He swung, watching Mario turn to Clay;

"How about it? Want to show me what you've been doing?”

"Hey, that would be great!" Warmed by the exercise, Clay's hesitation had disappeared; he grinned up at Mario without a trace of sullenness, pulling in the bar. Then the grin slid off his face; he looked shaken, suddenly, and scared. Tommy, lowering himself to the head-down swinging catch position, twisting his calves around the padded supports of his trapeze, saw Mario lay his hand on Clay's shoulder. He couldn't hear what Mario was saying, but he could imagine.

("Come on, now, take it easy. Got to be a first time for everything, you know. You won't get hurt if you do just like I tell you, just when I tell you to do it. Now take the bar-all right—go!”)

He saw Clay swing out, a blurred flying bundle of arms and legs. Tommy arched his back, pushing his own swing higher, and the boy's thin wrists slapped hard into his outstretched palms.

"Easy does it," he said, smiling down into the young face swinging below him. He could feel the tension in the bony, taut arms. "Here you go.”

Swinging upright again when Clay was back on the board, he heard Mario criticizing the catch. "Trouble is, Clay, you don't really leap at all. You let Tommy scoop you off the fly bar."

"Well, that's the way Johnny said to do it," Clay argued. Tommy almost fell from his own trapeze in amazement.

"I don't remember asking Johnny, or you either," Mario snapped. "Try again, and this time you get off the bar under your own steam. You're supposed to leap off, not fall off!"

"Yeah, but you're always telling me not to grab at the catcher," Clay retorted as he took the taped bar from Mario's hands. At the call of "Go!" he swung again. "Pull up, pull up," Mario called, "point your feet-easy, now-easy-go!" Clay tumbled toward Tommy, and Tommy, judging in a split second the loom of the hurtling body, pushed forward slightly and again his hands meshed around Clay's wrists.

"You hung on too long again. Tommy had to pull up and take you-Tom, next time just spill him. Now shift around-easy," he called, as they transferred their wrist-grip so that Clay faced the pedestal, "All right, let go— grab it!" As Tommy released Clay's hands, the boy reached out, barely getting the tips of his fingers on one edge of the trapeze; then dropped and sank toward the net. "Roll over," shouted Tommy and Mario together, and Clay, turning catlike in midair, bounced easily on his back into the net.

mattachine REVIEW

"You're still hanging on too long," Mario yelled. He dived down into the net, and Clay, jumping energetically to the floor, thrust his hands into the pockets of his shorts and regarded Mario with his chin thrust out. "You dropped the bar too fast, didn't you, Mario?”

Tommy, sliding down the rope, nearly fell off in amazement. Mario's face darkened.

"I dropped the bar too fast? You know the trouble with you, Clay Santelli? Always some alibi! If it isn't Tommy's fault it's mine. Never yours." "So why are you making a production of it?" Clay's lip curled. "Because there's no room in this family for that stuff. You think you're pretty darned good, don't you? You're not. You couldn't even go to the catcher if Tommy wasn't correcting for all the stupid things you do." "Sure. We all know Tommy can do no wrong around here."

"At least, at your age, he knew enough not to talk back. If it was up to me, you wouldn't be flying at all.”

"Well," said Clay, setting his childish mouth, "is it up to you?” Mario opened his own mouth and shut it again. "Probably not. Go on, go up and get dressed."

When Clay had sauntered out of the room Tommy burst out "If I'd given you that, when I was Clay's age, you'd have knocked my head off my shoulders!"

Mario stood hunched over, scowling. "Angelo's got me so self-conscious about the kids now," he said at last. "I'm afraid of what he might have said to Clay-to make him think he can get away with talking like that to me."

Tommy, biting his lip, picked up Mario's sweater and handed it to him. "Put this on, you'll catch cold standing around in your tights like that." "Now you going to start in ordering me around?”

"Suit yourself." Tommy slammed the practice room door behind him. It didn't take two to make a fight when Mario was like this.

He heard Mario come up, while he was still in the shower, and after a while he went back to their room and found Mario there, just finished changing into blue jeans and a knitted shirt. He turned as Tommy came in.

"Let's go out for a walk, Lucky. There's some fog, but it isn't too dark to see."

"Okay," Tommy felt suddenly as if the house were stifling them. He thought of their first few seasons together, in the crowded quarters of the circus. The sneaking around, the sickening guilt, the continual fear and the reminders Mario had hated having to make; ("Kid, listen, I know it's rough, but remember, all we have to do is get careless for five minutes and I get fired-or go to jail-if your Dad doesn't stuff me into the lion's cage first

19.