Running From Legs and Other Stories

The Fallen Angel

He first came in one morning while I was making out the payroll for my small circus. We were pulling up stakes, ready to roll on to the next town, and I was bent over the books, writing down what I was paying everybody, and maybe that is why I did not hear the door open. When I looked up, this long, lanky fellow was standing there, and the door was shut tight behind him.

I looked at the door, and then I looked at him. He had a thin face with a narrow mustache, and black hair on his head that was sort of wild and sticking up in spots. He had brown eyes and a funny, twisted sort of mouth, with very white teeth which he was showing me at the moment.

“Mr. Mullins?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, because that is my name. Not Moon Mullins, which a lot of the fellows jokingly call me, but Anthony Mullins. And that is my real name, with no attempt to sound showman-like; a good name, you will admit. “I am busy,” I said.

“I won’t take much time,” he said very softly. He walked over to the desk with a smooth, sideward step, as if he were on greased ball bearings.

“No matter how much time you will take,” I said, “I am still busy.”

“My name is Sam Angeli,” he said.

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Angeli,” I told him. “My name is Anthony Mullins, and I am sorry you must be running along so quickly, but...”

“I’m a trapeze artist,” he said.

“We already have three trapeze artists,” I informed him, “and they are all excellent performers, and the budget does not call for...”

“They are not Sam Angeli,” he said, smiling and touching his chest with his thumb.

“That is true,” I answered. “They are, in alphabetical order: Sue Ellen Bradley, Edward the Great and Arthur Farnings.”

“But not Sam Angeli,” he repeated softly.

“No,” I said. “It would be difficult to call them all Sam Angeli since they are not even related, and even if they were related, it is unlikely they would all have the same name — even if they were triplets, which they are not.”

“I am Sam Angeli,” he said.

“So I have gathered. But I already have three...”

“I’m better,” he said flatly.

“I have never met a trapeze artist who was not better than any other trapeze artist in the world,” I said.

“In my case it happens to be true,” he said.

I nodded and said nothing. I chewed my cigar awhile and went back to my books, and when I looked up he was still standing there, smiling.

“Look, my friend,” I said, “I am earnestly sorry there is no opening for you, but...”

“Why not watch me a little?”

“I am too busy.”

“It’ll take five minutes. Your big top is still standing. Just watch me up there for a few minutes, that’s all.”

“My friend, what would be the point? I already have...”

“You can take your books with you, Mr. Mullins; you won’t be sorry.”

I looked at him again, and he stared at me levelly, and he had a deep, almost blazing, way of staring that made me believe I would really not be sorry if I watched him perform. Besides, I could take the books with me.

“All right,” I said, “but we’re only wasting each other’s time.”

“I’ve got all the time in the world,” he answered.

We went outside, and sure enough the big top was still standing, so I bawled out Warren for being so slow to get a show on the road, and then this Angeli and I went inside, and he looked up at the trapeze, and I very sarcastically said, “Is that high enough for you?”

He shrugged and looked up and said, “I’ve been higher, my friend. Much higher.” He dropped his eyes to the ground then, and I saw that the net had already been taken up.

“This exhibition will have to be postponed,” I informed him. “There is no net.”

“I don’t need a net,” he answered.

“No?”

“No.”

“Do you plan on breaking your neck under one of my tops? I am warning you that my insurance doesn’t cover...”

“I won’t break my neck,” Angeli said. “Sit down.”

I shrugged and sat down, thinking it was his neck and not mine, and hoping Dr. Lipsky was not drunk as usual. I opened the books on my lap and got to work, and he walked across the tent and started climbing up to the trapeze. I got involved with the figures, and finally he yelled, “Okay, you ready?”

“I’m ready,” I said.

I looked up to where he was sitting on one trapeze, holding the bar of the other trapeze in his big hands.

“Here’s the idea,” he yelled down. He had to yell because he was a good hundred feet in the air. “I’ll set the second trapeze swinging, and then I’ll put the one I’m on in motion. Then I’ll jump from one trapeze to the other one. Understand?”

“I understand,” I yelled back. I’m a quiet man by nature, and I have never liked yelling. Besides, he was about to do a very elementary trapeze routine, so there was nothing to get excited and yelling about.

He pushed out the second trapeze, and it swung away out in a nice clean arc, and then it came back and he shoved it out again and it went out farther and higher this time. He set his own trapeze in motion then, and both trapezes went swinging up there, back and forth, back and forth, higher and higher. He stood up on the bar and watched the second trapeze, timing himself, and then he shouted down, “I’ll do a somersault to make it interesting.”

“Go ahead,” I said.

“Here I go,” he said.

His trapeze came back and started forward, and the second trapeze reached the end of its arc and started back, and I saw him bend a little from the knees, calculating his timing, and then he leaped off, and his head ducked under, and he went into the somersault.

He did a nice clean roll, and then he stretched out his hands for the bar of the second trapeze, but the bar was nowhere near him. His fingers closed on air, and my eyes popped wide open as he sailed past the trapeze and then started a nose dive for the ground.

I jumped to my feet with my mouth open, remembering there was no net under him, and thinking of the mess he was going to make all over my tent. I watched him falling like a stone, and then I closed my eyes as he came closer to the ground. I clenched my fists and waited for the crash, and then the crash came, and there was a deathly silence in the tent afterward. I sighed and opened my eyes.

Sam Angeli got up and casually brushed the sawdust from his clothes. “How’d you like it?” he asked.

I stood stiff as a board and stared at him.

“How’d you like it?” he repeated.

“Dr. Lipsky!” I shouted. “Doc, come quick!”

“No need for a doctor,” Angeli said, smiling and walking over to me. “How’d you like the fall?”

“The... the fall?”

“The fall,” Angeli said, smiling. “Looked like the real McCoy, didn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you don’t think I missed that bar accidentally, do you? I mean, after all, that’s a kid stunt.”

“You fell on purpose?” I kept staring at him, but all his bones seemed to be in the right places, and there was no blood on him anywhere.

“Sure,” he said. “My specialty. I figured it all out, Mr. Mullins. Do you know why people like to watch trapeze acts? Not because there’s any skill or art attached. Oh, no.” He smiled, and his eyes glowed, and I watched him, still amazed. “They like to watch because they are inherently evil, Mr. Mullins. They watch because they think that fool up there is going to fall and break his neck, and they want to be around when he does it.” Angeli nodded. “So I figured it all out.”

“You did?”

“I did. I figured if the customers wanted to see me fall, then I would fall. So I practiced falling.”

“You did?”

“I did. First I fell out of bed, and then I fell from a first-story window, and then I fell off the roof. And then I took my biggest fall, the fall that... but I’m boring you. The point is, I can fall from anyplace now. In fact, that trapeze of yours is rather low.”

“Rather low,” I repeated softly.

“Yes.”

“What’s up?” Dr. Lipsky shouted, rushing into the tent, his shirttails trailing. “What happened, Moon?”

“Nothing,” I said, wagging my head. “Nothing, Doc.”

“Then why’d you...?”

“I wanted to tell you,” I said slowly, “that I’ve just hired a new trapeze artist.”

“Huh?” Dr. Lipsky said, drunk as usual.

We rolled on to the next town, and I introduced Angeli to my other trapeze artists: Sue Ellen, Farnings, and Edward the Great. I was a younger man at that time, and I have always had an eye for good legs in tights, and Sue Ellen had them all right. She also had blond hair and big blue eyes, and when I introduced her to Angeli those eyes went all over him, and I began to wonder if I hadn’t made a mistake hiring him. I told them I wanted Angeli to have exclusive use of the tent that afternoon, and all afternoon I sat and watched him while he jumped for trapezes and missed and went flying down on his nose or his head or his back or whatever he landed on. I kept watching him when he landed, but the sawdust always came up around him like a big cloud, and I never could see what he did inside that cloud. All I know is that he got up every time, and he brushed himself off, and each time I went over to him and expected to find a hundred broken bones and maybe a fractured skull, but each time he just stood up with that handsome smile on his face as if he hadn’t just fallen from away up there.

“This is amazing,” I told him. “This is almost supernatural!”

“I know,” he said.

“We’ll start you tonight,” I said, getting excited about it now. “Can you start tonight?”

“I can start any time,” he said.

“Sam Angeli,” I announced, spreading my hand across the air as if I were spelling it out in lights. “Sam An—” I paused and let my hand drop. “That’s terrible,” I said.

“I know,” Angeli answered. “But I figured that out, too.”

“What?”

“A name for me. I figured this all out.”

“And what’s the name?” I asked.

“The Fallen Angel,” he said.

There wasn’t much of a crowd that night. Sue Ellen, Farnings, and Edward the Great went up there and did their routines, but they were playing to cold fish, and you could have put all the applause they got into a sardine can. Except mine. Whenever I saw Sue Ellen, I clapped my heart out, and I never cared what the crowd was doing. I went out after Edward the Great wound up his act, and I said, “Ladeeeees and Gentulmennnn, it gives me great pleasure to introduce at this time, in his American premiere, for the first time in this country, the Fallen Angel!”

I don’t know what I expected, but no one so much as batted an eyelid.

“You will note,” I said, “that the nets are now being removed from beneath the trapezes, and that the trapezes are being raised to the uppermost portion of the tent. The Fallen Angel will perform at a height of one-hundred-and-fifty-feet above the ground, without benefit of a net, performing his death-defying feats of skill for your satisfaction.” The crowd murmured a little, but you could see they still weren’t very excited about it all.

“And now,” I shouted, “the Fallen Angel!”

Angeli came into the ring, long and thin, muscular in his red tights, the sequins shining so that they could almost blind you. He began climbing up to the bars, and everyone watched him, a little bored by now with all these trapeze acts. Angeli hopped aboard and then worked out a little, swinging to and fro, leaping from one trapeze to another, doing a few difficult stunts. He looked down to the band then, and Charlie started a roll on the drums, and I shouted into my megaphone, “And now, a blood-chilling, spine-tingling double somersault from one moving trapeze to another at one hundred and fifty feet above the ground — without a net!”

The crowd leaned forward a little, the way they always will when a snare drum starts rolling, and Angeli set the bars in motion, and then he tensed, with all the spotlights on him. The drum kept going, and then Angeli leaped into space, and he rolled over once, twice, and then his arms came out straight for the bar, and his hands clutched nothing, and he started to fall.

A woman screamed, and then they all were on their feet, a shocked roar leaping from four hundred throats all together. Angeli dropped and dropped and dropped, and women covered their eyes and screamed, and brave men turned away, and then he hit the sawdust, and the cloud rolled up around him, and an Ohhhhhhh went up from the crowd. They kept standing, shocked, silent, like a bunch of pallbearers.

Then suddenly, casually, the Fallen Angel got to his feet and brushed off his red-sequined costume. He turned to the crowd and smiled a big, happy smile, and then he turned to face the other half of the tent, smiling again, extending his arms and hands to his public, almost as if he were silently saying, “My children! My nice children!”

The crowd cheered and whistled and shouted and stamped. Sue Ellen, standing next to me, sighed and said, “Tony, he’s wonderful,” and I heard her, and I heard the yells of “Encore!” out there, but I didn’t bring Angeli out again that night. I tucked him away and then waited for the landslide.

The landslide came the next night. We were playing in a small town, but I think everyone who could walk turned out for the show. They fidgeted through all the acts, crowding the tent, standing in the back, shoving and pushing. They were bored when my aerial artists went on, but the boredom was good because they were all waiting for the Fallen Angel, all waiting to see if the reports about him were true.

When I introduced him, there was no applause. There was only an awful hush. Angeli came out and climbed up to the bars and then began doing his tricks again, and everyone waited, having heard that he took his fall during the double somersault.

But Angeli was a supreme showman, and he realized that the value of his trick lay in its surprise element. So he didn’t wait for the double somersault this time. He simply swung out one trapeze and then made a leap for it, right in the middle of his other routine stunts, only this time he missed, and down he dropped with the crowd screaming to its feet.

A lot of people missed the fall, and that was the idea, because those same people came back the next night, and Angeli never did it the same way twice. He’d fall in the middle of his act, or at the end, or once he fell the first time he jumped for the trapeze. Another time he didn’t fall at all during the act, and then, as he was coming down the ladder, he missed a rung and down he came, and the crowd screamed.

And Angeli would come to me after each performance and his eyes would glow, and he’d say, “Did you hear them, Tony? They want me to fall, they want me to break my neck!”

And maybe they did. Or maybe they were just very happy to see him get up after he fell, safe and sound. Whatever it was, it was wonderful. Business was booming, and I began thinking of getting some new tops, and maybe a wild-animal act. I boosted everybody’s salary, and I began taking a larger cut myself, and I was finally ready to ask Sue Ellen something I’d wanted to ask her for a long, long time. And Sam Angeli had made it all possible. I spoke to her alone one night, over by the stakes where the elephants were tied.

“Sue Ellen,” I said, “there’s something that’s been on my mind for a long time now.”

“What is it, Tony?” she said.

“Well, I’m just a small-time circus man, and I never had much money, you know, and so I never had the right. But things have picked up considerably, and...”

“Don’t, Tony,” she said.

I opened my eyes wide. “I beg your pardon, Sue Ellen?”

“Don’t ask me. Maybe it could have been, and maybe it couldn’t. But no more now, Tony. Not since I met Sam. He’s everything I want, Tony; can you understand that?”

“I suppose,” I said.

“I think I love him, Tony.”

I nodded and said nothing.

“I’m awfully sorry,” Sue Ellen said.

“If it makes you happy, honey...”

I couldn’t think of any way to finish it.

I started work in earnest. Maybe I should have fired Angeli on the spot, but you can’t fire love, and that’s what I was battling. So instead I worked harder, and I tried not to see Sue Ellen around all the time. I began to figure crowd reactions, and I realized the people would not hold still for my other aerial artists once they got wind of the Fallen Angel. So we worked Farnings and Edward (whose “Great” title we dropped) into one act, and we worked Sue Ellen into Angeli’s act. Sue Ellen dressed up the act a lot, and it gave Angeli someone to kid around with up there, making his stunts before the fall more interesting.

Sue Ellen never did any of the fancy stuff. She just caught Angeli, or was caught by him — all stuff leading up to Angeli’s spectacular fall. The beautiful part was that Sue Ellen never had to worry about timing. I mean, if she missed Angeli — so he fell. I thought about his fall a lot, and I tried to figure it out, but I never could, and after a while I stopped figuring. I never stopped thinking about Sue Ellen, though, and it hurt me awful to watch her looking at him with those eyes full of worship, but if she was happy, that was all that counted.

And then I began to get bigger ideas. Why fool around with a small-time circus? I wondered. Why not expand? Why not incorporate?

I got off a few letters to the biggest circuses I knew of. I told them what I had, and I told them the boy was under exclusive contract to me, and I told them he would triple attendance, and I told them I was interested in joining circuses, becoming partners sort of, with the understanding that the Fallen Angel would come along with me. I guess the word had got around by then because all the big-shot letters were very cordial and very nice, and they all asked me when they could get a look at Angeli because they would certainly be interested in incorporating my fine little outfit on a partnership basis if my boy were all I claimed him to be, sincerely yours.

I got off a few more letters, asking all the big shots to attend our regular Friday night performance so that they could judge the crowd reaction and see the Fallen Angel under actual working conditions. All my letters were answered with telegrams, and we set the ball rolling.

That Friday afternoon was pure bedlam.

There’s always a million things happening around a circus, anyway, but this Friday everything seemed to pile up at once. Like Fifi, our bareback rider, storming into the tent in her white ruffles.

“My horse!” she yelled, her brown eyes flashing. “My horse!”

“Is something wrong with him?” I asked.

“No, nothing’s wrong with him,” she screamed. “But something’s wrong with José Esperanza, and I’m going to wring his scrawny little neck unless...”

“Now easy, honey,” I said, “let us take it easy.”

“I told him a bucket of rye. I did not say a bucket of oats. Juju does not eat oats; he eats rye. And my safety and health and life depend on Juju, and I will not have him eating some foul-smelling oats when I distinctly told José...”

“José!” I bellowed. “José Esperanza, come here.”

José was a small Puerto Rican we’d picked up only recently. A nice young kid with big brown cow’s eyes and a small timid smile. He poked his head into the wagon and smiled, and then he saw Fifi and the smile dropped from his face.

“Is it true you gave Juju oats, José, when you were told to give him rye?” I asked.

“Si, señor,” José said, “that ees true.”

“But why, José? Why on earth...”

José lowered his head. “The horse, señor. I like heem. He ees nice horse. He ees always good to me.”

“What’s that got to do with the bucket of rye?”

“Señor,” José said pleadingly, “I did not want to get the horse drunk.”

“Drunk? Drunk?”

“Si, señor, a bucket of rye. Even for a horse, thees ees a lot of wheesky. I did not theenk...”

“Oh,” Fifi wailed, “of all the stupid — I’ll feed the horse myself. I’ll feed him myself. Never mind!”

She stormed out of the wagon, and José smiled sheepishly and said, “I did wrong, señor?”

“No,” I said. “You did all right, José. Now run along.”

I shook my head, and José left, and when I turned around Sam Angeli was standing there. I hadn’t heard him come in, and I wondered how long he’d been there, so I said, “A good kid, José.”

“If you like good kids,” Angeli answered.

“He’ll go to heaven, that one,” I said. “Mark my words.”

Angeli smiled. “We’ll see,” he said. “I wanted to talk to you, Tony.”

“Oh? What about?”

“About all these people coming tonight. The big shots, the ones coming to see me.”

“What about them?”

“Nothing, Tony. But suppose — just suppose, mind you — suppose I don’t fall?”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Just that. Suppose I don’t fall tonight?”

“That’s silly,” I said. “You have to fall.”

“Do I? Where does it say I have to fall?”

“Your contract. You signed a...”

“The contract doesn’t say anything about my having to fall, Tony. Not a word.”

“Well... say, what is this? A holdup?”

“No. Nothing of the sort. I just got to thinking. If this works out tonight, Tony, you’re going to be a big man. But what do I get out of it?”

“Do you want a salary boost? Is that it? O.K. You’ve got a salary boost. How’s that?”

“I don’t want a salary boost.”

“What, then?”

“Something of very little importance. Something of no value whatever.”

“What?” I said. “What is it?”

“Suppose we make a deal, Tony?” Angeli said. “Suppose we shake on it? If I fall tonight, I get this little something that I want.”

“What’s this little something that you want?”

“Is it a deal?”

“I have to know first.”

“Well, let’s forget it then,” Angeli said.

“Now wait a minute, wait a minute. Is this ‘thing’ Sue Ellen?”

Angeli smiled. “I don’t have to make a deal to get her, Tony.”

“Well, is it money?”

“No. This thing has no material value.”

“Then why do you want it?”

“I collect them.”

“And I’ve got one?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what...?”

“Is it a deal, or isn’t it?”

“I don’t know. I mean, this is a peculiar way to...”

“Believe me, this thing is of no material value to you. You won’t even know it’s gone. But if I go through with my fall tonight, all I ask is that you give it to me. A handshake will be binding as far as I’m concerned.”

I shrugged. “All right, all right, a deal. Provided you haven’t misrepresented this thing, whatever it is. Provided it’s not of material value to me.”

“I haven’t misrepresented it. Shall we shake, Tony?”

He extended his hand, and I took it, and his eyes glowed, but his skin was very cold to the touch. I pulled my hand away.

“Now,” I said, “what’s this thing you want from me?”

Angeli smiled. “Your soul,” he said.

I was suddenly alone in the wagon. I looked around, but Angeli was gone, and then the door opened and Sue Ellen stepped in, and she looked very grave and very upset.

“I heard,” she said. “Forgive me. I heard. I was listening outside. Tony, what are you going to do? What are we going to do?”

“Can it be?” I said. “Can it be, Sue Ellen? He looks just like you and me. How’d I get into this?”

“We’ve got to do something,” Sue Ellen said. “Tony, we’ve got to stop him!”

We packed them in that night. They sat, and they stood, and they climbed all over the rafters; they were everywhere. And right down front, I sat with the big shots, and they all watched my small, unimportant show until it was time for the Fallen Angel to go on.

I got up and smiled weakly and said, “If you gentlemen will excuse me, I have to introduce the next act.”

They all smiled back knowingly, and nodded their heads, and their gold stickpins and pinky rings winked at me, and they blew out expensive cigar smoke, and I was thinking, Mullins, you can blow out expensive cigar smoke, too, but you don’t have any soul left.

I introduced the act, and I was surprised to see all my aerial artists run out onto the sawdust: Sue Ellen, Farnings, Edward and the Fallen Angel. I watched Angeli as he crossed one of the spotlights, and if I’d had any doubts they all vanished right then. Angeli cast no shadow on the sawdust.

I watched in amazement as the entire troupe went up the ladder to the trapezes. There was a smile on Angeli’s face, but Sue Ellen and the rest had tight, set mouths.

They did a few stunts, and I watched the big shots, and it was plain they were not impressed at all by these routine aerial acrobatics. I signaled the band, according to schedule, and I shouted, “And now, ladies and gentlemen, the Fallen Angel in a death-defying, spine-tingling, bloodcurdling triple somersault at one hundred and fifty feet above the ground, without a net!”

Sue Ellen swung her trapeze out, and Angeli swung his, and then Sue Ellen dropped head downward and extended her hands, and Angeli swung back and forth, and the crowd held its breath, waiting for him to take his fall, and the big shots held their breaths, waiting for the same thing. Only I knew what would happen if he did take that fall. Only I knew about our agreement. Only I — and Sue Ellen, waiting up there for Angeli to jump.

Charlie started the roll on his snare, and then the roll stopped abruptly, and Angeli released his grip on the bar and he swung out into space, and over he went, once, twice, three times — and slap. Sue Ellen’s hands clamped around his wrists, and she held on for dear life. I couldn’t see Angeli’s face from so far below, but he seemed to be struggling to get away. Sue Ellen held him for just an instant, just long enough for Edward to swing his trapeze into position.

She flipped Angeli out then, and over he went — and wham. Edward grabbed his ankles. Angeli flapped his arms and kicked his legs, trying to get free, but Edward — Edward the Great! — wouldn’t drop him. Instead, he swung his trapeze back, and then gave Angeli a flip and

Farnings grabbed Angeli’s wrists.

Farnings flipped Angeli up, and Sue Ellen caught him, and then Sue Ellen swung her trapeze all the way back and tossed Angeli to Edward, and I began to get the idea of what was going on up there.

Edward tossed Angeli, and Farnings caught him, and then Farnings tossed him to Sue Ellen, and Sue Ellen tossed him right back again. Then Farnings climbed onto Sue Ellen’s trapeze, and they both swung back to the platform.

Edward took a long swing, and then he tossed Angeli head over heels, right back to the platform, where Sue Ellen and Farnings grabbed him with four eager arms.

I was grinning all over by this time, and the crowd was booing at the top of its lungs. Who cared? The big shots were stirring restlessly, but they’d probably heard that Angeli sometimes fell coming down the ladder, and so they didn’t leave their seats.

Only tonight, Angeli wasn’t doing any falling coming down any ladder. Because Sue Ellen had one of his wrists and Farnings had one of his ankles, and one was behind him, and the other was ahead of him; and even if he pitched himself off into space, he wouldn’t have gone far, not with the grips they had on both him and the ladder. I saw the big shots get up and throw away their cigars, and then everybody began booing as if they wanted to tear down the top with their voices. Angeli came over to me, and his face didn’t hold a pleasant smile this time. His face was in rage, and it turned red, as if he would explode.

“You tricked me!” he screamed. “You tricked me!”

“Oh, go to hell,” I told him, and all at once he wasn’t there any more.

Well, I’m not John Ringling North, and I don’t run the greatest show on earth. I’ve just got a small, unimportant circus, and it gives me a regular small income, but it’s also a lot of trouble sometimes.

I still have my soul, though; and, what’s more, I now have a soulmate, and she answers to the name of Sue Ellen Mullins, which is in a way most euphonic, you will agree.