It had been a hot night and she had stretched out nude on her bed, the sweat pushing out of her skin and the sounds of the music drifting outside.
She hadn't known he was there until he was standing over her, fum bung for the light.
"I promised myself I was gonna have you."
"And I'm gonna give you something to remember me by baby...."
She had reached for the sheet, hoping to cover herself, but he had ripped it aside with one hand and working at his own clothes with the other.
She had closed her eyes, and she had remembered that the girls in school had said it hurt the first time.
She had started fighting him as he came to her though, his hot breath on her face and his mouth seeking hers. Then she felt the pain, her whole body ripped by him. But the pain hadn't been unpleasant, soon she had lost the sense of pain and she had found something, else some thing that had been driving her with the fury of a stallion.
CHAPTER ONE
When Valerie Talman moved in with Earl Wyatts, room and bed she didn't give a damn about morals. All she knew was, she wanted Earl for sex intercourse whenever she wanted to do it. There was more to it. Valerie was a real piece as far as he was concerned. She was too voluptuous and too free with her body and charms just for show purposes.
The people they worked with put up with this arrangement because some of them preferred to be able to get rid of each other on this basis too. It was easy to get rid of an unwanted sex partner, man or woman but mostly the responsibility of support seemed to concern them, not the depraved arrangements.
Earl Wyatt and the show workers were part of that unique society that travels the roads of the nation throughout the four seasons. Their customers would come to performances when the sun was shining or when me evening was clear. The show had to travel to keep abreast of the weather and to survive. This tight need to survive feeling could only lead to the members of the group being so insecure as to have to live with the least amount of responsibility for themselves and to each new acquaintance. Man to girl relations were on the house, and they all sort of knew it nad to be so. Some preferred marriage as their goal but money pushed them further from it, since they had none at hand.
Earl and Valerie both were employed by Ben Hardwicke. Ben was an old wiery codger who was another of the victims of itinerant love. He ran the show with a warm human hand but his big mistake was trying to be good to a woman.
He idolized a young lady named Laura Hall. He'd fathered a group of her kids, so the story went, but nobody really could tell. Laura had so many lovers on the side that old man Hardwicke was a patsy for her. His income supported her and she was sexy enough to get any guy hot and bothered at the drop of her hanky. Hardwicke enjoyed her favors nightly and for an old man, the performers kept saying he was really going some. Laura was known to be a dynamo. How long could the old man keep this up. He was bound to bring doom on himself and of course that meant trouble for Earl and the show.
Earl Wyatt lay on the bed in the trailer next to the blonde and swore softly. The rain was coming down hard, almost harder than it had during the whole week of their last stop.
"More rain," Valerie Talman said.
He didn't look at the girl in the faint light of morning. He knew what she looked like. She was rounded in all the right places and she was naked and waiting. But then she was always naked and waiting and wanting as much as a man could give her. In his twenty five years he had never before met a girl like Valerie.
"If this keeps up it could ruin Ben," he said. "We've had bad weather right from the start."
The girl said nothing and he reached for a cigarette. Ben Hardwicke had owned The Show Value for more than twenty years, hitting the road every spring, and now he was close to ruin. Ben had never been one to save any money for an emergency and that daughter he had back home cost him plenty. Not only did the daughter cost him money but so did Laura Hall from the Big Revue show. Every year for the last three years Ben had given Laura a kid and he supported them. Earl didn't know how Ben could do everything that he had to do with a bad ticker but somehow he did it. He was on the stand every night and although Earl did some of his work for him, such as making sure that the rides were safe, he couldn't do much more than that and still do the master of ceremonies bit for the girlie show. Most of the customers were thinking that the girls were going to take off everything, but the men got cheated because the girls only go down to flesh colored vee patches. Since Laura was one of the girls Ben wouldn't let them go all the way and that hurt business. The first clear night in a town the play was usually good but after that it fell off. The word got around and the men wouldn't pay.
"Hell," Valerie said stirring on the bed. "These Mondays kill me."
The weekend was moving time and Monday was the day when the rides and the booths had to be set up. Even with the rain the men would have to work. If it cleared the money would start coming in that night but if it didn't clear there wouldn't be any. Monday meant a new town and new people to meet and new things to do. To his way of thinking there was something exciting in it but Valerie didn't feel that way. He had been sleeping with Valerie almost since spring and every Monday she seemed to be down in the dumps. As for himself he didn't have much to do. A couple of drunk punks would set up the girlie stage. Outside, facing the crowd, was another platform and the girls came out there to show themselves on Earl's trailer stage.
"We need another girl. Two girls can't carry the show," she said.
"Hardly.".
He was naked, too, and she put her hand on his mid-section.
"Wonder why the other girl left?"
"How would I know?"
But he did know. The girl had been a little stupid and the past Thursday night when Valerie had gone into town for a bottle he had her good and he had made her cry out when he had hurt her. The next morning she had been gone in a fit of anger and shame.
"It would be different if we went all the way," Valerie said. "Two girls might be able to do it if they went down bare. The suckers pay for that and they've got it coming."
Of course there were a lot of towns where a girl couldn't strip naked but in many towns they could. Earl had discussed this with Ben but Ben had been firm in not allowing it. Earl guessed that Ben didn't want any other man to see Laura Hall in the nude. That was a joke. When Ben sometimes went ahead of the snow on business, sounding out a new town, Laura was available to any man who felt in need of a woman. How Ben could be sure that Laura's kids belonged to him Earl didn't know.
"Funny a guy like you being with a hootch outfit," Valerie said.
"You've said that before kid."
"Well, it is, education and all and you sounding off for a girlie strip. You must like it, huh?"
"I was brought up in the circus," he told her.
"Yet you went on through college after your folks died."
"Sure, because dad left the insurance money for that."
"You didn't learn much about a carnival at college."
"I didn't learn anything about a carnival. I took hotel administration-don't ask me why-and I tried it after I got out. But the traveling life was there in my blood and when I had a chance to come with Ben I did. Except for the weather," he added. "The rain kills you and you can't fight it back, otherwise the life is good."
She pushed toward him, one full breast against his chest.
"There's something else you can't fight," she said.
"What?"
"What we've been doing. What we did last night and what we're going to do before we get out of bed again." She rubbed herself into him and her nipples hardened to his male countenance. She was ready again.
"You never quit, do you baby?
"Is that what you want?"
"One of these days you'll be looking those nine months square in the face."
"I'm no Laura Hall. When I get a kid I'm going to be married."
Her hands moved over him. A man couldn't ask for much better than Valerie and he didn't have to ask her to get what he wanted. She was only twenty but she had been with the trailer shows for a couple of years and he knew there had been other men for her. It hardly mattered for he wasn't going to marry her. A girl like Valerie lived for her sex and if she didn't find it with him she would find it with somebody else. There were plenty of guys in the show who chased her. There was that one guy with the ho-karts who had offered her twenty five bucks and she had only laughed at him.
'We've got to do something about that girlie show," he said as he put out the cigarette. The fire gathered in his guts as he became terribly aware of her then.
"I told you what we have to do Like the show I was in last year. We had three girls, just three, but when we told the suckers they would get a show they got a show. And we didn't have a girl who had stretch marks the way Laura had. If the light is bright they show and the men don't like that. They come inside to get their eyes knocked out and they don't want to look at some girl who is marked up."
It was tough at this time of the year to get a good girl. Most of them who had any talent at all had their spots and they usually stayed until the end of the season.
They wanted now naked girls up there on the platform, shaking it wild and hot and maybe letting the men touch them.
"I'll talk to Ben again," he said. "If he doesn't want Laura to show herself off why doesn't he pull her out."
"She likes to get out in front of the customers."
"Maybe so."
"And she wouldn't stop if he didn't control her. We talked it over, just the two of us, and we know what we ought to be doing. The first act we should go down to bras and panties and the next trip around they should come off too."
"I guess that wouldn't bother you none, huh?"
She leaned over far enough to kiss him on the mouth. She had warm lips, soft and wet, and when she kissed him she kept them moving, forcing his mouth open. The tip of her tongue became a sensual thing of desire on his.
"There's only one thing that's bothering me right now, Earl."
"Tell me about it then."
"You know you bother me and I think you get a kick out of teasing, almost as much kick as you get the other way."
"They say if you wait for something that it gets better and better while you expect it to happen."
"If you don't wait too long maybe. I used to get with a boy once and he always waited too long."
He knew what she meant. It had happened to him once.
"Damn," he said as he turned toward Valerie.
He could see her breasts rise and fall as she breathed, her hand still upon him and her lips curved in a smile. Her breasts were big. One night half drunk, he had measure them and they had come out an even thirty nine. Her flesh was firm, no sag to it at all.
"Sometimes I want your baby," she said, moving in close to him. "Like now, tor instano honey."
"You've got bricks in your head."
"Why? Because I'd like to have something that's mine?"
"Look at Laura. Three kids already and there's probably another one in the oven. She hasn't finished a season in the last couple of years."
"Who says she isn't happy."
"I don't know, ask her. She was knocked up not me."
"She's happy." Valerie decided, pulling his hand to her breast. "And Ben hasn't let her down. You can say that for Ben. He doesn't deny his own family. He pays steady for what he starts."
"He's a fool though."
"What should he do, leave?"
"No, I didn't say that."
"Would you leave me if I got that way?"
"You get that way and it'll be by somebody else."
She didn't say anything but she pulled his head down and she started kissing him, pulling him in tight and hard, the moans deep in her throat and her mouth demanding. Her body started to gyrate a rhythm of desire.
"Oh man, hey," he said thickly.
"Oh man," she repeated, clinging to him, such a big boy."
They merged, two bodies in one, and he knew it was wrong, terribly wrong, knew that anything could happen, knew that this was insanity. She didn't want him for an hour, just forever.
There had been a lot of girls for him the past, some of them pretty good and some of them not so good, but Valerie was always good, sending a powerful surge of need through his loins.
Again and again he squeezed into her, knew her as he had never known her before this night.
"That was foolish," he said afterward as he lay beside her.
"It was wonderful, Earl."
"You won't think so if you blow up."
"I trust you, you big bugger."
Trust him? Should any girl trust him? He doubted it. He had slept with married women and he had slept with single girls and not once had he thought of his relationships with them in terms of marriage. Most of them had been working girls, girls with average jobs, and they had wanted to trade their freedom for an apartment or a house of their own.
He closed his eyes and listened to the sound of the rain on the roof. If they got rained out here in Burnside it would be tough to move on. Most of the performers were discouraged and hardly any of them had enough money to move again. The. drivers had to be paid and fuel and repairs cost dough. You could go just so long and then you tell apart if it rained.
Sleep came over him, the sleep of emotional exhaustion, and he had a dream. The show-the dream didn't tell him for what reason-and that left him as top dog, running things the way he wanted to run them. He had some girls for the show, real honeys-well, maybe Valerie was one of them-and they wore low cut gowns out front that were hard to keep up. There was one girl with a huge bust and she had a cleavage as deep as a valley between two mountains, a valley of flesh. The crowd was down below him, a big crowd, and the rain was gone. Overhead the stars were bright but you couldn't see much of them because of the lights on the midway. In the background there was some music, the kind of music to make love by, and the girls were swaying their bodies, the girl with the big breasts fighting to keep her gown in place-not fighting too hard, however-and the men were pushing in close.
Just then the girls faded from his dream and he was awake. He wasn't dreaming any longer. He was sitting up and talking, more asleep than awake, and Laura Hall was there in the little room with them, her eyes wide and frightened and the words spilling out of her mouth.
"He had it," she said. "Just now, Ben had it. A heart attack and he looks dead. You've got to come with me Earl. You've got to do something."
He got up quickly. Now more awake than he had been. He reached for his shorts and T shirt. As he got into them he regarded her hair and how it fell around her face. He could tell that she wasn't paying any attention to him and he could see the tears that clouded her eyes.
"You go on back with him," he said. "I'll be right along. And you'd better call a doctor. Get in touch with the police. They can always locate a doctor."
"All right," she said as she turned away. "All right. But hurry. I've never seen anybody die."
He heard the outer door close and he stepped into his pants.
"I knew this was going to happen," Valerie said from the bed behind him.
"How did you know?"
She didn't say how.
"I like Ben. I hope he'll be all right."
The rain had began to stop when Earl left, and that was good for business. But Ben might be on his last leg and never see another sun set.
CHAPTER TWO
May Hardwicke had her Tuesdays free for herself to do as she thought fit. This was Aunt Denton's day out and May could roam around the house stark naked. Aunt Denton lived in, taking care of May when she was home from school and the aunt was a square pain, and a deterrant to wanton voluptuous naked freedom.
"You'd better watch ,Bill," her aunt often told her. "He's just spoiled and he isn't up to any good with you."
May laughed to herself as she went for the liquor. If Aunt Denton could see them in the back of Bill's car she wouldn't just think that Bill wasn't up to any good. She'd know that as a stud lover, physically, he was way out in lots of ways.
There was a bottle on top of the liquor cabinet and May poured a shot. It was early in the day to be drinking, ear her than she usually did, but Bill would be along about noon and then they would have a time of it Aunt Denton always spent the day with her friend on the other side of town and they could really mow the grass up in her bedroom, neither one of them dressed in anything and their desires boiling all the way.
She sat down on the sofa still holding part of her drink, and she wondered why she went with Bill. Oh, he had money, money to burn, but there were other fellows in town who had money and she could have had just about any one of them she might have wanted. When she went down to the pool, for forty-two inch breasts covered as little as possible, the males stopped swimming and started staring at her bikini.
"You ought to get a different suit," Aunt Denton had told her.
"What's wrong with this one?"
"It shows most of what you've got."
May had forgotten the discussion until now and she didn't care about the suit. When she had been in her teens she had been as big as most women and at seventeeen she had been bigger than most. Now at the age of twenty they stuck out like twin melons, yet they were tilted and firm and she didn't have to wear a bra.
With her free hand she touched one of them, sort of cupping it, and she thought of the time when she had been sixteen and she had spent her last summer with her father's show.
"Don't wear short shorts," her father had told her.
"How come? Some of the others do."
"I know but-well, you're rather overly developed for your age and some of these men may-. I don't want them getting any ideas about you and I don't want you getting any about them either."
Her father hadn't told her anything about sex, and she had been pretty dumb about it. Some of the girls in school had talked of sex, saying that it was just swell with the right guy, but she had been so ignorant about the subject that little of the talk had meant anything to her. But at sixteen she had been such a long ways from knowing what she should have known.
That last summer had been good-until possibly that night and she was sorry that her father had kept her away from it since then.
"The way I live is no life for a gal," he had said during her final year in boarding school. "You should have regular friends and be settled. I know a woman I can get and she can stay with you during the summer months."
She hadn't seen much of her father since then, not even when she came home on winter vacation when Aunt Denton opened up the house for her, and when she had suggested that she visit him he had come up with one excuse after another. She strongly suspected that he was living with some girl and she didn't blame him for that. Even at his age he probably had some sex drive left. And there was only one way for him to take care of his needs. Sometimes she wondered if the girl was old or young but, actually, she didn't wonder about it too much. She missed seeing him, of constantly growing away from her father, but he was good to her and he sent her money right along. The year before had been a fair year on the road and he had bought her a convertible car.
"Now you're in my class," Bill had said.
But it hadn't put her in his class and she had known it. Just owning a good car hadn't put her in the class with any of the others. Despite the nice house they had her father was still an outsider and the older residents looked down on them. Any date she was offered was for one thing only and she was aware of that. Bill had probably talked and the fellows knew that she didn't say no, that she liked what they did for her perhaps even more than what she did for them.
"You're stacked," Dave Moore had told her that last summer.
"Leave me alone."
"You've got a pair of lamps on you. And no fat. You're all woman up and down."
"Cut it out or I'll tell my father, Dave."
"I should run because of that?"
Dave Moore had been in his late twenties, a giant of a man, and it had been said along the midway that he had forced more than one girl to go the limit. He had bragged that they might fight him at first, like those who were married and who wanted to remain true, but that they always came back for more once they had a sample.
One night her father had gone ahead to see about some business in a distant town and she had been alone. It had been a hot night and she had stretched out nude on her bed, the sweat pushing out of her skin and the sounds of the music drifting outside.
She hadn't known he was there until he was standing over her, fumbling for the light, the smell of whiskey strong in the tiny wagon.
"I promised myself I was gonna have you,"
Dave Moore had said as the light came on."
"And I'm gonna. I'm gonna give you somethin' to remember me by baby-"
She had reached for the sheet, hoping to cover herself, but he had ripped it aside with one hand and working at his own clothes with the other.
Of course she could have screamed and she supposed later that she should have, but she had been too frightened to even think about it as he stood there nude.
She had closed her eyes, and she had remembered that the girls in school had said it hurt the first time.
She had started fighting him as he came to her though, his hot breath on her face and his mouth seeking hers. She had hurt him some but he had been too much for her and then she had felt the pain, her whole body ripped by him. But the pain hadn't been unpleasant, soon she had lost die sense of pain and she had found something, else something that had been driving her with the fury of a stallion. Again and again she had cried out with pleasure, the emotions of her body separated from all reason by then.
The twirls had been right about Dave Moore with their gossip.
Only minutes later, she had asked him to be good to her again.
After that she had seen him whenever she could get away from her father and often they had used the seat of Dave's truck for their love.
"Just don't give me a kid," she would say. I'm only a teen-ager and I don't want any just yet. I'll die."
Boarding school had been terrible following this, all girls and no chance of meeting any boys, but the first year in college had been fine. The first night out with a boy she went all the way with him, eager to have him please her, and the boy had been surprised.
"This is some present," he had said.
"Make the most of it."
He had undressed her there in the woods and then he had taken her on the leafy ground. It had been three in the morning before she had gotten into her clothes and they had left for her dorm.
Now she got up from the sofa and went to the cabinet to get another drink. She guessed that she wasn't any good-only in one way. Bill said she in that special way and so did the boys. She never lacked for a date and if she could get away for a weekend she sometimes went to a hotel with one of them, checking in early and hardly leaving the room until Sunday afternoon. She liked a room better than a car but no matter where she made love it always sent her. That was why she had dated Bill during the past two years. He always sent her, sent her down that wonderful jumpy road.
"Marry me," Bill kept saying.
She had to admit that she thought about it. His parents might not approve of her but Bill had plenty of money in his own right and living with him might not be too bad. She was a little sick of college and she couldn't see much sense to what she was doing. For all she could see it was a waste of her father's money. If she didn't marry she would return to the show train after graduation. There were a lot of things she could do to help him and he had been good to her, keeping this house so she had a place to stay when she came home and sending her money and buying her that car. She had another drink and she knew that she missed the circus life, the moving every week and the challenges that had to be met-not only the physical challenges but the challenges of making an income. Regardless of what she had to do she would be willing to assist him. Like the girls in the girlie show, for instance. They had always fascinated her, their outer warmth and their hardness inside. They got out front and sheok it for the customers and when they got the men inside they shook it even more. She wasn't much of a dancer, not in a sexy way, but she had the equipment and the dancing was only part of it. When she had been with them they had gone down naked in the towns where they could and she didn't think she would mind doing that. A lot of men had seen her in the nude and a few more wouldn't matter. All it was, was a show and it didn't have to go beyond that. Sure, some of the girls slept around for money but they were tramps. If a beautiful girl fired up a man until he had to go out and give his wife or girl friend some hard hell, she had done her job, she figured.
Leaving her empty glass on the cabinet she turned and started upstairs. Not that Bill wouldn't see all there was to see before he got finished with her for the day, but it was more fun if she was dressed and he had to help her get out of her clothes as a tease.
Once she was in her room she looked at herself in the full length mirror on the back of the door. She had it all right. Several times she had thought of having her brunette hair bleached but she hadn't done anything about it. When she put one side back behind her ear it made her very lovely face seem not quite so full and it caused a glint to come into her eyes, like she was all hell to be had. Bill and other men had told her that she had a glorious face, as well as a tremendous body. Her nose was small, and her lips were always curved sensually and full. Just at that moment she smiled. Bill and the other men didn't want her face. They wanted something else and only if a man was a smart aleck with her did she refuse.
Turning a little she thrust out her breasts, their tips presently at ease, their centers that held the red fire of the tips all wrapped up and still.
She remembered three or four weeks ago that the top part of her suit had become undone at the pool and the men had gotten a real thrill.
"I'd have fainted," one girl had confided to her.
"How come? You can buy almost any man's magazine and find a pair of naked breasts. They just like it better when it's right there in front of them all to see in 3D."
It was true or, anyway, she thought it was true. Bill bought the magazines and all of them went in for the two big parts on a girl. If she ever married and she had a kid she guessed she'd nurse it.
Thinking of marriage and what it meant, getting bigger and bigger with a seed that kept growing, she put her hands to her stomach and she smiled again as she did so. She didn't have to pull it in to keep it flat because she was small there. She wondered how big she would get if she ever got big and the thought rather frightened her.
Well, she told herself, she had been lucky, lucky more than once. The first time she had been lucky with Dave Moore and there had been times after that, careless moments. The only thing she didn't like about her body was her hips. They were thirty-eight inches, thirty-eight inches that rolled and bounced just a little when she walked. She thought she ought to be thirty-six and once she had gone on a diet to try and get that way but the diet hadn't done any good.
"Wait until tomorrow," Bill had said the night before.
They had been parked on a lonely country road and they had been in the back seat of her car.
"Who wants to wait until tomorrow?" she had countered.
"Why don't you let that old dame go out to the movies? If she wasn't there we could really shack up good."
"I don't have anything to say about it."
"She doesn't like me," he said.
"So what? You aren't getting anything from her, are you?"
"Stop kidding, nobody ever got anything from her."
She walked to the dresser and found a bra, her favorite one. The cups were the right size and the thing didn't hurt her, not even when she had to reach up and stretch for something. Next came the panties, a pair with Bill's name on the side. He had bought them for her and he was crazy about them. She didn't know why. It seemed to be sort of nuts but maybe his name so close to her was sexy.
In less than an hour he would be stripping her naked and all of this work was a waste of time.
The dress which she selected was a number that was about-two sizes too small and which highlighted every curve that she had. It was low in front, the tunnel of love between her breasts partially exposed, and when she took a deep breath she felt the strain on the fabric.
Back downstairs she had another drink, a bigger one than before, and she lit a cigarette. Outside the sky was clearing from the recent rain and it felt good to have the sunlight spill in through the windows. She hadn't heard from her father in a couple of weeks. She hoped that it was clear on the road for him and that he was doing all right. His last letter had said that he had been caught in bad weather, and that wasn't good. Every night had to count for him. If the rain came down the expenses piled up.
She sighed and hit the bottle again. Monday, she thought. Monday with Aunt Denton out of the house and it would be the same as always. First there would be a few drinks, maybe some talk, and then there would be a lot of love. A couple of times he had made her there in the living room on the sofa but generally they went up to her room, kissing and undressing each other and going out of their minds. Then, before he was with her, it would be an ecstacy of torture, her passion like a great fire.
"Don't keep me waiting any longer," she would plead frantically.
"I thought you liked to wait."
"Until I'm ready but not beyond that."
That was the trouble with her. She was always ready. Day or night she was ready, willing and able. How she'd like to be one of those girls in the show. She'd show the guys something they hadn't seen.
She relaxed near the cabinet, the bottle handy, and she knew that she wasn't ready for marriage to Bill or to anybody else. That Dave Moore had lit the bomb and it was still going off. Even some of the boys she hadn't cared about had gotten their share. She knew what they said about her. They said she was a bum. Maybe you didn't have to take money to be a bum. And maybe if a girl gave herself to enough men she found the right one.
She was on her seventh drink when the front door opened and Bill came in. He gave her a wide smile.
Bill wasn't a terribly big man, a few inches under six feet, but he had broad shoulders and when he took her in his arms she thought he was going to break her ribs. His hands went down to the small of her back on to her buttocks pulling her into him.
"We've got time," she said, removing her lips from his mouth and leaning backward. "This isn't a case where you have to rape the girl."
He kissed her again, harder against her than before, and then he let her rump go then.
"You into the drinks already?" he wanted to know.
"Just a few."
He walked over to the bottle and helped himself to one.
"Batteries need charging."
"You know better than that," she said. "The trouble with me is I've got too much life in mine yet."
She had looked forward to this wild day with him. Maybe it was what she had been drinking. She didn't know. She just knew in that instant that she wanted to be alone, that she wanted to be able to think. Not think just about today but tomorrow. The sooner the better she was trying to make a decision.
"We ought to get straightened out," she said to Bill. "Seriously. This is the second summer for us and we're right where we started, aren't we?"
The next shot he poured was a bigger one.
"You name it and you can have it, May. If you're ready to settle down I'm ready to do it with you. The folks might not approve but I've got the money that was left to me and we wouldn't have any worries. We can drink and make love and kick the sides out of the barn if we want."
She was close to what he wanted, close to giving in, close to giving up the life of a pampered girl and of becoming a wife who had only one thing to offer.
"Well, Bill, I don't."
She stopped talking as the phone rang. It was strange for the phone to ring since she didn't have any local friends, and the fellows knew that she wasn't avilable to them.
"Somebody selling something," Bill said as she started for the phone.
She picked up the phone. It was long distance and the operator wanted her.
"I'm May Hardwicke," she said.
And then some fellow by the name of Earl Wyatt was one the line saying hadn't her father mentioned him in some of his letter? and this Wyatt was telling her that her father was in a hospital and to come as soon as possible to his side.
"I'll show up."
After he had hung up she thought to herself, that she had wanted to return to him but not like this.
CHAPTER THREE
She was restless, and couldn't read or sit still. She paced the room, over and over. The rain had stopped and she could hear the men working away.
Dave Moore should be with them on the crew picking up spending money when he could, but if he knew Earl was out, like it had been a couple of times before, he would be in with her and laying her body. She wasn't afraid of him. He was big all right, not as big as Earl. His main job was driving a trailer but he was always promoting some money on the side. Nights when he didn't do anything he would come into the girlie show and he would jus t stand and stare, raping the girls with his eves.
"He's a heller," Laura Hall had told Valerie, 'he'd go to bed with anything any hour round the clock."
Valerie didn't think much of Laura but she guessed that she wasn't anybody to judge another person. She wasn't exactly moral herself and she hadn't been since she had been seventeen and she had been living with her parents on a farm.
"Got a new man coming to work," her father had announced one night. "Young and strong and he was brought up on a farm. He ought to be all right, better than any of the others."
Valerie had seen the others and they hadn't been anything to brag about.
The new man had arrived the next morning, carrying his belonging in a farmer on the next farm had been sending over a cow to mate with her father's bull and she had crawled upstairs in the barn to watch. It hadn't been the first time that she had watched and the procedure had always proved fascinating to her.
'Good show," somebody behind her had said.
She had turned quickly, feeling trapped, and she had seen that it was the new man, his body stripped to the waist and his big chest covered with hair that excited her.
"I was only looking for any gloves my dad might have left up here," she had said.
"Hay is good for a lot of things. I can tell you."
She hadn't known what he had meant and she had gotten out of there right away, stumbling down the stairs, ashamed that he had found her and that he had known what she was interested in. For the rest of the day she had stayed in the house, pleading sickness when it was time to eat so that she wouldn't have to see him.
But she hadn't been able to avoid him for long and sometimes at night she had been alone in the house with him when her father and mother had driven to some other farm to play cards.
"Stay in your room and lock your door," her mother had said. "That fellow would just as soon stretch you out as look at you. And that doesn't go with his job. If he was to have anybody he can go somewhere else."
Valerie had known that the Koby girl gave herself away to the boys from town, guys who drove out and parked with her not far from the tarm, and she had known something about sex. Her mother hadn't hidden any of the facts from her or avoided any questions and she had known how a girl got a baby. A girl got a baby like the bull gave a cow a calf and somehow it had seemed dirty, like the male got all the pleasure and the female got all the trouble. Yet some nights she had heard her mother with her father, just across the hall and the door open.
And she had noticed the new man more and more, noticed the power in his shoulders and the way he had tipped his head to one side when he talked.
One night when they had been alone in the house-it had been a farmer's meeting that night-she had left her room and he had just been coming out of the bath. He hadn't had anything on, all naked and big, and she hadn't been able to stop looking at him.
"I thought you were downstairs," he had said walking up to her.
"I was in my bed."
"Haven't you ever seen a man before?"
Her mouth had been thick and dry suddenly
"No, not before, Not like that way you are now."
He had come right up close to her and something had told her that he wanted her in that special way that a man wanted a girl.
"I'd like to see you," he had said. "Without the shorts and halter. I'd like to see if those bumps are real or if you've got pads in there or something." He had grabbed her by the shoulders then. Your folks are out. They wouldn't know."
She had been kissed before, several times by boys who had taken her to school dances, but she hadn't been kissed the way he kissed. And she hadn't been held that way either. He had lifted her to him, driving the air out of her lungs, making her wonder if she would ever breathe again, and his mouth had crushed her lips, his mouth open and the up of his tongue trying to get in between her teeth. She had opened her mouth, gasping, and then suddenly she had been kissing Turn back, feeling him against her and knowing just what he was like as she clung to his maleness.
Seconds later they had been in her room and he had been untying her bra, swearing at the bow in back, and then her breasts had been freed to his amazed eyes.
"You've got plenty," he had said as he had pushed her down on the bed.
Even now, thinking about it, she couldn't remember all that had happened, remembering only that he had removed her shorts and that he had come after her.
"Love me," she had implored, "Love me good."
Well, it had been good, all of it good, every. second of it. They had been like that, locked together, finding each other time after time, when her mother had appeared in the doorway suddenly, and her mother had let out a scream.
She had left home that night, the names they had called her still ringing in her ears, and she had hitched into town with the young man who had been her first. They had spent the rest of the night in a hotel, taking their love in each other's arms, everything else forgotten for that big, moment.
The next night he had taken her to a road show and she had been curious about the girlie show. The girls in the show hadn't been too pretty and she had thought she could do what they could. She had seen the man who owned the show and he had hired her on the spot.
She had gone on the very next evening and she had been surprised to see her father out front, staring up at the other girls and getting a cheap thrill. He had turned away, tears in his eyes, and she hadn't seen him since.
That had been years before, she had lied about her age to get her first job and the show had been her fife since then.
She thought of her relationship with Earl, of living with him in his trailer, and it had been a satisfactory one. He was smart and she was rapidly approaching the point when she wanted to give up showing herself to any man who had the price. She was older now, four years older, and there were times when she thought of having a husband and a home and of getting herself with a child about every second or third year. She couldn't see having them one right after the other the way Laura Hall did but if Earl got her it wouldn't hurt her feelings. He wasn't that kind to walk out on a girl and she thought she could kind of depend on him to do the' right thing by her. When she thought of the show closing for the year and of losing him it made her more than a little sad. That meant another man, maybe some man who was married, and there was always the chance of getting caught. More than one girl got caught Some girl was getting caught every day, getting caught and half killing herself with tears.
The trailer door opened and Laura Hall came in. She looked terrible, like she had been up two nights in a row. She wore a tight dress that curved down over her body.
"I'm scared," she said as she sat down.
"It's bad enough," Valerie agreed.
"What happenes to the kid if he dies?"
"You should have thought of that before."
"And I think he has another on the way." Laura lit a cigarette.
"You have anything to show that he's their father?"
"Only that he sent me money and he paid the hospital bills."
"That isn't enough. He could have done that out of the kindness of his heart. What you need is some statement from him and then if he died you'd have a claim on the show. A man's kids have to be taken care of, married or not."
Without asking Laura got up and turned off the record player.
"I don't want to go through it again," she said. "One more kid to look after would just about kill me. At twenty-eight I don't have much longer in this racket. The guys want them young and with a shape like yours. I never was too big in the bust, and I was lucky to get along. The Sly who got me into it gave me a kid right off e bat but I lost that one. Funny thing is that I wanted to lose it and then after it was gone I was sorry." She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. "I didn't want to go so far, not as far as I've gone with Ben."
"If It wasn't for you we'd have a better show," Valerie said. "Or if it wasn't for Ben. I don't know. You almost have to strip in the towns where you can or you don't get any business. Why should a guy pay to see a girl in scanty clothes? They can go to almost any beach and see just about the same thing."
"It's Ben's doings. It's none of mine. The second show I was in you had to go out back with the guys if they had the money. You got maybe four guys a night and you got to keep half of the five each one paid. It was a rotten way to make a living but what way isn't rotten? You give it away or you sell it and you get the same thing from the men."
Laura kept on talking, talking about nothing, and she asked for a drink but the bottle was empty. Earl had finished it the night before, but he could drink a lot and it hadn't stopped him any. Valerie had taken a shower, once the water had been hooked up, and he had helped her with it, kissing her and sending the throb all through her. In the end he'd taken her soaking wet on the bed and she'd had to change the sheet afterward.
Laura didn't stay too long and she was glad when the girl was gone. Valerie worked with Laura, sharing die dressing room with her, but she couldn't say that she liked her. Five nights out of six Laura couldn't get into the mood for her act and that didn't help matters any. The men didn't pay out good money to see some dame who was half drunk. They paid for what they didn't get in the Big Revue show and once they got stuck they told their friends not to bother with it.
Most of the shows she had been with had carried two girlie revues both of them competing against each other to get business, but the only reason Ben had one was because it was expected of him. What was it without a flesh show?
"No naked uncoverings," Ben had said when he had hired her. "Some of the girls like to take it off but that doesn't go with me. I run a clean show."
She had been staring out of the window and when she turned she heard the door open and close.
"Rain stopped," Dave Moore said. "What are you doing in here?" He grinned and reached in his pocket for a cigarette.
"Heard Earl rode into town with Ben and thought you might be a little bit lonely."
"I can sutler with my own company, thank you."
"You can go nuts trying that." He grinned again. "You find a girl just wearing a robe and you know that she's waiting for something to happen to her." He lit the cigarette and wiped some sweat off. "They read my palm last week and said I was going to get to know some blonde."
"Here's one blonde you won't get to know so good."
"Oh, I wouldn't count on that. I've been with Ben a number of years, since I got out of construction, and there hasn't been a dame vet who didn't come back the second time."
"Earl wouldn't like it if he knew you were in here."
He found a chair and sat down. "You gonna tell him?"
"I will if you don't leave." She remembered that the robe was too tight, the split in it starting at the bottom and working up high on her legs, and she brought her legs together. "Earl's a big man," she reminded him. "He's very big and he can be short on temper."
Dave Moore shrugged.
"I don't scare none, baby. Maybe he's big but I can hold my own with any guy. The way I figure it if a dame is passing it around I want my share. And I've watched you nights in the tent, watching you bounce when you go into your dance and kind of wanting to get my hands on you." He reached into his back pocket. "I've got a flask, let's have a drink and forget the damned world."
"Thanks but I don't want any."
He uncapped the pint flash, and took a drink directly from it.
"Maybe you want something else, huh?"
She moved away from the window.
"Shut up, she said, taking short steps so that the robe wouldn't fly open. But it did. It opened up all the way.
"You've got good legs, baby. Why don't you take off your robe and let me see where they lead to?"
"What do you think this is?"
"I don't know what I think it is but I know what it's going to be."
"Don't fool yourself, big boy."
"Aw, come on. You trying to make it rough on me?"
"I don't care how it is for you, you clod."
But she did care. Earl was in town and he wouldn't know anything about it. Sometimes a girl had to experience another man to appreciate the one she had. And if he gave her what he had given some of the other girls she would never know.
"So we'll have a drink," she said as she walked over to him.
"Take off the robe," he said again.
"You're going to give me that drink or not? You think this is a strip act-?"
"I think you're getting yours regular and I think you're a sucker. He wouldn't marry you if you were as big as this room."
"Let me worry about that."
"Go ahead and worry. It's no skin off my knees."
He finally gave her the drink, making her stand real close to him, one of his hands at her back, his arm around her, and his other hand in front, under the robe, starting at her knee. She told herself that she was a fool, that this was the wildest thing she had ever done, but she swallowed a long drink and she thrilled to the touch of his hand on her. She wouldn't stop until he could no longer continue or stand up after he asked her once more about letting out of her robe.
"Supposing I lock the door?" she asked.
"I don't care what you lock as long as you don't lock me out. What I've got for you has been waiting a long time, baby."
She locked the door. Laura Hall might come back but she didn't get out of her robe right away. What she was doing wasn't right and she knew that it wasn't right. She belonged to Earl, at least for the season, and she should have been satisfied.
"Strip," he commanded as they finished the bottle.
She laughed at him, standing in the middle of the room, and then she untied the belt and slipped out of the robe. Laughing she ran to the rear of the trailer and flung herself down on the bed. She lay there for a moment alone and she tried to blame the drinks but she knew that the liquor wasn't at fault. The fault was inside of her, buried deep, and only a man could find it.
"Oh baby," he said as he entered the room. "Oh baby, you're really something."
And then he was on her, all of him male, all that was man finding all that was woman, all their violence finding the tenderness to match it.
"Please," she begged later. Don't leave me-now."
He kissed her briefly.
"Why should I stay, baby?"
"There might be a reason." She returned his kiss. "The same reason as before."
"Yeah, and I get caught in here."
She didn't want that, not the way things had been with Earl. She was sure of him-perhaps she loved him-but after all he wasn't there. He hadn't been in the trailer when she had needed him, needed somebody. She had to be held tightly so that she knew she was wanted. Still, she guessed that she hadn't ought to be sure of Earl. She had seen it happen throughout the seasons, people who met, lived together and then parted. She had seen the tears and the bitterness, the frustration that followed the parting, the love that often changed to hate. She couldn't understand the hate part. Once you loved it shouldn't change, bright hopes being replaced by despair. But things did change. People changed. What was true might not be true tomorrow. You had to accept that. Only a few minutes before she hadn't been eager to have anything to do with Dave Moore and now she was stretched out on the bed for him. The favors that belonged to Earl had been given carelessly and without heed, without regret. How could she be like that? What was wrong with her?
Reaching over she placed one hand upon his chest. It rose and fell as he breathed.
No good, that was her all right.
Well, maybe she wasn't. No good at all. A tramp who walked through life and took what she could get. She smiled and dug her fingers down into his chest. There was one thing that she wasn't doing without, the strange and wonderful thing that almost everybody said should only come with marriage. Still, how many girls were like that? How many waited? She didn't know. There was hardly any way that she could have known.
"You won't get caught," she said to him. "Anyway, I thought you had some guts."
"I've got guts."
She felt like teasing him.
"I'd fight over anything. But what's the sense when it isn't necessary? What's it prove?"
"Oh, I was only wondering."
"You're his woman."
"Maybe."
Dave Moore yawned.
"This is bad about Ben," he said. "First it was the weather and now his heart, they never come back all the way. This is a tough life and there's the worry on top of it."
She thought about it, about the show closing, of being out of work.
"It scares me," she admitted.
He laughed.
"Dook, with what you've got you can always make out."
"I know what you mean."
"It could be worse. I know of some girls who go south the winter and the northern resorts during the summer. Or you push drinks and make what you need after the bar closes."
"I'd never do that."
"Why is it different than this?"
She removed her hand from his chest, ran it down over her breasts to her thighs. She had yielded to him and she was beginning to feel a little sorry that she had. There was nothing solid between her and Earl. The relationship was a temporary affair and one day it would be finished. Very few girls realized marriage out of such a situation. The man found somebody else or drifted on.
"I should be getting to work," Dave said but he made no effort to leave the bed. He didn't sound as though he wanted to work. They only did what they had to do. "But it'll keep," he added. "Nobody's going to steal it from me."
She stretched, thrusting the mounds of her breasts upward. For a second she held the position, looking down at herself, and then she turned her head to glance at him.
"I'd hate to be a husband and have a wife near you," she told him.
"So what?"
"Don't you care about anybody else?"
"Does it pay to-?"
"It could."
"Not in this racket. You have to be out for yourself." He leaned over to kiss her. "Baby, those guys who go to your show don't know what they're missing."
"Sometimes I think they're dirty."
"Dirty with dough."
"Once in a while I'd like to get out of this. Maybe I would."
" What-' s stopping you?"
"Lots of things but mostly dough."
"You're not making a fortune."
'Are you?"
"No."
She stretched again and her breasts rose big and hard.
"Well, it could be worse. And it's all I know. I'd die in some factory. Forty bucks a week and the boss with his hands. Those who want it can have it."
She crept close to him, desire rising inside of her. He felt solid. She knew that it was wrong, the whole thing was wrong, but she was powerless to control the raging torrent inside of her.
She lived for those moments in her life when her excitement spun in a crazy lunging pattern of lust and the plea for fullfillment. Even with Earl, knowing him so well and all, it didn't die. Oh, maybe it died for a little bit but in a short time it was born all over again.
"Please," she said and kissed him fully.
He grinned, pulling away from the kiss for just a second.
"Baby, it's no wonder Earl is nuts about you."
"Oh, shut up."
She listened only to his heavy breathing as he took her, bring the same lust thrills to her as before and his stark male organ pounded her and later, gave way to the ecstatic spasms of his completion.
"Don't leave me," she said as he withdrew from her and got up to dress and leave.
He looked down at her in astonishment. "I'm only human kid. I can hardly walk now, you've drained me of everything I've got."
He did leave her and she rolled over and tried to comfort herself from her unhappiness.
CHAPTER FOUR
Earl had spent quite a lot of time in the waiting room. He was reading a Newspaper and one of the articles that he was reading was about a sex club where all kinds of perversions had taken place, and they were all young teenagers. He didn't think much of that situation.
He threw the paper aside. Ben hadn't looked or acted very good on the way in and he was worried about Ben. Part of what was wrong with Ben might have been his own fault, not resting when he had been told to rest and getting upset about things. Of course Ben had had a lot of worries, like the rain and all that, but he couldn't change the weather by digging a hole in the ground for himself and it was senseless to try and fight something that couldn't be fought. Earl blamed Laura for some of it, not leaving Ben alone when he should have been left alone, but that only followed because he didn't think much of Laura. Laura could be had by any man who wanted to have her and if Ben thought he was the only one who had gone the route Ben was crazy. A girl like Laura couldn't be trusted any further than the next bed.
He turned his head, looking out of the window, and he saw that the sun was bright and hot. The heat brought showers with it. Just the possibility of rain kept customers from coming.
A girl passed in front of the door and even with the uniform she had a figure, a figure that was all movement and curves. It was the kind of a shape that a girlie show could use and The Big Revue was in sad need of some girl who could jazz up business. Valerie was okay, any guy knew what she cried for when she went through her bumps and grinds. A man paid an extra buck and he wanted to see all of the girl, not just her bare stomach and the important parts of her covered up. The trouble with Ben was that he didn't believe in the girlie show and he thought a man should get what he wanted somewhere else. Most of the show owners wanted their skin shows hot and if a girl wouldn't go along with it the girl was dropped.
He decided that tonight was the night that they should put on a show that would burn down the tent. Laura's shape wasn't the best but the men went for a naked girl and if they got a run for their money they talked up what they had seen. As for Valerie he knew that she wouldn't object because she had done it in other shows where she had worked. It was just a job with Valerie and nothing bothered her , only getting excited when she was nude and wanting him only to please her.
He swore softly and tried to relax. If he ever gave her a kid he didn't know what he would do. She didn't have anybody except him. He didn't think that she slept with anybody else and if she ever got in that condition he'd have to assume the blame. The thought of marriage didn't impress him. He'd had a lot of other girls and he hadn't wanted to marry them, hadn't even thought about it except once. He hadn't stayed with any of the others as long as he had stayed with Valerie but if it hadn't been her it would have been somebody else, possible a variety and not so much of one thing. He knew everything that she did, the way her hands could make him desperate for her, and he remembered every sigh or moan that she had uttered. She was like a machine when he was loving her. She often asked for the near impossible stamina from him.
"Please," she would beg. "Please Earl, more, faster, oh yes."
He was still thinking about her when the doc finally came in.
"He's resting comfortably," the doctor said.
Earl got up.
"That's good. I thought he had hit the bucket."
The doctor shook his head.
"It isn't as serious as that, not yet. There's nothing abnormal about his heart-or I should say nothing that a long rest shouldn't cure. He ought to be here for two or three weeks."
"I see."
"I think you should see him for a few minutes. He's worried about the work and I don't want him to be."
"I phoned his daughter."
"I'm glad you did. At first he didn't want her to know but then he said he did. He thinks he's going to die and that isn't a healthy sign. That's one of the things that I don't like."
Earl walked down the hall. Ben's daughter ought to be arriving pretty soon and he wondered about the kind of a girl he would meet. Just from what he knew about her, of how she had been living off of Ben, he didn't think he would take to her.
Ben's room was at the end of the hall. The door was open and he went in.
"I'm glad you stayed," Ben said.
Ben looked very old and very tired there in the hospital bed. Earl sat down on a hard chair.
"You just take it easy," Earl said. "We can get along."
"You re going to have to look after things."
"All right."
"I don't have any money for you to work with and it isn't going to be easy."
"I'll manage."
"And fifty a week has to go to Laura for her kids. I pay that every week the year around.
She's been good to me, Earl, and I can't let her down."
"I'll see that she gets her fifty," Earl said.
Ben rocked his head from side to side.
"She may be that way again. She doesn't know for sure but she thinks she might be." Ben made a face. "I should have been more careful. I shouldn't have kept on giving her kids. The only thing is I thought a lot of her and it seemed right at the time. Until this year I was making my dough and I could afford them. But this year has been terrible. If we got a town where it was clear there was a strike or something." Ben forced a smile.
"Your daughter ought to be here any minute," he said. "I talked with her and she said she'd leave right away."
Ben's eyes looked sad.
"I feel sorry for her," he said. "This sickness is going to cost and the hospital and doctor bills have to be paid. Lucky I'm covered by insurance or they'd have been after me already for some dough. But it won't cover it all and if I have to go home after I leave the hospital it's all going to fall on your shoulders." He paused. "I've tried to keep May away from our show for' the past several years but maybe she's going to have to stay on and give you a hand."
"Whatever you say is O.K. with me."
"And look after her for me, Earl. Back home I knew she was all right, not getting into any trouble, but with a traveling show you can never tell. There's always some guy around who wants to have what he shouldn't."
"I'll keep my eye on her."
"Your next stop should be a good one. Their fair drew over a hundred thousand last year and even with another show working on the same grounds you ought to get your share."
"We'll do our best."
He continued to sit there, not saying very much, and Ben was rather quiet, the strain of the conversation plain on his face. It was pretty obvious that Ben was done with the carnival and that he wouldn't be able to go back to it again. He hadn't said anything about selling out but that would come later on.
Earl was sitting with his back to the door and he wasn't aware of the girl entering the room until she walked past him, her perfume filling his nose and her body swaying like she was moving to some wild music. He caught his breath and looked at her again. She had a really tremendous body and when she bent over to kiss Ben on the cheek he got a look down inside the front of her dress. She was wearing a bra all right but that didn't shut out the view of her cleavage and the deep crush of her breasts.
"I'm glad you came," Ben said.
"I made it as soon as I could."
Ben tried to sit up but he couldn't quite manage it.
"Earl, this is May, May meet Earl."
The girl's eyes regarded Earl intently and then she smiled.
"Glad to know you," she said.
Earl had lost his voice for the moment and he only nodded. All a man had to do was to look at this' babe and he'd be willing to hit her over the head with a club if he had to do it in order to take her into the bushes.
"We've been talking things over," Ben said. "Earl is going to manage the show and perhaps you should help him. Even after I get out of here I have to take it easy."
"That's all right with me," the girl said, those full breasts of hers lifting and falling. She gave Earl another smile. "Perhaps we can discuss it afterward?"
"There's a bar down the street," Earl said as he got up. "You may want to see your dad alone and I'll wait for you there."
He told Ben to take it slow, not to try and rush things and he got out of there. His legs were heavy and his guts were on fire.
In a matter of seconds she had burned into his veins.
He walked down the street, forgetting that his car was parked in the lot and forgetting everything except May Hardwicke. Any man, he decided, who had ever seen her would never be able to forget her. Only a dead man wouldn't want her to be with him, those huge breasts of hers thrust against his chest.
The bar was a small place, no tables or anything like that, and he sat down on a stool and ordered a drink. He looked at himself in the mirror over the back bar and grinned. Nobody could tell him that Ben's daughter had grown up to be so attractive and that she didn't know what it was all about. She probably had fun before. Half of the girls he had known had been willing if a guy treated them right.
He was on his fourth beer when she came in and sat down beside him.
"Ben doesn't .look good," she said. "No, he's had a bad time."
"I didn't know he was so worried about money, not until he told me when I asked him."
"Well, it's been a bad year."
"What can we do?"
"Stick with it. Even if he was loaded with money it wouldn't be right to pull in off the road and leave the other people stranded. They've suffered enough already. All we can hope for is good weather and big crowds."
"How do you think this town will turn out?"
"With good weather it should be okay, good spenders from all the statistics I've seen."
"He said you ran the girlie show for him." She turned her head to smile at Earl. "You must like that."
He shrugged as though it was just another job.
"I do the come on," he said. "I promise the suckers something that they never get on the inside and after the first night business falls off."
"Why? I thought men like to look at girls."
"We've only got two. The other one left."
"A man can only look at one girl at a time."
"Yeah, but he wants to see all of her."
"One girl is about the same as another, isn't she?"
He waved for another round of drinks.
"How wrong can you get? Saying one girl is the same as another is like saying that one man is the same as another man."
He got a good look at her from the side and she was all female. He guessed that she was not wearing a bra. He blinked his eyes against the sweat that crept into them. It would be something to get his hands on her, to pull away her clothes, to feel those breasts fill out in the palms of his hands. If he had somebody like that in the girlie show and she went down naked he'd have the men crawling up the walls.
"Yes, I suppose you're right. We're all different and we aren't always what we seem to be. like my father, for instance. I haven't seen much of him in recent years. I sort of figured he was living with somebody. But I didn't know that the girl was with him or that she'd had three of his kids."
"There may be another one on the way." She fingered her glass. "Can I call you Earl?"
"Sure, go on."
"Well-Earl, isn't it disgusting? I mean a man his age starting a family and not getting married? Think of the girl."
"He takes care of them all."
"Oh, I know that but it still isn't right."
He hadn't thought of it before but it was a good point. No matter what you did somebody always had to pay.
They had a few more drinks, not talking too much, and once their legs touched. He kind of pushed his leg against her and she pushed right back, her eyes serious as she regarded his face and a little smile of amusement on her lips.
"Is Dave Moore still with the show?" she asked after a while.
"He's still around."
Earl thought a strange light crept into her eyes.
"I remember him," she said. "I was only sixteen at the time but he was always after me with his paws."
He was feeling the drinks slightly.
"If you had half then what you have now he had plenty to chase after."
She moved her leg up and down against his.
"Don't get fresh," he said.
"I'm sorry."
She laughed and put one hand down to his leg, digging into the flesh then letting go and grabbing him again higher up.
"It's okay, Earl. I'm rather used to it by this time. A girl with a body like mine has to get used to it. You go to the beach and every guy within miles tries to make you into his bed-mate."
She removed her hand from his leg and he knew that he'd like to make her. Maybe she wouldn't be as hot as Valerie. He didn't think that any other girl could be that wild, but it would be good to take her in a moment of longing.
"What can I do?" she inquired. "What can I do to help?" It's four years since I was with the show and I didn't know much about it then. All I did was to walk around and watch."
"All your dad has left is the girlie show."
"And that isn't paying off, is it?"
"It could. We need another girl and we need to have them to bare bottom, when the men pay an extra buck. With just one show we should be stacking it every night when the weather is in our favor. But your father put the lid on and I have to lie to the men out front, making them think that they're going to get something that they never get. You can do it for one night, maybe a second, but then the guys just walk right on by you."
"He said he didn't want this girl he's been living with to go all the way."
"He told me that, but he's dead wrong. Who is she? I'll tell you who she is. She's a dame with her eye on a buck and she hooked him hard."
"People like that scare you about marriage. The girl has the kids and the man plays around on the side."
"I wouldn't know about it."
".My father said you shared your trailer with one of the girls."
"We have an understanding and it saves her some room rent."
"How much do you charge for her rent?"
"Not much."
"Just to love you up?"
"Isn't that personal?"
"Maybe but I get real personal at times. If I'm going to work with a man I want to know what he's like." She was silent while the bartender poured a couple of more drinks. "I don't go for the idea of living with my father's lover but I guess I'll have to put up with it."
"We've got to pull this show out of the hole, May."
"Yes, but how can we?"
"Well, we can start with The Big revue first. Maybe Laura Hall had three kids by him or she said they were his but that doesn't make her any better than the other girl."
"The girl you live with?"
"That's right, Valerie. We've got the backing of the authorities here in town and nobody bothers us. We'll give the men what we promise inside of the tent and we'll tear the place to shreds."
He hadn't thought that she would agree with him but she did, saying that the girls could go down to nothing on the second pitch, getting right up to the edge of the platform and letting the guys give them a little encouragement with their applause before they bumped out of their Vee patch.
"They shouldn't touch," he said.
"Did I mention that?"
"No, but I did."
"What if the girl doesn't care?"
"That can lead to complcations."
While he talked he let Ins glance wander over her, at the tilted fullness of her breasts and her stomach that fell away to hardly anything at all. Only once during his life had a girl ever effected him so suddenly.
"You could move into my trailer," he said. "There's room."
She laughed.
"That would be cozy, wouldn't it?"
"Well, why-"
"Who wants to break up a man's love life?"
They had another drink and he thought about it. He liked Valerie, maybe his feelings went so far as to love her a little bit, but he didn't owe her anything, he owed her the same as he owed some of the others before her-which was zero. She was good to go to at night but this girl at the bar would be better. On the other hand she was Ben's daughter and he had to consider that.
"You're staring," May said to him.
He lifted his eyes to her slightly smiling lips, lips that were full and red and wet.
"Sorry," he murmured. "I was thinking."
"About what, raping me, maybe?"
"You wouldn't be happy if I told you the truth."
"How can you be sure until you try?"
He turned his attention to his drink. In a way he almost wished that she hadn't come. Temptation was a terrible thing for a man to conquer and every curve of her body was like a searing flame in his guts. The flame spread outward, driving numbness down into his legs, then shot up to jab him in the chest.
"Now you don't even look at me," she said.
"Is that bad?"
"I don't know but it isn't a compliment to my legs or bosom."
"I don't know."
But he knew. He knew with all of the want that a man could have for a woman. It was a hungry want, a savage want and she was pushing hard.
"Hell," he said as he glanced at his watch. "What's the matter?"
"I've got to get out to the grounds and set up the record player. If I don't do it nobody else will."
"What about the girls?"
"In what way?"
"In how far they go."
"That's up to you, lady."
"No, it isn't. You're running things."
He nodded, thoughtfully.
"And we need dough," he said. "We need money or we'll fall apart."
"Then it has to be all the way for the girls tonight."
"Yes, I guess it does."
She had left her big car in the parking lot at the hospital, she mentioned as they walked they went to get the car. He held the car door for her and she showed him some leg as she got in. Her legs were long and smooth and curvy.
"See you," she said.
"Sure you will."
He found his own car and drove to the street. The car was all right but it had taken a beating pulling that trailer and he supposed he ought to have a new one. However, he couldn't afford it and it was rough on him.
He tried to forget about May Hardwicke but that was not possible. A man simply didn't forget a girl like May, she was one in a million, a real special deal.
CHAPTER FIVE
"I'll leave this place for you," Laura said after Earl had left but not before he had called her out front and said something to her.
"No, not at all," May replied. "I'll take this room and you can use the other one."
"That's very nice of you."
"Well, why not. You don't have to leave?"
"Because of having lived with your father."
"That isn't any reason. It was his fault as much as yours, maybe more. If he hadn't wanted you here you wouldn't have been here," May unzippered her dress and began to pull it over her head. "But I do think that both of you were very foolish. It's one thing to live with a man but it's something else to keep right on having kids by him. A girl your age ought to know better."
May placed the dress on top of the bed and stood there in her bra, panties, garter belt and stockings. Laura had been wearing a robe but now she took it off, revealing her naked body underneath. May regarded the other girl with interest. Her father had said that Laura might be pregnant again but if she was she wasn't along far enough to show. Laura's stomach was almost flat, only a little bulge below it, but she could see the stretch marks. Up above Laura had good breasts, and she had a pretty face. She didn't blame her father for having gone to bed with Laura, any more than she blamed herself for having gone to bed with Bill.
"You've got one hell of a shape," Laura said. "If I had somebody in The Big revue with a shape like that we'd really drag the men in. Valerie has a nice pair but I'm not so hot in that department."
"It's a strip show tonight, isn't it?"
"Yeah, that's what Earl told me out there in front. He says to take it off and throw the body around." Laura shrugged. "Well, it had to come. A man sneaks away from his wife and he comes here for one thing. If you aren't woman enough to show him he goes away sore." She shrugged again. "It's funny but they like them with big busters. I don't get that but I guess that's because I'm not a man and I can't think like one. I've seen girls who had breasts bigger than yours even but after they got in bed with a guy they didn't hardly know what to do."
"Any girl knows what to do. It just takes the right man."
"Well, perhaps. I don't know. I'm twenty-seven and still can't figure men out. All they want to do is have you run."
All of a sudden she started to cry. "Now he's sick and what am I going to do? ,Three kids and maybe a fourth one inside of me and what am I going to do?"
"We talked about that," May said, unhooking her bra. "He said he had a confession to make and then he told me everything. As long as the show rolls and the money keeps coming-which it hasn't lately-you and the kids will be taken care of. If-well, if anything should happen to him-the worst that could happen there's some insurance and I'll help you out."
"That's sweet of you. Most daughters would hate me."
May's breasts were free and proud as she bent to unhook her stockings.
"No, I don't hate you. I feel sorry for you and sorry for the kids. Anyways you look at it it's a mess but that doesn't lessen his obligation-or mine."
"Thanks, May."
She sat upon the bed and peeled the stockings down over her legs.
"Just think that he's going to get better," she said. "Just believe that he will."
"I'm trying to think and believe those things but I know that I'm going to miss him so. Nights when I finished with work he was always waiting for me and it was wonderful with him. He wasn't old, not in that way. Some nights he would wake me up two or three times and then it was better than ever."
"You'll have to forget that part of it." Laura lingered in the doorway. "How can I forget it?" she wanted to know. "You don't sleep with a man going on four years and then forget it in a couple of minutes."
"Perhaps not but you can try." Laura continued to linger. "You'd better watch that Earl," she said. "Watch, why?"
"Because I saw how he was looking at you, like he wanted me out of the trailer and he wanted you in bed."
"I thought he had his own girl?"
"Valerie? Maybe she is his girl but that doesn't mean that he can't have ideas and with the body you've got any man would get ideas."
Laura went on out and May began to unpack. Bill had helped her pack up in her bedroom but the packing had been delayed when he had shoved her down on the bed.
"Just once," he had begged.
"Bill, I'm in a hurry."
"Maybe you don't think I'm in a hurry. You leave me like this and I'll chase the first woman I meet. That's not good, is it? Me, a guy who's known so many girls. But I'm human, I'm male."
"Bill, I told you I was in a hurry. I want to pack, if you'll just-"
"Please!"
"Don't be an animal in a barnyard!"
"We aren't animals at all."
"I don't know. Sometimes I don't really know."
He had kissed her hard then.
"Look, honey, animals don't love. It's instinct with them. They don't marry. I've asked you to marry me. I meant it. I didn't go with you for just this one thing."
"Bill, you're-"
"Look. What can you do when you get there?"
That had been a big question and he'd helped her with the lock on one of her bags. Some of her stuff from college had still been inside of it. She'd thrown the whole mess on the floor. Winter things, spring things. She hadn't needed them at that time of the year. Some of them had been tight anyhow. Maybe she'd never have any use for them again.
"Bill, I can't tell you about that," she had replied. "I don't know what I can do. All I know is that he's sick. Do you understand that?" She'd cried a little. "Gee, it's awful."
"Don't worry about things, not until you have a reason."
"Sure. That's easy to say."
She'd dashed around the bedroom, grabbing what she had to have sometimes folding the garments and then rushing some more.
"Please," Bill had said again.
She hadn't been able to stop him and in her misery she hadn't actually wanted to refuse. She'd felt his mouth over her lips, his hands roaming the curves of her body, drawing her clothes open. Then she had stumbled to the bed, taking him with her, needing his love more than ever, needing somebody who cared. He had undressed her, taking off ever stitch. He had talked of love, of missing her. She'd begged him not to take a chance with her but she hadn't really cared about that. Her fingers had been in his hair, pulling his face closer to her breasts, her mouth open for him to know. Although he had been impatient at first he had been kind to her, exciting her, turning the day and the moment into a raging inferno of desire. Then he had her, not just as before. Later, she had clung to him, sobbing out her heart, knowing that they had been foolish and still not caring.
"Please, Bill." She had been the one begging that time. "Oh, please, make this last forever."
After this she had been a bundle of fury in his arms, knowing what she had said, knowing how she had begged, but knowing too, that it had been like that with some of the others.
"Help me pack," she had said after they had moved off the bed. She had kissed him hotly. "And, Bill, I'm sorry-I-"
"Its all right."
"No, it isn't all right. Nothing is. Not what we just did or any of it. Or what I am. I wish I wasn't but I am. I'm me and I can't change what's me. There's never enough. There always has to be another time and another place."
"Stop crying, won't do your father any good."
She had paused and looked at him for a long time.
"Bill, maybe I'm crying for myself."
But during the drive to the hospital-oh, those miserable, winding roads-she had cried not only for herself but for almost everybody else.
Now as she put her things away in the several drawers, hanging her dresses in the narrow closet, she thought of the financial situation as her father had outlined it to her. Ben hadn't held back on the truth. She knew it now.
"Something has to be done," her father had said. "I've tried all that I could."
She felt weak and helpless. There was only one thing that they could do, have the girls go naked and hope that the girlie show would pull them along the road. The girls were there in her mind, a question between right and wrong. The question was simply one of being able to survive.
She gave little thought to the girls in the show. As workers they were hardened to a thing like that. For that matter it was quite possible she could do the same as they did if she was forced into it You simply took the risk and grabbed the money. What else was there to do?
"Work with Earl," her father had said. "He's a good man and he knows the business but no man can stand alone. We need the business and don't ever forget it I'm too old to go into something else and it's all that I know. If the show dies I've had my finish. And do anything that Earl tells you. With some decent weather he'll pull us out of it but the load is going to be heavy. I'm here and you'll have to pull it with him. I just can't do a thing. Also, about Laura, be good to her. Try to understand."
"Yea, father, I'll try," she had said.
"Thanks, but work with Earl. It means your summer and I hate to ask you only I can't do anything else. Until I'm out of here it's your show, yours and his."
She looked down at herself, at the swollen curves of her breasts, the flatness of her stomach. She felt the surge of passion reach into her, going deep, deeper than it had gone except that second time with Dave Moore. She closed her eyes and shook her head. Her father had been a fool and now she was tearing herself apart over a man she hardly knew. It was weird but she could feel his arms around her, the crush of his body against hers, the haunting fury of his mouth as she lifted her lips to him. She felt the embrace going beyond the point of no return. Her hands traveled over her body, lifting against her breasts, her whole being wanting them to be his hands. Again she shook her head, both in despair and fright, and she opened her eyes. She thought of racing away from temptation, but she couldn't run. Her father lay there and her obligation was to him. She had to fight what she felt but as she decided to fight she was almost certain that she couldn't do it.
"I'm no good," she murmured to herself.
"You're sure a wild number," Dave Moore had said that second time, lying beside her, breathing heavily, her own breath burning as it shot down into her lungs.
"You made me that way."
"Nobody can make a girl that way."
"Well, suit yourself."
"And you were scared before."
"Terribly."
"But not now?"
"I don't know." She had twisted toward him. "Shut up and live for what we've got now."
"This is living," he had admitted. "Oh, shut up."
He'd shut up all right, bringing her pleasure, what they had been to each other both brutal and lovely, her body his in a frenzy of desire and passionate thrusts.
"Goodbye," she had said afterward.
"All I get is a goodbye?"
"Naturally. What else do you want?"
"I'll see you again, I hope."
"Of course."
She wished now that Dave Moore was no longer with the show. They hadn't seen each other in four years but she was more than certain that he'd want to pick up their relationship where they had broken it off. She was also pretty certain that she didn't want it to be that way. She had been too young to know. No longer was she too young and she knew. Maybe she knew more than he did. She found a pair of shorts and put them on. Her father wouldn't have approved of them but since her father was sick she didn't have to worry. Besides it was hot outside and she wanted to be comfortable today.
The halter was small or her and she knew it, her breasts threatening to spill outside if she took a deep breath. Aunt Denton had yelled about that halter a lot but Bill had liked it and she had worn it several times. Once she had started to go on a picnic with Bill but the halter had become untied in the car and with most of her out in the open. Bill hadn't been able to stand it. As soon as he had found a place to park he had pulled off the road, daylight or not, and then he had made violent love to her.
"Somebody might see us," she had protested mildly.
"So what?" he had said as he stripped her bare.
Now she put on a pair of sneaks and walked through the trailer. Laura was on her bed, stretched out naked and flat, and she was crying. May walked past. What could she say to a girl like that?
Outside she felt the heat of the sun against her skin and she walked toward the tent where some of the workers ate.
She sat down on a vacant stool and ordered a hot dog.
"Heard you were coming," somebody said behind her.
She-didn't look up or around. She knew who it was, Dave Moore.
"My luck isn't so good today," she said as he sat down beside her.
She looked at him then and she saw that he hadn't changed much. He was still handsome and powerful.
"It could be worse," he said.
"I don't know how that's possible."
"How's Ben?" he said.
"They aren't just sure yet but I guess his traveling days are over with."
"Tough. But maybe that's true of a lot of us for this season."
She put the food aside.
"I don't follow you," she said.
"More than half of the trip we've had rain and most of the equipment is falling apart. My truck has a knock in the motor but Ben didn't have the money to have anything done with it. If I make it to the fair I'll be surprised." He gave her a long look. "You've filled out," he said. "You were plenty big before but you're bigger now, wow what a figure."
"Don't get smart with me."
"Somebody must have been having some real fun with you."
"Shut up."
He laughed aloud.
"If you remember right I was there first. I got there first."
"It was rape," she said without conviction. "And the times-"
"Drop dead," she said. He ordered a coffee.
"What happens now?" he wanted to know.
"Earl and I are going to do what we can but nobody can work the impossible."
He put one of his hands down on the inside of her leg, almost at the point where the shorts ended.
"I know what I could work, May." She pushed his hand away as she said, "Times change."
"For the worse it seems." He threw some money down for the coffee. "I've got a room in town and we could blastoff. I'd give six months of my life to find out if you're as good as you used to be, baby. I've been with a lot of them but you were the most."
"You had your fun and you probably had it since then."
"Yeah, I don't deny that. I'm a guy who has to have a woman."
"So why bother me?"
"I take the best."
"Take second best and leave me be."
"You're impossible, kid."
Her eyes burned with an inner anger.
"You think a lot of yourself, don't you?" she demanded. "A girl is away from you for four years and you think she should come rushing back into your arms? All I've got to say is you can think again."
"I don't give up easily."
"And don't fight too hard for what doesn't belong to you."
He got out a cigarette.
"You staying in Ben's trailer?" he asked.
"Where else would I stay?"
"And with that witch?"
"Laura? She's a little mixed up but she's all right."
"She's taken you for plenty through your dad."
"Well, why not?"
"Your old man and anybody else."
"I don't know about those affairs."
"I do. All he f had to do was to drive into town and she hit the sack with somebody."
"You wouldn't be one of them?"
"No, you can't blame any of that on me. I may be the bull that they say I am but I've still got some sense."
She got away from Dave after a while and she walked around the place. Nothing was moving as yet but in a couple of hours-and with luck-the grounds would be alive with people.
When she returned to the trailer she saw that Laura had gone out and she lay down on her bed to rest. It had been a trying day, one of love and fear, and still she didn't seem to be too tired. The car had rode well on the road and she had been able to make good time. She wondered, vaguely, what they would do about her father's car and she guessed that Laura could drive it. Probably she had done some driving anyway and she was used to hauling a house trailer.
It was dark when she came out of her sleep and she could hear the music outside, the jumbled voices of what promised to be a good crowd. For a second she lay there and then she yawned.
She yawned again and got up. What was the difference? People expected to get taken and most of them didn't feel too badly about it. That, however, didn't apply to the girlie show. The man paid to look.
She moved through the crowd and it looked the same as always but then the crowd always looked the same.
She played a few of the games, losing every time, and since none of the operators knew her they just kidded around and didn't say anything serious. She was aware that her halter was a source of attraction but even if she had been wearing a dress they would have been curious about her big breasts.
A few drops of rain were coming down when she made her exit from the tent but she saw that there was a good crowd in front of The Big Revue show. The crowd stood back from the platform, even the men, but that wasn't strange. The men wanted to get inside and find a thrill but they didn't want to have any of their friends, especially friends of their wives or girl friends, to know that they had gone in there.
"If you aren't eighteen you can't come in," Earl was saying from the platform. "And if you're over sixty you'd better have your blood pressure checked first."
He kept on talking, music playing in the background, but she didn't listen to all that he said. The girls were swaying up there on the stage, their smiles bright, and May thought that the blonde was rather pretty, her breasts tilted and tempting, her moving legs below the tights like two crawling animals in heat.
"I wonder if she does," a man behind May said.
"They all do," his companion replied.
Earl finished his spiel, the girls going into a series of bumps and grinds, and the tickets began to sell, only a few at first and then picking up. She moved on, thinking of Earl. Maybe he took care of the blonde regular, sleeping with her every night, but that didn't mean that he didn't have enough of himself left for somebody else.
The drops of rain had increased now and a lot of people were going toward the exit. That was unfortunate because once you lost them you didn't always get them back.
She returned to the quarters and undressed in her room without turning on the light. There was enough light coming in from outside.
It was hot and she sprawled out on the bed, thinking about the girlie show, how much depended on its success, and knowing that two girls weren't enough to carry it. The show should feature three girls and if they could manage it four would be even better.
Still in the darkness she got up from the bed and in the limited space went through the bumps and grinds she had practiced when she had been younger, really throwing herself into the bumps, then going down to grind her hips. If she went into the show, she might feel sorry for some of the men who wouldn't get what they ought to get but there wasn't much of anything else that she could do. All that she had was her body. Her education didn't count in a carnival girlie show. Just put the body on the line and the men crowded around. When you got over them and you were naked you lowered yourself in a grind and then you gave them the bump.
She returned to the bed and she didn't know if it got right down to it whether or not she could do it. A lot of men had seen her naked loveliness but that had been in the privacy of a bedroom. You got all kinds in a girlie show. That was why a man always had to be around, just in case some guy blew his cork.
May twisted on the bed and she wished that somebody was with her, perhaps somebody like that Earl who was big and who would be able to crush her, the song of love ripping into her body and turning her into a tigress. She smiled and closed her eyes. That blonde had it made while she was living with Earl. He would be strong, that Earl, he would drive the air from a girl's lungs, filling her insides with a fire, the man of him almost too much to endure. Yet, she told herself, you couldn't tell. She had known a boy not big in any outward way, but when he had come to her there on a beach blanket she had thought for a second that he was going to kill her. After that she had looked forward to going out with him.
She finally drifted off to sleep and she didn't know what time it was when she woke up. It was dark in the room now, no lights outside, and the music had stopped. All she could hear was the rain on the roof and the voices that came from Laura's room.
"I hope she doesn't wake up," Laura said.
"She won't." The man had a deep voice. "I looked in on her and she was out cold."
"I suppose you took a good look?"
The man laughed.
"Who wouldn't? I'd like to have her. A man could die in bed with a girl like that and not even mind it. Maybe you're worth ten but I'd be willing to pay her more."
"She isn't that type of girl."
"You know. You saw the show. I'm cheap and I'm rotten and I've also had a few too many. Now give me the money and let's get with it." Laura laughed. "If you like my sex services tell your friends that I'm available if they have the money."
May felt awful at the conversation, and she buried her head in the pillow so that she didn't have to listen to them. But she still heard the lascivious sounds of horny passion and grunts of rutting lust.
CHAPTER SIX
Valerie started to write home, but she couldn't get started, so she gave it up. What difference does it make anyway, hell with them all.
She threw the pen down and got up from the desk. Outside, it was still coming down and Earl had gone into town to see Ben, driving in with Ben's daughter. She had met the girl earlier that day and she had been somewhat amazed at the girl's voluptuous curves. With a pair of knockers like that she'd be lucky if she ever made it to town with Earl. Earl would want to feel them'and slip it to her.
She got up from the desk stretching, and thought about the night before. Until the rain they'd had a big play and it had been good going all the way again, coming out naked for the second show, the dollar one, her breasts tight with excitement and the men leaning foreheads as she had gone into her bumps.
"Fifteen bucks," one man had offered. "Fifteen for ten minutes."
Of course she had refused the man but Laura had taken him on for ten. That was foolish. A girl had no way of knowing who the men who approached her were and if the man happened to be a cop that girl could get taken in. A thing like that hurt the show and it would result in a fine. While stripping naked wasn't exactly legal the most they could get you for was giving a lewd show.
She was half asleep when Laura came in and closed the door, the rain thick in her hair and her dress almost soaked through.
"You missed a trick last night," Laura said.
Valerie sat up.
"I don't want that kind of money. If I have to make my money that way I'll hang myself first."
"What was I supposed to do with Ben in the hospital?"
"If you thought anything of Ben you wouldn't sell yourself. And with you living in the trailer with May you were taking a chance."
Laura took a chair.
"I didn't think she'd hear me but I guess she did. She was as cool to me as a block of ice today. And the guy looked on her first last night." Laura laughed.
"Well, she's got the shape all right."
"She did say something about how she might work with us."
"In the show?"
"How else?"
"Ben wouldn't like that," Valerie decided. "He wouldn't like it if he knew that we got out of everything last night."
"That was Earl's idea."
"Yes, but it showed up in our take. We had about twenty-five guys that last hitch and that isn't bad."
"They went for you all right but then they always go for the girl with the biggest breasts." Laura lit a cigarette. "I saw that May almost naked last night, those breasts of hers right out in the open, and if I'd been a man they'd have me in jail for rape by this time."
Laura talked some more and she said she was going into town, possibly to see Ben if she could and then to work a couple of the bars, picking up what she could and getting as much for herself as she was able.
"You're a damned fool," Valerie said.
"Well, I'm not going to make any money out here and Earl won't be able to pay us at the end of the week. If he has enough dough to buy gas he'll be lucky."
Valerie sighed and put on a couple of more records after Laura had gone. Laura was playing with a whole case of dynamite and he didn't have sense enough to know it.
There was a fresh bottle of rye and she opened it and poured herself a long drink. Rainy days could be lonely days on a show lot.
She had a second drink and this one went down easier, not burning her throat or causing her to gasp for breath. The first drink was always the worst and there were times when she wondered why she bothered with the stuff. When she had a load on she couldn't recall what Earl had done to her and remembering was nice.
She wished that Earl hadn't gone into town. She was naked and ready for him and they could have made some wonderful love, the blinds closed in the bedroom and their bodies hot together, her body lifting to him as she took from him all that was love.
The door opened suddenly, not giving her time to pick up the robe, and she turned to see that it was Dave Moore. He wore a coat that glistened with water and he had a big hat pulled down on his head.
"Damn you," she said. "Damn you, why don't you knock?"
He took off his coat and threw it on the floor. The hat followed.
"I knew you were alone. I saw Earl leave with Miss Big Bust."
He had seen her naked before and it wouldn't do much harm if he saw her again. The night before he had been in the crowd, watching the show, and he hadn't taken his eyes from her.
"Let's get out of here," he said, helping himself to a drink.
"What do you mean?"
"Let's go somewhere else. This show has got the sign on it and it's going down the drain."
She had thought of it, too, of leaving, but the only reason she had stayed had been because of Earl. Still she didn't know exactly how she stood with Earl and he could drop her in any town.
"Where would we go?" she inquired, curious.
"Who cares? It's a big country and there are things to be done. The year before I came with the carnival I worked on construction and that paid pretty good. I know how to run a shovel or a cat and if you're in the union you've got it made. Even driving trucks pays off in the old bucks."
"And what do I do when you're working?"
"Sit home and save what you've got for me. I catch you giving it to every guy who comes along and I'll bust your beautiful rump."
She poured another drink and she knew what it would be like living with him. No matter how much money he made they would share some cheap room and when he was in the room with her they would make love. If he gave her a baby he would leave her and she would be on her own.
"I'm going to stick it out," she said. "What have I got to lose? I know what I've got here and I wouldn't know what I was getting into."
He gave her an evil grin.
"Stop kidding me," he said with a leer.
"Shut up."
"And I know what Earl is getting. Only he's going to fool you honey. A guy with his education didn't come with this outfit for his health."
"If you want my guess he thinks he can take over and make himself a wad. Well, I've got news for him. Ben laid out the worst route that he could have picked. Trouble with Ben is that he won't say no to anybody."
"The fair should be good," she pointed out. "Most people are heavy on cash when they come to a fair and they shell out to our acts."
He took a second drink and then sat down on the sofa, his glance starting at her bare feet and going up to the top of her head.
"Oh, you can hit it at a fair," he admitted. "The suckers come down out of the hills, and they're easy. But how many fairs have we got left?"
"Three, counting this next one."
"Yeah, and one is for eight days. What happens to the other six days? You lay over and you spend what you make. You have to play a town for a week or you won't get a booking."
"The guys liked you last night," Dave said.
"That's what I'm up there for."
"But you need another girl and that's a fact. I've seen shows that could keep going with just one girl but she really had to have it."
"You weren't looking in the other direction last night."
"I'm looking in the same direction right now."
"Go ahead and look."
"You were anxious enough the first time."
"Yes, but that was the first time and it was a mistake. I guess I got carried away and I didn't have sense enough to stop."
"The dame last night didn't have any idea about stopping."
"Then look her up again."
"Hell, I would if her old man wasn't in the trailer." He scratched his head. "I must be stupid or something but I don't see how these old guys get the young chicks. She can't be more than twenty and he's in his fifties. He can't do anything with her and a girl like that is too young to give up." She scratched his head again. "Wouldn't it be funny if I gave her a kid? How would she explain that to her husband, huh?"
"You've got a rotten mind, Dave."
"Maybe, but I've put my mind on one thing right now. A girl shucks out to me once and she doesn't tell me no the second time. I get what I need and I get it plenty."
Valerie was ashamed that she had been standing there like that and she went over to the sofa for her robe. He was sitting on one end of the robe and he wouldn't get up. Instead he grabbed her breasts and it hurt her. She backed away from him.
"Keep your hands to yourself," she said.
"I liked them better where they were."
"Well, I didn't, do you hear?"
She was turning to start for the bedroom and get another robe, the one Earl didn't like because it hid too much, when the door opened and she saw Earl standing there. She didn't know what to do, to run or to scream, but she saw his eyes wander from her own naked form to Dave. He came in and slammed the door behind him.
"Ben's worse and we couldn't stay," he said.
Dave got to his feet, standing only a few inches shorter than Earl. He didn't seem to be upset by the interruption and Valerie supposed that he had experienced many of them. Terrified at what Earl might think or do she stood there, unable to move, her heart pounding the blood through her veins and her breasts heaving up and down.
"The old man has had it," Dave Moore said as he picked up his hat and raincoat. "That Laura was too much for him and he should have known better."
Earl stood there, the rain wet on his face, and said nothing. Dave put on his coat and hat and said he guessed ne had better be going.
"Slut," Earl said, the door closed. He was staring at Valerie. "Cheap slut."
Somehow she found her voice.
"It was an accident. He walked in on me."
"And how many times did he get what he came after?"
"He didn't."
"I should believe that? He was never alone with a girl or woman yet when he didn't pull their pants down."
She walked over to the robe and recovered it.
"I don't care what you believe," she said. He hadn't asked her about any other time and she would have lied to him if he had. "And he didn't see anything that he didn't see in the show last night."
"That's different."
"Why is it different? Because there was one man instead of twenty or twenty-five? The odds don't change it. When you're naked you're naked. And how do I know what you did on the way in or out from town? Give you half a chance with May Hardwicke and you'd get from her what you got from me last night."
Earl removed his jacket and he made himself a drink and sat down.
"The doctor thought it was better to give him oxygen but I don't know. He looks like hell and I know that this rain had him worried.
"Don't think that it hasn't got the others worried."
"We'll manage," he predicted. "I don't know how but we will."
After the sat around and they talked about Ben and the show they got deep into the bottle. It didn't take long to kill what was in the bottle and Earl said he would drive into town for another one.
"We can't work," he said. "We might as well get a package on."
He was gone about half and hour and during bat time she took a shower. She had just enough liquor in her to want him real bad and she put on just bra and panties. Bra and panties did things to Earl. He said that a girl was more attractive half dressed then she was undressed. When she was wearing these things he liked to kiss her and run his hands down over her body. He'd take them off, breathing heavily as he did so and she'd come alive.
She was out in the living room, when he came in and he looked worried.
"I stopped off at a bar for a drink," he said as he opened the bottle. "And who do you think I met in there? That Laura Hall, offering herself for sale."
He sat down on the sofa and she sat beside him. "I don't like it, Valerie. A girl like that can give you a bad name if she's hauled in."
"She took on a guy last night, right here."
"I thought maybe she had but I didn't know for sure. When I asked May what she thought of Laura she didn't have much to say so she must have known about it, too." He put one arm around Valerie's shoulders. "There are times when you can't figure people, especially a girl like that. And the hell of it is I can't let her go. I need her in the show and Ben thinks she's tops. He would blow out my brains if I ever did anything about her. Old as he is he could have gotten other girls and he had to pick on a slut."
The only time he left her was to get the bottle and once he kissed her hard, putting his drinks down and going at the breasts wildly with his hands. He kissed them, his mouth traveling then his tongue forcing her teeth apart but she made no effort to return the kiss, teasing him along and wanting to make him suffer for what he had said to her.
"You called me a slut," she said, breaking away. "A cheap slut."
"I'm sorry about that," he said grasping her breasts.
"You'd better be."
"Anybody would have been sore. A man walks in and finds his girl naked with another man and what is he supposed to think?"
"I told you how it was."
"All right, all right. But you could have ran. You didn't have to just stand there."
"Aren't you after the same thing?"
"With you maybe but I don't chase the others. There are a lot of girls with us who would let me work it off with them but when I take on one girl I stick to her."
She leaned her head against his shoulder.
"You're smart and you've got an education and here you are with a show that's ready to fold up on the road. If you put what you have to work for you, you could be with a big business organization."
"I like this better, baby."
"Do we always do what we want to do? Aren't there times when you have to do what's sense?"
He laughed and kissed her but not so hard this time.
"The booze is making you preach," he said. "Next thing I know you'll be-"
"It isn't funny."
"It is to me and I couldn't quit this racket if I felt as though I wanted to. Ben is depending on me and you can't let a man like Ben down."
"His daughter could take over."
"Sure, she could take over but what does she know about it? You have to put down the figures and add them up to get the total."
"Just make sure you leave her figure alone. My guess is that she would add up to a pretty big bundle."
"Don't be nasty."
"Oh, I'm not being that way. She's got it and you can't take that away from her." Valerie reached for her drink. "And there's probably something else that you couldn't take away from her." She put her free hand down on his leg. "If you know what I mean."
"I know."
The rain stopped for a few minutes, the sun almost coming out, but then the rain started to come down again and they continued to drink. Even if it cleared the grounds would be wet and they wouldn't draw a crowd, perhaps only a few men who would come out to see the girls shake the flesh.
She could feel herself getting high and then he finally took off her bra, pawing at her. She spilled her drink as she put it aside and then she was fifting herself to him, her legs twisting because she couldn't control them any longer.
"Tell me what you want," he said looking up.
"You, I want you, all the way."
"How bad do you want me?"
"Oh, real bad," she said as her hands went into action.
A few minutes later they were in the bedroom, the blinds down, and she helped him to undress. She liked to do that, to do the things that a man would do for himself. No matter how many times she saw him nude he always fascinated her. He was big, his young body hard and throbbing, and when she saw him that way she thought of the love to come.
"Hurry," she pleaded as she fell to be bed, fighting clear of the single garment that reained and kicking away from her. "Please, Earl" She chocked back a sob. "I need you so badly I hurt."
"This is better than working," he said as he came down to her. "This is a whole lot better than that."
"Only there's no money in it."
"Sometimes it costs."
"Why?"
"You know why."
He kissed her hard as he asked, "Are you afraid?"
She returned his kiss, searing his mouth with her eager lips.
"Maybe I am," she replied. "Sometimes I'm scared. I don't know, honestly. You drink and you want to love somebody, the way I love you, but you have to think of what could happen. You must-"
He drowned any words that she might have said with the pressure of his mouth upon her. She moaned and gave life to the kiss, her mouth coming open, her heart pounding, her hands moving desperately over the hard muscles of his naked back. He kissed the same as he always had, arousing her, the yearning so great inside of her that she wanted to scream in delight. She closed her eyes, shutting out the light of the room, telling herself that this was right, that they were meant for each other and that there would never be anybody else.
She let out a little cry as they rolled and for a second she broke the kiss, burying her face against his shoulder at each thrust. Then her lips met his mouth again, fiercely, wonderfully, and she didn't care what it cost. It could have been her life in the next hour and she wouldn't have cared. She was living only for this churning mass of flesh, for his complete possession of her, for the rising tide of hunger that swept through her. There was nothing else, nothing that could equal what they were doing what was theirs and theirs alone at every twist and turn.
Later, he found cigarettes for them, lit two, and they lay there in heat. For a few minutes they didn't talk, their minds and senses still dulled by what had belonged to them, only their hands played with each other. One thing about Earl, he didn't think that it mattered to a woman afterward, but it did. It mattered terribly to be able to look over at the man who had owned you and feel that he was thinking about you. For Valerie there was always an emotional letdown and having him near to her was a big help. Once she had climbed the summit of love she worried. Sometimes she didn't. If she was too high on booze she just went to sleep. But that day was somewhat different than the other times.
"You said I was your woman," she reminded him. "You said that, didn't you?"
"Well, aren't you?"
"Only I don't want it to be cheap."
"What do we care about some people?"
Some of the ashes from the cigarette dropped upon her right breast. She rubbed herself and the jiggling breast excited her.
"Dave Moore asked me to go away with him," she said.
"He'd drop you when he was done with you," Earl didn't sound sore or surprised.
With her free hand she reached over and traced a line down to his chin. He hadn't shaved that morning and he needed one.
"Is that what you're going to do with me? Drop me when you're finished?"
He rolled over and sat up on the edge of the bed. He was quiet for a moment.
"Do we have to get serious about this?" he inquired.
"Shouldn't I know?"
"What can I tell you? You know how things are. Rough."
"There's always the hotels for you."
He got up and walked around the room, first to the window and then back to the bed. His glance wandered over her nude body.
"I like the traveling," he said. "It's inside of me. And I-couldn't do anything right now if felt like it. Ben's been good to me and he's in bad shape. But it isn't just Ben I have to think of. It's the other people, the little people who have nowhere else to go. You have to work for people like that. You can't let them down."
She moved over so that she could put out the cigarette.
"You didn't answer my question."
"No, because there isn't any answer today."
She felt a little sick.
"No answer except the booze and the quickie. Is that it?"
He ran his fingers through his hair.
"Hell, Valerie, don't push. I'm doing the best can with what I have. There are problems and what we have can wait."
Suddenly the sickness passed for her.
"Honey," she said as she made room for him on the bed. "Honey, what I want you to do is screw me real good."
He went to her and when naked, he fell upon her positioning his body between her parted raised legs.
CHAPTER SEVEN
As Earl drank he thought, thoughts about the night before, thoughts about a lot of things, mostly about the pleasure, the hot tight, throbbing pleasure, the climax, the indescribable finish.
"I hope you did it," Valerie had whispered in the darkness."
"What's that?"
"Gave me your baby."
He had taken no precautions when he did it to her.
He ordered another beer and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Well, he was a fool taking chances with her and not worrying about it until the next day. Not paying any attention to what he did as long as he satisfied himself. If he continued sleeping with her like that she would find herself in trouble and if that happened he didn't know what he'd do.
"Nice day," the waiter said.
"Yeah, for a change."
"You from around here?"
"No, I'm with the traveling show."
"Thought maybe you might be." The bartender rinsed a glass in water. "Heard they've got girlies out there where they go down to bare bottoms and all. Any truth in it?"
"You heard right."
"Maybe I'll take it in."
"Why not? It's worth your dough."
He had another drink and he knew that he ought to be out at the lot. There were always things to do and he should be making plans for their next move. The only hitch in this was that he didn't know if they were going to move. The fair was a hundred miles away and it took money to get there, plus the fact that workers had to be paid. And there wasn't any money. Money was something that they didn't have. It was a challenge that he didn't know how to meet.
At least, he thought, the weather had changed in their favor. They had three nights left here and if the breaks were with them they could do a lot in three nights. He could count on a cut from the admission fees and he had the Big Revue show running hot. If he only had another girl it would balance out and they'd be able to draw a bigger crowd.
He thought about May Hardwicke and whenever he thought of May his stomach tied itself in knots, the knots growing tighter as he thought about her, about those wonderful breasts of hers and how those nubs had shown through the dress the day before. That had been up in Ben's room at the hospital and he'd have been willing to take her on there. On the way out of the room he had sort of brushed against her, his arm lightly touching the side of one breast and she didn't say anything much except smile wickedly. "It's real," she had said.
He thought, too, about finding Valerie with Dave Moore in the trailer and he didn't like that. He might not be in love with Valerie but he wasn't quite ready to share her with anybody. If a girl put out to too many men one of them was bound to fix her up but good. And Dave was capable of doing that.
About noon he left the bar and drove to see Ben. The weight of the trailer was too much for an ordinary car and he ought to have a truck he thought as he drove on wearily.
There were only a tew cars in the parking lot and he went inside. Just as he entered the medic who was taking care of Ben entered along the hall. THE HALL.
"He's sleeping," the man said. "And I've cut out any visitors."
"What about his daughter?"
"I don't think he should see anybody today. I know it may sound cruel but its best for him. He needs to be quiet and he can't be that way when people are around him."
"What are his chances?"
The medic shrugged.
"Your guess is as good as mine. We doctors know some things but we don't know everything. These attacks often come one right on top of the other and at other times they're years apart. But even if he gets out of here he'll have to watch his movements on stairs, anything like that. I can give him pills that will help him. I can't give anything like a cure."
Earl felt sorry for Ben as he left. It would tear Ben apart not to be able to be with the show but there wasn't much that could be done about it. He had worn himself out on the road and now he had to sit around and wait to die. Or he had worn himself out with that tramp of a Laura Hall.
On the way back to the grounds Earl stopped off for some more beer, telling himself that he knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to be with that May Hardwicke and if she could be had he wanted to have her. Of course, Valerie would be waiting for him, probably with nothing on, but he'd had so much of her the night before that he didn't need her again until later. Later would be that night and after the show was finished she would be dying for him.
His next stop was a drug store and he bought what he had to have. He wasn't going to be a fool again.
When he reached the grounds he left the car in an open space and walked toward Ben's trailer. All of Ben's papers were in there and it would give him a good excuse to see May again. The one dark spot in his imagination was Laura being around and being high on booze. When Laura was high she didn't care what she did and most of her talk was a real pain.
He reached the door and knocked. The land rent for the concessions was due but there was no sense of trying to collect. Everybody was down on money and if he was able to get it from most of them by Saturday he'd be lucky. Ben had been easy with those who had found it tough to pay and now he was up a tree. There was a price for every location and the price should be met if the owners had the cash. To kick them out when they were broke was stupid because you cut down on the size of the exhibitors and when the people came through the gate they wanted to see something fairly big. It didn't make any difference if the wheel games were mostly the same. The wheel games didn't get a very big play from those who were smart anyway but you had to have a selection of rides, or you let the customers down. A ride operator would check over his equipment but if he was low on funds he might not make the necessary repairs. He sold tickets and trusted to luck. It only took one accident and the news traveled ahead of you.
The door opened and May stood there looking out at him. She was wearing a dress that met every curve in the best places and it had a nice low front. The material was thin, nothing much to it, and he could see the outline of her bra.
"Come in," she said. "I was just going out to look for you."
He went in, closing the door behind him, knowing that she could smell beer on his breath and wishing that he hadn't had it. Drinking didn't solve anything. Drinking just made it worse.
"Where's Laura?" he asked.
"Well, she said she was going in to see my father out I think she just wanted to roam around the bars. If you ask me she's just out for her-self."
"I hope she stays sober. She can't dance much but she can't even bump or grind. That's a big part of it. Only walking up and down the platform in the raw isn't what the men pay for."
SEX TRYST pg 71 thru 80 LR
* * *
ARCHIVE NOTE: The above line appeared at this point in the original hardcopy pocketbook. There was no indication what the cryptic note refers to.
* * *
He was close to her, real close, smelling her perfume and womanliness and he wanted to grab what he shouldn't grab and he wanted to do what he shouldn't do.
"She won't get in to see him," he said. "They won't let anybody in. I was to the hospital a little while ago."
Her face grew tense, her eyes worried.
"Why? Is he worse?"
"No. I don't think so. They're just being careful. I guess they do that with a lot of patients keeping the excitement from them."
She walked over to the desk, picked up a pile of papers and then dropped them.
"I'm going to sell my car," she announced.
"Huh?"
"It ought to be worth a few thousand and I can drive my father's car. I have been sitting here all morning going over it and I don't see any other way. We have to pay Saturday night and we have to move. You can't keep them if you don't pay them, can you?"
"Too bad to have to sell such a nice auto,"
Earl said.
She turned her head, looking at him, and her smile flashed.
"Don't feel sorry for me, Earl. It was his money that bought it to begin with and if we hit it lucky I'll get another one. And the money had to come from somewhere, doesn't it?"
"I suppose so but I was counting heavily on the girlie snow to turn the trick for us."
She came across the small room toward him, all of her female, every movement of her body in that tight dress a movement that started the rockets exploding in his head as he watched her breasts bouncing at every step.
"Laura's no good," she said.
"You don't have to tell me."
"She even brought a man in here night before last. And for money. It was disgusting."
"I'd think so," he said.
"Last night she was in town picking them up wherever she could. She didn't tell me but I know. I'm not stupid. A girl doesn't stay out until four o'clock in die morning and not have a guy grabbing her."
"How do you know?"
"Because I'm human, too. I'm no virgin and I don't mind saying so. You go out with a man and if he's nice to you, you kind of lose your head. But I don't see it for money, I never did. Maybe you don't love the man afterward but it's nice to love somebody just a little while."
Ben always kept a couple of bottles in a closet and he wished that he had a drink, a big drink that would numb his brain. She was being frank enough about herself and from what she had said other men had scored. For no reason at all he more or less hated them. They had probably seen her naked body waiting for them upon a bed, her breasts twin mountains of flesh, her stomach sinking in to nothing and her hips wide enough to drive a man out of his skin as she gyrated.
"Anything else?" he asked, still thinking about the men and wishing that he had been one of them, that he had experienced her rising to him in a moment of frenzy.
"Maybe we should have a drink first?"
"Whatever you say."
"There's scotch."
"I know. Your father liked his scotch. They told him to drink a little brandy now and then but he hated the stuff."
She went to get the bottle and while she was gone he sat down on one of the chairs. She had something on her mind and he hoped it was the same that he had. All he had to do was to close his eyes and he saw a bed with her on it, expecting what he was going to do to her and telling him that she couldn't wait.
"You like it with ice?" she called out.
"If you please."
"Coming up."
She brought him the drink a couple of minutes later and it was just right. As she sat down opposite him and crossed her legs he could see all the way up her legs. It was only a second that it lasted but it was a good look and he got frantic all over and his head began to throb. Who, he asked himself, was she kidding? A man didn't have to rape her to get her. All he had to do was time right and make the proper moves.
"I could help you in the show," she said, leaning back, her breasts thrusting but, the centers of them not quite as prominent as they had been the day before yet.
"I don't need anybody to sell tickets. I've got a dumb nut who does that. When he gets more than a ten dollar bill he had to count his fingers."
"I didn't mean selling tickets. I meant inside with the other two girls and really giving the men a blast for their money."
"Your father would kill me if I let you do that." Earl could almost see her going down to nothing. "He'd kill me anyway if he knew what the girls were doing. He wanted a nice show, only a little sexy, but the men don't go for that."
She uncrossed and crossed her legs again. The view wasn't so good this time but it was good enough.
"He wouldn't have to know," she said.
"Somebody might tell him."
"Who? We've only got a few more days here and then we'll be moving on." Her lips parted in a smile and her teeth were white. "What's the matter, Earl? Don't you think I've got what it takes?"
"You've got what it takes," he agreed. "Where?"
"You know where."
She looked down at herself.
"I am big, huh?"
"You're big, but you look bigger because you're so small in the belly."
"I'm only nineteen inches there."
He finished his drink and put the empty glass aside.
"The men like a girl to be flat in the gut, or a little bulge maybe, and for her to be big upstairs. The bigger you are the better it is." He was sorry that he didn't have another drink. "But I don't see you doing it, May. It just doesn't fit. You're a nice girl and nice girls don't strip and push flesh into customers faces."
"Why wouldn't a nice girl strip if she had to have the money? I wouldn't be sleeping with them or anything like that. And for all you know I may not be so nice. I've done some things that most nice girls wouldn't do. I met all kinds of girls and eight out of ten of them would get into the back seat of a car with a man if the man talked hard enough. And you know what goes on in the back seat of a car, don't you?"
He nodded and said nothing. You couldn't just pull at her dress and have your way, not too quickly. Of course there was an exception to this rule and he'd been out with a girl once who'd been an exception. She had pulled her dress apart herself, lifting her hips as she did so, and then she had told him what he could do and that she didn't have to hurry and that she had all night. She hadn't been very pretty, not as pretty as most girls, but he had taken all night with her and the last time it had been daylight.
"You need another girl in the show," May was saying. "Two girls don't look too impressive to the men. They want to see as many girls as they can for their money and I could do it. I know how to dance some and I can grind and bump even raw if it will help our income."
He didn't want her doing this, not really, but she would be a lift to the show and it would mean money in the bank.
"I'd go for another drink," he said.
She got up to fix the drinks, the same as she had fixed them before, and he wanted to see her naked right there. He wanted to see her as he could have seen Valerie and then he wanted to take her to bed. If he took her to bed and if he started a family for her it would be okay. Being married to somebody like May was about all any man could ask for.
"Let me try to get another girl," he said when she returned with the drinks.
"And where do you think you'll find one?"
"I don't know. There isn't time to go into the papers with an ad. One may show up. Sometimes you hit a town and a girl is leaving home and she needs a few bucks. I've seen some good ones found that way but the trouble is they seldom last. They either get a kid or they get sick of it and then they break away."
"Just tell me what you do while you're waiting lor this girl to come out of nowhere."
"Do with what I have. Laura hasn't got the shape that I wished she had but Valerie is okay."
"I've got more than your Valerie has got."
"She isn't my Valerie."
""Not much she isn't. A girl sleeps with a man every night and she has to belong to somebody, doesn't she? So she belongs to the man she sleeps with."
"Let's forget it, huh?"
"Oh, I don't care. What you do is your business and what I do is mine. What I want to do right now is work into the show and see some money coming in. This sickness of my father is going to cost and other things have to be paid. I went over his book and I saw that you didn't get your money last week."
"I managed to get along although I will admit that I'm a month back on my personal payments. But it isn't the first time and it won't be the last. As soon as we're on our feet I can catch up."
"As soon as I sell the car I'll straighten up with you."
"Aren't you being a little impatient about selling your car? A dealer finds out that vour close to being broke and he'll cheat you out of a thousand."
"It won't be the first time somebody cheated me."
"Well, it's up to you. It's your car and you know as much about what we have as I do. I haven't hidden anything from you. We haven't got hardly anything and by the end of the week we'll owe quite a lot."
"What would I get if we sold out?" she inquired.
"Not what it's worth at this time of the year and not with the route that we have ahead of us. Except for the fairs it isn't much good, not as good as last year. My guess is that Ben was having a ball up in his room and that anything that came up was all right so he made mistakes because of Laura."
They had four or five drinks together and he knew that he was feeling them. He guessed that she was feeling them, too, because of the way she sat on the chair. She kept crossing and uncrossing her legs and she showed him more and more each time that she did it. There was a terrible pound at the back of his neck and it spread forward over his head, smashing him between the eyes. She continued to talk about working out with the show, trying to convince him, but he didn't listen to all that she said. He was too busy wondering how she would be, if she would twist and moan and perhaps bite when she reached the summit of her desires.
"I could show you," she said. I could show you how I'd do it."
The pounding between his eyes increased. That meant that she would go down to bare, letting him see all of her, and he knew that he wouldn't be able to stop himself then. He would be after her like some animal of the woods and if she fought him he would force her, bringing her naked body to him and then knowing it fully, shaking all over, hating himself for what he had done to her.
"You couldn't wear that dress," he said.
"No, I know that but I could pick up something in town, something real tight and low in front. I wouldn't wear any bra with it, not even when I was out there and you were giving them the come on."
"For the second show you wouldn't need any dress."
"I'm aware of that."
"The second time it's all skin and nothing else. We don't keep the men waiting for what they want to see and we give them a fair share of it."
"You seem to be thinking my way, Earl."
"I'm not thinking your way. I'm just talking. A girl who goes out there for the second act can't have any reservations. You have to understand that these men are really lonely, hungry to look at a girl, to think for a few minutes that the girls want them to make out."
"What man hasn't got a dirty mind?"
"Some don't."
"Sure I'm looking at you. I'm human but I'm not a savage."
"And what are you thinking about?"
The sweat ran down into his eyes and his legs felt heavy.
"If you don't know what I'm thinking I won't tell you."
"You'd like to make me, wouldn't you?"
The sweat run down and stung his eyes and blinked them rapidly.
"That's stating it mildly," he admitted.
"Do you want every girl?"
"Not every girl, say, you ask a lot of questions. "
"I'm just curious. If a man married a girl he wants to be the first one with her but if a man takes a girl out he wants to have his fun. So what chance does a girl have? If she doesn't sleep with a man she loses him and if she sleeps with him she loses him anyway. Like you and that Valerie. You won't marry her. I know very well that you won't. Why should you marry her when you get her for free?"
"She's happy enough."
"Is she? What girl can be happy that way?
Look at that Laura Hall and think of her three kids and the possibility of another one being on the way. Is she happy? I doubt it. She's so confused she hardly knows left from right. Some night she'll get so drunk or be busy with a man and she won't show up. Then where will you be?"
"I still don't like it," Earl said. "I never had any trouble. I don't want any now."
She got up from her chair.
"I tell you he won't know." She kicked off her shoes and reached for the zipper on her dress. I'm going to show you something," she said, "if I can send you I ought to be able to send the others. You've seen so many girls you've probably lost count."
"I've seen all sorts."
"But not my kind before."
"Maybe not" He hadn't realized until then that she'd been drinking a lot.
Her smile teased him and her body began to sway slightly. As she swayed she fooled with the dress, lifting it up several inches above her knees, then letting it fall down again. He leaned forward, staring at her, the sweat in his eyes and the pound in his head almost driving him insane with the awful need for her body. She toyed with the dress again, bringing it up higher, her thighs a golden and richly full. He sucked air into his lungs, breathing hard, as she went all the way up with the dress and fought to get it over her jutting breasts. Seconds later the dress had been cast aside and all she had on was the bra.
"You like?" she wanted to know.
He tried to reply but the words wouldn't come. He had never seen any girl like her before, no girl so lush and ripe, no girl with the lines that set her apart from all others. The air poured into his lungs, burning on the way down, and he let out a groan as she reached behind her for the clasp on the bra. In a few seconds she would be spilling outside, those rosy nipples only a few feet away from him, and once he saw her like that he'd have to go all the way.
She was swaying again, faster this time, her hips moving like they were mounted on bearings, her head up high and her smile bright. Slowly she lowered her body and when she threw him a bump it nearly tore off the top of his head. Her smile washed over him and he clenched his fists. Her bra was coming off her now, her motion unhurried, and then suddenly it was all the way off, lying on the floor by the dress.
She was big up there, really bigger than a girl ought to be, but on her they looked good. They were close together, the valley between the deep and warm, and they pushed up and out, the flesh of them alive and moving as she went into a torrid grind that ended in a tremendous bump of naked desire from her.
Like a giant cat she came toward him, grinding and bumping, throwing everything she had into what she was doing. Fascinated, he watched her body knowing what she was doing to him, knowing what she could do to any man. No man could ever see this beautiful creature and not want to get at her with his hands, to arouse her to the fever pitch of excitement and then lose himself with her on one of those wild seas of passion she was creating with every bump and each breast, lovely breasts, breasts that she cupped in her hands, her face flushed, her whole being an invitation to untold pleasures, her teeth white behind her smile.
"Hell," he said thickly as she moved away from him.
"I guess I'm not much of a dancer," she said as she paused still cupping her breasts, still tormenting him.
"You don't have to be."
"Do you think the men would pay to see me?"
"A man would have to be blind or dead if he didn't."
"And they'd tell their friends?"
"Or come back again for some more of the same."
He got up from where he had been sitting and walked to the door to lock it. She had driven him beyond endurance and now there was only one thing left, the only thing that was meant for the male and the female, the one thing that would quite possibly bring life into the world.
"Come here," she said softly.
He locked the door.
"Don't ask me twice."
"I knew this would happen," she said.
"Is that why you danced for me?"
"No, because it would have happened anyway, good or bad, Valerie or no Valerie." She acted as though she was close to tears. "I put on the strip to prove to you that I could help out in the show but I shouldn't have done it. I told myself that I shouldn't but I knew that I would.' She smiled faintly. "I like you. I can't help that. And a girl shouldn't tell a guy so, should she? I mean-'
"And I shouldn't," she said thickly. He knew that he shouldn't. She was Ben's daughter and Ben was more than his boss. Ben trusted him and he didn't deserve it now. What if there had been other men for her? She had said that, hadn't she? But that didn't matter and make it right. No matter what she was, no matter what she had done, she was out of his class. The Hardwicke's might be almost broke but they were still above him. People didn't have to have money to be the best. It was what they had inside that counted.
"We shouldn't," she agreed and looked up into his face as her hands grasped his and squeezed.
"Ben would hate both of us."
Her eyes searched his face thoughtfully.
"Earl, there are some things that you have to know."
"The forbidden things?" He wished the sweat would stop.
"What ever you call them." She freed herself from his hold. She glanced toward the bottle of scotch. "Some stuff," she said.
"Yeah."
"It makes you do what isn't right. Like that dance. It wasn't decent but I telt you had to know." Once more she smiled. "But there was something else, something that I seldom feel so strongly."
"Such as?" The sight of her was driving him out of his mind, yet he did not move toward her again. He couldn't move just then. He couldn't do anything but look at her and lust for the body that he saw.
"Well, maybe two things."
"I'm listening." Even talking was difficult.
"This out fit has to keep going."
"Yes, I know."
"For Ben. It's his life, his future." The tears were gone now but the sweat clouded his eyes. "I'd do anything for him, anything at all. What else can I do but work in the show? I may hate it but it'll be money for us, money that we need. And the men won't see me again. Next week I'll be gone from this town, to another town, to more men who want to see the same thing. It'll hurt him if he finds out but it's for him." She paused. "The price is worth it, Earl. It has to be."
He dug the knuckles of one hand into his eyes, clearing them somewhat.
"And the other thing?" he inquired. She was slower in reply to his question. Their hands touched as she gave him his glass and he longed to take her.
" It's you," she said softly. "I didn't do anything." She tasted her drink.
"Earl, I try to be straight with myself and with a man. I think you have to be straight in both directions or you get all twisted up."
"All right."
She looked at him, her eyes digging into his face. It was great to see her but he wished, without any real conviction, that she'd put something on. This was so exciting that it was terrible.
"I like you," May said and once more the threat of tears were there, not only in her eyes but in her voice. "I like you and the blonde is yours."
He thought of Valerie. Why didn't he go to her? She'd be good to him and the next time he saw Ben he'd be able to look the old man in the face. Yet he knew that he wasn't going to Valerie, not just then anyway, and he knew that he couldn't go. What he wanted was in the nude right there. And he wanted her in the worst way.
"Damn," he said as he went to her. ."Oh, damn."
The glasses made a little sound as they hit the rug, rolling away, the spilled drinks staining the pile.
"My pocketbook," she said. "Let's not be too foolish."
He didn't care. "Forget the lousy-"
"You men are all the same, aren't you? You don't think you're a male unless you give a woman a kid."
"Well, a woman isn't a woman until she's had one."
She laughed nervously.
"Thanks, honey, but I'll wait a while before I prove that to the world."
The passage was narrow and he had some trouble carrying her down to the room. Possibly that was due to the fact that he kissed her along the way, her legs kicking as she wound her arms around his neck. He stumbled as he went into the room and his head ached worse than it ever ached in his life before. She was smart and he knew it.
He put her upon the bed and she smiled up at him hungrily as she saw that he was going to protect her, that her worries, if any, would be simple ones.
"This is crazy," she said turning to him so that he could take her in his arms to know what others had already known but what was strange to him.
"Be savage," he begged her. "Remember," she said. "You asked me to." Then he ran his hands around the curves of her breasts, caressing the smooth skin and the pink area which circled her nipples, and after that e came to the nipples themselves. He stroked each nipple with his forefinger for a moment, and then he took both nipples into his grasp of tore-finger and thumbs of both his hands. He began to shake both of her breasts by moving them with his fingers on her nipples, and was rewarded by her sighing gasp of excitement and smiling.
Then he slipped his hands down again onto her breasts themselves, holding them by their undersides in the palms of his hands, and shaking them that way. And after that he moved his hands together and began to rub her breasts against each other, ending by squeezing them mightly together into a soft, lovely mass of exciting warmth and passionate gasping.
The rest of her body, motionless when he had first opened her bra, was no longer that way. Her buttocks began to slide restlessly back and forth against the sheets of the bed, her uncovered middle bucking upward toward his body and then retreating and then bucking upward again a moment later, and her hands reached up to caress his hard-muscled shoulders and back. She slipped her hands forward at intervals to stroke and pinch his chest and small nipples while he was squeezing her full breasts in return, and then moved back to roam over his shoulders and arms and shoulder blades. And when she finally slid her hands all the way down and held his buttocks, clutching their roundness and extending her fingertips into the crevice between his body moved with a leap.
He bent forward quickly, then, and took her opened bra off her, hastening to lift the straps away from her arms so that she could quickly return her fingers to their position on him. Then he moved his mouth toward the naked breasts which loomed up at him so enticeingly.
The shapeliness which had made May's breasts look so lovely made them even lovelier now that they were completely naked.
The fact was that this gal really didn't need a bra at all. Her breasts stood firm and erect, despite their size, without any support at all; their beauty curved sweepingly into the air and were made to appear even more erect by the length of the deep-red nipples.
But he did not admire them for very long this time: he was so full of urgency that he wanted to taste the sweetness of her skin and her body, and he continued to move downward until his mouth had touched the stiff redness of her tight nipples. He kissed her nipple lightly, stroking it gently with his lips, and then he let the nipple move between his lips and he closed his mouth tightly against it. The taste was as sweet as he had anticipated it would be, and he moved his lips around against the nipple for a moment or two. And then he let the nipple slip deeper into his mouth and he closed his teeth on her as they went into their total passion for the needs of each other.
When he left her he was a man in a daze. She was all of the women of the world in one, her love a demanding, furious thing of complete wildness, bringing with it the ultimate of the treasures of the flesh.
He walked the carnival lot but actually he saw nothing. He thought of May and himself and what lay ahead of them. He thought of Ben. Ben whose daughter, wisely or unwisely, had yielded herself in such a wild, uncontrolled need for her release and desire.
He didn't want her in the show, didn't want other men to see her intimately, but he realized that it had to be done, that for whatever it might mean he had to accept it. As soon as she could latch onto another girl she could be replaced, perhaps belong to him alone, but for now they lived in insecurity. She had to be used for his complete sexual pleasure and satiation.
CHAPTER EIGHT
May got a fair price for the car but she could have done much better if she had gone for a ride and put out her body for the customer.
"If you're with the traveling show you know what I want, from you," he said eyes gleaming. It's worth a hundred just to see if your boobs are all real."
"Come see us in the show and you'll find out."
"That a promise?"
"It is if you pay the price."
He gave her a check for the amount of money due and as soon as she got away from his she took it to his bank to cash it. They were satisfied with her identification but they phoned the auto agency just the same and she had to wait a few minutes for the money.
Outside, the money in her pocketbook, she asked about directions as to how to get to the hospital from an old man on the corner and he told her, waving his arms and telling her what turns to take.
She left the old man standing there. Her legs were stiff from having worked in the show the night before-or had something else caused it?-and she thought walking would help loosen up her muscles. She didn't know if they would let her in to see her father but it was worth a try. Of course she wouldn't tell him about selling the car or stripping down for the men but she would simply say that things were going fine. Later she could get a cab back to the grounds.
The previous night had been her first time performing but she knew that she had done good. Laura had been drunk, hardly able to stand, and she'd had more to show than Valerie. She had been nervous at first, aware of the hungry eyes upon her, but when she had forgotten any inhibitions that she may have had she had gone to work, bumping and grinding naked around the platform, avoiding the hands that had tried to reach up and touch her flesh.
"I've got something for you," one man had said.
"Try the girl with the sleepy eyes."
"She wouldn't know what it was all about, sister."
"Don't worry, she knows, even too much."
"For how much?"
"Ask her, friend."
After the final show the other two girls had gotten out of there quickly. Valerie because she couldn't wait to get with Earl and Laura because the man had finally offered her ten dollars. May had been getting into her clothes in the little dressing room with Earl had walked in on her. The effects of the scotch had been gone by that time, both of them sober, but it happened again right there on the floor and he hadn't been careful with her. He had regretted it afterward because she had gone positively wild this time. His back hurt.
As she walked toward the hospital she thought about it. Well, those things couldn't be avoided sometimes. When a man was after a girl he didn't care what he did and very often the girl didn't care either. Her muscles still ached.
"No kids for five years," one of the married girls had told her in her home town. "You go by a chart and you can't do any harm. We can both get our feet on the ground before he gives me what he says I'm going to get."
Something must have been wrong with the chart because she'd been gotten three months later and the girl had been sick every morning.
"Some plans we had," the girl had said when she had dropped out of functions. "We had the chart but we didn't look at it. He said it was okay and I thought it was okay, too. So he gave me a present."
She walked along, thinking of the money in her pocketbook and glad that it was a nice day. It was just hot enough to be very good show weather and not hot enough to bring showers with it Naturally she missed the car but she told herself that she had parted with it for a good cause. Maybe the dealer hadn't paid her all that it was worth but when you were down on your luck you didn't have much choice. She would stay with the show for the rest of its tour and during the winter she would get something else to do. She rather hoped that it would be near Earl, that they might be able to work in the same hotel. Naturally there was Valerie to consider but May tried not to think of the girl. Valerie had a nice body, nothing wrong with it, but May thought that she had more to offer and that if she worked it right she could win Earl, not forever perhaps but at least for a little while. She wasn't sure about forever, that she wanted it that way or that it would be good for them. Forever meant keeping a house and getting yourself a baby.
"Don't ever give it to them," another girl had said. "You give it to them and they play you for a sucker. When you meet the right guy say no quick."
She supposed that she had been wrong with Earl, wanting him too much and being too easy for him to take. That dance in the trailer had been a wild thing to do, practically asking him to satisfy her, but she had needed him and she had wanted him and she had gone the limit, flaming with desire. Now that she thought about it she decided that it was strange that showing herself naked to the men the night before had made her desire all the greater. Perhaps, she decided she wasn't any good, not any better than other girls who came out in their bare skin to make a living, some of the girls willing to take on any man who had what they needed. Maybe they did it for money and maybe they did it for free but the reason why they did it didn't change what they did.
"A man could die in your arms," Earl had told her in the dressing room after their orgy.
It had been a bad night for her in the trailer, twisting and turning on the bed and wanting him again and again. Laura hadn't brought her man to the trailer and when she had come in toward morning she had been drunk and stumbling, falling over a chair or something in the living room and then banging along the passage until she reached her bed. That morning Laura had ridden into town with her, saying that she was going to see a doctor, but instead of going to some office she had gotten off in front of a bar.
"I need a shot," Laura had explained. "I can't even light a smoke without shaking."
May felt a little sorry and a little bitter about Laura. Any of Laura's dates could be a trap and if she got caught it would reflect on the whole show.
She walked up the steps to the hospital and tried to dismiss it from her mind. For the good of everybody Laura ought to be let go but Laura had too much on her dad for anybody to do that. As long as he had been supporting her he had admitted being the father of her kids and that was about all any judge would need.
The girl at the window was a flat chested thing with pimples on her face. She acted rather man-ish and May knew the type.
"He's out of the oxygen tent," the girl said in reply to May's question. "But I don't know if I should let you see him. The doctor said he shouldn't have any visitors."
"I'll only be a minute."
"Well--?"
"I'll just look in and I won't stay. I know he isn't well and I wouldn't do anything to hurt him."
The girl finally let her go but after she got into the room she was almost sorry that she had stopped. He was sleeping, a very deep sleep, and his lips had a funny color. She bent over him, looking down, and she found it difficult to imagine that a person could change so much. Now that she had seen him she would worry all the more and she had been worrying enough already. And it wasn't because she had been close to her father in recent years because that wasn't true. She had only seen him a couple of times a year but he was her father and the love for him was there.
She left the room and walked through the hall.
"Hey," somebody said as she started past the entrance to the waiting room.
She knew who it was without looking. Bill Wakely. Bill had followed them.
"Hello, Bill," she said as she turned and entered.
He had been standing near one of the windows and he came over to kiss her on the mouth. The kiss was warm and filled with meaning and she made an effort to return it. But when she kissed him she thought of Earl and she knew that her kiss wasn't very good.
"How did you find me?" she asked.
"It wasn't any trouble. I knew the town you were playing and they told me out at the grounds that you were probably here." He bent and kissed her again.
"How is he, baby?"
"Not very good."
"That's too bad."
She shrugged her shoulders and moved away from him.
"It's one of those things, I guess. When we're young and we have our health we don't appreciate it and then suddenly it's gone."
"It'll probably take him off the tour."
"Oh, there's no doubt about it."
"And what happens to us all?"
"I'll stay with it and do what I can to help out. All of this is going to cost money and that's the only way I have of making it."
They walked outside into the sun and stopped on the steps.
"Where's your car?" he asked.
"I sold it. We needed money to move on."
"Why didn't you let me know? I've got money and you could have had it."
"I know but I wanted to do this my way."
He led her down the steps and over to a new car. It didn't impress her. Bill got a new car about twice a year and he had money to burn.
"Like it?" he asked.
"Really beautiful."
They got into the car and she could smell the newness of it.
"Is there any place we can go?" he wanted to know.
"For what?"
His right hand started at her left knee.
"You know for what," he said. "I didn't drive up here just to kiss you."
No, he hadn't driven up there to kiss her. He had driven up there to do to her what he had done so many times before and she didn't want him that way again.
"There isn't anything left for us," she said steadily. "You'd better find somebody else."
He left his hand right where it was.
"I don't want anybody else, just you."
"Thanks but I'm not in the mood."
"Don't tell me you've changed that much in only a few days."
She took his hand away from her. "I've changed a lot, Bill. I have a job to do now and I have to think of that."
"Why not marry me and forget about it?" It was a good question. Marriage to him wouldn't be so bad. He knew how to make love and there would always be money, plenty of money. She wouldn't have to worry about bills or getting a kid or anything like that. The bills would be paid on time and the kids would come along when they were ready. Still, there was Earl.
"I'm not ready for marriage," she said with determination. "And I don't think you're ready either. I think you had something that you liked.
"We both liked what we had. Remember the days when Aunt Denton was off? You used to make me quit and you didn't want me to quit."
"Maybe you're right," she admitted. "I don't deny it. We had our fun together but you can't make a marriage out of that. If you marry just for sex what do you have when you get older and there isn't so much sex left?"
"Don't ask me. Maybe you find something else. How would I know?"
A few minutes later he drove her toward the show grounds and he tried to talk to her into returning to his hometown with him. She refused. There were two good reasons why she refused. First, she was thinking of her father, of what might happen to him and, secondly, she was thinking of Earl. She wanted to be with Earl, to have him crush her in his arms, both of them naked and longing for each other. She remembered his maleness very well.
"I'll write to you," she said as she got out of the car near the entrance. "I'll let you know how it goes."
"All right but my offer still stands."
"I'll think about it."
She walked away from the car and she knew that she had hurt him. Well, she couldn't help that. A lot of people got hurt in this life.
She knew that there was something wrong as soon as she entered the trailer, knew that somebody was waiting for her. She hoped that it was Earl and hurried toward the rear.
It was Dave Moore though who waited for her.
He was sitting on the bed, a cigarette hanging from his mouth, a smile curving his lips.
"The girl with the melons," he said sarcastically.
She slapped him hard across the face but it didn't even cause the cigarette to fall.
"You've got no right in here," she told him.
He got up from the bed, advancing on her, forcing her against the wall, and then he grabbed her where a man shouldn't grab a girl who didn't belong to him. He grabbed her and he hurt her as her clothes tore.
"Sorry I missed your show last night," he said. "I heard that it was real hot, like a brush fire in a blazing sun. . A couple of guys were asking around how they could get at you for a few bucks but they were suckers. Here's one guy who's going to get you for nothing."
She brought a knee up, trying to get at him, but she missed. She tried it a second time and missed again. His hand had left her now bul the pain was still there.
"You had better go," she hissed. He laughed at her.
"Not until I get what I was waiting for. You either come across or I tell it around the lot how I used to get at you before, how you used to put out and then ask me again for more."
She tried to think but it was almost impossible to think. She could fire him easily enough but if she fired him he would ruin her name and what she had done would get back to Earl. Earl would hate her for that, for having given herself to Dave, and she would lose him forever.
"I'll give you money," she said.
"Money I don't need. What I need is what I had four years ago."
"There are other girls."
"Built the way you are? Don't be funny. You've got the biggest pair on the lot and I'm gonna use them right now, baby."
Before she could stop him he took hold of the top .of her dress and ripped it all the way to the bottom. The bra came next, the snap behind giving under the force of his tug, and then she was all open up there, the twin cones rising and falling, her hands lifting to them to them to try and cover herself.
"You damned rapist," she spat at him.
"Aw, shut up. You like to get raped. You don't care how you have a man as long as you do and you don't care who he is. Bet the guys back home really got a work out from your swinging fanny."
She thought of screaming but she didn't want to reveal their past relationship and there wasn't anything that she could do to stop him. She would have to submit to him, willing or not, not just once but until he had exhausted himself.
"Get out of the rest of the stuff," he commanded.
"Think it over," she begged.
"Think it over? I already thought it over. Any dame who strips for a bunch of strange men can't be too proud. You're trying to hide yourself from me but last night you didn't hide, did you? You're damned right you didn't. You got out there and you bounced around and you let the guys look you up and down."
"Please don't go on."
She wasn't doing what he wanted her to do, not last enough to suit him, and he came after her again, ripping everything off, leaving her frightened and naked before him.
"Four hundred dollars," she whispered. "If you don t.
He had been working at his own clothes but now he stopped.
"You haven't got that much."
"I promise you I have. Five hundred, if you don't touch me, in cash."
He seemed to be thinking it over.
"That's a lot of money," he said.
"You never had that much at one time before, Dave. You can buy a lot of girls for five hundred dollars."
"Yeah," he admitted slowly. "Yeah, I guess I could."
While he was considering the situation she got her pocketbook, turned her back to him so that he couldn't see the bundle of bills, and counted out the money. It was a lot of money to pay but it was better than being raped.
"Here," she said as she held out the money to him. "Take it and kill yourself in some girl's bed."
She was slightly surprised when he took the money and put it in his pocket, not bothering to count it. Most men would have counted it but not Dave. He cared only about what he got and not the details. Four years before he had been the animal in her life, arousing her time and time again. Lucky for her she hadn't born his child, her young stomach swelling with the terrible secret inside of her.
"Let's see your pocketbook," he said, grinding.
"No, you don't."
She sounded confident but she was frightened. What if he took it all? He'd run and sometimes people got away from the police. They weren't always caught.
"The pocketbook," he said. "Let's take a peek."
She didn't lie to him.
"I sold my car."
"Then you ought to have a lot. Cars like that don't sell cheap."
She was weary and still frightened.
"It's for the show, Dave. It's for moving and all that."
"To hell with moving." He started for the pocketbook and then stopped. "Why not you First?" he wanted to know. "You and the way it used to be." He shook his head but it was obvious that he wasn't changing his mind. "You and the money."
"I paid you," she said. "What do you want?".
"The works, baby."
Unfortunately he was between her and the pocketbook and he couldn't get to it. He was strong and she remembered his strength, the strength of a mountain lion pulling down a helpless calf. She backed away from him, knowing that if she lost the money all was lost. No matter what kind of weather they had they wouldn't be able to take in enough to cover expenses. They would die in this town and nobody could prevent it.
"Be reasonable," she implored of him. "You look good the way you are, good and ripe."
"Shut up. Please shut up." He stepped toward her.
"You're mine," he said. "You and the money."
"You can get in trouble."
"Prove it, prove I had you or I took money."
He was coming for her, driving her to the wall, when she heard the door of the trailer open and close. He heard it, too, and he came to a halt as though he had been shot. As he did she dashed to snatch up a robe, found the sieves tangled in almost a hopeless mess and fought her way into it. She was breathless, not wanting Laura to find her this way, for the girl to think that she was as low as any of them. And you had to be low to have anything to do with Dave Moore. You had to be right down at the bottom of the ladder.
She didn't quite make it.
Even the belt on the robe wasn't tied, hiding her middle, when she let out a gasp.
Earl stood in the doorway of the room.
"Well," he said with deadly softness.
His face was hard, like the hardness of a brick wall. His eyes moved taking in everything, then kept on moving. His hands were at his sides but the fingers were huge, big enough to kill a man and send the man into his grave. But it was his face that she noticed mostly, the nervous twitch at one corner of his mouth and, of course, his eyes, eyes that were bitter.
Dave sucked in his breath and shrugged his shoulders. He grinned but the grin was sick. She even thought that it was a trifle weak. He'd always said that he wasn't afraid of anybody but it was obvious that he was afraid just then. He had reason to be. He was big, powerful, but certainly not a match for the man who stood in the doorway.
"I'd better be going," Dave said. His words were even, paced by thought, perhaps fear. He looked at May as she tied the robe. "And thanks for the talk, May. It was good."
"You're welcome," she murmured.
Dave shuffled to the door and for a second she believed that Earl wasn't going to let him pass. But he did. He stepped into the room, his shoulder ramming into Dave and almost knocking the other man down. For a moment Dave paused, seemed to be thinking about what he might do, then disappeared from view. Seconds later the outer door closed behind him.
She tried to look at Earl and couldn't, not in that moment as silence filled the trailer. She knew how it must appear to him but she was grateful that he had come in. Without him she would have been lost, Dave taking her as he had before, her body aching from him and her inner disgust mounting every moment that he knew her. And she would have lost the money. He would have stolen it and all of her sacrifice would have been for nothing. No, it wasn't good like this, not good at all, but a whole lot better than it might have been.
"I must have lost my charm," Earl said and sat down on the edge of the bed. "Whenever I walk in and find Dave with a woman she's naked."
Painfully, she came to her own defense.
"I wasn't naked, Earl."
"No, but you had been."
"Just as he said, we were talking."
"Do you have to take off your clothes to talk?" He laughed but there was no humor in it. "Or were you really doing something else?"
"Earl," she said miserably. "Oh, Earl."
He caught up her dress from the floor and examined it. He saw the rip, threw the dress aside.
"You let him do that to you?" he wanted to know.
She had to have a cigarette and she lit one.
"Maybe I did it," she replied. "It was tight and I got mad."
"Perhaps I'm a little mad, May."
She inhaled the smoke. It almost chocked her.
"All right, be mad but it wasn't what you think at all. Of course I knew Dave, four years ago. He was asking about my father. I told him it was bad."
Earl nodded and leaned back on the bed, resting on his elbows , his eyes, now moody, wandering over her. She smiled some feeling proud of her body, contented to know that she had the best curves on the lot. And she knew how to use them. The men who had come to the girlie show had found that out.
"I'll take your word for it," Earl decided. "But if I thought he had done anything to you I might be tempted to kill him. Or beat him up, anyway."
"Earl, don't. We can't afford any trouble. We've got plenty as it is." She didn't think of telling him about the money she had. "Trouble we don't need. We can do without it."
He nodded again, his smile flashing only to become lost in the hardness of his face.
"He's a bum, May. He's always been a bum. He sleeps with any woman he can and he's about as honest as one of the wheels on the midway. If he wasn't a good driver I'd let him go. They're hard to get. The pay isn't high and they don't stick."
"Let's forget it," she said. "He shouldn't have been in here but I can't apologize for that."
"How well did you know him before?"
"Not well," she lied. The truth would have ended for them, swiftly. "I was just a kid, what do you expect?"
"He wouldn't have cared what you were. A woman could be fat and fifty or a girl could be so young that she didn't know what it was all about and he wouldn't care. He's never cared."
She put out the cigarette. What she wanted she shouldn't have wanted, just as she shouldn't have wanted him when she had done that wild fiance. Yet the want was there, pouring through her with the force of a giant river out of control. Want, she guessed, was a terrible, beautiful thing.
"You live with a girl," she said, not actually knowing why she felt as though she had to hurt him. "Is that caring?" Maybe she had to be certain just how he thought of her. "Is that caring Earl?"
She could see the sweat on his forehead.
"I only came in to talk to you about the show," he said.
"Why?"
"Because I was thinking but I can't figure out how to do other than what we are. I don't want you in it. You could kick me in the guts and it couldn't hurt more than having those men look at you. It never bothered me much before, about Valerie or any of the other girls. It's just a job to them but somehow it's different with you."
"Don't concern yourself over me." Another thing she shouldn't do was to open her robe wider but she did, exposing her soft heaving volupous breasts. "Do it to me, Earl....the way you loved me before....and only remember that about right now."
CHAPTER NINE
Valerie was heaving the low blues, one of those times when one suffers a great disappointment. Yet she didn't know just what was bugging her. Or she knew the action but she didn't know the cause.
"Let's be different," Earl said to her last night. "Let's go to bed to sleep only and not for a piece of tail. O.K.?"
That wasn't Earl at all. He went for the lust pleasures of the flesh to satisfy his sin libido, and he usually went for his sex in a big way, with any girls whenever he could get it.
"You haven't touched me all day long," she had reminded him. "You think I'm a block of wood or some cube of ice?"
"I was busy."
"Sure, with that May."
"We had things to talk about."
"Or things to do?"
"Pull your mind out of the sewer."
"It isn't in the sewer. I've seen the way you look at her and I know what that look means. It's the bedroom look and she looks right back the same way. You'd think she could leave any man alone and find one for herself."
He had merely grunted at the and said nothing.
She sighed as she sat down on the sofa thinking about the bottle that was too handy and telling herself that she ought to cut down on her drinking. Give her another couple of years and she'd be as worthless as that Laura Hall.
"Maybe I'll be able to finish out the season," Laura had said. "If I'm lucky I won't show too much."
"Leave the men alone," Valerie had answered.
"Why? I like men. And I met a dream of a guy in town. He can drink you stupid and then he takes you for a spin in his big car. Drunk or sober he can handle a hundred and he knows what makes a gal tick. Take it from me he can wind you up until you think your spring is going to break open."
Valerie came to the conclusion that Laura was from some other world. She was a creature of desire , her body never getting quite enough of a man, her mind so confused she didn't know right from wrong. Or if she knew she didn't care. Ben was in the hospital, getting worse every day, and she was throwing what she had around.
She finished her drink and got up to pour another one. It had been a big night the night before, the tent packed for every show, and that May had plenty of what it took to pull in the bucks which she, Valerie couldn't have done even with Laura to help her.
There was a mirror on the opposite wall and she looked at herself in it. Well, anyway she was dressed and that was something for the middle of the afternoon. When Earl had come out of his sleep that morning she had been naked in the bedroom, but it hadn't done any good. He'd just grunted again, and put on his clothes, saying that he had things to do. She had almost raped herself in her need.
Things to do? She sat down on the sofa, holding the drink in both hands. He had things to do all right. But he was doing them in bed. And he was doing them with May Hardwicke. Well, okay so let him do them. Let him get May in trouble and he'd know what it was all about. That thought froze Valerie inside. What would she do then? Take a room in each rotten town they hit and play the field? Frankly, she'd had enough men during the time she'd been on the road.
She was on her third drink when Earl came in.
"Hell," he said, "You're getting as bad as Laura Hall.
"So what else is there to do around this miserable hole?"
"Take my crate and drive into town. Do some shopping at least."
"On what? I was one who didn't get paid last week."
"Yeah, you're right but you'll get it tomorrow."
"From where?"
"Mays'got it."
"Got it in what way?"
"Cash," he replied, annoyed. lie poured a drink for himself. "Good crowd of kids out there but they don't have the loot to spend. They want a quarter ride for a clime and then they get sore when they can't have it."
"That's your advertising gimmicks."
"Yeah, it is misleading. . I could never figure that out about Ben. He said if a kid got a buck to spend he got a buck and so what difference did it make. And this is a poor town. We're doing business in the girlie show because we've got what the men want to see anyhow."
Earl didn't stay in the trailer very long and he said he had to go somewhere else. She didn't ask him where he was going. Probably Laura was in town and if that was the case she knew where he was going. He would go to May Hardwicke and she would submit to him, stripping down as she did in the dressing room before she went out to please the men and then with Earl, going the distance on the sofa or on the floor on the grass if it came to that.
She sat down and began to pout, not the pout of a girl who couldn't get what-she wanted but the pout of a girl who had tried and lost who had very nearly lost. She honestly felt that she had lost Earl and somehow it didn't seem right.
So she had to face it. She had lost men before, and she would probably lose them again. You couldn't always win. You were lucky if you won part of the time.
She knew that she was getting a little drunk as she poured the next drink but she didn't give a hang. Earl thought that May was so hot let him put on the show with just May and Laura. She hadn't missed a night since she had been with the group but maybe she'd miss this one. Maybe she'd load up the old gut and then go out and get a man for the money. She had never done it for money.
She started the record player going but she didn't listen. She knew what was wrong and no doubt she had known it for a long time. She hated herself for what she was and what she was doing. Granted that she got some charge out of dancing nude it still wasn't right. A girl shouldn't have to light sex with a torch . Sex ought to be as natural as going to sleep and having a pleasant dream, a dream that rose steadily to a wonderful climax and then left you weak from the beauty of it all.
She was just reaching for the bottle again when the door opened and Dave Moore came in. She gave him a brief smile and poured the drink. Dave was built strong and he always managed to get around after another man had left his woman in the lurch.
"Help yourself," she said, shaking the bottle. "The lousy stuff isn't going to last forever."
"You headed for town?"
"I wasn't headed for anywhere but right here.
And what's the matter with me putting on some clothes?" she added. She held out one leg. "Even stockings, the works. Don't you think I get tired of sitting around in my skin?"
He took the bottle from her and fingered a glass.
"You won't be wearing any clothes where we're going," he said.
Her eyes searched his face.
"And where are we going?"
He downed the drink and took another one.
"We're blasting out of here baby."
"That's your story."
"Yeah, and I like it."
She didn't take him seriously.
T suppose you'll set me up in a cheap room," she said. "What are you going to do after that? Go out and pimp."
He reached into his pocket and brought out a wad of bills.
"This is just part of it, baby. The rest of it comes later."
"How much later?"
"Tonight or tomorrow."
She had never seen him with that much money before. He didn't make a big salary and he generaly spent it all.
"You must have been in a card game," she decided.
He returned the money to his pocket.
"It was better than a game, a lot better baby."
"Well, you didn't come by it honestly then."
"That's beside the point. I just got paid for something that I didn't do, that's all."
She didn't understand him but she blamed the liquor for that. When she was drinking nothing registered the way it should.
"Why pick on me?" she wanted to know. "There are other girls around here."
"Maybe I like you, huh?"
"I guess you've tried enough of them to know."
"I guess there's hardly a gal on the lot I haven't had some truck with." He grinned. "II you know what I mean. Some real hot business. But I'm kind of getting tired of that. You make a little play today and tomorrow you have to start all over again. Mostly I just took what they had and I left them. But with you it's a little different. I got for a dame who isn't trying to save part of herself for her memories."
She remembered having been with him, his passionate conquest finding her own passion to the hilt.
"What happens to us after the money is gone?" she inquired.
"I'll get a job. I told you I worked on bridges before, didn't I? We'll settle down where there is plenty of the heavy work going on."
"Give me one year of that kind of a life and I'll have a kid."
"So, you'll have a kid."
"That's easy enough for you to say. You wouldn't have to get fat with it."
He emptied the bottle into their glasses.
"Maybe I want a kid of my own. You ever think of that? Maybe I'd sick of taking everything that comes along. Hell, I'm not getting any younger and this life is for the birds. Oh, you like it at first but it wears into you. And what have you got out of it?"
"I haven't gotten anything out of it yet," she said.
"That's what I mean. You've got nothing. You've got a good shape that will put on some weight in a few years and then they won't want you. So what happens to you then? I'll tell you what happens. You pick a town and you work the bars and you sleep around for what you can get."
Valerie hadn't thought much of Dave until now but what he said made a lot of sense. He hadn't said anything about marriage but living with him might not be too bad.
"You just want a steady woman, don't you?"
"No, not that. If I was only out for a woman little number doing the palm reading and she wants to haul in off the road. The trouble with her is you might as well sleep with a pillow and when I sleep with a girl I want her to tear the bed apart." He looked Valerie up and down. "The way you did. The Way you drive a man crazy."
He was putting it on the line, straight down the middle and she could either take it or leave it. If she took it, if she accepted his offer, it would be an uncertain life. Maybe he had some money now but he would probably chase other girls on the side and when he got to working part of his pay would go for that. He'd put her up in some cheap room that would be hot in the summer and cold in the winter and before she realized it she would be getting big with his child. But that wasn't the worst of it, having a kid by Dave. It was the misery that would come afterward. On the other side of it if she didn't go with him she would hang around Earl.
"I'm worried about that money you've got," she said, playing with the zipper at the front of her dress and letting him look down inside. "I'm just worried about it, Dave."
"You'd have more cause to worry if I didn't have it. You can't go hardly any place without-money these clays. And I wouldn't want to work the first week or so, just shack up with you. Hell, I'd like that."
"I'm a bitch anyway."
"Oh, I wouldn't say that."
"I wouldn't be living with Earl if I wasn't. I wouldn't have stayed with some of the men I've stayed with and I wouldn't have gotten kicked out of home if I didn't have a lot of bitch in me." She continued to fool with the zipper, shoving it down past her bra and then closing up the opening again. "I'd make some hell of a mother, wouldn't I? And you'd make some father.'.' She laughed. "We'd be a pair and that's for certain. A strip girl and a stud. What kind of a child would we get out of combination like that?"
He came over to her and kissed her lightly on the mouth. It wasn't just a sex kiss but it had some other meaning to it, a meaning that didn't quite reach her and one that she couldn't understand.
"You've got me wrong," he said. "Maybe we aren't what we should be but that doesn't mean that we can't change. I got my first girl when I was sixteen, a girl in school, an older girl, and I've been that one thing ever since. If a girl was married I didn't care what I did to her and if she was single I didn't care about that either. Some of the girls would want me to be careful with them but I wasn't. I feel a little bad about that right now. Maybe I gave some of them kids and I shouldn't have done that. I wouldn't want some guy sleeping with my steady girl and the other guys aren't any different. I just happened to please the girls and they got what they were after. There are only a few girls I came back to a second time and you're one of them. You're right up there on top and make no mistake about it. If I was staying with you I wouldn't need anybody else."
Here, she told herself, was a new Dave, a man who spoke from the heart, a man who had known more than his share of girls and who now wanted to settle on one.
"Get out of those clothes," he said.
"What is this? You can't just walk in here and have me go down to my skin for you."
He kissed her again, harder this time. This time one of his hands got at her bra, and she could feel him going for the flesh underneath. The bra was tight but he forced his fingers under it, moving up, and then he was working at the center, sending a torrent of thrills up and down her spine from her nipples.
"You want loving and you know it, baby."
"You're hurting me."
"I won't if you get out of this junk. The last time you were just the way I wanted to see you and I want to see you that way again."
"Earl might walk in." It was weak but it was an excuse. "You can't tell about him."
"Not Earl. He's getting his from Ben's daughter and he's getting it plenty. He's getting it every hour on the hour. So don't worry about Earl. He gets his hands full of her and he'll kill himself on the job. That's how Ben got his heart attack."
The strain on the bra was hurting her, the band digging into the flesh, and she tried to make him take his hand way. He wouldn't.
"You probably got yours," she said.
"No."
Her left breast was filled with pain, like it was swelling under his touch, under the teasing demands of his finger tips, and she knew that she wanted him again the way she had had him before, her body naked and the manliness of him, overcoming her sanity.
"Wait," she said as she finally pushed his hands away. "Just wait."
She was aware of him watching her as she pulled the dress over her head and placed it on a chair. But before she could get to anything else he had her in his arms, crushing him to her, his hands fighting to unhook and release the bra. She sighed as she felt it let go and opened her mouth wide, her tongue furious in his mouth.
"Hell," Dave breathed as he shoved in against her and his hands traveled over her body.
She laughed and spun away from him, pulling the bra away from her body, her breasts thrusting and ripe. The garter belt came next but she left her stockings on. Her legs had a terrific shape to them and she knew they looked good in nylons.
"The rest," Dave said thickly, struggling with his own clothes.
Then, suddenly, the fright was gone, the sensation of fear being replaced by the delightful sensation of seeing him how he was, stripped.
Seconds later they were both naked and they met in the middle of the room with a fury. Almost impossible they churned into each other.
"The sofa," she whispered. "Please. And the door. Lock the door."
He broke away from her to go to the door and she fell upon the sofa.
After he locked the door he walked toward her.
"You're beautiful," he said, breathing heavily.
"I hope I am. I want to be."
"For me?"
"Maybe. I guess so."
She lay there naked, waiting."
"Or that Earl?" he demanded.
"Do we have to talk now?" This was torture.
"I'd like to know."
Suddenly, she started to cry. She didn't want to cry. This was no time to cry. A girl cried when she was hurt or lonely or lost. Just then she wasn't any of these things. Or she didn't think that she was. She supposed she shouldn't have been drinking so much. Liquor mixed you up. It didn't solve anything. You got half potted and you didn't know what you were doing. But she knew what she was doing-and wanted to do. She knew that all right. She knew as any woman knows when a man wants her and she's anxious for the man.
"Tell me," he said and sat down beside her.
She smiled and fought with the tears.
"I think it's finished for us, she said.
"So do I."
"A thing like this never lasts."
"I told you how it was, Valerie. I'm fed up and sick of this whole racket. I've got the money. I'll have more."
"You said that-but how?"
"Isn't that my affair?" Now he was annoyed with her.
He grunted and placed a hand over one of her breasts.
"It shouldn't be, not as long as I can provide for you. Going, is a problem for both of us. How I get the money doesn't concern you."
She felt sorry about that. Of course she didn't have you know where he got the money but she'd like to know. That was part of being together, of sharing, not sharing only what was physical but the other things which filled in the picture.
"I'd like to know where we'd go," she said.
"Does it matter?"
"No, I suppose not."
He kissed her again, a lingering kiss, a kiss that spread out from her lips and made her twist in desire.
"Just you and me and the money, Valerie. A hot time for a week and after that a job. Then a little place to live where you can cook our meals and wait for me to get home at night." He laughed. "Maybe we won't eat supper and we'll throw the food out. I don't know. I guess you don't want to eat certain times. I guess there are other things that you'd rather do with your time."
The sofa was narrow, mostly because of the limited space in there and it had to be built that way, but he managed to get down beside her. She felt the warmth of his body against her own, the two spots where her breasts tried to sink into his chest and couldn't.
She closed her eyes, listening to him talk, her whole being terribly aware of his maleness . As soon as they were ready to leave they'd travel north. Some big jobs were going on up there and they'd look around. They'd find a town that they liked to stay in and where there was work for him. While he talked he stroked her body with his hands, bringing her in tight, sometimes pausing in the middle of a sentence to kiss her on the mouth, a kiss that she didn't want to break. Then his one hand came between them, searching and finding the fullness of swollen breasts. She moaned and drove her lips against his mouth, unable to wait longer for her unfulfilled passion. Before she spoke again she made it evident what she wanted from the lover.
"Make your speech later," she said fiercely. "What do you think I am? A sack of flour? Honey, I want it now."
She gasped and pressed her soft hotness to him as he entered her violently, sobbed deep in her throat as his mouth mashed down over her lips, and moaned at the burning of his pumping, turgid male spear ramming in and out of her woman sheath, the stiffening as his instant of ecstasy came, the gushing torrent of his male seed releasing, to her, the shock pleasure as the flow came to her pleasure.
CHAPTER TEN
Somebody started knocking on the door of the trailer. The sounds of someone knocking on the door woke Earl, and he grumbled till he felt the hot soft pressure of Valerie's naked body against him. Ben had been worse last night and May had gone to visit him, missing the last show. He had told her that he would wait for her ... Laura had a date in town....but she told him she had thought it over and she didn't think it was right to continue their relationship while they were still single. So he had come to Valerie but she had rebuffed him and he was stumped.
All night he had been working on her trying to get what he wanted, and almost at that point somebody knocked on the door.
"Somebody's at the door," Valerie said. "Don't you hear them?"
The faint traces of dawn were creeping in.
"Hell, yes. And wouldn't you know it? At a time like this?"
"I wouldn't have let you anyway."
"Why not?"
"Because I wouldn't."
"What's got into you?"
She moved away from him with a silly expression on her lace.
"None of your business."
The knocking continued.
"You need me," Earl said hopefully.
"Not without a ring on my finger. Earl answer the door."
"To hell with it."
"It might be important and it won't do you any good staying here. You didn't have me all night and you're not going to have me now." She yawned. "And I'd like to get some sleep besides."
Disgusted with Valerie and the knocking he got up and found his robe. He didn't know who was at the door but it was unusual. The workers wouldn't bother him at that time of morning.
He was tired as he left the room, belting the robe, and walked through the trailer. Valerie wasn't herself and it bothered him. Nights when he had been tired she had forced him to make love to her. Her present attitude was a new one. She hadn't touched him with her hands after they had gone to bed and when he had tried to have her she had refused him. Even when he had kissed her, doing all of the kissing by himself, she hadn't been the same, failing to moan low and husky in her throat or thrust herself at his body.
He turned on a light in the living room and walked to the door. Probably some dumb husband had lost all of his pay on the games and his wife was coming around to put up a bitch.
But it wasn't a woman who stood there as he opened the door.
It was a fairly big guy in blue uniform with a serious face.
"I'm looking for Earl Wyatt," the man said.
"You just found him officer."
"I figured so. Can I come in?"
"Help yourself."
The cop came in and he wasn't as big as he looked at first.
"Bad news," the cop said.
Earl said nothing. A cop was always bad news to him. It generally meant that one of the workers had gotten into trouble, maybe a fight, and the ones who got in fights never had enough money to post bail. Or a girl took the wrong guy on for a few bucks.
"A girl by the name of Laura Hall ever work for you?" the cop asked.
Damn Laura, he thought. Damn her work-in g the bars and having to have it all the time.
"Yes, she works for us," Earl said.
The cop scratched his head.
"She got it tonight," he said. "She was with some guy who's been picked up half a dozen times for speeding only this time they didn't make a turn in the road. The guy was dead when we got there but the girl lived long enough to mention your name. She died in the ambulance."
Earl walked over to the bottle and poured himself a drink. Well Laura had bought death by being so nuts and there was no doubt about that. Now she didn't have to worry about anything.
"Tough," Earl said as he downed the drink.
"She had an identification card and that gave her address as being out of town. Would that be right?"
"I guess so. She stayed there winters with her kids."
"Then she was married?"
"No, she wasn't married."
"Just had the kids, huh?"
"One every year."
"There's something else," the cop said. "She died at the hospital door and while she was dying a Ren Hardwicke also died. They said at the desk that he was with you out here."
Earl poured another drink. You expected these things, like a storm coming up over a mountain but when they hit they shocked you, left you numb and uncertain.
"I'll have to tell his kid," Earl said.
"Well, I wish you would."
The cop went out, saying that he would see about the remains of Laura, and Earl took a stiff jolt from the bottle. lie didn't know what Bens' death would do to the show but right then he thought it would die with him. There wouldn't be anything for May to work for now and if she got a fair price she'd probably sell out and go home.
Back in the bedroom he began to get into his clothes and while he dressed he told Valerie what had happened. She sat up in bed while he talked but she covered herself with a sheet so he couldn't see her naked body.
"Is there anything I can do?" she asked.
He sat down on the bed to tie his shoes.
"I don't know what anybody can do. They're dead and you can't bring them back to life."
He left the trailer and it was lighter outside by then. Ben had cursed the weather all the way up from the south, fighting to make ends meet, and now that he was dead the sky was clear. Somehow it seemed like a lousy irony.
Ben's trailer was unlocked and he went inside. As he walked back to May's room he didn't quite know how he was going to tell her. How did you tell a person that somebody close to them had died.
She lay naked on the bed, sleeping. For a second he stood there looking at her, at her tremendous breasts rising and falling steadily, at her tiny stomach that he would like to fill with love.
"May," he said, bending over her. "May."
It didn't take much to bring her out of her sleep and she stirred on the bed.
"It isn't time to get up," she said, blinking her eves. "How long have you been up?"
"All night."
"You ought to get some sleep. And I told you last night how I felt about what we were doing. I-"
"May, I've got something to tell you."
"But why now? Why couldn't it wait?"
"I-well, it couldn't wait. May, your dad is dead."
He sighed. He hadn't made it easy for her and he had hit her hard. She sat up.
For a moment she looked like she was going to cry but she didn't. She just sat there motionless, the only difference being that her breath was not unsteady, her breasts thrusting outward and then relaxing.
"I felt it last night," she said after a while. "He wasn't good but he tried not to show it."
"I'm sorry," Earl murmured.
She got up from the bed, her body flowing, and reached for her bra and panties.
"I know you're sorry. It's nice of you to say but you didn't have to tell me. You did what you could to help Ben with the show and that meant you thought something of him." She had quite a time hooking the bra and when he moved over to kiss her she kissed him back. "We'll have to see about the funeral," she said. "And don't kiss me again. Even with him dead, just knowing about it, I could go wrong with you."
"You didn't talk that way last night."
She had trouble getting into her panties and he digested her lovely curves in silence.
"No, because it wasn't right. Just yesterday I started looking back and I saw so many things that I had done that weren't right." The dress came next. "Love in the back seat of a car or sneaking up to my room in the house when Aunt Denton was off. Only it wasn't love, not the kind of love that a girl really needs. It was sex for the sake of sex, just having a man, you can't build anything on that kind of activity."
Her dress was tight where it should be tight and he thought that she was really beautiful even in her grief.
They left and took his car to drive into town. The sun was up higher.
"There's something else," he said as they rounded a curve in the road. "Laura was killed last night in an accident."
"Oh, no!"
"I'm afraid it's true. She went out with a wild guy and they cracked up on the highway."
"Those poor kids of hers."
"After his insurance is paid I'll see that they get helped."
"That's more than a lot of people would do."
"Maybe but I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I didn't. Now that Laura is gone.
It was later than May discovered that he had left her pocket book in the trailer.
"And I didn't lock it," she said, worried. "I wasn't thinking."
"It'll be all right," Earl assured her.
"Oh, I hope so."
There was a diner on the way back to the grounds and they stopped off for coffee.
"What happens now?" Earl asked.
She didn't say anything for a while.
"I don't know, Earl. I wanted to keep the group going for him but now it doesn't seem important."
"We need another girl to take Laura's place but where we'll find her I don't know."
"Huh?"
She stirred her coffee and turned to smile at him.
"Well, I honestly don't get a kick out of it, Earl. Perhaps I did the first lew times but it soon wore on. Now when I take off my clothes for them I feel like some cheap slut who can't get anything. To show myself for money is something else again."
"You've got the body to do a job. All you have to do is expose yourself and the guys run out of the tent and make love to their sweethearts. But I don't want you doing it, not to the raw bone anyway."
"It isn't decent." She drank her coffee. "You get a little sick when you think about it."
She was concerned about the money and they didn't stay in the diner too long. She pointed out that it was a lot of money and that they could afford to lose it. They needed every dime.
He thought as he drove and he was glad she was considering dropping out of the show. It made him sore when other men looked at her for a buck, seeing what should only be seen in a bedroom. Of course she was an attraction and she would be difficult to replace.
When they got to Ben's trailer he went inside with her. Sure she felt bad about Ben, just as any girl would feel, but if he caught her in the right mood, sort of weak and not caring, he might be able to give her a good going over, stripping her naked and then giving her the love that she needed. Maybe Ben dead but they were alive and they should make the most of it, demanding of each other bodies the desirous straining to know the ultimate bang of love.
The first thing she looked at when she got into the bedroom was her pocketbook and she let out a little cry, her face turning white.
"It's gone," she said miserable. "It's all gone, Earl!"
"But-"
"Don't you see? Somebody came in her and took it."
"I didn't think anybody would come in here with me around," she said. "And I'm sure they didn't because I didn't sleep much last night. Then when you told me my father was dead I got so upset I forgot it." Wearily she sat down on the bed. "What do we do now, Earl? You tell me, will you? His policies are back home and that undertaker wouldn't believe me."
Earl lit a cigarette and thought about it.
"I'll work something out," he promised.
"How?"
"I don't know but we can manage it somehow."
"Now you try to take it easy. Have a drink. Knock yourself out. But don't worry."
He wasn't as confident as he sounded and he was upset as he left her. The take at the Big Revue show had been good but he didn't think that it could stand the blow of eight hundred dollars. And the cost of the deaths was just the start.
Valerie wasn't there and he saw that her clothes were gone from one of the closets. This started him checking and he discovered that everything she owned was gone.
He sat down on the bed and thought about it. She had been very strange the night before and possibly she had thought about leaving him then. But How? And with whom? She didn't have a car and there weren't any trains connecting with this town, just busses two or three times a day. Valerie was the kind of girl who needed a man. And the man must be-Dave Moore was a good bet. He had caught her naked with Dave and he wasn't vain enough to believe that he had been the only man in her life recently.
He got up and checked the money but he didn't count it. Dave ought to be on the lot by this time and maybe he could talk to him. If Valerie had lifted the money he had to find her before she got away. Yet, if she had taken May's money why hadn't she taken what he had hidden? She had known where it was, sometimes watching him while he put it away, propped up naked on the bed and waiting for him to come to her.
There wasn't much doing outside and he roamed the lot, asking the people he saw if they had seen Dave or Valerie but it wasn't until he got to the chow line that he had any luck.
"A cab came out for them," a man said. "He was carrying a couple of suitcases, and she had on a dress that would knock your eyes out. When she went by here I thought one of those melons was going to bounce right outside. But I don't have to tell you about that, Earl. You've been getting at them."
He left the man and walked back to Ben's trailer.
He entered the trailer without knocking and walked back to the bedroom. She was lying on the bed, flat on her stomach, and she was crying.
"Who knew you had the money?" he asked her gently. "Did you tell anybody else other than me?"
She rolled over, rubbing her eyes with one hand, the hem of her dress agove her knees, her bare legs sexy as every.
"I didn't tell anybody," she replied.
"But could somebody-"
She was silent for a moment then jumped up. "Maybe Dave Moore," she said. "And how would he have known about all this?"
"He was here."
"I know." His voice was tight. She rubbed her eyes again. "It wasn't the way you think. Or the way I said."
"Maybe not."
"He was going to rape me and I gave him five hundred dollars not to do it."
She got up from the bed and walked around the tiny room. He thought that he had made it with Valerie, made it the way Dave had made it with a lot of girls, but he disliked thinking that May had been one of them.
"I might as well tell you," May said with resignation. "He wanted me but he wanted money worse and I gave him the money. Then he wanted me but he wanted money worse and I gave him the money. Then he wanted me, too."
"But why? One scream and there would have been half a dozen men in here."
"I know but I didn't want it that way and you came in. Oh, what's the difference? You'd have to know sooner or later. When I was sixteen he was the first man for me, forcing me the first time, and it continued after that. He threatened to tell everybody if I wouldn't let him have me again and I had the money so I bought him off."
"What can we do, Earl?"
"You stay here. I know what I'm going to do."
He got out of there in a hurry and ran to his car.
It wasn't a long drive into town and he pushed the car for all it was worth. If Dave had the money and he got away with it nobody would ever find him. And there was no way of proving that he had taken it. Just a hunch that a girl like Valerie would go away with a man like Dave.
The station wasn't difficult to locate and then he checked at the window.
"A big guy and a girl buy tickets?" Earl inquired.
"One guy was pretty big, yes."
"How about the girl?"
"I didn't see her but he bought two tickets."
"Thanks mister."
His visit to the frankfurter stand in the same area failed to pay off. There was a customer in there and he was telling the waiter about the show the night before.
"What a babe they had in that girlie show," he said. "That girl could kill six guys and have enough left over for a regiment. She looked like a melon farm."
There was a bar down the street and Earl walked toward it. Dave was a heavy drinker and if he had enough money he'd want to get tanked up.
He found them inside, alone except for the bartender.
"You blowing out?" he asked as he sat down next to Dave.
Dave regarded him with interest for a moment and Valerie, who was sitting on the other side, lowered her eyes, staring at her glass.
"I've had it," Dave said. "With Ben gone the show'll fold and now's the time to find something else."
Earl ordered a beer.
"And where are you going?"
"We're off to where the jobs are. I've been driving for a long time now and I'm sick of it."
"Tough to do with out any money."
"Money? Aw, you get a break once in a while. I've never been one for busting my rear with the cards but this time it paid off."
Earl leaned forward.
"You could have left me a note," he said to Valerie.
"I didn't think it all happened so fast. And I didn't think you'd care." She paused. "We talked about it before, Earl. We both wanted out and we're going. Is that so hard to understand?"
"No, not that but the money part is. There haven't been any big card games going on that I know of and it seems funny that a guy who never played very much should wind up with a bundle."
"Take it or leave it," Dave said.
Dave was wearing a coat and it had a big bulge in front. That bulge could be money or just something that he was carrying. Earl tasted his beer and he knew that he didn't have very much to go on. Just thinking that a guy was a crook didn't make him a crook, any more than thinking that a guy was good made him good. No, it wasn't much to go on but the way things were he had to play every chance he had.
'She was your woman long enough," Dave said, nodding toward Valerie. "A girl gets tried of this racket after a while, stripping and all, and she wants to settle down."
"Maybe," Earl admitted.
"It isn't just taking off your clothes," Valerie cut in. "It's what they want to do to you. And they think they can. there isn't a man who comes into the show who doesn't think he can make me."
Earl frowned. Perhaps it wasn't much of a life for a girl but the girls who had worked in the show hadn't been forced into it.
"Have another beer," Dave said, "or wouldn't May like you to?"
"All right."
The bartender set up fresh drinks all the way around.
"I don't know what you're talking about?"
"You know. She likes to have a man for herself and you've been taking care of her."
"You sound like an authority."
"Well, I could be. I gave her love when she was young and she didn't say no after that. Ben just had to turn his back and I had her on the bed. She wasn't too worried about getting knocked up or anything. She just wanted to be taken care of when she had that urge."
"Such a wonderful subject with me sitting beside you," Valerie said. "Why should I care about her or any other woman?"
Dave grunted at her.
"I'm only saying, baby. I'm saying how it used to be. She had me a little scared then, not of age or anything. It's the only time I ever bothered with anybody that was so young-and the only time that I was first. I'll take somebody like you, somebody who knows what it's all about. What if you slept with a hundred men and I slept with a hundred girls? That don't mean that we can't make a fresh start of it." Dave looked at his watch. "I hope that bus is on time. I hate waiting for anything."
Earl finished his beer and waved the bartender away. He had to make his move now or forget about it. And he wasn't going to forget about it.
I'll take the money that you stole from May," Earl said. "You can keep the amount she gave you but I want the rest."
Dave's eyes were hard.
"Say, you're running off the mouth, aren't you? I've got a little money maybe but it belongs to me."
"Let's see you open your coat then."
"For what? Aw, cut it out, Earl. So you know about the dough she gave to me but I had it coming. I did a lot of work for Ben and sometimes I didn't get paid for it. Call it a bonus or whatever you want but it's mine to keep."
Earl nodded vaguely. There was only one way of finding out if he was telling the truth and that was by force. He hated to start a fight in a public place and he knew that if he was wrong, if Dave was clean, he'd end up in jail. You traveled with a carnival and they threw the hook into you every chance they got.
"You're asking for it," Earl said, tightly.
"You've got me wrong, fellow."
The bartender shouted something as Earl grabbed one of Dave's arms and slid down off the stool but there was no stopping Earl and he didn't pay any attention to the bartender.
Dave was like a spring for his size and in an instant he was on his feet; Valerie screaming for them to stop and Dave drove a fist into Earl's gut. Earl felt the blow but he was hard and it didn't hurt. With an oath he leveled a smash at Dave. It exploded when it hit, driving Dave against some tables.
Dave growled. "You crummy bastard."
Earl aimed another shot at the same spot and let it go. By this time Valerie was screaming like some wounded animal and the bartender was hollering that he was going to let somebody have it with a club.
"I'll wrap it around your neck," Earl said as he reached across the bar and seized the club from the bartender. "This deal is private and you keep out of it."
"I'll call the cops."
"To hell with you."
Dave tried to get away from the bar but Earl threw the club aside and he hammered savagely at the man. Dave fought back but he lacked the guts when the going got rough and Earl didn't care what he did. This was simply a job for him to do, cutting a man down, turning his face into a bloody mess. He shook his head, his ears ringing from her screams, and his fists thundered into the mountain of flesh that could no longer fight back.
And then he was at the front of Dave's coat, ripping the buttons off, blood staining his hands, getting into the pocket and pulling out the money.
"I was right," Earl said. "I was right all along, you lousy no good swine."
Dave leaned wearily against the bar, his tongue licking at the blood and his eyes glazed. The screams had stopped and that sounded better, a whole lot better. Rapidly Earl counted the money-most of it was there-and then he threw some on the bar.
"It's mine," Dave said.
"Sure, take it." He glanced at Valerie, her face filled with pain. "And take her with you."
"Earl, I didn't know. I-"
"It's mine," Dave cut in again.
Earl stuffed the money into his pocket. He heard a police siren in the distance. He feared a police siren and its consequences.
"You're a creep," he told Dave. "You knew what this money meant to May and yet you were willing to destroy her."
Dave wiped some of the blood from his raw pounded face. The siren was coming closer and he started to leave. As he turned he saw Valerie coming at him with the club her face full of hate. There was no time to avoid the blow and he wasn't going anywhere for a while, and then, to the right place. Not for him of course.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Since the show was about to roll they had Ben's funeral the following day so that everybody could go to give him his last respects.
"Poor Ben," everybody said.
May wore black and she was supposed to but the dress was too tight even then, on her full stacked body.
"We don't get them so big in the bust very often," the girl in the store had told her. "I wish I had some of what you've got and I'll bet they'd wish it to. I used to wear falsies but I lost one of them so that ended my attempts to be a glamour girl."
Earl was in the hospital, suffering from the rap Valerie had dealt him, and she stood by the side of the open grate wishing that he was with her. A cop had brought her the money arid the day before she had been so busy with the show that she hadn't been able to get in to see him. She had made up her mind that she wasn't going on, that she was done with the girlie bit and one of the ride operators had made her a fair offer for the equipment.
"I have to talk to Earl," she had told the man. "He may want to go on with the show and if he does I'm not going to stop him."
"But he doesn't have any dough of his own."
"I wasn't thinking about dough."
Now she stood with the others and listened to the final words said for Ben.
The services weren't long and then she was walking toward one of the cars.
She didn't go back to the grounds but got off near a bar downtown. IT WAS STILL QUITE A WHILE BEFORE visiting hours for Earl and he wanted to be alone so that she could think.
Inside the bar she ordered and ignored a man who was staring at her. She had paid off her debts that morning and she still had a little money left. It could have been worse, being broke and being hung up in a strange place.
She thought about Earl, about what he had done for her, and she knew that she wanted him, wanted him terribly. She had told him the last time he had sought her that it wasn't right to make free love but just then she would have accepted him on any terms. If she had been in a bedroom with him she would have gone down naked in a second and then she would have been in his arms, pulling him toward the bed where he could take her. She didn't care if he gave her a kid. She wanted his. The only thing was she didn't know how he felt about it. Of course he had slept with other girls but somehow it was different with a man. When a girl married she wanted her husband experienced on their wedding night and there was only one way for a man to get experience.
She thought of Bill Wakely and she knew that it wouldn't be any good with Bill. Bill qualified in the money and the sex departments but there had to be more to marriage than that. You couldn't spend your whole life in bed, making love, basing everything you had on pure physical lust.
The bartender set up another drink and she felt like crying, not simply because she was afraid of the future but because she regretted the past. She wished that she was a virgin again. The first time Dave had forced her but after that she had done it because it had been fun. But none oi it had been as good as it had been with Earl, their bodies locked together in moment of passion so that she had to fight the fire deep in her stomach.
"Another drink, Miss?"
"Yes, thanks."
"Earl, she thought, oh Earl-"
She looked at the clock on the wall and waited.
There was nothing else to do but wait for him to get well.
A few weeks later they had been loving all night and most of the morning and now they were loving again. She didn't know how often and she didn't care. He hadn't been careful with her and she didn't care about that either.
"You go for me plenty," he breathed.
"I go for you in a big way dear," she said.
And then it was over with, over with again, and she was sorry that it has ended. She felt him stretching out beside her on the bed.
"You hungry?"
"Only for what we mean to each other."
"Give me a break, will you lady?"
"I thought you were a strong man "
"Yes, but I'm also human and can fall apart."
She remembered the ride on the bus and it had been better than she had thought it would be. He had asked her to marry him and she agreed. They had enough money to get along on a honeymoon and she was confident that it would work out.
"I'm glad you made me leave the rest of our memories behind," he said slowly.
She stretched, then rubbed her naked breasts with the palms of her hands. The nipples were still hard and demanding. "But I don't want the kid to know about those special shows I did for you."
"You could have done something worse."
"Like?"
"I wasn't thinking of anything in particular."
"Well, I couldn't stand not doing this to you."
She turned and pressed her body in close to his bigness and warmness.
"Don't be rough with me," she said.
He moved his head to kiss her.
"But give me what I desire very much."
In a very hosrt time she got her desire. Her honeymoon was going fine and it looked like she would have some place in the scheme of it from now on.
This she felt as he grunted his release from him to her, in the mutual sensating of indescribable thrill, it was the new deal in her future, starting now.
