Chapter 10
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.