Chapter 4
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.