Chapter 10
The next morning Mr. Salmon bought the parts he needed for the bus, repaired it, and got the show back on the road. Of course, Gully said yes.
And so, the biggest thing to ever hit that town rolled right on out of it and over the horizon toward California, where everyone hoped that business would be half as good as it had been during that one-night stand.
Sheriff Small's telephone started ringing around ten in the morning that day, and didn't stop until well past dinnertime. The Sheriff got the picture right away, and took a personal walk across town, staring disgustedly at the wreckage of Gully Fry's office, kicking the empty tin boxes around with his feet, and walking all over Hermann Hinkle's bedraggled blankets.
As the day wore on, people kept dropping by with new pieces of the story and more facts about the incredible events of the night before, until Sheriff Small began to get the impression that over a thousand prostitutes had been in town last night.
Which was kind of odd, considering that he couldn't find a single male in town who would admit to having done business with them.
By nightfall the news was everywhere, and the Sheriff's phone finally stopped ringing. There was going to be trouble about this, and he tried to steel himself to meet it. After a while the townspeople were going to begin wondering why their Sheriff hadn't been keeping an eye on things, upholding the law the way he was supposed to.
The next few weeks were going to be pretty rough, and that made Sheriff Small very angry.
At ten o'clock, when the familiar knock sounded on the back door of his orifice, he had really worked himself into a vile mood. He opened the door and pulled Solveig Hinkle in roughly, dragged her down the corridor of empty cells to the one with the most comfortable cot. He never said a word to her as he stripped the clothes from her body, flung her down and had her like an animal.
As usual, his roughness, his power, his commanding personality, and especially the smell of leather and gun-oil which arose from his sweating flesh, thrilled Solveig's Teutonic little heart to the core. Now where, she wondered could a girl find a more masterful man? Why, he was even better today than he had been last night.
As for Sheriff Small, all he could think of was that this fat little strudel had made him miss all that excitement. A whole pack of hookers in town, and he hand't copped it with one of them!
So there you are. That's the story of what happened to this rotten little town. And maybe now you understand just how big a chance they passed up.
Now if they'd had the sense of a moron, they'd have asked Meg and the girls to stay. It wouldn't have done anything but good for the town. After all, the place was as lousy with vice as a wide-open burg anyway, and every man in town would have used Meg's girls until his money or his wind ran out. So why not just let them set up and go all the way?
They could have tuned this sour, unhappy, little burg into a real sin-town with no trouble at all. People would have come from miles around to take advantage of the sport, bringing money, and new faces, and fresh air, and all the things that a town needs to grow.
But not a man of them thought of that until it was too late.
So they threw it away. And when the excitement settled, they found that things were even worse than before. The story of that night reached the town wives in no time at all, naturally, and all of a sudden married men found things pretty chilly at home. There wasn't a woman anywhere who didn't believe that her man had flopped on one of those whores that night, and most of them were absolutely correct.
When the big chill finally thawed and the men were allowed back into bed, they discovered that their wives were even lousier than they remembered.
One good thing happened though. One little gift was left behind when Meg and her girls pulled out. The young men of the town had been given a chance to sample the real thing for once, and it made a deep impression on them.
It made such a deep impression, in fact, that they finally realized just how worthless the girls of the town were.
The girls caught wind of this in a hurry when they discovered that their old tricks didn't work any more. Try as they might-and they sure did try-they couldn't get a boy to take care of them. Even Marge Webster discovered that Jock Carella wouldn't crawl for her any more. She gave up the idea of squealing on him, because she knew that no one would listen to her.
No one would listen to any of the girls. All they could think about were whores.
Eventually, the girls found a way of getting the boys back.
They started trying.
It was damned hard for some of them-Abbie Tate, for instance-because they were all used to thinking of themselves as God's gift to young men, and couldn't get used to the idea that from now on they were going to have to work for it.
But they kept trying, and gradually the boys gave in and taught them all the tricks they'd learned from Meg's girls.
Once the girls had learned those tricks, they discovered that sex was a lot more fun than they had ever suspected.
A generation of girls in this town grew into women-and I mean real women. But there aren't many of them around any more. Most of those girls married and got out of here to go live someplace else. Their fun opened their eyes to just how much of a cemetery this town was.
Now as for the busload of girls ... well, it reached California safe and sound except for two casualities, poor nutty Pete, who just couldn't seem to straighten herself out after that thing with Tansy, made the big mistake of trying her line on Crazy Pearl. And crazy Pearl was itching to use her knife.
It happened during the stopover in Gasport, and the first that Meg and the rest knew about it was when they saw the headlines in the papers. Crazy Pearl was in jail, the article said, for having gone nuts and hacked an unidentified woman to pieces right in the middle of the brightest section of town.
So Pete got to relax at last, and went into the ground to sleep off all her pain and trouble. And Crazy Pearl got the kick of cutting somebody right in the middle of a crowded street.
She had never done that before. What else?
Tansy quit the business and went straight. That scene with Carella had done as much for her as it had for him and she began to realize that the pleasure of sex depended entirely on who was involved, and how much they cared. Tansy came to maturity during that trip, and a good thing, too. She was really a good kid, and Meg and I were real happy to see her get out of it. She got married. Me?
My name, friend, is Gulliver Fry. Like you, I'm only passing through this town. Meg and I are taking a trip back to Clayville to see if any of our old friends are still alive, and we jut stopped over in this burg for a couple of hours.
Why did I go with her? That's a good question, I suppose, because you still don't get what I was talking about. It took me twenty years to understand it myself.
I mean the difference between Good and Evil, of course.
Good isn't rules and it isn't laws, and it isn't any of the things people think. Good is what makes people happy. Doesn't that make sense when you stop and think about it? All the restrictions in the history of the world haven't stopped the human race from wanting women, liquor, and good times. No, and they're not going to either. The love of fun is too basic in human nature to ever be strangled by rules. After all, none of us is around for any longer than it takes God to blink His eyelash, and there's a whole lot of life that has to be crammed into that little space before the grave takes it all away.
And Evil?
Evil is what you see right here-this town. Evil is making rules and spouting fine talk about Good and Right, and then sneaking into corners. Evil is being ashamed to admit what you are, ashamed to let the world know you're flesh and blood, and not the plaster saint you pretend to be.
Good is being your own man and doing what you want.
Evil is hiding and pretending and wearing masks.
Good and Evil had quite a tussle in this town that night and Evil won!