Copyrighted Ernst Schultze Publications. No reproduction of any kind without permission from the author.
CHAPTER ONE
PAPPY
"I'll kill you all you aholes," he said aiming his rifle into the windshield.
"Is he gonna kill us Mommy?" Carolyn asked her mother. "Just be quiet while I back out of the driveway," Momma said to her little daughter.
He stood in the driveway wavering front-to-back as he struggled to hold the rifle. He was drunk, in a rampage. A rampage triggered by questions from his wife about being out all night again with "them whores" and missing work because of his drunkenness.
"Why don't ya dump the son-of-a-bitch mom?" her eldest son, Ned, asked from the back seat of the car.
"'Cause he's my man," she would invariably reply. Carolyn knew better.
"Why can't we just pack up our stuff and leave him and find a new town or somthin'."
Momma looked at Carolyn with sad eyes, then looked back over the hood while she drove down the road.
"I can't get a job, Carolyn. I don't know how to read or count or nothin'. How can I get a job?"
She was raised in the mountains as a Hill Billy never having a chance to develop any skills. The first car she ever saw was at age thirteen and she hid behind a tree from it as it went by. The only currency in life she had was her body and her beauty and the fact men wanted it.
"Your Pap wanted to marry me cause he thought I was beautiful, and he is a handsome man. I wanted to spend my life with him -- when we first got married."
Momma was getting older now and she feared her attractiveness to men was leaving her. She held on to her drunk husband out of fear. And she had developed a way of separating herself emotionally from the situation out of survival. She had four kids and no job.
"But glory be girl," Momma said quietly to Carolyn. "There is no excuse for a beautiful woman not to marry rich and be happy. There is no excuse for a beautiful woman not to get anything she wants out of life. She can wrap a man right around her little finger. And bless it all girl, with your big brown eyes and your long beautiful dark hair and that face alone, you can have anything you want."
"Yeah Momma, I am gonna find me a rich man and be a movie star. I can tell -- boys like me to boss 'em around. I got somthin' they like!"
Pap had his philosophy of life too, what there was of it.
"If I woulda known I woulda kept it in my pants," he would tell his relatives and friends about his family responsibilities and his tie to the oil fields.
"The oil field is hell what with that hot sun and humidity high enough to ring water out of the air. Throwin' a sledge hammer and scoopin' concrete twelve hours a day is one hell of a way to make a livin'. How can a man help but get a little help at the end of the day, a man has to wet his whistle to relax a little. A drink never hurt nobody."
He rationalized his abusive ways and drinking this way.
Carolyn was afraid of her dad and his drinking but loved her mother. She never saw her father at work, she only saw him as a drunk and a sexual pervert.
"Mommy, where are we going?" she asked her mother as they headed down the road. Her father was still standing in the drive, lowering his rifle and stumbling back toward the front door with holes in the screen. Those holes let insects in the house and the sound of them buzzing kept Carolyn awake late at night. Her father kept her awake with his rantings early in the evening.
"We are going to visit your cousins for a few days," Momma said to Carolyn. "We will spend some time down by the river with our kin again like we do in the summertime."
The response from her children in the car was immediate. They all wore smiles at the prospect. Relatives from all over the South would come and camp out there and the children would swim in the river and chop off snake heads. The fish from the river were fresh and tasty and the huge gathering of relatives ate them together. The men would talk and drink and spit. The women would gossip. The children would run and scream and laugh together along the banks of the river.
Carolyn was the pretty one at these gatherings and the boys teased her without mercy. She knew how to control them with her beauty. She could be overpowered by their physical superiority but she soon learned how to use her looks as a carrot to lead them wherever she wanted them to go.
She got on well with the girls; they had in common a form of feminism inherent in the condition of a poor female.
Carolyn and her mother left the other three children at her Aunt's house to go back and talk to her father the next day. By then he would have a chance to sober up. Mother wanted to try to talk him into coming to the camp as he was off work in the oil fields. Carolyn and her mother had a conversation on the trip back home in the old beat-up Chevrolet the family owned. They had to leave it parked on a hill so they could start it by letting it roll down the hill and popping the clutch. The battery had been dead for months. It was lucky the house driveway was on a decline.
"Mommy, why are we goin back to get daddy?" Carolyn asked. "he hates us all and I am afraid of him and the way he yells at you when he gets drunk."
"He is a good man," Carolyn's mother said dutifully.
Carolyn was truly puzzled by that answer.
"How can you think he is a good man when all he does is yell and drink and hit you and scratch himself?"
Carolyn's mother frowned.
"He is a good man because he don't leave us girl," she said. "He goes out into the oil fields and works real hard and sweats in the hot sun and does what his mean boss tells him to so's we can have the money to eat and have clothes on our backs and a house to live in."
Carolyn thought about this and formulated her next question.
"You mean he is a good man cause he doesn't leave us and brings us money so we can buy what we need? Even though he is mean to us and beats you?"
"Yes Carolyn. God never meant for anyone to be perfect. Pap has his faults but he works hard for us."
The house they had fled in terror from the day before was coming into sight. Pap was sitting on the front porch with a freshly opened beer beside him. He was not as drunk as he was the day before, his eyes focused on them as they approached. She pulled into the drive and brought the front of the car close to the garage door. She mustered up her most pleasant voice.
"how are you feeling today," she asked out the car window. She left the motor running just in case the question did not agree with him.
"What are you doin' back here bitch," he said calmly.
"Just wanted to see if you wanted to head out to the family camp out by the river, unless you have to go back to the fields."
"Nope, I could go to the river," he answered. "Let me get my stuff."
He stood and went into the house to get his things. He was drunk, but not so drunk he was mean.
"If a beautiful woman can get a rich man, Mommy, why can't daddy get money, he is a beautiful man ain't he?" she asked.
"Yea, your pap is a beautiful man and the girls like him, but a man needs more than a pretty face and body to get rich, he needs brains and your daddy drunk all his outta his head years ago."
They both laughed at that. Carolyn's father came out the front door with a bundle of cloths and some bottles. He walked to the rear of the car and opened the trunk to put it all inside. Carolyn got out her side of the car and got in the back so her mom could slide over to the passenger side. The man always had to drive. It was the masculine thing to do among the Hill Billy culture. That is, if they could afford a car.
Back at Carolyn's Aunt's house everyone was loading up and getting ready to go to the camp by the river. There was a lot of laughing and children chasing one another around the house.
Carolyn's father always took on a friendly nature when he was around friends and family outside the family shack. The men were drinking and shouting in their best Texas shout and the women were gossiping about their friends back home.
Texas men have to shout everything when they talk. It is a way of demonstrating strength and confidence among those with little strength or confidence. The more sure one might sound and the louder and the more positive, the less one could rely on what was said in this group. The men all knew this but they continued with the charade anyway. No one individual was sure if any one else besides himself knew this. But they all did. That is the case with most social norms. Individuals are so often sure that only he or she is aware of flaws in social belief. Thus the glue of social problems are perpetuated.
Problems are perpetuated such as a belief among some that women can only succeed through personal beauty sold to the right man. And it might be one of those flaws perpetuated through generations of women. There may have been a time when "beauty is all a female has for security" was true but economic structures began to open up to the female. Nevertheless there are many young women still believing that her only hope is through her beauty and a rich man. Maybe it is still true in Texas.
Carolyn and her family left her Aunt's house and set off for the river after a few social moments there. they were on their way to the river in the old Chevrolet listening to the news on the radio.
"Did ja hear about the President ordering them troops to Little Rock? It was on the radio," Carolyn's father said to her mother. "If I was him I would just kill those sassy niggers, to teach the rest a lesson."
"They are gettin' more uppity these days," Momma said. "Soon they want to be just like us white folks. Sad to watch 'em suffer like that though."
The trip was relatively calm except for dad getting more and more drunk as they made their way to the river. By the time they got there he was as drunk as the rest of the men already making camp.
Carolyn got out of the car to join the rest of the children. She walked down the river bank away from the camp breaking into a boy's gathering just to prove she could do it. The oldest boy was the leader; he was in his early teens.
"You guys know what you are doing down here?" she asked them. "Me and the girls are gonna do some fishin' so just find someplace else to talk your big talk."
That statement brought a look of disdain from the boys.
"What the hell do girls know about fishin'?" the leader of the boys said to Carolyn.
"We know we have to pull 'em out and keep 'em if you want to eat 'em," Carolyn spit back. "you weenies always throw them fish back in the river cause you are afraid of 'em," she said.
"We ain't afraid. We just throw 'em back cause they are too small this time of year."
"What's too small? The fish or your bait?" she yelled in his face. The other boys laughed. The boy hit Carolyn in the forehead, knocking her back into the water.
She got out of the water stifling a tear.
"You are weak," she yelled at him walking back toward camp.
"Don't fuck with me you goddamn bitch-girl," he yelled at her.
The sun was going down and dinner was done and the women in the camp were cleaning up. The men were taking full advantage of the leisure time away from the oil fields getting drunk as they could. Carolyn was a distance down the river from the camp sitting on a stump thinking about the boy hitting her and why he had done it. Back at camp Pap was dealing with nature and its call.
"I have to go pee," father said to Momma back at the camp.
"You better go see a man about a dog," she said to him. He ambled out of the camp up the river. He was drunk as ever having a difficult time walking. He made his way to the clearing where Carolyn was setting on her stump thinking.
"What are you doin' here girl?" he said when he caught glimpse of her.
"I'm just restin' my bones a spell Pap." She said to him. Pap walked away in his search for the proper place to pee.
The boy who hit her in the forehead, the older boy, came out of the bushes. He had been watching her.
"What are you doing here, you gonna do some fishin' by the full moon?"
He looked her in the eye. His look scared her. He walked toward her faster and she stood to run. He tackled her from behind pulling her dress up from behind. She got up on all fours trying to escape, he pulled her down pulling her arms back with his, causing her face to fall forward in the mud.
Pap heard Carolyn's cries and ran back to see what the commotion was about. He came to the clearing with Carolyn and the boy. Pap ran over to them and kicked the boy in the stomach rolling him over. He got up and ran to the bushes. Pap leaned over as if to help Carolyn as she turned her head looking at his face in the full moon. He lowered himself to his knees and grabbed Carolyn’s thighs pulling her back toward him. She struggled to get loose but he was stronger than she. She pulled her leg up from the mud and forward, then kicked her father in the balls with a backward lunge. He pulled back in pain as she got up to hide in the bushes nearby.
Carolyn was so much in shock she could not respond. The boys hiding in the trees around them saw what had happened and they were as shocked as Carolyn.
Pap picked himself up and stumbled back toward camp.
Carolyn sat on the muddy bank of the river without motion all evening. She sobbed from time-to-time. The boys soon quit harassing her from the bushes and returned to camp.
The sun appeared on the horizon that morning and Carolyn was still setting in the mud. A copperhead snake crawled toward her out of the water. She picked up a shovel by the stump she had been setting on and used it to cut off the head. The body wiggled, the head snapped, and she stood looking at it until it stopped moving. She cut the body into smaller and smaller pieces.
CHAPTER TWO
AWAY FROM HOME
They stayed a few days at the river. Carolyn was subdued about the incident the night before. The boys were afraid of her because of what her father had tried to do to her. She was humiliated about it and stayed away from the boys. The girls were ill at ease around her but tried to be sympathetic. They went off by themselves to talk about it.
"I just can't believe what happened to me!" Carolyn said crying.
"Oh -- you ain't got it so bad," one of the girls said. "My sister was raped by my Paw and she had a baby! She had to give it away and I hear it ain't got a normal brain."
Carolyn felt lucky she was not old enough to worry about getting pregnant.
Carolyn and her family made their way back home in the old automobile later. The other relatives at the camp had pushed the old car to help start it. They pulled into the drive then got out and began to unload the gear. Father was already in a drunken stupor having taken periodical sips from his flask on the trip home.
"Pull the god-damn tent out of the trunk," Pap said to his eldest son, Ned.
"I'll pull it out soon as I get to the pot and pee Pap," he said.
Carolyn chuckled and repeated what Ned said. "Pot and pee Pap cause I'm a pauper and a poop plod'in plenty."
"I said get your ass to the trunk now and pull out the tent you shit-assed little bastard," Pap bellowed.
"I said I'd get it out in just a second Pap, I really gotta go bad!"
His Father grabbed him and began hitting the side of his head with his fist. He resumed until blood ran down his son's neck, turning his shirt red. He threw his eldest off-spring to the side of the drive like a rag-doll then turning around he casually walked toward the house. Carolyn was in the back seat crying. Her mother was in the front seat afraid to get out.
"Jesus, I will be glad when he goes back to work in the oil fields," she said aloud to the windshield.
"I hate him Momma," Carolyn said.
"You have got to try to love him," she said to her eight year old daughter. "He brings home the bacon."
"Is the only thing that makes you love him -- the money he brings home, Momma?"
"I guess that about covers it child," she said with deep sadness in her voice.
"Momma," Carolyn said from the back seat. "Daddy tried somthin' at the river."
Silence came from the front seat. Momma knew her husband had been forcing himself on their older daughter. The thought of him starting on Carolyn made her heart sink to her feet. She could barely muster up the courage to reply to Carolyn. Carolyn saved her the trouble.
"Is he still a good man cause he brings home the money for us Momma? Are all men like him?"
Momma spoke her next words out of survival.
"Yes Carolyn, he is still a good man cause he brings home the money. But don't let no man ever take your body unless he gives you something in return. And honey, don't take what happened personal-like. Just pretend he did it to someone else."
"OK mama."
Pap was by now wondering why Momma and Carolyn were still in the car.
"Git yore asses in here now," he barked out the screen door in his drunken rage. It seemed he was drunk more and with it came more anger, in particular at people in his family. They got out of the car and tried to pick up Carolyn's brother still lying by the drive, sobbing and peeing his pants.
Later that night her father became even more drunk. He was sitting at the kitchen table with a bottle in one hand, a pistol in the other. The rest of the family was in the small living room watching the television. He came stumbling into the living room from the kitchen grabbing the eldest sister by the wrist throwing her to the floor ripping her pants down around her ankles. In front of the entire family he pulled down his pants and had intercourse with her while she lay sobbing and moaning. The family continued to watch the television as though nothing was happening. Ed Sullivan was on the television announcing the "dare-devils of the High-Wire act" about to come on. Sullivan cracked a joke and the audience roared with laughter. The living room was silent except for father and the moaning of his daughter on the floor. Momma's face was wet with tears as was Carolyn's. The boys acted as if the only thing in the room was the television.
* * *
As Carolyn grew so did her beauty. Her father was an extremely handsome full Apache Indian and he had high cheek bones with dark eyes to match his hair. Momma had the face and figure of Marilyn Monroe, stunningly beautiful in her own right. Carolyn had inherited the best attributes of both. She grew into her teens getting attention from the boys and popularity among the girls. She was the envy of students and teachers alike at school. More and more she learned how to use her looks to get what she wanted.
She used her Southern drawl and sultry young female voice and her eyes to get what grades she wanted from the male teachers and used her bond of sisterhood to get what she wanted from the female teachers. Her acting teacher suggested she enter the miss Houston beauty contest. Beauty got a girl everything in Texas and it was the most a girl could ever hope to have, for it got her the men with the power and the money and Texas girls knew it.
She entered and won the contest and her picture was printed in the Houston Gazette along with her address. Her parents were proud but her sister hated her for it. Carolyn felt like she did not deserve it, for her self-esteem suffered a great deal because of her sexual experience with her father and what went on in her house and family.
The announcement of her winning the beauty contest brought some nasty telephone calls and odd characters driving by her house. She answered the telephone late one night when the rest were asleep. The caller said:
"I saw your picture in the paper Carolyn. I am going to come to your house some night when your parents are gone and strap you up to the ceiling by your --,"
She hung up the telephone before the strange voice could continue. It was a familiar voice, like someone she had heard before somewhere.
The next day she stayed after school to practice cheer leading and to talk to the boys after basketball practice. Patrick was one of the guys on the team that was not a hero, but he was intelligent and pretty. In Carolyn's mind that meant he would go on to be successful and that turned her on. He was coming out of the boy's locker room and she was waiting. The coach was playing "Battle Hymn of the Republic" over the school public address system to instill pride in his team as they practiced. It was playing it's thunderous music all over the school.
"Hi Carolyn," he said to her. "You sure are lookin' good today. You always look good."
"That's real nice of you to say, Patrick, but I'm not so sure you mean it."
"What do you mean by that? I mean, why would I say something like that if I didn't mean it?" he said.
"Cause lots of boys tell me that and all they want to do is get me in a back room somewhere."
"I'm not like that," he said in honesty. "I just think you are a great lady, and you are funny with your jokes all the time and all. You are full of life and energy, and when you smile you could melt the Matterhorn."
"Where is the Matterhorn?" she said.
The "Battle Hymn of the Republic" hit a high, loud note as Patrick answered.
"Where did you say?" she said over the music.
"I think it is in Disneyland or Canada. I am not sure but I would like to go there some day. I would like to just get out of Texas some day, and amount to somethin'," Patrick said.
"I would like to go to the Matterhorn too. I want to go to Hollywood someday and be an actress. Everyone tells me I could, if I just go and do it."
Patrick looked into Carolyn's eyes and she could see by them he cared for her. She touched his arm and he put his hand on her shoulder and leaned toward her face. He kissed her on the lips in a very tender fashion. She had never before experienced such tenderness and she returned his kiss.
"Want to go steady?" he said.
"Yeah, I'd like that."
He handed her a ring he pulled off his finger and she put it on hers, the ring being about five sizes too large.
"Looks kinda goofy hangin' on your finger like that don't it?" he said laughing.
As she laughed she realized she had never laughed like this or talked or felt like this with a boy before.
"Are you gonna have money some day?" she asked him.
"I'm gonna be so danged rich I'll swim in my cash. I won't count it I'll weigh it."
"Well, you better, cause if ya don't I won't like you any more."
He laughed again thinking she was joking.
"I have to get home soon or Momma will kill me," Carolyn said.
"OK, remember you are my girl now. I'll see you tomorrow Carolyn. Bye."
Carolyn went down the hall to get her books out of her locker. She worked with her combination lock trying to get it open. The lock was at least twenty years old and worn to the point she had to move it just a certain way to get the combination right. She could normally hear the thing making a certain noise when it was ready to open but the music was too loud. She struggled with it for a while trying to get it open. Had she been able to hear over the music she would have heard footsteps coming around the corner.
"Hi Carolyn, what are you doing here so late?" the man said to her. It was a teacher she had seen around the hallways and she recognized his voice.
"What are you doing here Carolyn?" he asked again.
"Oh, hi," she said. "I am just here cause we were late with cheer leader practice and I can't get my locker door open."
"Let me help you," he said. He took a step closer to her and moved his hand toward the locker sliding it into her blouse. She jumped back in shock.
"Don't be afraid of me," he said to her over the music.
"YOU!" she yelled. "You are the voice on the telephone."
"Don't be afraid," he said smiling at her. He put his hands on her arms. She pulled away.
So you're going to be a fun one are you?" he said
wrestling her down to the hall floor. He rolled over on her, pulling her dress up and her panties down in syncro with the flutes playing over the loudspeakers. He was done and off as the music stopped. She began to cry as she lay on the floor, putting her hands to her face. He pulled up his pants running down the hall.
Carolyn pulled her self together and ran all the way home. Her mother was the only one there. Carolyn flung her arms around Momma and cried uncontrollably.
"What's the matter darlin'?" she said. "Why are you cryin' like this?"
"He raped me Momma, a teacher at school, the one that's been callin' here, he raped me Momma. Why do men want to do that to me! I hate them! I want them to feel what it's like to hurt like that. It's like they want to rip a piece of me off and throw it in the gutter! I want to kill them."
"Just think of it as happening to someone else." Momma said.
"I am gonna tell the police about that teacher, they will put him in jail won't they Momma?"
"They ain't about to take your word against a teachers darlin', just let it go."
"Let it go?" Carolyn said in disbelief.
"You got to let it go to survive and be with yourself Carolyn. You are not the only one. It happened to me all my life. It happened to my friends and lots of other women with looks. We just have to learn how to survive with it, to use it to our advantage and survive." She said to her tearful daughter.
Her older brother walked into the front door and joined them. He had a slip of paper in his hand and a tormented look on his face.
"I just been drafted to thet got-damn war over in Vietnam! They want me to go git kilt Momma!"
"Oh god," Momma said in disbelief. "Why does life got to be like this?"
Momma turned on the television to see the news about the war. As was routine the news footage was showing piles of bodies and soldiers getting shot at and killed, followed by denials of the country losing the war by government officials.
"They are gettin' us more and more into that war," Momma said. "When are they gonna wake up and quit the lyin' about it."
"I ain't got time to think about that!" Carolyn said. "I got to take a long shower Momma. Make sure no one walks in on me will you?"
"I will stand at the door and guard it Carolyn."
Carolyn's brother eventually got on the bus and headed out for boot camp. He was as rough and barbaric as was his father. He had a good teacher. He chose friends like himself which was not difficult in these tough parts near the oil fields.
Her younger brother was much more soft. His father beat him but not as severely or as often as he beat the oldest boy and oldest girl. But he lacked the toughness that went with the severe treatment and was seen as less than a man by his brother and his father. Carolyn respected his tenderness as she did the tenderness of her boyfriend, Patrick. But Patrick was about to graduate from high school and would attend the "college of Chiropractic" in Houston. He took it to heart, what Carolyn said. He took it to heart when she said that she would not love a man if he had no money, but it might have only been a subconscious understanding.
He took her to prom night and they made love. They took no limousine to the dance but his parent's old Ford. It would hardly start, but it got them there. They did not make love in a luxurious hotel room but in the back of the Ford. He asked her to marry him that night and she accepted, thinking this was the way out of the hell and the prison she and her family called "home."
She was eighteen and graduated from High School when she got married and moved in with Patrick. Patrick had just finished chiropractic school and received orders to report to military duty in Vietnam. After a tearful parting at the bus she went back to the empty house and he was on his way to war.
She was now living alone in Houston. She found a job as a clerk at a local motel. After a few months working at the motel she had sex with the manager which for some reason convinced her she must leave her husband. She decided to write Patrick a letter to explain why she had to divorce him and find her new life in Hollywood.
Before she had time to write him she received a letter from him. He was fighting near Khe Sahn. The letter said:
Dear Carolyn,
I now know why the VC are so intent on getting us out. I saw a pile of bones near a village we were sent to protect. I have seen lots of bones here but none like this. I noticed something about these that
were different. They were a pile of bones made up of baby's skeletons.
Some of our guys take this hate thing a little too seriously. They like to kill the children to keep them from growing up so they will not become the VC that killed our American friends.
We own the day. Charlie owns the night. When the
night comes I am scared to the very core of my soul
Carolyn, and I just want to stay alive to come home to you. I look up at the stars at night and with all the terror here, I just can not believe you are ever are under those same stars.
They brought in a buddy of mine today from the bush.
His name is Stoney. He is a great guy here from Nebraska. He did not make the grade at his
college there so he was drafted and sent here. He did not make it very far here. Only a few days. The VC cut off his dick and stuck it in his mouth making it hard for him to breath. He was like that for hours till we found him. They cut his belly open so his guts all fell down to his knees. Everyone gave him
their shot of morphine so he would not feel the pain,
and it was just enough to kill him before the chopper could pull him out of the bush to the medical. If anything happens like that to me I hope I am so lucky.
I can't wait to see you again baby. I love you.
Patrick.
The letter took her aback and she felt some sympathy for him because of it. but she had to think of herself now.
Carolyn decided that she was not happy being alone and unable to make a living on her own. She did not want to end up in a shack with a drunken man like Momma. She emotionally separated herself from her husband by seeing it all as happening to "somebody else." She decided not to write a return letter to Patrick but went to a "family" lawyer. She filed for divorce. Her letter to him was to the point.
Dear Patrick,
I saw a lawyer today and got a divorce from you. I am sorry you are having a bad time. I have no money and no way to do anything but return to poverty if I stay married to you. Everyone is going to Hollywood these days. If Momma will not let me move back home I am taking my chances and going there too.
Regards,
Carolyn
Carolyn was not making enough money on her own to make ends meet so she approached her mother.
"No Carolyn, when you moved out to live with your husband you moved out forever. We can not afford to take you back now what with things as tough as they are."
She stood and walked across her mother's living room for the last time, saying nothing as she walked out the door.
She walked out of the house and down the drive Pap had stood on while aiming his rifle at them when Momma and the rest of the children ran from his drunken rampages.
She turned around a few blocks away, stopping and thinking about her mother. she went back to her mother's house and hugged she and her younger brother and her older sister good-bye. Next morning Momma drove her to the Houston bus depot and Carolyn boarded the bus to Los Angeles, never to return to Houston again to live.
It was a long, dry ride from Texas to Los Angeles. She sat by the window most of the trip, just staring at the vast space between her home and where she would somehow find her dream. She was learning not to care about the past and people. She was learning to be tough and how to survive on her own. She was putting her friends and the love of her siblings and her mother out of her thoughts. She was learning to think only of herself.
She could not take her eyes off the endless space across the vastness of America out the bus window. She was glad she was safe on the bus and not alone in the dust and the dirt in the middle of the country. She felt a tear stream down her cheek. She could not stop the tear but she did everything she could not to think about it.
Patrick and her high school friends, her relatives she used to play with by the river -- they were fading fast in her accounting of her life and who she was. Now she could repress the horrible things she associated with Pap and the things he did to the family. She put the vision of the shack she had lived in as a child behind the bus as it made it's way down the old two-lane highway. She saw mountains in the distance. a few swirls of dust started up and tried to keep up with the bus a few yards from it from time-to-time; but they always died down and gave up the race.
CHAPTER THREE
HOLLYWOOD HERE WE ARE
It was a long hard road from Texas to Los Angeles. As the bus started to get into the freeway traffic she could hardly believe her eyes. She had never seen so many cars trying to get into the same space at the same time. She thought it would be easier if they would get on the freeway in shifts or something so it would not be so crowded. One thing that made her smile was the sign she had been waiting to see for a long while. The highway 101 off-ramp signs that said "Hollywood" and "Sunset Boulevard" because she knew this meant glamour and bright lights and stardom.
Carolyn had two hundred and sixty-five dollars and her Mother's best wishes with her when she got off the bus. She also had a suitcase full of two good sets of clothes and a few assorted needs. She asked the driver where she might find a place to stay for not a lot of money and he joked that she could stay with him for free, then motioned down the street to something that looked like a cheap motel a few yards away.
She struggled with her suitcase down the sidewalk. More than a few cars with men in them drove by and whistled at her offering her a "good time."
She made her way to the motel and walked into the main reception area. The man looked her over and smiled.
"Where you from today, Miss; Kansas?"
She answered in her Southern drawl.
"Nope, I'm from Houston Texas. I came here to make a name for myself and make some real money."
"You must be the tenth one today," the clerk said. "You all end up on the street, fucking your Johns just the same, I don't care how high and mighty you think you are."
"Just gimme my key," she demanded, plunking a twenty on the counter. She took the key from the smiling clerk and started outside to look for the number of the bungalow on the key. Other girls were leaving their bungalows looking very made-up in very sexy clothing.
Number ten on the door matched her key.
"I am so got-damn tired from that ride I got to get me some shut-eye," she said out loud while sliding the key into the hole. She opened the door and walking in she saw what looked like another suit case sitting by the make-shift couch in the tiled room. She walked quietly into the bed room.
"Ho Shit," the feminine voice shouted from the shadows in the closet.
"Who are you?" Carolyn shouted, trying to scare the person behind the voice.
"I am rooming here," she said. "Don't tell me the damn manager is trying to double up his rooms again. He is such a pain in the ass and he treats us like we are dirt."
"He does this to everybody without telling them?" Carolyn asked.
"Yeah, he is a pimp. What do you expect? My name is Kelly."
"He is a what?"
"A pimp," Kelly repeated. "Most of the girls that get off that bus go to the nearest shelter and that turns out to be this piss-hole. If they get off a bus in Hollywood they have no money and come here in search of the dream of becoming big starlets. They are always beautiful like me and, like you. I am from Dallas, where are you from?" she asked.
"I am from Houston. Are a lot of girls here from Texas?"
"A lot are," Kelly said. "Texas is where woman show their worth as humans by their looks and they get all the goodies of life by selling their looks to men that can pay for it. Hadn't you noticed?"
"So is that news to anyone outside Texas?" Carolyn said.
Kelly just stood looking at Carolyn for a bit, looking for something to register in her eyes. It didn't. The telephone rang and Kelly answered it.
"Another one already?" she said without another word. She hung up the telephone and went into the bathroom, closing the door. Carolyn stood for a moment looking over the tiny bungalow and opened her suitcase up on the bed. She hung her clothes up in the closet next to Kelly's. Kelly came out of the bathroom with ruby red lips and heavy rouge on her cheeks, wearing a short black skirt and a low cut sweater. She swept out of the room to the outside.
Carolyn looked out the window at Kelly as she walked down the walk.
I guess I got to find a job now, She thought to herself.
Carolyn started thinking about what she would do in this new environment.
At least I know bookkeeping, thanks to my old high school business teacher. Maybe I can work as a book-keep part time and wait tables near the studios. All those movie executives would love my body, hell, every man does. Must be something they like cause they like looking at it and touching it a lot. Wish I could say the same for them. Men are such assholes. They all have those big egos, the more you feed their ego the more they give you. She thought.
She decided the best way to find a job was to visit the companies in the office buildings along Santa Monica Boulevard, Sunset, and Wilshire, streets she picked from a map in the telephone book. They seemed like major streets.
She went out to look for a job the next morning. She had been walking door-to-door most of the day and was struck by how different this place was as compared to her home town. There were beautiful women walking the streets, especially along Sunset Boulevard. She wondered if they were all here in search of the same thing she was.
She wondered how the stars had made it to stardom in all this competition for the big break. Carolyn was young and ambitious and smart. She struck up conversations with whom ever she met and asked questions to learn all she could about this new place. She had to learn for she could not return home. Her mother would not take her back into the family and she had burned her bridge with her ex-husband. She had to make it here. No matter what.
She was filling out an application for employment at a table in the reception area in one of the offices. An older man came out of an office and asked her if she was looking for work to which she answered in the affirmative.
"What have you done for work before?" he asked. "Have you done anything in the area of receivables and payables?"
She knew what he was talking about and told him she had developed these skills in High School.
"Well then young lady," he said with a bit of a twinkle in his eye "you can start working here tomorrow."
"Thank you very much sir, I can hardly wait to work in these beautiful offices and all," she said in her best Texas accent, sounding every bit the sweet southern belle.
* * *
She had been working at the company and living with Kelly for several weeks now. She longed for something to "happen" in her life. She could see the people driving about on the streets of Hollywood looking as glamorous as people in the movies. She was in the thick of it yet she was as far from it as she had been in Houston. She felt frustrated. Her break came when she was struck by a very serious intestinal infection for which she had to have surgery immediately. The "bikini" surgery technique saved her from a grotesque scar across her belly.
"Do not worry Carolyn, I will take care of everything," her boss told her while holding her hand at her hospital bedside. By now the boss was enjoying her fleshy favors and had no intention of letting it get away by a little thing like a lack of health. It was he who instructed the surgeon to use the new bikini technique. He thought her his possession to take care of. Carolyn looked at the old man and his use of her as something "happening to someone else."
Her boss, it turned out, had a wife. When his wife made inquiry as to why her husband was spending so much time at the hospital through a private investigator he fired Carolyn with some severance pay. He did not tell her until she was released from the hospital some two weeks after the operation on her belly.