The Girls Who Were Really Built
In Neosho, anyway, it started with Candy Brown.
It had been going on for years in bigger places, I guess, but nobody thought anything about it.
I was only ten when Candy came in on the bus from Kansas City, but even I knew that a girl shaped like Candy, with a face like Candy, and a name like Candy had no business in a town like Neosho, Kansas.
She belonged in New York modeling strapless evening dresses or black lace underwear or soap bubbles.
Her real businessno matter what she was sellingwas love.
That was the word that rhymed with Candy.
I've heard that fashions in female beauty change just like in clothes.
Maybe my great-grandfather would have thought Candy was too skinny in the legs or the waist and too full in the hips and the bust, but the flabbergasted young men of Neosho wouldn't have redistributed an ounce.
The news spread through town faster than the time they busted the jug of mail-order perfume down at the post office.
Before Candy got to the hotel, the lobby was already crowded.
The lucky ones got chairs; the rest had to stand around and act like they were selling steers.
I was luckiest of all.
I was only ten and I could go right up to her and look at her long, blond hair and her blue eyes and her red, red lips, and I could smell her.She smelled like new-mown hay when you're rolling in it.
People talked. Particularly the women.
Some said she was married, and there was no use sniffing around because her husband would be along.
Some said she wasn't, but she should be.
Some said she was a widow, and some said she wasn't any better than she ought to be and the sheriff oughtn't to allow that sort of thing to go on in Neosho and right in the hotel, too.
Folks called her "Miz" Brown - halfway between "Miss" and "Missis" like you call women before you know whether they're married or not.
I knew, though, that first day.
There was no ring on her finger, and, besides, she promised to marry me.
That was just after she'd signed the register for poor Marv Kincaid, the day clerk.
Marv finally ripped his eyes off her long enough to read what she'd written.
"Candy," he'd sighed, like an old cow settling down for the night. That's when I piped up. "Miss Candy," I said. "Will you marry me?" She looked down and smiled. The fellows in the lobby sighed, all together.
The object of itmefloated a foot off the marble floor. "What's your name?" she asked, in a voice as sweet as molasses and twice as smooth.
"Jim," I said faintly.
"Sure I'll marry you, Jim," she said.
"You hurry and grow up."
But she didn't.
She married Marv Kincaid, the homeliest man in town, and settled down to make a home for him.
Folks said nothing good would come of it. They said she would leave him or drive him to drink, or they would find him with his hand in the hotel cash drawer or in the basement some morning with his throat grinning.
But I didn't notice much difference, except Marv started staying home nights instead of hanging around the pool hall, and he took a correspondence course from the University, and he wound up manager of the hotel.
Nobody ever had any trouble from Candy, not Marv or anybody.
She kept to herself. She didn't gossip, socialize, or flirtand I guess that made the women madder than anything.
Besides, the young fellows soon had other things to think about.
Like Tracy. She came right after Candy got married.
She and Candy might have been twins, except that Tracy had red hair, and they didn't look a bit alike.
Like Candy, though, Tracy was a man's dream of heaven, a sweet-formed, sweet-faced angel.
Doc Winslow got her.
He wasn't Doc Winslow then, of course. He was plain Fred Winslow, and he was no catch.
It was later that he got busy and put an M.D. after his name. Doc always said that Tracy was a big help. I asked him once how come Tracy married him. He thought about it awhile and then said, "I wondered that, too. Not then. I was too excited about how lucky I was and too scared something would happen before the wedding. The way I figured, though, I was the first one who had guts enough to ask her." "Ever talk about it?" He shook his head quick. "Even after almost thirty years, I'm scared I might get the wrong answer." I knew what he meant.
Because after Tracy came Choo-Choo, and after Choo-Choo came Kim, and after Kim came Dallas, and after Dallas came April, and I was eighteen, then, and April married me.
April was a blonde, like Candy. She was shaped like Candy, too. They might have been made in the same mold.
It worried me a little at first. I figured maybe that was why I fell in love with her. I was wrong. First time I got her alone I asked her to marry me, and she said "Yes."
April made me a perfect wife, and I never was sorry I got married, not once.
Find another man who could say that.
April was everything a wife ought to be.
She was even-tempered but not cowlike, affectionate but not possessive, interested in my work but not nosy.
What's more, she could cook.
In the morning she got up, smiling, to cook me a good breakfast. At noon she had a tasty lunch waiting for me--but easy on the calories.