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It was a sign of Hot Springs' comparative cosmopolitanism that Catholics, rare elsewhere in the state, had a large parish and school in the city. The city's affluence came largely from the Federal Government, which had established a hospital and reservation around the mineral waters in the 1800s. The natives let a double jurisdiction grow up, and visitors to the spas were received with illegal (but openly practiced) gambling and prostitution. The local tales of Hope were traded for the legends of Al Capone carousing in the acrid steam of the bathhouses or at champagny circles around the roulette wheel.
After the Clintons moved into town, Billy tried out the slot machines (confiscated in various political campaigns and held by a compliant police force until the zealots had moved on). A natural stinginess soon made him give up on machines that gobbled his money and gave so little back. Like the other boys, he called up Maxine, the best-known madam, to tie up the line she used for customers. "We did it mainly to hear her cuss -- we never heard a woman use language like that."
Carolyn Staley, who lived next door to the Clintons when she and Bill were in high school, says that as a preacher's kid, she never even knew about the town's reputation as sin city. Did the Clintons know? I ask her. "Oh, yes, they were more sophisticated, more worldly-wise." Clinton's mother liked the gambling, and his stepfather, who was still drinking, flew into rages when he was not sure where she had been. In a deposition for divorce proceedings, the mother feared for her son's safety: "He has continually tried to do bodily harm to myself and my son Billy."
Eventually Billy got too big to beat, and threatened his stepfather, telling him never to lay a hand on his mother again. When the rages continued, the family broke up.
Hot Springs, unlike Hope, was a place where such problems could be kept secret. Billy's friends, teachers, counselors and pastors never knew what violence he faced when he went home. Staley lived next door when the Clintons' brief (three-month) divorce was still in effect, and did not realize that her friend was fatherless during that period. Eventually, Roger convinced Virginia that he could reform. Her son, 15 at the time, argued that he would never change and tried to persuade his mother not to remarry him. Why, I ask, did she? "She was old-fashioned and thought she must be to blame in some way; and she felt that Roger ((Clinton's half brother, born of this marriage)) needed a father." He does not mention what seems the obvious and (in this case) the real reason -- that Virginia still loved Roger.
Clinton has always been very close to his mother, despite the fact that he and his brother were largely brought up by a maid who cared and cooked for them while the mother was at her nursing jobs. It was a tradition in Hope for families of even modest means to have a black maid -- Virginia had one when she was growing up, and Billy had Odessa while he was at his grandfather's house. In Hot Springs the maid was white, and very religious -- she hoped Billy would grow up to be a preacher.