The World According to Garp

“Well,” said Bensenhaver, holding up the bra for them and the deputy to see. “Well, that's exactly what the new law provides for—in the case of these sexual crimes.” Neither the deputy nor the Roths spoke. “Any sexual crime,” Bensenhaver said, “is now punishable by castration. If you fuck anybody you shouldn't,” said Bensenhaver, “or if you assist in the act of getting a person fucked—by not helping us to stop it—then we can castrate you.”

Weldon Rath looked at his brother, Raspberry, who looked a little puzzled. But Weldon leered at Bensenhaver and said, “You do it yourselves or do you have others do it for you?” He nudged his brother. Raspberry tried to grin, pulling his birthmark askew.

But Bensenhaver was deadpan, turning the bra over and over in his hands. “Of course we don't do it,” he said. “There's all new equipment for it now. The National Guard does it. That's why we got the National Guard helicopter. We just fly you right out to the National Guard hospital and fly you right back home again. There's nothing to it,” he said. “As you know.”

“We have a big family,” Raspberry Rath said. “There's a lot of us brothers. We don't know from one day to the next who's riding around in what truck.”

“There's another truck?” Bensenhaver asked the deputy. “You didn't tell me there was another truck.”

“Yeah, it's black. I forgot,” the deputy said. “They have a black one, too.” The Raths nodded.

“Where is it?” Bensenhaver asked. He was contained but tense. The brothers looked at each other. Weldon said, “I haven't seen it in a while.”

“Might be that Oren has it,” said Raspberry.

“Might be our father who's got it,” Weldon said.

“We don't have time for this shit,” Bensenhaver told the deputy, sharply. “We'll find out what they weigh— then see if the pilot can carry them.” The deputy, thought Bensenhaver, is almost as much of a moron as the brothers. “Go on!” Bensenhaver said to the deputy. Then, with impatience, he turned to Weldon Rath. “Name?” he asked.

“Weldon,” Weldon said.

“Weight?” Bensenhaver asked.

“Weight?” said Weldon.

“What do you weigh?” Bensenhaver asked him. “If we're going to lug you off in the copter, we got to know what you weigh.”

“One-eighty-something,” Weldon said.

“You?” Bensenhaver asked the younger one.

“One-ninety-something,” he said. “My name's Raspberry.” Bensenhaver shut his eyes.

“That's three-seventy-something,” Bensenhaver told the deputy. “Go ask the pilot if we can carry that.”

“You're not taking us anywhere, now, are you?” Weldon asked. “We'll just take you to the National Guard hospital,” Bensenhaver said. “Then if we find the woman, and she's all right, we'll take you home.”

“But if she ain't all right, we get a lawyer, right?” Raspberry asked Bensenhaver. “One of those people in the courts, right?”

“If who ain't all right?” Bensenhaver asked him.

“Well, this woman you're looking for,” Raspberry said.

“Well, if she's not all right,” Bensenhaver said, “then we already got you in the hospital and we can castrate you and send you back home the same day. You boys know more about what's involved than I do,” he admitted. “I've never seen it done, but it doesn't take long, does it? And it doesn't bleed much, does it?”

“But there's courts, and a lawyer!” Raspberry said.

“Of course there is,” Weldon said. “Shut up.”

“No, no more courts for this kind of thing—not with the new law,” Bensenhover said. “Sex crimes are special, and with the new machines, it's just so easy to castrate someone that it makes the most sense.”

“Yeah!” the deputy hollered from the helicopter. “The weight's okay. We can take them.”

“Shit!” Raspberry said.

“Shut up,” said Weldon.

“They're not cutting my balls off!” Raspberry yelled at him. “I didn't even get to have her!” Weldon hit Raspberry so hard in the stomach that the younger man pitched over sideways and landed on the prostrate pig. It squealed, its short legs spasmed, it evacuated suddenly, and horribly, but otherwise it didn't move. Raspberry lay gasping beside the sow's stenchful waste, and Arden Bensenhaver tried to knee Weldon Rath in the balls. Weldon was too quick, though; he caught Bensenhaver's leg at the knee and tossed the old man over backwards, over Raspberry and the poor pig.

“Goddamnit,” Bensenhaver said.

The deputy drew his gun and fired one shot in the air. Weldon dropped to his knees, holding his ears. “You all right, Inspector?” the deputy asked.

“Yes, of course I am,” Bensenhaver said. He sat beside the pig and Raspberry. He realized, without the smallest touch of shame, that he felt toward them more or less equally. “Raspberry,” he said (the name itself made Bensenhaver close his eyes), “if you want to keep your balls on, you tell us where the woman is.” The man's birthmark flashed at Bensenhaver like a neon sign.

“You keep still, Raspberry,” Weldon said.

And Bensenhaver told the deputy, “if he opens his mouth again, shoot his balls off, right here. Save us the trip.” Then he hoped to God that the deputy was not so stupid that he would actually do it.

“Oren's got her,” Raspberry told Bensenhaver. “He took the black truck.”

“Where'd he take her?” Bensenhaver asked.

“Don't know,” Raspberry said. “He took her for a ride.”

“Was she all right when she left here?” Bensenhaver asked.

“Well, she was all right, I guess,” Raspberry said. “I mean, I don't think Oren had hurt her yet. I don't think he'd even had her yet.”

“Why not?” Bensenhaver asked.

“Well, if he'd already had her,” Raspberry said, “why would he want to keep her?” Bensenhaver again shut his eyes. He got to his feet.

“Find out how long ago,” he told the deputy. “Then fuck up that turquoise truck so they can't drive it. Then get your ass back to the copter.”

“And leave them here?” the deputy asked.

“Sure,” Bensenhaver said. “There'll be plenty of time to cut their balls off, later.”

Arden Bensenhaver had the pilot send a message that the abductor's name was Oren Rath, and that he was driving a black, not a turquoise, pickup. This message meshed interestingly with another one: a state trooper had received a report that a man all alone in a black pickup had been driving dangerously, wandering in and out of his rightful driving lane, “looking like he was drunk, or stoned, or something else.” The trooper had not followed this up because, at the time, he'd thought he was supposed to be more concerned about a turquoise pickup. Arden Bensenhaver, of course, couldn't know that the man in the black pickup hadn't really been alone—that, in fact, Hope Standish had been lying with her head in his lap. The news simply gave Bensenhaver another of his chills: if Rath was alone, he had already done something to the woman. Bensenhaver yelled to the deputy to hurry over to the copter—that they were looking for a black pickup that had last been seen on the bypass that intersects the system of county roads near the town called Sweet Wells.

“Know it?” Bensenhaver asked.

“Oh, yeah,” the deputy said.

They were in the air again, below them the pigs once more in a panic. The poor, medicated pig that had been fallen on was lying as still as when they'd come. But the Rath brothers were fighting—it appeared, quite savagely —and the higher and farther from them that the helicopter moved, the more the world returned to a level of sanity of which Arden Bensenhaver approved. Until the tiny fighting figures, below and to the east, were no more than miniatures to him, and he was so far from their blood and fear that when the deputy said he thought that Raspberry could whip Weldon, if Raspberry just didn't allow himself to get scared, Bensenhaver laughed his Toledo deadpan laugh.