"Tell him," said Bensenhaver to the deputy, "that he is a liar."
"You're a liar, Weldon," the deputy said.
Raspberry Rath said to the deputy, "Shit, who is he, coming in here, telling us what to do?"
Arden Bensenhaver took the three pieces of the bra from his pocket. He looked at the sow lying beside the men; she had one frightened eye, which appeared to be looking at all of them at once, and it was hard to tell where her other eye was looking.
"Is that a boy pig or a girl pig?" asked Bensenhaver.
The Raths laughed. "Anyone can see it's a sow," Raspberry said.
"Do you ever cut the balls off the boy pigs?" Bensenhaver asked. "Do you do that yourselves or do you have others do it for you?"
"We castrate them ourselves," said Weldon. He looked a little like a boar himself, with wild tufts of hair sprouting upward, out of his ears. "We know all about castrating. There's nothing to it."
"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 Raths 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?"