"Enough," the deputy said with self-conscious solemnity. He had never seen a rape or murder before, and he realized that even now he had not actually seen it through his own eyes as much as he'd been treated to the experience through the eyes of Arden Bensenhaver. He had seen rape and murder according to Bensenhaver, he thought. The deputy felt very confused; he sought some point of view all his own.

"Well," said the driver, peering in the rear window again, "I seen some stuff in the service, but nothing like this."

The deputy couldn't respond.

"This is like war, I guess," the driver said. "This is like a bad hospital."

The deputy wondered if he should let the fool look at Rath's body, if it mattered or not, and to whom? Certainly it couldn't matter to Rath. But to his unreal family? To the deputy?--he didn't know. And would Bensenhaver object?

"Hey, don't mind my asking you a personal question," the driver said. "Don't get sore, okay?"

"Okay," said the deputy.

"Well," the driver said. "What happened to the rubber?"

"What rubber?" asked the deputy; he might have had some questions concerning Bensenhaver's sanity, but the deputy had no doubt that, in this case, Bensenhaver had been right. In the world according to Bensenhaver, no trivial detail should make less of rape's outrage.

* * *

--

Hope Standish, at that moment, felt safe at last in Bensenhaver's world. She floated and dipped over the farmlands beside him, trying not to be sick. She was beginning to notice things about her body again--she could smell herself and feel every sore spot. She felt such disgust, but here was this cheerful policeman who sat there admiring her--his heart touched by her violent success.

"Are you married, Mr. Bensenhaver?" she asked him.

"Yes, Mrs. Standish," he said. "I am."

"You've been awfully nice," Hope told him, "but I think I'm going to be sick now."

"Oh, sure," said Bensenhaver; he grabbed a waxy paper bag at his feet. It was the pilot's lunch bag; there were some uneaten french-fried potatoes at the bottom and the grease had turned the waxed paper translucent. Bensenhaver could see his own hand, through the french fries and through the bottom of the bag. "Here," he said. "You go right ahead."

She was already retching; she took the bag from him and turned her head away. The bag did not feel big enough to contain what vileness she was sure she held inside her. She felt Bensenhaver's hard, heavy hand on her back. With his other hand, he held a strand of her matted hair out of her way. "That's right," he encouraged her, "keep it coming, get it all out and you'll feel much better."

Hope recalled that whenever Nicky was being sick, she told him the same thing. She marveled how Bensenhaver could even turn her vomiting into a victory, but she did feel much better--the rhythmic heaving was as soothing to her as his calm, dry hands, holding her head and patting her back. When the bag ripped and spilled, Bensenhaver said, "Good riddance, Mrs. Standish! You don't need the bag. This is a National Guard helicopter. We'll let the National Guard clean it up! After all--what's the National Guard for?"

The pilot flew on, grimly, his expression never changing.

"What a day it's been for you, Mrs. Standish!" Bensenhaver went on. "Your husband is going to be so proud of you." But Bensenhaver was thinking that he'd better make sure; he'd better have a talk with the man. It was Arden Bensenhaver's experience that husbands and other people did not always take a rape in the right way.

16

THE FIRST ASSASSIN

What do you mean, 'This is Chapter One'?" Garp's editor, John Wolf, wrote him. "How can there be any more of this? There is entirely too much as it stands! How can you possibly go on?"

"It goes on," Garp wrote back. "You'll see."

"I don't want to see," John Wolf told Garp on the phone. "Please drop it. At least put it aside. Why don't you take a trip? It would be good for you--and for Helen, I'm sure. And Duncan can travel now, can't he?"

But Garp not only insisted that The World According to Bensenhaver was going to be a novel; he insisted that John Wolf try to sell the first chapter to a magazine. Garp had never had an agent; John Wolf was the first man to deal with Garp's writing, and he managed everything for him, just as he managed everything for Jenny Fields.

"Sell it?" John Wolf said.

"Yes, sell it," Garp said. "Advance publicity for the novel."

This had happened with Garp's first two books; excerpts had been sold to magazines. But John Wolf tried to tell Garp that this chapter was (1) unpublishable and (2) the worst possible publicity--should anyone be fool enough to publish it. He said that Garp had a "small but serious" reputation as a writer, that his first two novels had been decently reviewed--had won him respected supporters and a "small but serious" audience. Garp said he hated the reputation of "small but serious," though he could see that this appealed to John Wolf.

"I would rather be rich and wholly outside caring about what the idiots call 'serious,'" he told John Wolf. But who is ever outside cari

Tags: John Irving Fiction
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