Chapter 8

When Brad King returned to the Rooster Tavern that night he walked into the middle of a brawl. Roland Hanson had gone berserk it seemed. He was flinging beer mugs and chairs at a young man who was cursing him out while the interested clientele looked on. Someone had managed to part them and the bouncer was trying to throw both men out.

"That's Roland's son, Ret," said a drunk with a thick stubble on his chin.

"What?" said Brad. He moved among the crowd until he got the whole story. Ret Hanson, who hadn't been seen in this county for over ten years, had showed up at the bar that night with a wild story about how Roland had cheated him of some money. When Roland denied it and told him to get the hell away, the son had started shouting something about a donkey.

"She did it with a donkey. In a donkey act in Iowa City. That's the kind of daughter you have. How do you like that? Do you like it? I saw it, with my own eyes, I saw it!' That's what he kept shouting," one old timer recounted to Brad with a laugh. "Whoeee, you should have seen Roland Hanson's eyes bulge," the old man laughed.

Brad had heard enough and he quickly left the saloon. Lena had told him of her stay in Iowa City and how her brother had betrayed her, and how her father had betrayed him.

The bouncer had succeeded now in ejecting both the elder and the younger Hanson and they stood facing each other, their fists raised, outside the establishment.

"With a donkey. She fucked a fucking donkey, she sucked him off and then she fucked him with her cunt! How do you like that? Is that what she does to you too? Does she fuck you just like she fucked the donkey?" Ret was screaming.

"Shut up, you miserable liar!" Roland Hanson was almost beside himself with liquor and anger and confusion.

Men were trying to keep father and son from falling on each other with their fists.

Brad King stepped up. "Sir, I don't know if what your son tells you is true, but I do know one thing. Your daughter has fucked your horses. Both of them. Your stallions. She told me she goes out into the barn and fucks them both, after every time you take her and you rape her in the barn!"

"It's a lie!!!!" screamed Roland Hanson, held by several hands. His eyes were boiling red and every muscle in his body and face was straining to keep the truth from coming out.

"Let me go. Let me go home. I'll ask Lena myself. I'll ask that stupid bitch."

"Er, I don't think you should drive home yourself Roland, old man. You've had quite a few," said a friend.

Roland Hanson spit. "Let me go."

"No," other men agreed. A few of them decided to escort him home, to make sure he didn't do something wild and crazy on the way. They could see that he was a man at the end of some kind of rope and they wanted to protect him from himself.

Against his wild protestations, he was forced into the cab of his pick-up between two men, and another car followed behind.

By the time they pulled into his driveway he had calmed down. He was thinking. He let on as if he was feeling much calmer and better, and thanked them for helping him home. He was hoping they would leave, when they let on they'd love a cup of coffee. He let them into the kitchen, casting a backward glance at the barn. He'd have to wait for them to leave before he could go in there.

He fumbled around in the kitchen, knocking the glasses together, trying to boil water on the stove for coffee.

"Where's Lena?" one of the men asked. "Have her come out here and do it," they suggested.

"Lena!" he called gruffly and then when there was no answer he said, "She must be asleep."

"How's Mara doing, Roland? We hear she's pretty sick. Is everything okay? Is there anything we can do to help?"

Roland thought of that sick feeble face to whom he was feeding small amounts of rat poison everyday. He looked the men straight in the eyes and said, "No thanks. Appreciate it, but there's nothing anyone can do. The doc looks in on her every once in a while."

Brad King was among the men in the kitchen. He had ridden in the car that followed behind. "How is Lena doing?" he asked, sipping his coffee. "You be sure to tell that girl, my offer is still good. I'll take her out anytime."

The other men murmured, "She's a nice girl, Roland. She'll make some man a fine wife some day."

Roland barely kept up his polite attitude until the men finally thanked him for the coffee and said goodnight. They were still offering their help anytime, when they pulled out of the driveway and drove away.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," said Roland disgustedly as he watched them leave. He spat on the ground and then, when their headlights were out of sight, he stalked into the barn.

He looked for her everywhere. In the loft, in the horses' stalls, in the cows' stalls, in the house. He barely cast a glance at his sleeping wife lying pale and grey on her cot. After he had searched the entire premises he found himself sitting dully on a kitchen chair, under a bare electric bulb, pounding his fist against the kitchen table and repeating, "She's gone, she's gone."

Then there rose up before his mind pictures of what two men had told him she had done. With his stallions? No, he couldn't believe that. He saw her white buttocks parted for the horses' long dicks and closed his eyes and spit. No, not that. NO, not with his horses. He thought about how skittish they had become of late, almost spoiled for riding, and he remembered how he had talked with Brad about it.

"They're ruined for riding now," he had said. "I can't figure it out. It's like they've had a woman on their backs or something. They just won't heel anymore."

And he remembered now how Brad King had smiled.

And with a donkey? Ret swore he had seen her do a donkey act in a bar in Iowa City. No, Ret was full of lies, vengeful lies. He just wanted his money, and had come home to make trouble for Roland with a fistful of ridiculous lies.

But then where was she now? How had she escaped? Where had she gone? He thought of the soft warm body, the odorous cunt he could ordinarily have gone into the barn and taken, now, when he wanted it so much, and it was gone!!!!!

Brad King went home that night and had a long, if fitful, rest. He was not worried about Lena for the moment. He knew she was safe in Linda's tent. But he was figuring out, even in his dreams, how he would get Lena permanently out of her father's clutches.

Brad woke late in the morning and greeted his parents at breakfast. They had heard about the ruckus down at the Rooster the night before. Indeed it was the topic of conversations at breakfast tables that Sunday all over the county. Men were asking men and women were asking women: "With a donkey? With a horse? Do you think she really did it? What goes on over there at the Hanson place anyway."

Brad refused to say much, except that he had been there and had driven home with Roland.

"Well I reckon you'd better get that bull over to him today anyway. Whether he's fighting with his son or not, I reckon business will still go on."

"Yessir," said Brad and he went out to load the bull into the van.

Brad King was not the first visitor to the Hanson residence that Sunday morning however. Earlier that morning, much earlier, at dawn, a car had pulled into the driveway and Ret Hanson, stepping out, saw the figure of his father sitting hunched up at the kitchen table with all the kitchen lights on.

Ret Hanson was humming as he knocked on the door and then stepped in, waking his father up.

"I got her," was all he said.

"Huh?" said Roland blinking.

"She was gone when you got back here. Right?" He licked his dry lips, just like his father.

Roland said nothing.

"I know where she is and I can get her right to you. For $2000."

Roland said, "I don't believe you."

"Here, recognize these?" and Ret pulled from his back pocket a pair of crumpled up black panties.

Roland put them to his face and smelled them deeply. He took the panties away from his face and his eyes had a clearer look. "Where is she," he said.

"Ah, not until you hand the money over," Ret wagged a finger at him.

Roland got up and went into the back bedroom. He lifted the mattress his wife lay on and pulled at a wad of bills stuffed into the springs. He sat down and counted out a thousand dollars. He let the mattress spring back. He went back into the kitchen. He had never noticed that his wife had ceased to breathe.

"There, a thousand. That's all I got. Take it or leave it," said Roland slapping the money on the table.

"I know you got more, old man, but I'll take this," said Ret after a moment's hesitation. Then he said; "She's in the car. In the trunk."

In the dawn's first light, two men lifted a bound figure of a girl from the trunk of a car and carried her into the barn.

The younger man drove off in the car and the older man, after checking that the girl's bonds were secure, and that she was firmly gagged, left her tightly tied up in the upper loft. He went in and fell asleep on the couch where he was awakened later that morning by Brad King who arrived with the bull.

Roland looked at him suspiciously. Ret had told him how he'd gone, drunk and with a woman he'd picked up, to the carnival at the edge of town, after being thrown out of the Rooster. They walked around spending what little money he'd had left, and then suddenly, behind a tent, he saw Lena. She had slipped out of the tent to pee. He'd come up behind her and hauled her away. Roland wondered how she had gotten there. He wondered if she'd had any help this time.

But he said nothing. He wanted to get rid of this boy. He'd have to get some other man to help him out on the farm when he needed help from now on.

He began to bring the bull out. It was snorting and kicking like crazy. It obviously didn't like travelling in this fashion.

Brad got the bull into the pen where the cows would be brought to him. He asked Roland if he wanted him to stick around and help with the mating, but Roland said no. Brad looked over at the barn once or twice, and Roland saw this and watched him.

"This kind of job really requires more than one man around. These bulls can be mean, as you know," said Brad.

"Thanks, I'll be just fine. You can come by and pick him up about five today. My brother-in-law lives down the road and he's going to come by and help me out. Thanks."

There was nothing Brad could do but get back in his car and leave.