Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey

14–Going Away

Bodie Carlyle (Childhood Friend): It took the both of us to haul off Rant's clothes. A night before he left home, he only pretended to pack them in his suitcase. Got garbage bags and filled those instead, folding those shirts and pants just so. Half his mom's life wasted in embroidery-ing. The young part of her life spent punching rivets and sewing extra trim on regular blue jeans. Rant, he'd hold each shirt tucked under his chin, petting the wrinkles smooth against his chest, then folding the sleeves. He'd button all the buttons. He piled all the folded pants and shirts into the black plastic bags.

Over the horizon, beyond the windbreak of Russian olives, three horizons off from the Casey farm, we walked, until we almost got to morning. Getting to nowhere, Rant fished a shirt out from a bag. Holding the collar with one hand, Rant shook a cigarette lighter in his other hand. Rant sparked a little flame and stood there, looking at the bright tie-dyed colors in the weak light. His mom's masterpiece. That shirt looked brighter and brighter, until Rant had to let go, let it fall, flaming, to his feet. In the firelight, little snake bites of yellow stood around us, dog and coyote and skunk eyes flickering, scavengers, watching, all having sunk teeth into Rant's skin.

Echo Lawrence (Party Crasher): The first time you met Rant, the first part you met was his teeth. Instead of chewing gum, him and his redneck friends, they used to pinch up clean tar from the county roads. In summer, black tar oozed up from cracks in the blacktop, and they used to chew it. Teeth they sold to the Tooth Fairy were pitch-black.

Bodie Carlyle: Rant used to carry his radio out, nights, into the desert. He'd walk, monkeying with the dial to pick up traffic reports from all over the world. Car crashes and whatnot. Holding that radio to his ear, Rant used to smile and listen. Eyes closed, he'd say, "It's always rush hour somewheres."

From DRVR Radio Graphic Traffic: Northbound on the 417 Freeway, at Milepost 79, look for a totally cherry Dodge Monaco, maybe the heaviest coupe ever in mass production, four thousand pounds of Winchester Gray powered with a 175-horsepower V8. Very nice hidden headlights. Word from the officer on the scene is, the driver of the Monaco apparently hit a slick patch and went sideways in the right lane. The driver was a thirty-one-year-old female with the dicing injuries typical of shattered safety glass.

Echo Lawrence: On Party Crash nights, Rant used to talk about leaving Middleton. How, on his last night at home, he was chewing tar. That night, Rant sat out with his dad on the gravel shoulder of the highway, down the road three mailboxes from the barbed-wire fence at the edge of their farm. The sun going flat-tire against the soft, wheat-field horizon. Chester Casey, squatting on his cowboy-boot heels in the dust smell of the gravel. Rant, butt up on a cardboard suitcase heavy with gold and silver coins.

Bodie Carlyle: Rant's old suitcase he had was full to busting with Tooth Fairy money.

From DRVR Radio Graphic Traffic: The Monaco was T-boned by a Continental Mark IV that's really worth crying over: California Sunshine Yellow with a cream leather interior, the first model of American automobile to feature "loose cushion" upholstery. The meat-wagon boys called to say the Monaco suffered predominantly left-side injuries, including lacerations of the liver, the spleen, and the left kidney. Immediate cause of death looks like transection of the aorta.

Echo Lawrence: Rant's chewing tar that last night of his childhood. His suitcase packed and dragged to the shoulder of the highway, father and son waiting next to the metal bus-stop sign shot Swiss cheese with bullet holes. The wind twisting the sheetmetal sign a hair, side to side. With the wind whistling through those rusty holes, Rant says, "I got a secret I needs to tell."

And Chester Casey says, "No." He says, "No, you don't. You ain't got no secrets from me." A hand pushing down on the top of each thigh, Chet Casey stands up from squatting. Arching and twisting his spine until it pops, Chester kicks the pointed toe of one cowboy boot, just tapping the side of the cardboard suitcase printed to look like leather. His toe tapping the brown cardboard, Rant's father says, "You ain't never told me as much, but I knowed you're packing nothing but cash money here."

From DRVR Radio Graphic Traffic: Smart money says the Mark IV has myocardial contusions and lacerations of the pericardial sac, but we can't confirm that until the coroner opens him up at the morgue. I'm Tina Something with your DRVR Rubberneck Report, every ten minutes or as the wrecks happen…

Echo Lawrence: The future starts tomorrow, and Rant needs to say this before the bus pulls up. This moment, it's something his dad won't want to know. This here, Rant says, is the fact that starts a new future. Or a brand-new past. Or both.

Rant slapping flies, cupping wind and sand away from his face, he says, "Just so you know," he swats a bite on the back of his neck and says, "I'm never getting hitched."

A star blinks on the edge of the world, getting bright, blinding bright, growing so fast it goes past before you can hear the sound, the wind and dust of it—only a car, already come and gone. The headlights fading over the far side of the world.

And Rant's dad, he says, "No." He squats in the gravel and says, "You only figure that way to put a fright in me." Chester Casey says, "Soon as you meet a girl name of Echo Lawrence, you'll figure otherwise."

The wind bowing every weed and clump of cheatgrass in the same direction. Shaking every sagebrush. On the wind, you can smell the smoke of embroidery silk and smoldering denim. Chrome rivets.

Look here. It's impossible Chester Casey could've known my name. We'd never met. At this point, I'd never heard of Middleton or Rant.

Logan Elliot (Childhood Friend): The only worst part of the Casey house, when you visited, was how his ma used to listen outside the bathroom door. No lie. The first time I was over, I opened the door, and she stood there blocking the way, telling me, "I would appreciate it, upon future visits to this household, if you would urinate from a seated position…"

It didn't matter I didn't know the word "urinate."

Echo Lawrence: That night, waiting for the bus, Rant and his dad squinted as a new star blinked on the horizon, getting big, blowing by in a gust of wind and diesel smoke, the star exploded into white headlights, yellow running lights, red taillights. A cab, sleeper box, double trailer. Then—gone.

Rant says, "I'm meeting some girl?" He says, "How do you figure that?"

And his dad says, "Same as I knowed an old man pulled up and talked to you before you come running about your Granny Esther." Chester says, "Old man in a Chrysler, told you that he was your for-real pa."

Spitting black, a sideways stream into the gravel, Rant says, "What model of Chrysler?"

And Chester Casey says, "Same as I knowed your Granny Esther screamed at the sight of him, called him the Devil, and telled you to run."

East of the bus-stop sign, the real stars come on. Straight overhead, more stars blink on. Flicker, and stay bright.

Scratching at bug bites, rubbing away goosebumps, Rant says, "Supposing that's the truth," he says, "what else did that old man tell me?"

Cammy Elliot (Childhood Friend): At the Casey house, if you used their peanut butter, Mrs. Casey wanted for you to smoothe what was left in the jar. So it always looked fresh store-bought.

Echo Lawrence: Chester Casey tells his son, "That old man telled you he was your real pa, he telled you to come find him in the city, soon as you was able." Chester's cowboy boot, the pointed toe taps the cardboard suitcase, and he says, "And that old man telled you where to find all this cash money."

And Rant spits black tar, close enough to splash the side of the suitcase. Rabies-infected saliva. Black spattered on the brand-new of the cardboard. Rant just sits there, shaking his head no.

Chester Casey says, "That old man, he telled the truth about being your for-real pa."

Sheriff Bacon Carlyle (Childhood Enemy): Don't ask for my feeling sorry. Your average city's nothing except different levels of pervert. Rant only told that story to fit in. Him and Mr. Casey, they just took their pissing matches a little more far than your average father and son.

Echo Lawrence: At the edge of the world, another star pops up.

Rant says, "You're only lying so I won't get homesick…" He shifts his ass on the top of that cardboard suitcase full of gold.

In the city, Chester tells him, Rant will find his real father, and his grandfather. Rant will discover his true nature. "First thing," Chet says, "soon as you meet Echo Lawrence for the first time, you give her a big kiss for me." He says, "Let her know, does her cholesterol taste too high."

Brenda Jordan (Childhood Friend): Don't say I told, but Rant showed me a gold twenty-dollar coin his mama gived him for his going away. Dated 1884. Mrs. Casey told how Chet Casey weren't Rant's real daddy, but she'd never tell how come she had that coin she gived him for good luck.

Echo Lawrence: And his dad, whether it's good night or goodbye, Chet Casey leans over the top of Rant's hair. His face bent over the skin of Rant's forehead, where the wind combs the bangs back, that bare spot, his dad bumps. His lips press and bounce off.

Chester says, "Tell Shot Dunyun not to let his little-bitty pug dog, Sandy, drink out of the toilet."

Another impossible piece of advice. Shot had never met Chet Casey. Even I didn't know the name of Shot's little dog.

The next new star gets big. The headlights of the bus, one bright spot breaking into two separate stars. As those lights come closer to Rant and his dad, the headlights spread farther and farther apart.

"Soon as you discover your true nature," Chester tells his son, "you hightail it back to Middleton."

Irene Casey (Rant's Mother): Anytime anybody in Middleton opens their mouth, you need to ask: "Why are you telling me this?"

Shot Dunyun (Party Crasher): How weird is this? But the last words Rant's old man says to him, while Rant's waving from the window of the bus, is Chet Casey yells, "Find the truth and hurry back, and maybe you can save your ma from getting attacked by that crazy-insane lunatic…"

Echo Lawrence: Chester Casey, both his thumbs hooked in the front belt loops of his blue jeans, he says, "Don't think on this any too hard. None of this is gonna make sense until it's close to, just about, almost too late."

Rant's father shouts, "It pains me, I'll never put eyes on you again."

15–Boosted Peaks

Shot Dunyun (Party Crasher): How's this for bullshit? At this shop, for our top all-time rental, you're talking about Little Becky's Walk on a Warm Spring Day. Shit like that, comfort shit, dumb shits come in here, ask to rent it all day long. The reason I got into this business is I love transcripts, ever since I was little, but this is killing me. It's beyond bullshit.

Eight hours every day, renting out copies of Little Becky's Seaside Hunt for Shells. Everybody wanting the same mass-marketed crap. Saying it's for their kid, but really it's not. All these fat, middle-aged dumbshits just want something to kill time. Nothing dark and edgy or challenging. Nothing artsy.

Just so long as it's got a happy ending.

A love story strained through somebody's rose-colored brain.

Your basic experience, what people called a "boosted peak," is just the file record of somebody's neural transcript, a copy of all the sensory stimuli some witness collected while carving a jack-o'-lantern or winning the Tour de France. Officially, that's what the primary participant is called: the witness. The most famous witness is Little Becky, but that doesn't mean she's the best. Little Becky is just brain-dead enough to appeal to the biggest audience. Her brain chemistry gives a nice, sweet perception to softball peak experiences. Hayrides. Valentine's Day. Christmas bullshit morning.

She's what a movie star used to be. Your vehicle for moving through an experience. Little Becky is just somebody with a sweet disposition, the ideal serotonin levels, I-dopamine—and—endorphin mix.

You could say I'm a little beyond burned out on all this new technology.

And you'd better believe I've screwed with a few transcripts. You take a copy of Little Becky's Halloween Pumpkin Party and you rewitness it through yourself on acid. You hook up for the boost, plug in for all five of the tracks: tactile, audio, olfactory, visual, and taste. Drop a tab of acid. And at the same time out-cord a transcript of you experiencing the Pumpkin Party while on acid.

Then you rewitness that transcript through somebody Down's syndrome or fetal alcohol.

Then you rewitness the resulting transcript through a dog, maybe a German shepherd, and you've got a good product. No shit. A peak worth the time and money to boost. Still, weird as this sounds, you put that on the shelf and don't expect to get anything but complaints.

The bullshit truth is, this entire industry sells to dipshits.

The day that Little Becky's Happy Treasure Hunt hit the shelves, we had assholes lined up around the block. We moved something like fifteen hundred copies.

Over on the Employee Picks shelf, my faves are covered with dust. Nobody wants to plug in and boost ten hours of Getting Gun Shot in Wartime or Last Minutes Alive: The Final Moments Aboard the World's Worst Airplane Crashes. That shit, I love. My favorite part is one crash where the witness has just started to out-cord his peak experience. He's just switched to out-cord his transcript, and you can smell the jet fuel the moment before it flashes. You can taste the bourbon still in his mouth. The airplane seat belt is so tight it cuts across your hips. The armrests are shaking under your elbows, and your bones go stiff, all your joints grinding together inside tight muscle. Then, at the end of every boosted death, you get the blip where transmissions stop. This guy's last neural stream, out-corded to his wife's mobile phone.

When you switch your port, in the back of your neck, to transmit a record of your neural stimuli, when you're broadcasting that experience, officially it's called "out-cording."

A "script artist" is the official term for anybody who monkeys with neural transcripts, whether you're booting, boosting, or damping the tracks.

Just don't expect your artwork to sell. No studio is going to pick up a radically mixed peak for mass distribution. Studios have their own marketing lingo. They'll launch A Tour of Antarctica, witnessed through a primary like Robert Mason, some totally bland pair of eyes and ears. But even the studios will sweeten that boosted peak by rewitnessing it through a neutered cat, a Catholic priest, a housewife overprescribed with estrogen. What hits the market is sugary, sweet crap. The tracks beyond balanced. It's the junk food of boosted peaks.

Plus, you have the new automatic interrupts. If at any time during a boosted peak your heart rate, pulse, or blood pressure exceeds the federal limits, the plug-in stops. Just a bunch of lawyers trying to cover the industry's collective ass.

Sweetened, mellowed, nuanced, remixed crap makes the perfect gift.

This is so beyond boring, but our top-selling experience for all of last year was called Cross Country Steam Train Excursion. No shit. A seventy-two-hour boxed set of plug-ins where you do jack shit except sit on a fucking train and watch the outsides stream past the window. You smell the upholstery, the cleaning fluid. The postproduction people didn't bother to damp out the chemical stink. The witness is Robert Mason, wearing wool pants you feel itch the whole trip. Wearing Old Spice cologne. The highpoint is, you go to the dining car and have breakfast, some greasy ham and eggs.

Me making that transcript, I'd step off the train at every stop. Walk around in places like Reno and Cincinnati and Missoula. I'd rewitness the whole trip through a dog, a perfect old-school trick for heightening the olfactory track. Really make the smells pop. For the taste track, I'd borrow from the best gourmet boosts, then strain that track through somebody on a starvation diet to really beef up each flavor. That's called "sharpening."

Half of the industry is freaks who rewitness shit to amp the tracks. You hire blind folks to build up the audio track. It's so beyond illegal, but you rewitness the tactile track of anything through a year-old baby, and velvet feels like velvet. Granite like granite. No sloppy guesswork about the texture of anything. No calluses to fudge the feel of real skin or hair. No baby needs a boost port stuck in the back of its neck, but you see them around. This industry is full of assholes ready to let you remix your porno peaks through their kid. It's beyond tasteless, but you can tell porn peaks reboosted through a kid's soft, sensitive skin. It's no wonder the real world can't hold a candle to a boosted experience.

Babies amp the touch track. Blind people ramp up the sound. Hunger, the taste track. Dogs, the smells. To ramp the visual track, some production techs swear by rewitnessing through birds. Hawks. You know, birds of prey. In school, kids I knew used to rewitness through deaf people, saying it gave the final visual track the best resolution. You take all these reboosted tracks, mix them, and you have a train ride worth taking. My point is, if you're going to sell a crap experience, at least the quality should be the best.

My point is, this seventy-two hours is coming out of someone's life. This boost will replace something real a person might do, so it should be decent. Hell, it ought to be beyond decent. If some asswipe's handing over his time, he should get the train trip sweetened by having the whole mess rewitnessed through a Playboy Bunny on heroin. Morphine at least. Watch those boring, bullshit mountains roll past while zonked on opiates and fondling your own set of love-a-luscious titties. You want to wish the old man a happy Father's Day, that would be my gift suggestion.

In school, after all the film schools switched over, after the entire film industry switched over to neural transcriptions, I did my best work by getting it reboosted through junkies. Hang around any transcription program and you'll meet needle freaks who'll sweeten student work for the extra cash. Or speed freaks who'll let you boost a boring peak through them to amp the pace. If you only need some soft-focus, hook up with a codeine fanatic, run your final mix through him for out-cording, and your edges will look a little relaxed. Very damped.

In transcription school, the programs have random piss-testing. That's why you rewitness through some outsider. If you're financing a hundred thousand to get your M.F.A. in neural transcription, you don't want to piss hot and get booted out of school. Before you can boost anything for the industry, you need to learn how to identify a marketable peak. Then how to choose the right primary participant as your witness. How to structure that experience. If it's a sixteen-course meal or a hot-air balloon ride over Holland, you need to deliver the payoffs at regular intervals. Plus, you need to keep your focus; if this is a boosted peak about swimming the English Channel, you don't want to get distracted by muscle cramps or a headache. Nobody is going to buy a bullshit feature-length headache. Even boosted through an OxyContin high, it's beyond impossible to remove a headache from your tactile track. Trust me.

About going professional, a solid method is to boost for the consumer-product market—you know, those boosted peaks where you're always drinking a Coca-Cola and wearing Nike clothing, always looking straight at the logos and brand names of the products. Eating stuff that tastes so incredible, so drool-inducing, that you know the taste track had to be rewitnessed through some starving tribesman in some famine-ravaged nowhere.

How weird is this? But for fifty bucks' worth of rice and canned milk, somebody's reboosted the entire taste track through so many human skeletons that you can hardly get through the peak without interrupting, you're so hot to buy a soda. A doughnut. A hamburger. Old Spice cologne.

In transcription school, you learn all about effective pacing, so you don't overwhelm your user. You learn all the legal criteria for the production codes and rating system. What distinguishes a G-rated peak from a PG-13. Classifications based on the physical reactions, the electrolyte balance and hormone levels, pulse and respiration of a test audience. A good way to flatten a peak—say, lower it from an R rating to a PG, is you rewitness through a dope-smoking stoner. An easy fix.

To graduate, we each had to produce a feature-length peak experience. For my thesis, I had a great concept. We're talking three to six hours of marketable sensory content. My idea I had, it was so great. I threw a party. Invited one Asian friend. One Jew. One black. One queer. One hot lesbian. One straight cheerleader girl. One Native American. One redneck hillbilly. One Hispanic guy. An Irish. An Eskimo. You get the idea. One of everything. They didn't know, but I was boosting while I played host, spending almost exactly ten minutes talking with each person. The cream on my idea was, I'd ask each guest back, to rewitness the party. Each guest would meet themselves and see, hear, smell, and feel themselves for those ten minutes we'd talked.

Splicing all the boosts together, I made it so the whole four-hour peak was tinted by each person meeting him-or herself. The Hindu meeting the Hindu. The Quaker meeting the Quaker. Shit like that, for hours.

Another student in my same class, he boosted the birth of his first kid, then rewitnessed it through himself while he held the kid on a sunny day. Four hours of sentiment, tinted with Percodan. You can tell by the slight halo effect you get boosting through somebody on painkillers.

The Percodan guy, the faculty committee said his thesis peak was extremely commercially viable. And they gave him 360 points out of a possible four hundred.

My thesis, the committee didn't like so much.

It went beyond a disaster. Nothing sharps the contrast like adrenaline. Each guest got so tweaked, seeing how they occurred to strangers, it made the boost almost unbearable to stay plugged into. Beyond bitter. Boosting the peak, you'd sweat so hard it kept interrupting the feed. Some faculty members couldn't stay plugged in past the second hour.

My concept was, I figured people would love to meet people just like themselves. Like, why most French people stay living in France. Why all the Southern Baptists go to the same church. You know, birds of a feather.

What totally wipes ass is, the committee withheld my degree.

The bunch of dipshits.

These days, every month, when I have to send the school a payment on my loans, at the bottom of the check, where it says "For…," in that blank I always write, "Thanks for the best rim job ever!"

To make those dipshit payments, I work here. Renting out copies of Little Becky's Easter Egg Hunt to people who just want to get through another awful night, alone. These people, boring themselves to death.

How weird is this? But inside me, in secret, I know that thesis didn't wreck my life. Not by much. Even saddled with a hundred grand in student loans to pay, I can't get too upset. I learned something, maybe not about boosting peaks, but about people.

Whatever the blessing, the talent, or technology, we can still find some way to fuck it up. The other day, the Percodan guy who graduated with top honors after his boosted birthing experience, he comes in here to rent a peak, still lugging around that baby. He tells me, he just lets it slip, that he's got Robert Mason under contract to boost an upcoming white-water raft trip. Such a bullshit big-name fucking player he's turned into. Such an industry hotshot.

It's not even a year old, and he's already stuck a little black port into the back of his kid's neck.