Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey

26–In Denial

Shot Dunyun (Party Crasher): How weird is this? The last night I go out with Rant Casey, we waste our whole window Mercy Crashing. The more front-end damage your car has, the better you look in Party Crashing. Teams I know, they'll take a sledgehammer to the bumper and front fenders of any new ride, just whale away on their headlights and grille so they won't look like newbies.

The opposite of status is rear-end damage from getting tagged. First, because it marks you as a loser, you've been nailed so many times. Second, because after too much damage nobody bothers to even stalk you. The damage Sharks inflict, they want it to show. Any team looks for something pristine to ram into. You might take half the night to stalk a battered car, but if something with a perfect paint job and a showroom body drives by flying the flag, you'll go for the cherry.

Neddy Nelson (Party Crasher): In Party Crashing, you know what a For Sale Night means? You know the flag is to write big prices painted in white across your windshield and rear window? To keep the flag exclusive, you know you have to always make the price thirteen thousand dollars and fifty cents? Can you imagine the mess if the flag was just any price?

Shot Dunyun: For one Dead Deer Night, we're cruising with our Styrofoam deer tied to the roof and a bullshit Park Avenue charges out of nowhere. It slams into our right headlight, breaks a radiator hose, and our coolant goes down a storm drain. The Park Avenue backs off with nothing but body damage. Even with their windows rolled up, you can hear them laughing. Rant climbs out of our backseat, walks over to the team in the other car. Mr. Money Bags, he leans into the driver's window, and out of his back pocket he pulls a wad of bills. They signed over their pink slip, and took their dead deer home on the bus. We moved our deer to their car, and played the rest of the window in that Park Avenue.

Bodie Carlyle (Childhood Friend): In a letter Rant wrote to me, he said, everybody being inside cars, you couldn't tell women from men. Black from white. If you asked him, the tough teams to beat were always the gimps. Gimps or queers. You put them in a car on a level playing field and you'd see some pent-up frustration. Nobody drove as hard as paraplegics with hand controls. Or skinny, hundred-pound girls.

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms (Historian): The night in question, our last together, was a Mattress Night. Foremost in my memory of the evening is Rant Casey unbuttoning his blue uniform coveralls in a brightly lit parking lot while we drank coffee. I remember his chest was riddled with hundreds of extra nipples, countless raised, round welts. "Hobo spiders," he told me. "Found some at work." He said he'd tried to smuggle them home by dropping them inside his open collar.

Shot Dunyun: Certain game windows, if you don't tag anything all night and nobody tags you, just so you don't go home disappointed you might slam into some trashed old Shark. Any game window, you'll see beater cars rattling around, each in its own cloud of blue smoke, their rear ends balled up into shivering, creaking sheetmetal. Rolling scrap. You get your hit, and that beater Shark feels like part of the game.

If you smash into some clunker out of pity or desperation, that's what we call Mercy Crashing.

Echo Lawrence (Party Crasher): Come on. Dunyun was all, "Don't!" Don't mix with Rant. Don't fall in love. Dunyun kept tugging me aside, all, "Can you still boost anything?" Going, "Rabies!"

I'd let Rant ride in my backseat for months.

Shot Dunyun: Our last game as a team, we're playing a Mattress Night. Certain people will spray-paint their mattress black to make it harder to see. You want my advice, crack your side windows and loop the rope through the inside of your car. Tie down your mattress, leaving the slipknot on the inside. That way, if the police come sniffing around, you can yank the slipknot undone and ditch the mattress. It slides off, taking the ropes with it, leaving you just another innocent car on the city street.

Our last Mattress Night, every sputtering, rattling old rust bucket with a stained mattress roped to the top, Rant says, "Give them a bump." He goes, "Smack 'em, and make their night."

Echo Lawrence: Check this out. Rant was such a romantic. It's one thing to buy a girl roses she can watch wilt and rot. It's a much nicer thought to give a girl a fully equipped Skylark she can total. One Honeymoon Night, my sweetheart handed me the keys to a white Lincoln Continental with power everything. A very solid set of wheels. A ride so smooth, with a stereo so loud, at some point a Jetta rammed us from behind, hooked its front end under our rear bumper, and we didn't even notice. We drove around half the game, dragging this little car full of angry people.

Shot Dunyun: Now, how bullshit is this? In Mercy Crashing, the second you pull your bumper out of some pock-marked, saggy, rusted rear end, you regret not just going home without making any tag. You can feel so dirty and sad, you don't bother to get out and yell. You just nail and bail. Nail and bail. The rules of Party Crashing call that a foul, but chances are a junk heap will be too grateful to call you on it.

What's worse is you can picture yourself after a few more years of Party Crashing, dragging your crumpled rear end around, hoping somebody's bored or desperate enough to nail you. A big reason you nail and bail is, it's sad seeing the beater car, but it's unbearable to see the driver. Somebody wearing a cervical collar, walking with a cane, stiff and limping. Most likely that's you in a few more years.

Echo Lawrence: Let me think. Rant bought me a LeSabre I couldn't total fast enough. He bought me a Cavalier that I rammed into the back of someone's Audi. Then he bought me a Regal that I swerved to trash the side of a Taurus. No, wait, there was a Grand Am in there somewhere. A Grand Am and a Cougar and a Grand Marquis. Oh, and the Lebaron that we caught on fire, trying to eat fondue during one game. Maybe that car shouldn't count.

Shot Dunyun: We're stopped at a red light when a scrap heap rolls, coughing and shivering, from a block behind us, heading to tag our rear end. You can hear the engine tappets knocking from a block away, the springs squeak, and the headlights flicker. The fan belt's squealing, and a stained mattress quivers on its roof. This monster creeps closer, but we're trapped in traffic, waiting for a green light.

The light goes green, and this monster behind us still drags itself along, crawling toward our bumper. Echo starts to gun the engine, but Rant tells her, "Wait."

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Young Rant was committing the most kind and gracious act of generosity.

Shot Dunyun: We sit through that green light, another red light, and half a second green before this sputtering, trembling old clunker—it just nudges our bumper and dies. Dies dead. The fan belt whimpers and goes quiet. Steam boils up through the grille, and the loose sheetmetal and chrome trim stop banging. The old car seems to sag down onto its axle stops, and the driver gets out. A kid, maybe sixteen years old. No shit. A kid by the name of Ned…Neddy…Nick, I forget.

Our car was a Caddy Seville. We had the room, so Rant offers the kid mascot position in the middle of our backseat. We were the first tag this kid ever made; I remember he was smiling so wide.

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Another pleasant aspect of Party Crashing was the piñata aspect. We project the worst aspects of ourselves into the vehicles around us on the road. The drivers dashing past us, we imagine them filled with arrogance. The slow drivers we're trapped behind, we imagine them as controlling or infirmed.

The joy occurs when, with one nudge or scrape, that enemy vehicle bursts open to reveal stamp collectors, football fans, mothers, grandfathers, chimney sweeps, restaurant cooks, law clerks, ministers, teachers, ushers, ditch diggers, Unitarians, Teamsters, bowlers, human beings. Hidden inside that hard, polished paint and glass is another person just as soft and scared as you.

Shot Dunyun: With every Mercy Crash, Rant would try and not hit too hard. A bump here. A ding there. Flirting kind of hits. I remember he said his money had run out, and he couldn't buy us another car. He said the car we were driving, that Caddy, it would have to last for one more big Tree Night.

Echo Lawrence: Earlier, when I say I let Rant "ride in my backseat," that's not a euphemism.

Neddy Nelson: You know how great Rant was? You know what he did when they dropped me off at my building, just before curfew? Anybody tell you Rant flips me a gold coin, saying, "For your next wheels…"? Can you imagine my surprise when the coin shop offers me ten grand for that 1884 Liberty Head dollar? Was there ever a guy so generous? Without Rant Casey, you think I'd be driving another car so soon?

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: That, I believe, was the squandered remainder of Rant Casey's Tooth Fairy fortune.

Echo Lawrence: When Shot said "rabies," I thought he'd said "babies." The results came back negative, thank God, but I think I asked for the wrong test.