Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey

27–Tree Night

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms (Historian): Following enormous deliberation, we chose to use a real tree. We decided on a noble fir. Festooned in blue lights, and crowned with a glowing blue star. Fastened lengthwise along the roof of the Cadillac Seville, the tree resembled a blue comet: the big star bobbing above the windshield, trailing hundreds of dazzling blue sparks behind it.

Neddy Nelson (Party Crasher): Do you think I'm an idiot if I say the best part of Party Crashing, what makes it best, is it's like this breaker? A circuit breaker? How about if your mom is yelling, calling you a lazy fuck, and you lost another job, and your friends from school, they have everything going, and you don't even have a date? What if it's a total toilet in your head, but out of nowhere—slam-bo! — somebody crashes into you, and you're better? Isn't it like a gift, somebody slamming you? Don't you get out of the car, all shaky and shocked? Like you're a baby getting born? Or a whole relaxing massage that happens in one-half a second?

Isn't Party Crashing like an electroshock treatment for your depression?

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: The night Rant died, he wore a blue denim shirt embroidered quite enthusiastically, if not expertly, with a variety of rainbows and flowers. The shirt was quite a departure from his usual blue coveralls which reeked of insecticide. I seem to recall columbines, or a similar native flower species, stitched in purple, circling the collar. On the chest pocket, over his heart, an emerald-green hummingbird hovered, feeding from a yellow daffodil.

Lew Terry (Property Manager): The only other occasion I entered Casey's apartment was, one day I go down to the basement to clean out the recycling bins, and dumped there in the clear-glass bin is those jars I seen in his closet, only empty. No spiders. On the top of each jar, Casey's put the name «Dorry» or "June." On every jar, a girl's name.

The company where Casey worked, the exterminators said he'd quit. He wasn't so much killing bugs as he was just relocating them. Seeing how this was a vermin issue, I'm allowed to use my pass key and take a look. Was nothing left on the premises but his empty suitcase and those little dark lumps on the wall above the bed, no bugs or rats, nothing. The only thing out of the ordinary was a plain white egg, set in the middle of his bed pillow. And if anybody's saying I took that egg, it was the police detectives who took it. Since then, the county threatens to fine us, we have so many poison spiders. The crazy bastard must've set loose his whole friggin' collection.

Echo Lawrence (Party Crasher): Picture it. We'd mixed hours of Christmas music to blast. For two hours before the ten o'clock window, teams cruised around, showing off their trees. Parading cars, streaming with silver icicles. Cars shaggy with gold tinsel and shaking off glass balls that popped in the street. People stood on every corner, wearing red hats with white fur trim, waving for places on a team, shouting and flashing skin to get a spot in any car really done up in lights and decorations. Hundreds of Tag Team wannabes dressed as Santa Claus.

Shot Dunyun (Party Crasher): How weird is this? You'd cruise past a Santa Claus standing on some corner, and jolly old Santa would flash you his rack. Her rack. Tits on St. Nick. That's the kind of carnival that Tree Night turns into.

Echo Lawrence: There's no team loyalty for the two hours before the window. As everybody parades their decorations, people are climbing in and out of cars. Pit-stopping. Teams come together and dissolve. Just this mingling, mixing party that takes place in a milling sea of lit-up cars.

Shot Dunyun: About a minute before the window opens, every car kills its Christmas lights and scatters. Beyond instantly, we're back to being enemies.

Echo Lawrence: All I remember is Shot was all: "No mistletoe! No kissing! No rabies!"

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Pit-stop culture developed as an offshoot of Party Crashing. Teams stopped in order to refuel, members used the public bathrooms and bought food and coffee. Initially, teams completed their business as quickly as possible and rejoined the game, but occasionally teams would linger at a gas station or a convenience-store parking lot. Pit-stop culture is perceived as a safe resting place or refuge during any Party Crashing event.

The Tree Night in question, we'd stopped at a gas station. Rant told us he'd refuel the car while Echo, Shot, and I went inside for provisions.

Echo Lawrence: Standing there, pumping the gas, Rant asked for pork rinds. Rinds and root beer.

Shot Dunyun: Corn dogs with mustard for me. Corn chips. Microwaved nachos.

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: My weakness, I confess, is for Red Vines licorice.

Shot Dunyun: And beef jerky.

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: It's fortuitous we seldom drove the same vehicle for more than three weeks. One has so many possible ways to wreck a car, from either the outside or the inside. Nacho cheese can destroy resale value faster than any rollover accident.

Shot Dunyun: I walk out of the store, and Rant is gone. Nothing but a big puddle of gasoline where the Caddy had been parked.

Echo Lawrence: The car was gone, and way down the street you could see this blue comet flying along. Spread out behind the Seville, a rolling forest of dark, dead trees are chasing after him. A total wolf pack. Rant's left the Christmas lights on, and every car in the game is out to tag him.

From DRVR Radio Graphic Traffic: This just in: A police pursuit is in progress along the Landover Parkway. According to reports, the suspect vehicle is a white Cadillac Seville which failed to stop for a traffic light at the intersection of Winters and 122nd. At this point, the Seville is westbound on the parkway, and the latest sightings put a lighted Christmas tree on the vehicle's roof. No kidding. A tree covered in blue Christmas lights is roped to the roof of the fleeing car. Three police vehicles are in pursuit, with a helicopter expected to join the chase. Also, an unusually large number of looky-lous seem to be following the Seville, coasting in the path cleared by the cops' lights and sirens. Reporting for DRVR Graphic Traffic, this is Tina Something…

Echo Lawrence: Fuck me. I flagged a team and jumped in their car. I just told them, "Go!" Some bunch of stoner kids. I pointed down the street, where you could barely see Rant's blue lights through the forest of dead trees, and I said, "There!"

From DRVR Radio Graphic Traffic: To give you an update on that police pursuit, at the Highland interchange we had a vigilante car, driven by a private citizen, cut in from a side street and ram the blue Christmas tree. The blue tree is now speeding, eastbound, on Waterfront Avenue. And how's this for a coincidence? The driver who attempted to stop the fleeing car was also driving with a Christmas tree on the top of her car. 'Tis the season, I guess. For DRVR Graphic Traffic, this is Tina Something…

Shot Dunyun: I'm standing there with my hands full of shit food, Red Vines licorice and shit, and Echo just bails. Green goes to the curb and hails a cab. They're both beyond vanished. Rant's gone, and I'm left on the sidewalk holding microwaved nachos and a bullshit root beer.

Symon Praeger (Painter): My car, we'd parked at Pump Three. That man, Casey, at Pump Seven, he yanked the gas nozzle from his car. It was no accident. He hosed the Christmas tree on top of his car. Soaked every branch. Had gas just dripping off his rocker panels.

From DRVR Radio Graphic Traffic: Police and emergency-dispatch officials have requested that private citizens refrain from interfering with the suspect vehicle. At this point, at least six private cars have rammed the escaping car, all of them also carrying Christmas trees. Police blame this flurry of accidents for the suspect's continual escape.

Police helicopters now report the primary suspect is northbound on the Greenbriar Thruway. Next update as it happens. For DRVR Graphic Traffic, this is Tina Something…

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Forgive me for falling victim to the excitement of the moment. My intention wasn't to abandon Mr. Dunyun. I acted instantly, engaging a conveyance and giving chase. The moment felt very much like a hunt—the plethora of lights and sirens—as if we were a pack of hounds baying after the same fox.

Any memory I might have of Mr. Dunyun at that stressful moment includes his mouth hanging slack, his uncomprehending tongue slathered in orange cheesefood. I stepped into the back of a cab and simply told the driver, "Follow the blue Christmas tree…"

From DRVR Radio Graphic Traffic: The police pursuit of a white Cadillac Seville has reached the West Side of town. At last estimate, some two hundred vehicles have formed a wave of traffic sweeping along behind the Christmas-tree car—which some witnesses report has sustained at least twelve intentional collisions from bystander vehicles. To date, the Seville seems to have lost its rear bumper, its exhaust system, and, judging from sparks, at least one rear wheel is running on the rim. We'll let you know if the gas tank explodes. For DRVR Graphic Traffic, this is Tina Something reporting…

Shot Dunyun: How lame is this? We really believe a strip of paint down the middle of the road is going to keep us safe. That a white or yellow line is some kind of protection. I can tell you this, Rant Casey will never be one of those old Sharks, dragging his ass, hoping for someone kind enoughto ram him. No shit, there's worse ways to be dead than dying.

From DRVR Radio Graphic Traffic: What started as an attempted traffic stop for failure to obey a red light has snowballed into one of this city's most dramatic police standoffs. Despite police protest, bystanders continue to ram, sideswipe, rear-end, scratch, and dent the escaping vehicle. More on this continuing story as is happens. This is Tina Something for DRVR Radio Graphic Traffic…

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: If you'll ponder the thought, no one ever closes a thoroughfare due to the death of an individual. You can still drive over the spot on which James Dean died, or Jayne Mansfield, or Jackson Pollock. You can drive over the spot where a bus drove over Margaret Mitchell. Grace Kelly. Ernie Kovacs. Death is a tragic event, but stopping the flow of traffic is always seen as the greater crime.

From DRVR Radio Graphic Traffic: The police chase of our renegade Christmas-tree Cadillac has reached the Barlow Avenue Viaduct.

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: All of my automobile accidents have felt similar, like swimming through amber or honey. A moment unspools for years, time almost stops, in the same manner that one can dream for hours or days in the seven minutes between hitting the snooze button and the next alarm. In a car accident, you slow down to dream time. Time jells or freezes until you can recall every moment of every moment of every moment, the way Rant could taste your entire life in any single kiss.

From DRVR Radio Graphic Traffic: The police chase of the Christmas-tree car is headed up the East Side ramps to the Barlow Avenue Viaduct.

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Common to almost all spiritual beliefs is the idea of Limnal Time. To ascetics, it can be the moment of greatest suffering. To Catholics, it's the moment the Communion wafer is presented to the congregation. The moment is different for each religion or spiritual practice, but Liminal Time itself represents a moment in which time stops passing. The actual definition is a moment "outside of time."

That moment becomes the eternity of Heaven or Hell, and achieving even an instant of Liminal Time is the goal of most religious rituals. In that moment, one is completely present and awake and aware—of all creation. In Liminal Time, time stops. A person is beyond time.

Being involved in an automobile accident has brought me closer to that enlightenment than any religious ritual or ceremony in which I've ever participated.

From DRVR Radio Graphic Traffic: Our latest word is that the Christmas tree atop the escaping Cadillac has burst into flames, becoming a speeding, blazing bonfire, plowing along, leaving a trail of blue smoke and sparks.

The police have closed the west end of the Barlow Avenue Viaduct. A police roadblock is in place.

Shot Dunyun: It's beyond typical, but every tag I've been involved in, time slowed. Slow as stroboscopic photography, where you see the bullet creep through the air, pressing the side of the apple, tunneling inside, gone a second, then bulging out the far side, splitting the apple's skin, and coming out.

From DRVR Radio Graphic Traffic: Here in the newsroom, we've confirmed a telephone call from the driver of the burning Cadillac, and producers are patching the driver through. Do we have the line patched? Do we still have reception?

Echo Lawrence: It's funny, what you remember about a person.

From DRVR Radio Graphic Traffic: With its blue Christmas tree still shining, the still-blazing Cadillac has flipped, police report, and is now sliding toward the north edge of the Barlow Avenue Viaduct at its highest point above the river. If we're lucky, the next voice you hear should be that of the unidentified driver…

Echo Lawrence: But anytime Rant had an orgasm, or the moment after we'd been rammed by another team, right when he blinked his eyes and seemed to realize he wasn't dead, he'd smile and say the same thing. At that moment, Rant would always smile, all dopey, and say, "This is what church should feel like…"

Rant Casey on DRVR Radio Graphic Traffic: "…I love you, Echo Lawrence, but I got to try and save my mom."

Shot Dunyun: Off the record, but, weeks ahead of that night, I'd been dosing Echo's root beer with that Plan B, morning-after abortion pill. Just in case. I can't say how many little Rant Caseys I made her poop out.

Rant Casey on DRVR Radio Graphic Traffic: "…What if reality is nothing but some disease?"