Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey

30–In Mourning

Lynn Coffey (Journalist): On the first day after Rant Casey died—an apparent suicide witnessed by thousands of people, millions if you count the television rebroadcast of his car exploding—on the very next day, a curfew officer named Daniel Hammish, age forty-seven, a nineteen-year veteran of curfew patrol, was making his evening sweep when he assaulted a passerby. Hammish bit this stranger, with his teeth, in an unprovoked attack, on the exposed skin of her neck. Responding emergency medical technicians found Hammish delirious and seemingly hallucinating, before he lost consciousness and subsequently died.

Todd Rutz (Coin Dealer): The police come into my store, show me a mug shot of the kid who's been selling me his coins, that's the first I know the kid's name is Buster Casey. They tell me he's died in some car wreck, was on the news. Ask, what did I know about the kid, this Casey kid? They ask stuff like, did he ever exhibit violent tendencies? Did the kid ever kiss me? Or bite?

Crazy questions.

Lynn Coffey: In my opinion, there was something a little stagy about Casey's death. First, he was careful to drive the largest, brightest car that night, literally heaping that car with lights, drenching it with gasoline, and driving zigzag through the playing field to attract as many taggers as possible. Plus, the television newscopters and the way he called the radio station and kept talking until he'd burned. Even the way Casey ran that red traffic light, smack dab in front of some cops, seems calculated to give him a full lights-and-sirens escort to his next life.

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms (Historian): How does one compensate for the loss of a peer?

Looking back, I sometimes wonder if we didn't invent Rant Casey. The group of us. If, perhaps, we didn't need some wild, mythic character to represent our own vanishing lives. A marvelous, glittering antihero to be the challenge whom the rest of us—Mr. Dunyun, Miss Lawrence, and I—had survived to tell about. The moment Rant exploded on television, the moment his car burst into flame, he became this fantastic tale we could recount about our reckless Party Crashing past. And, bathed in the flare of his gasoline limelight, we would appear mythic by association.

Shot Dunyun (Party Crasher): How weird is this? It didn't matter a thousand people had Party Crashed over the past few years, getting nothing worse than whiplash. We hadn't really seen what could happen. We didn't realize. When we saw the worst that could go wrong—shit, we could die, we could burn alive—then Party Crashing did start to peter out.

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Not to be overly moralistic, but sometimes the death of one person can justify the death of an entire culture.

Lynn Coffey: On the third day after Rant Casey died, the drag boats hooked his car on the bottom of the river channel. Over the better part of three hours, they pulled the scorched shell of the Cadillac Seville—complete with the charred skeleton of a Christmas tree still tied to the car's roof—out of the river at the Madison Street boat ramp.

Neddy Nelson (Party Crasher): Doesn't the government have to make damn sure Rant Casey never turns into our martyr? Haven't oppressed people always gone to church for comfort? There, didn't they meet other oppressed people? Haven't all your major revolutions brewed as people complained together and sang songs and got riled up to take violent action?

Wasn't Party Crashing our church, the way people came together? Like in pit stops, griping together? Weren't we the revolution that every night almost happened…almost happened…kept almost happening, but instead we just only crashed into each other? If just one leader would emerge—Rant Casey or anybody—the army of us, ready to fight and die, wouldn't we be invincible?

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: In actuality, we're mourning a thousand vehicles filled with snack food, flirting, and talk therapy. It had been a form of consciousness-raising. Also, connection, dreaming, planning, perhaps even actual cultural change. Every night since that night has become the postmortem of Party Crashing. An autopsy, not of Rant Casey, but of a subculture that some Nighttimers have come to believe would have improved their quality of life.

Lynn Coffey: With all the windows rolled shut, the velvet interior of that torched Cadillac remained largely unsinged. According to eyewitnesses, the automatic transmission was still in drive, and the headlights were still switched on, although the car's battery had long been flooded. Furthermore, that powder-blue interior contained river water, one blue denim shirt embroidered with flowers, one pair of blue jeans embroidered with ivy leaves, two Converse high-top basketball shoes, but not a single, solitary Buster Casey.

In addition, to open the vehicle, the officers at the scene had to call for a Slim Jim rod. Because all the doors were still locked. And the keys still in the ignition.

Reverend Curtis Dean Fields (Minister, Middleton Christian Fellowship): The Bible tells us it will happen in the twinkling of an eye. The Rapture. Rant was delivered to Heaven. That's what I stopped by and told Chet and Irene. You never saw a couple so heartbroke.

Officer Romie Mills (Homicide Detective): It's at this point the department issued a warrant for Buster Casey's arrest.