Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey

32–In Hindsight

Ruby Elliot (Childhood Neighbor): I can tell you, getting abandoned at the Junction Airport by her husband is not the worstest event ever to happen to Irene Casey.

Glenda Hendersen (Childhood Neighbor): Basin and Ruby and me, we went through school with Irene, and she was always cutting class. Never did seem to matter, how she come into the world without a daddy. Irene was full of grand plans. Talking all the time about college or the army, anything she figured could deliver her out of town. Sad part is, she never did get beyond the ninth grade. The summer we was thirteen years old, her and Basin, Ruby and me, we ran wild, staying out; then Irene quit coming to the phone. Irene quit—well—everything.

Ruby Elliot: Between you, me, and the lamppost, it was no surprise to anybody that Irene was expecting. Three months along, folks say, before she married Chet. Story is, out of the blue, Chester Casey walked up on her porch and asked her ma, Esther, Could he have a word with Miss Irene Shelby? Like him and Irene was total strangers. Nobody hereabouts knew Chester from Adam. He come out of nowhere, no job or family, simply showed up in Middleton, saying, "Good morning, Dr. Schmidt…Howdy, Reverend Fields." Calling everybody by his name.

Wasn't until that day Esther even knowed her girl was pregnant.

Dr. David Schmidt (Middleton Physician): For better or worse, it was Chet's child. The age Irene was, we wanted to be certain she wasn't making another mistake, only looking for some man, any man, to help her raise a child. Chester must've been nineteen or twenty years old. We ran your standard paternity test, and every genetic marker pointed to the baby being his.

In hindsight, every genetic marker pointed at the baby being him. His genes and the child's were so close, the two were indistinguishable.

Reverend Curtis Dean Fields (Minister, Middleton Christian Fellowship): My clearest recollection is, during our requisite premarital counseling, the couple waived any discussion of intimacy. It was my assumption that their squeamishness arose from Irene being so far along. A lecture on contraception would have been locking the barn door long after that particular horse had run off.

Whether or not it was due to the pregnancy, I have never seen a couple less physically infatuated with each other. So you know how standoffish they seemed, at their wedding, when I told Chester he could kiss his bride, he kissed Irene on the cheek.

Dr. David Schmidt: Our gravest reservation had been regarding the possibility that Chester Casey had raped thirteen-year-old Irene Shelby, and circumstances were forcing her to marry her assailant. Small towns have a tragic way of trapping young people and making them answer for small mistakes with the rest of their lives.

Ruby Elliot: All the Shelby kin, leastwise the womenfolk, they were born under a dark star. Irene's own great-great-grandmother had been attacked by a man. Her Great-grandma Bel Shelby, when she was thirteen or fourteen years old and walking home after school, a stranger assaulted her. A transient. No sheriff ever caught the man, but Bel Shelby had a baby as the result, and that illegitimate baby was Irene's Grandmother Hattie.

It's as if bad luck stalks after the women in Irene's family.

Basin Carlyle (Childhood Neighbor): Don't make me laugh. Don't call what's really loose morals any "attack." Women in the Shelby family have always run around. No curse settled on the Shelby women, except maybe the curse of promiscuity.

Ruby Elliot: But soon as Hattie Shelby turned thirteen, it did happen, again. Another stranger and another baby. This baby was Irene's own mama, Esther.

Edna Perry (Childhood Neighbor): Their farm, Middleton folks call it the "Shelby Place" even after Chet Casey took over. For all those years it was Bel raising Hattie raising Esther. Local history is, the exact day little Esther turned thirteen, she got pregnant with Irene.

Ruby Elliot: A family history like that, and you can't blame Glenda Hendersen and me for fearing the worst once Irene got to ninth grade. We walked everywhere with her, not once letting our best friend out of eyesight. When we weren't watching Irene, her ma and grandma was. You could argue they drove Irene a little crazy, mother-henning that way. Could be that amount of safeguarding is what drove Irene to sneak out. Just to be by herself and walk along the river, through the trees along the river, alone.

Sheriff Bacon Carlyle (Childhood Enemy): The wild-dog packs running around in those woods, it's nothing but self-destructive, walking in those woods by yourself. For a young girl like Irene was, we're talking about just plain insane suicide behavior.

Ruby Elliot: Except maybe Irene didn't want to spend her life hiding behind locked doors and best friends and her mama's skirt.

Basin Carlyle: Irene Shelby took to sneaking off. Then she got herself knocked up. Then she gone and married Chester. No mystery. It's crazy talk to say a rapist has run down four generations of the same family. Don't make me laugh.

Reverend Curtis Dean Fields: Still, for the life of me, I never did see any child grow up to look so much like his father. Why, anybody meeting Buster and Chester Casey would swear those two were twin brothers.

That is—if they weren't born a generation apart.

Glenda Hendersen: Granted, Chet was some years older than Irene. You could blame that for why the two of them never acted close, not in front of folks. Never so much as held hands. But they seemed to genuine care for each other, right up until Chet climbed into that airplane and never looked back.

Irene Casey (Rant's Mother): You're asking, was I raped? Was I attacked by a stranger who might've been my father, and my grandfather, and great-grandfather? Why bring up such awfulness?

I don't know. I forget. I can't remember.