Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey

35–A Flashback

Chester Casey (Farmer): Here comes a load of bullpucky.

The night before my boy, Buster, goes and kills himself, some old coot tells him this long, impossible yarn. This rich old coot named Simms says how, when he was Buster's age and first moved to the city, he was in a car wreck. This Green Taylor Simms is a young man just driving along, and a car coming in the opposite direction, it crossed the centerline without slowing down a hair, and slammed into the man's car.

Shot Dunyun (Party Crasher): The way Rant told me the story, Simms wakes up in a hospital bed, asking, "How long have I been here?" And the nurse tells him, "Four days…"

Echo Lawrence (Party Crasher): At the hospital, this young guy asked, "What happened to my car?"

And the doctors said, "What car?" The police found him unconscious in the street. He was bruised, with a broken collarbone and breastbone.

The guy asked, "Where's my clothes?"

And the doctors said, "What clothes?" The police had found him naked.

Chester Casey: Everybody knows this is crazy talk, but Buster didn't know that. Buddy must've believed the old man.

Echo Lawrence: All those years ago, the police asked the guy his name and how to contact his family, and this guy told them. The next day, they came back to his hospital bed and told the guy that those people, his family, they didn't exist.

Shot Dunyun: The cops asked for his name and Citizen ID and Social Security numbers. And a day later, they told the man that he didn't exist.

Echo Lawrence: In the hospital, the doctors took one look at the scars on the guy's arms, the punctures and puckers in his skin, and they asked, "What drugs were you doing?"

They asked, "Were you aware that you're infected with rabies?"

Jarrell Moore (Private Investigator): The injuries that Simms described to Rant Casey—the bruises across the iliac crest of the man's hips, the cracked sternum, and the broken clavicle—these are all consistent with injuries inflicted by lap and shoulder belts during a high-speed head-on collision.

Shot Dunyun: So, when Green Taylor Simms was twenty-three years old, he sneaks out of that hospital. As soon as they mention a move to the psych ward, he bails before they can put him behind a locked door. Simms steals some clothes and shoes, and bails. And outside, in just the four days he's lost, the city isn't divided into day and night. Not anymore. Nobody is ported on the back of their neck. People are reading: Books. Magazines. Newspapers. Through windows, he can see people watching television. From radios and stereos—music.

Simms hitches a ride to the only place that seems safe. He goes back home to his family's house, in Middleton. Yeah, the same hometown as Rant.

Chester Casey: Breaks your heart, the load of loony insane lunacy that old Simms coot unloaded on my boy.

Shot Dunyun: In the few years since Simms had moved to the city, somebody had cut down the four locust trees that each stood at a corner of his family's yard. Planted there were four spindly locust saplings, not hand-high. On the house, Simms told Rant, somebody had replaced the buckled, blistered siding with straight new boards painted so clean white they looked blue. The paint, so fresh you could still smell it. His key didn't work in the lock, and when he knocked, a girl answered the door.

Chester Casey: Her name was Hattie, and she was pretty the way folks you love are pretty in old snapshots. When they're still young and excited about life. Before time and work and you have destroyed their youth. Seventy years back, Hattie was thirteen years old and just home from school in that empty house, waiting for her folks to come back from work in a few hours.

She must've seen something pretty in this Simms, because she took him inside and almost straight to bed. Straight enough.

Echo Lawrence: Of course, this is the man's version. He didn't rape anybody. He didn't guess who she really was until, laying there, waiting for dusk and her folks, Hattie said, "The only way they'll let you stay is if I get knocked up…" And they had sex again.

Midway through that second time, Hattie said she hoped it would be a girl baby. So she could call it Esther. And this strange young man came to orgasm, seeing the clock and calendar on her dresser. He asked her, "Is that thing right?"

Hattie rolled her head on the pillow, looking over, and said, "Give or take a minute."

And he said, "No." He said, "I mean the calendar…"

Chester Casey: This old man talking nonsense to my boy, he said he knowed the moment that baby was conceived—felt a surge of energy, smarts, balls, and craziness break over him. Sure as rain or sunshine. "Better," he said, "than any critter bite, poison, or just-plain teeth pain."

He said, since he didn't stick around and meet her folks, stay like a stray dog she wanted to keep, that Hattie gal must've told her folks he jumped her.

Echo Lawrence: The way Simms told it to Rant, when he kissed this Hattie person, Simms tasted the meatloaf with onions and sausage that she'd eaten for lunch in the school cafeteria. Her dinner the night before, of fried calves' liver. Her dinner three nights before, of chicken-fried hanger steak with creamed pearl onions and orange gelatin salad. The moment their future child was conceived, the man's eyesight and hearing, his senses of smell and touch and taste just—exploded.

Shot Dunyun: Driving, just trawling around, Rant told me that Green Taylor Simms had somehow fallen into the past some sixty years. After riding in the backseat of his own Great-grandmother Hattie Shelby, Simms says he felt great. Nights, he only needed two hours of sleep. Like some kind of Superman.

Tina Something (Party Crasher ): It's only one of the secret goals in Party Crashing. Most people call it a Flashback. Others called it Reverse Pioneering. Breeding yourself, the way Simms had, we call it Stoking.

Echo Lawrence: Pay attention. That supposed twenty-three-year-old refugee stuck in the past, he desperately wishes he'd studied more of recent history. At least memorized some winning lottery numbers. He washes dishes to save a little capital. He works every waking minute, asking strangers, "Has Microsoft gone public yet?"

These people, they would reply, "What's a Micro…?"

"Microsoft," he'd say.

But people would only shake their heads and shrug.

Shot Dunyun: He asked someone, "Has boosted-peak technology been invented yet?" When they shrugged, it didn't matter. He really, really wished he'd paid more attention during math and science class.

Every few years, he returns to spy on his daughter, Esther, his future grandmother. And because he can't invent anything, he says he seduced her, meeting her in secret, giving her money, he tells her his dream for a future dynasty, about his accidental fall backward through time. The car accident.

Echo Lawrence: Whether she believed him or not, if he raped her or not, that girl had a child she named Irene, and the man, now calling himself Green Taylor Simms, disappeared for another thirteen years.

Jarrell Moore: According to the elderly man in question, every generation, each of the thirteen-year-old virgins was willing, even excited, to participate in his project. His experiment.

Echo Lawrence: With every sperm that met an egg, Simms claims he felt stronger. He was hoarding more gold, making a fortune, and stashing it for his future self.

Shot Dunyun: Totally, balls-out crazy.

Jarrell Moore: Geriatric dementia, to say the least.

Shot Dunyun: The moment of every conception got him high. It jacked him up, all his chromosomes or whatall, changed in that instant. Rearranged. New and improved. And, same as any addiction, it was all this guy knew to do, so he did it, over and over and over.

He just kept fucking with the past. Filling the future with a new himself.

Chester Casey: After telling my boy his crazy story, this old nutcase, he asked Buster to roll up his shirtsleeves. The old miser pointed at the shadow bites, the dirt tattooed by teeth into Buster's hands and arms, and he said, "Badger…coyote…pit viper…" Getting every scar exactly right.

Echo Lawrence: Supposedly, Green Taylor Simms asked Rant to go back in time, to crash in a car accident. People were living longer now. Rant could go back a hundred years. Seed more generations of himself. Rant could memorize lottery numbers and invention plans over time, building an even larger fortune.

Jarrell Moore: Along the way, diddling thirteen-year-old girls.

Shot Dunyun: And Simms promised some way Rant could live forever. Become immortal.

Echo Lawrence: Plus, possibly to hide his tracks, or maybe because he's inbred, hybrid crazy, Simms has been sneaking back to murder those Middleton girls in their old age, using poison spiders, bubonic fleas, and killer bees…

Shot Dunyun: Rant tells this crazy old Simms, "Memorize? You don't figure what rabies does to a brain…"

Echo Lawrence: And Green Taylor Simms says, "I know exactly what you're capable of doing." He tells Rant, "I am you…"

Neddy Nelson (Party Crasher): Nobody wants to go there, but…wasn't the Virgin Mary, wasn't she God's child? And back in Biblical times, wasn't she, like, thirteen years old?

Shot Dunyun: Sixty years ago, this other Rant Casey got bumped back in time and had to wait his way back to the present, along the way making a few changes. Stoking.

Neddy Nelson: Besides, what about the creepy Old Testament stuff about Lot's two daughters getting their dad drunk and then…"preserving his seed"?

Chester Casey: Close as I can figure, that wild story is how come Buddy drove his car off that bridge. All that crazy coot's dreams, my boy was supposed to fulfill them. But I'd wager that's not exactly what my Buddy done.