Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey

37–Resolving Origin

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms (Historian): In Middleton, sleeping dogs have the permanent right-of-way… both metaphorically and literally.

Echo Lawrence (Party Crasher): So we went back to Middleton. To see the Middleton Christian Fellowship. The Sex Tornado. If we were lucky, the Tooth Museum and the wild dogs.

Neddy Nelson (Party Crasher): Didn't we go to Middleton to see if Irene Casey was dead? Wasn't our real reason to see if Rant had fulfilled the mission Simms sent him to do?

Shot Dunyun (Party Crasher): We parked Neddy's Cadillac at the end of a gravel driveway that ran to a white farmhouse on the horizon, Rant's house. All around that house, the yard where Rant had buried those stinking Easter eggs for his dad to find with the lawn mower.

Echo Lawrence: We parked in the middle of the night and watched the house with a dark outline of Irene in the yellow square of the kitchen window. One of her hands holding a shape in her lap, while her other hand touched the shape and pulled away. Touched and pulled away. Her head bowed down, the light behind her, embroidering. We watched until Shot and Neddy fell asleep.

Shot Dunyun: Until Echo fell asleep.

Irene Casey (Rant's Mother): For Christmas one year, my mother and Granny Hattie gave me a sweater they'd made. I figure it was Hattie who'd knitted it, and my mother who'd embroidered the fancy detailing. Satin-stitched down the front were pink roses, padded with felt, with green cord-padded stems. All complicated. Mixed in the roses were violet periwinkle blossoms, made with long and short stitching. Scattered in the background were so many navy-blue bullion knots and smaller French knots, they made the white yarn of the sweater look light blue. Not a single pucker or stray bit of floss.

It was a sweater for indoors, maybe for church on Sunday. Looking back, I should've pressed that sweater behind glass, inside a picture frame, and hung it on the wall. It was that kind of masterpiece.

I couldn't wait to show it off, but my mother said not to leave the house. After family started to arrive for Christmas dinner, all the aunts, uncles, and cousins, the house got so crowded I had no problem sneaking out.

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: I hesitate to even comment further on this pathetic person, this Rant Casey. It's regrettable that I ever discussed with him my theories about Liminal Time. Beyond that, he suffered hallucinations brought about by a terrible chronic disease, and died a horrible death in the deluded belief that it would be his salvation. Even as we depict him as a victim and a fool, our attention and energy create Casey as a martyr.

Irene Casey: Down along the river, in the trees along the Middleton River, I used to walk and pretend the water was the sound of traffic. I'd pretend I lived in a city, full of noise, where anything wonderful could happen. Anytime. Not like Middleton, where my mother and aunts locked the doors at sundown. Even with our closest neighbors, the Elliots, a half-mile away, my mother pulled all the curtains in the house before she'd turn on a single light.

My mother and my aunts grilled me about never talking to strangers.

But there were never no strangers. Not in Middleton.

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: To date, fourteen troubled people have driven their automobiles into obstacles and over precipices, dying in apparent imitation of Rant Casey. On a personal note, I deeply resent Mr. Casey casting me as a serial rapist and murderer.

Irene Casey: Usually, the river was noisy and windy, but not that day. That Christmas, it was silent, froze. The ground was so hard you didn't leave footprints. No wind swept the dead leaves or clattered the bare tree branches. You were like you were walking through a black-and-white photograph of winter, without sound or smells. Like I was the only alive thing moving, walking along the river path. My breath blowing out ghosts. The air so dry everything sparked my fingers with a shock of static.

Near as I recollect, such a black-and-white day, my eyes must've been starved for color, since they saw the littlest flash of gold. Way out on the center of the froze river, the thin ice over deep water, my eyes seen just that littlest bright speck of gold.

Tina Something (Party Crasher): Green Simms would tell you that Rant was insane. He's very much part of the elite, and he doesn't want to see that threatened by any new order.

Irene Casey: With one tennis shoe, I toe-kicked the shiny gold spot, round and bright. A coin. I pulled my long sweater sleeve, I slid the cuff back to keep it from getting dirty, and I stopped to touch the coin. To see if it was maybe chocolate. A chocolate-candy pirate coin wrapped in gold foil from the Trackside Grocery. With my other hand, I reached behind and held my hair together at the back of my neck. To keep the hair from falling in my face.

The river ice, gritty with dirt, but slippery under my shoes. Under the ice, water so deep it looked black.

With two fingers, I pinched the coin out of the dirty frost.

From somewhere in the woods and cattails along the riverbank came barking, dogs snarling and snapping.

Between my teeth, the coin was hard, not breaking, sticking to my lips with the cold. A real coin. Treasure. My tongue tasting gold, dated—

And: "Hello."

Someone said, "Hello."

Dogs you couldn't see, off a ways, howling.

In back of me, a man came walking upstream on the deepest stretch of water, flat as a glass road. Ice all around us. He said, "Well, don't you look nice…" The Christmas sky floated over him, blue as embroidery floss.

Echo Lawrence: They don't know I saw, but I woke up in the backseat of the car and saw Shot kiss Neddy Nelson on the lips. Shot said, "There, now you're infected."

And Neddy said, "I'd better be, because I'm not doing that again."

Irene Casey: The man reached to finger the sleeve of my sweater, and he said, "Isn't this pretty."

I started to step back, making my fist tight around the gold coin, to hide it in case it was his. Nodding at the cattails, I told him, "There's wild dogs, mister."

His eyes and mouth made just a look. Not a smile or frown, more how you'd look if you was alone. The man's fingers worked into the knotted yarn, and he said, "Relax."

I told him, "Don't, mister." I said, "Quit pulling, please."

He stretched the sleeve toward him, so hard you could hear the seam at the shoulder creak, a thread popped, and he said, "I'm not hurting you."

Holding the coin to hide it, saving it, left me with only one hand. My shoes sliding on the ice. To save my sweater, I stepped closer, saying, "You're going to ruin it…"

Neddy Nelson: Don't you know rabies is key?

Irene Casey: The sweater, the white yarn worked like a net. An acrylic spiderweb. With both hands, his fingers were tangled, worked deep into the knots and stitches, and when he dropped to his knees, his weight dragged me down. Buttoned to my neck, I twisted away from his clouds of ghost breath, and when he slid flat onto the dirty ice, he pulled me with him. The two of us tied and knotted together.

In the brush around us, dogs barked. The man put his lips together in a kiss and said, "Shhhh. Hush." The heart inside his coat, beating one thud for every four times mine jumped.

His eyes rolled to look toward the barking, the dogs, and I told myself he was saving me. I was fine. He'd only grabbed me and pulled me down to protect me. He heard the dog pack coming, and he wanted us to hide.

As the barking faded, moving down the river, his fingers still knotted in my sweater, he looked at me, from too close to see anything but my eyes. His eyelashes brushing mine, he said, "You ever wonder about your real daddy?"

Neddy Nelson: Isn't rabies what wrecks your port so you can't boost peaks? After that, aren't you free to flashback?

Irene Casey: I remember trying to hold my breath, because, every time I breathed out, he settled on top of me, heavier, making my next breath smaller. Crushing my insides, smaller, until stars of light spun around in my eyes. In the blue silk sky.

He said, "I've been watching your trash."

I remember the long sleeves of the sweater, wrapped and twisted around me, tight as those coats that crazy people wear in movies so they can't move their arms. My, each of my fingers, tied a different way.

From watching the trash, he said, "I know the hours and minutes since your last period." And he said how the baby I'd have, right now, would almost for sure be a boy. He would be a king, that boy. An emperor. A genius who would make me rich and exalted above all other women.

And with my every breath out, he settled heavier on top of me, making my next breath more shallow, until I was only half awake.

Neddy Nelson: Isn't that why the government pushed to port everybody? Because weren't too many people Party Crashing to mess with history?

Irene Casey: The air smelled like clean water in a clear glass on a hot day. The ice smelled like nothing. The dirt, froze stiff. The river, froze solid. No wind. Like we was outside of time. Nothing happening except us.

He said how boy sperms swim faster, but don't live as long as the girl sperms, and his breath smelled like a burp after you've ate pork sausage for breakfast.

I said I had to pee.

And he said, "When we're done."

Neddy Nelson: Don't you know about the covert government effect? People aren't even aware it's boosting, but doesn't the effect keep you stuck here so you can't mess with history?

Irene Casey: I remember I told him how sorry I was for peeing on him. Peeing on both of us. But it hurt so bad, and the cold air made the hurt worse. Those days, walking out, I'd layer maybe nine, maybe ten pair of panties. To give me hips till I'd fill out.

I didn't want to, but when he worked my zipper down and slipped his cold thumb inside all those panties, inside me, I peed. All hot, creeping through my jeans and underwear. The hot wicking up the yarn of my sweater. The rest of me, ice cold.

In the dirt, in my Christmas sweater, with this man crushing the air out of me, calling me "the mother of the future," I couldn't picture how this'd get any worse.

I remember him turning his hand in front of my face, his fingers wet and steaming in the cold, and me saying, "I'm sorry."

I said, "We're safe."

His wet fingers inside me, I kept calling him "mister." Kept saying, "Those dogs are long gone."

Neddy Nelson: Don't Historians call it "Oblivion," the place without place, where time's stopped. The place outside of time.

Irene Casey: This man brung one knee up to my chest, like to kneel on me, and he brung it down, hooking the toe of his black shoe in the crotch of my jeans. As he stomped the jeans and panties down around my socks and ankles, in that instant, I remembered how many folks were sat down to Christmas dinner at my house. Too many for my mother to ever miss me.

Echo Lawrence: The Easter egg that Rant left for me, he'd written on it with white wax, so that when I soaked it in dye I could read his hidden message.

Irene Casey: Worse than Basin Carlyle fouling you, nailing you too hard, down there with a dodgeball in phys ed. Worse than the cramps. That punching, pushing, shoving inside, it hurts. Gritty and grinding with dirty water, the ice, melted under me. That thin part of ice, turned to mud puddled under me.

I pictured fabric, stuck in one place, stabbed again and again in a big, slow sewing machine.

My arms wrapped tight as a baby or a mummy, just-born or dead-helpless, the man moved on top of me, faster, until he stopped, and every muscle and joint of him turned hard as stone, froze.

Then all of him went loose, relaxed, but he didn't let go. His fingers kept a hold of me.

His heart slowed, and he said, "It didn't happen, not yet. To be safe," the man said, "we'll need to go again."

Echo Lawrence: Instead of dye, I dropped the egg in a cup of coffee. After I drank the coffee, the egg sat there in the bottom of the paper cup, Rant's words telling me: "In three days, I'll return from the dead." Some kind of Easter quote.

Irene Casey: While the man waited, he sniffed his hand and said, "You smell just like your mama and grandma and great-grandma smelled at your age…"

Nothing moved. Nothing barked.

"Have this baby," he whispered, his mouth on top of my eyes, his lips on my shut-tight eyelids, "and you'll be the most famous mother in all of history…"

Down there, he was moving again, pressing me into the ice, through the ice into the river, and he said, "You don't have this baby and I'll come back to make you have another…"

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: If you must know, the hidden message written on my egg was "Fuck You."

Irene Casey: "Yes," he said, his chin grinding whiskers against the side of my neck. He said, "Yes. Yeah. Oh yeah." He said, "Please."

His hips bucked against me so hard, one crack, two, three lightning-bolted through the ice underneath. Water lapped up from under. White cracks, zigzagging toward shore.

Shot Dunyun: I didn't know why, but my egg said, "Green Taylor Simms."

Irene Casey: When he lifted up on his elbows, the man looked down and said, "You're bleeding."

He looked at my hand, how inside my fist, from holding the coin so tight, I made the gold cut open my palm skin. The edges carved a perfect round scar, deeper at the top and bottom of the circle. The man pried my fingers back, and inside them, the gold coin looked like Christmas in my bright-red blood. Weeks into the new year, I'd have a purple bruise dated 1884.

And the man told me, "Keep it. To pay for cleaning your sweater."

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Until now, Party Crashing hadn't a face, and it seems imprudent to give it one. There is no such phenomenon as "flashbacks." No immortal «Historians» exist. Which is more likely—all this time-travel rubbish, or the fact that one young man went insane?

To profess otherwise would be extremely reckless and irresponsible.

Irene Casey: The man pulled up his pants, his thing still steaming with pee and blood. Still dripping sperms. He pulled up the zipper and looked his head around. Looking down at me, he said, "Stay until I'm gone."

And he walked upriver on the water, all the way to over the most far-off horizon.

Tina Something: No, the real lie, the real liars, are Echo Lawrence and Shot Dunyun, because they know the truth but won't tell. You can flashback in time and tinker with events. And every night, they still try.

Irene Casey: My legs, open to the blue Christmas sky. My sweater was froze, stitched into the ice a bunch of places. Half sleepy from not breathing, my eyes watched the water bubble up through the cracks around me. My ears heard the whine and moan of the river pulling apart the broke pieces.

The living, alive blood and piss of me, freezing. The man's sperms.

The river ice shifting, breaking up. Coming to life.

Tina Something: That's how most of the people in power have anticipated and profited from current events. It could be, this is how people have always taken control. Or this dropping back might be limited to modern history. I don't know. You can't know. All I know is: People do this. And they don't want you to.

Irene Casey: Me, just letting the ice sink me lower into the deep cold, my ears hear a voice come out of the bushes. In the cattails along the edge of the froze river, a voice said, "Mrs. Casey?" Said, "Irene?"

The voice said, "Mom?"

And a mostly naked boy stepped out, shaking and wrapped in his own arms.

A blue sheet of paper hid the front bit of him. A hospital getup. He stood in paper slippers, saying, "I couldn't catch a ride."

His teeth rattling together, the boy said, "I'm too late." He said, "Am I too late?"

Echo Lawrence: The hospital ID bracelet that Chester wore that day, it's dated from the day they pulled him out of the river. Nineteen years to the day before Rant plowed his car into the same stretch of water. I still have that bracelet. Chet gave it to me.

The day Rant disappeared into the river, and the day Chet washed up, both days December 21.

Irene Casey: The boy stood pigeon-toed on the froze mud, both his hands knotted in the steam coming out of his mouth. His whole body clenched and shaking, like a skinny fist, he said, "It's going to be okay…You're going to be okay…"

Scars running up and down his arms. His chattering teeth black.

Maybe only old as a high-schooler.

Except for some blue paper, standing in those cattail reeds naked as a baby.

Neddy Nelson: Icky as it sounds, didn't Rant marry his mom? Didn't he change his name to Chester Casey and stick around to raise the kid? To help raise himself?

Irene Casey: I couldn't sit up, so much of me froze into the ice. I couldn't reach down enough to find my jeans or some panties.

The sheets of ice shifting and tilting, the naked boy come stumbling out toward me. He kept saying, "Don't move." Kept saying, "You're hurt."

The river gushing up, flooding the ice, he said, "Don't ever try and hitchhike dressed thisaways."

His blue paper slippers slipping and shuffling to come stand next to me, he gets low to help with my panties, my jeans. As his shaking fingers leaned in, close, to reach me, a spark jumps between us. Between his touch and mine, a static spark, it snaps. Loud. Electric-bright in the daylight. Between his fingertip and mine.

Neddy Nelson: Isn't it like—the Trinity? Rant and Chester and old Green Taylor Simms, like in Catholic Church, three people being the same but divided?

Irene Casey: Froze together, crawling off the busted ice, my ears hear the river lap behind us. My Christmas sweater stretched and dirty. Stained red and yellow. Blood and pee. Baggy and ruined.

The naked boy said, "I'm sorry about…this."

And I undid the buttons and peeled my arms out of the muddy sleeves. I held the sweater out, saying, "Take it. You'll catch your death."

Neddy Nelson: Doesn't that explain why Chet Casey wasn't more broken up about his kid being dead? Why Chet just moved in and set up house? Aren't we talking about big backward loops in time?

Irene Casey: Walking back to Christmas dinner, I asked him, "Who exactly are you?"

And this boy says, "You don't want to know…"

Echo Lawrence: Loops, like embroidery stitches.

Shot Dunyun: How impossible is that? Rant Casey isn't dead, he's become Chester. The dad. When Rant's car caught fire and Christmas-treed off the side of the Barlow Avenue Viaduct, he flashbacked in time, but not to kill Irene, as Simms had planned. Rant only went back to stop the attack on Irene. It's beyond impossible.

Irene Casey: And that's how Chet come into my life. I didn't know it for sure, not until my next period never come, but that's how Buddy come to life, too.

Echo Lawrence: The dogs barking woke me up. Still parked, watching Rant's old house. Still night. The front porch light blinked on, and the screen door creaked. The outline of someone leaned out, and a woman's voice shouted, "Fetch!"

The howling, barking, and snarling shrank, smaller, the sound blurred.

Shot Dunyun: The woman on the porch, in the glare of the yellow lightbulb, yelled, "Fetch! Come on, boy!"

From next to the trunk of a locust tree, a shape broke away. A figure stepped out, and a man's voice said, "Mrs. Casey?"

Echo Lawrence: And Irene said, "Bodie? Bodie Carlyle?"

By then, the figure had one foot on the bottom porch step. The screen door squeaked, and Irene said, "Get in here. You're going to catch your death…"

Bodie Carlyle (Childhood Friend): You see, life only turns out good or bad for only a little bit. And then it turns out some other way.

Shot Dunyun: The man stepped inside. The porch light went out.

Neddy Nelson: And isn't this the point when that bogus Sheriff Carlyle arrested us?