Bodie Carlyle: To show you how popular Rant got by senior year, one night our dogs took to howling and digging at the door. The wind was blowing, and you didn’t need sunshine to see it was the usual Sex Tornado.
Rant came knocking at our kitchen door. While my mom was on the phone laying blame, Rant waves me to come outside. Throwed over one shoulder, he’s lugging an empty burlap bag.
Seeing the gunny sack, my mom shakes her head no at me. But I kick the dogs away from the door and trail Rant into the dark outside, the wind snapping our hair, snapping our shirt collars up on one side.
At the fence line, a wad of white stuffing is flapping in the wind, wild and alive as a rabbit in a trap. Condoms flapping like gray tongues tipped with spit. Rant plucks a rubber free and holds it under his nose, the foamy spunk too close to his top lip, and he sniffs. He says, “The Reverend Curtis Dean Fields.” He smiles and says, “I’d know that stank anywhere.”
Rant drops the trash into his bag. He plucks a pussy plug, this one with just an itty-bitty dot of red in the middle of that white pillow. The red looking black in the moonlight, Rant sniffs it and frowns.
He sniffs again, with his eyes closed this time, and says, “It’s LouAnn Perry, all right, but she must be back taking those fluoride pills…”
Rant offers me the red dot, but I shake my head.
Before anybody decent has showed up to help, Rant’s picked the length of our back fence, guessing every dick and pussy.
Mary Cane Harvey: There’s so little to stimulate young people in Middleton. Social life is centered around the church or school events. The grange hall hosts a get-together every weekend, sometimes a cakewalk come springtime, and a craft fair going into the holiday season. Or the Cub Scouts will organize a haunted house as a fund-raiser around Halloween.
Bodie Carlyle: Rant Casey had a dog’s sense of smell. A human bloodhound, he could track anything. From staying out late at night, he could smell even better. By being the most popular boy in school, he knowed the name behind every smell. And by twelfth grade, all these talents, they finally started working together to his advantage.
“Look at this,” Rant says, and shows me a white pillow with a tight red flower in the center. Little as a violet. Without even sniffing it, he says, “Miss Harvey from English class.”
The howl of invisible dogs on the wind, the sound slipping around us.
It’s Miss Harvey, he can tell, on account of the red shape. “Makes a ‘pussy print,’” Rant says, one finger drawing around the outside of the red stain. “A hundred times more personal than your fingerprint.” The stain, he says, looks exactly like a kiss of her down-below parts.
You didn’t have to ask how Rant knowed the shape of Miss Harvey’s parts. Same as animal tracks in the snow or sand, he could hand-draw you the kiss of a wide-ranging variety of local pussy. Native-born or just passing through. Just seeing how far a rubber was rolled down, Rant could reckon what dick it come off.
A ways off, in the kitchen window of my house, you could see my mom’s outline standing at the sink, one elbow raised up and poked out sideways, her hand holding the outline of the telephone pressed to the side of her hair. Maybe watching us. Probably watching us.
Rant plucked another wad of white, splashed with a dark stain. He sniffed it and looked back toward my house.
I asked him, “Who is that?” and nodded at the old blood.
This new pussy print, a flower bigger than Miss Harvey’s, a sunflower compared to her little violet.
And Rant opened his bag, saying, “Forget it.”
No, really, I said, and reached for it. “Let me smell.”
Rant dropped the sunflower-big stain into his burlap bag. He walked a step away from me, walking down the fence line, saying, “I’m pretty sure it’s your mom’s.”
My mom, watching. Her ear still looking for blame over the phone.
Walking out with Rant Casey, time had a habit of getting stopped. That moment, another when time got stuck. That moment forever and always doomed to keep happening in my head. Those stars, the same old hand-me-down stars as folks still wish on now. Tonight’s moon, the same exact moon as back then.
Sheriff Bacon Carlyle: Between the time it took Rant Casey running to church, and the time we took getting back to old Esther, the dog packs had already found her. Irene’s mama. They left her something awful to come pick up.
Bodie Carlyle: If Rant Casey ever fucked my mom, I didn’t never have the balls to ask.
4–Fake Stars
Echo Lawrence ( Party Crasher): Before Rant had started kindergarten, but after he’d started sleeping in a regular bed, every day his mother put him down when the little hand of the kitchen clock was on the two, until the little hand was on the three. Yawning or not, Rant had to stay on that bed, up in his attic room, with his pillow propped against the wall. In bed, he hugged a stuffed rabbit he called “Bear.”
Picture the moment when your mom or dad first saw you as something other than a pretty, tiny version of them. You as them, but improved. Better educated. Innocent. Then picture when you stopped being their dream.
If the sun was bright, and Rant could hear dogs barking outside, he’d say, “Bear wants to go play…”
When he wasn’t tired, Rant would say, “But Bear isn’t sleepy…”
Ruby Elliot ( Childhood Neighbor): Girls who gone to school with Irene Shelby, we know how close Buster Casey come to not getting born. Irene being no older than thirteen when Chester took up with her, fourteen when the baby come due. To be honest, Irene was none too happy, her being the only gal stretch-marked and breast-feeding in ninth grade.
Edna Perry ( Childhood Neighbor): You best swear I didn’t tell you this, but before Buster come, Irene used go on how she wanted to paint pictures and carve statues. She didn’t never figure what kind. Went as far as Dr. Schmidt, trying to not have that baby. Went to Reverend Fields at Middleton Christian, asking permission to give it up. It didn’t help none: Her own ma, Esther Shelby, told her that baby would be born a flesh-and-blood curse of the Devil.
Echo Lawrence: Irene, she’d press her lips on Rant’s little forehead. Sitting on the edge of his bed, she’d shake her finger at the stuffed rabbit and say, “We still need a nap.” She’d say, “Let’s count our stars until we’re sleepy.” Rant’s mother would make him count one…two…all the stickers pasted to the ceiling paint. Four, five, six, and she’d walk out of the room, backward, and close the door.
Ruby Elliot: No lie, but Esther had her own child, Irene, about that same age. Chet Casey was the only voice that helped little Rant come into the world. Chet and Irene got hitched, but she had to quit school. Nowadays, folks see the path Buster Casey took, the plague he started, and it’s hard to not figure Irene made the wrong choice.
Echo Lawrence: For that hour alone, looking straight up at the ceiling, his eyes not focused, Rant’s finger, it explored the warm, deep world inside his head. Every two o’clock, Rant would lay there and pick his nose. Fishing out gummy strands of goo, he’d roll these between two fingers until the goo turned black. The black goo ball sticking to one finger, then his thumb, never falling, no matter how hard he shook his hand. Every gummy black little ball he’d reach up and paste on the wall above his pillow, the white paint peppered with black lumps. Stuccoed with black goo balls mashed flat, printed with loops and whirls, a thousand copies of Rant’s little fingerprint. Souvenirs from the travels inside his head. Always the same portrait of the index finger of Rant’s right hand. This spotted rainbow, this arching mural of black dots spreading wider as his little-kid arm grew longer The dried goo up close to his pillow, it was just black specks, dusty keepsakes from when he was really small. A hundred naps later, the dots were big as raisins, spread as high and wide as Rant could reach, flopped on his back, his head propped on the pillow.
The ceiling of his childhood bedroom Irene Casey had pasted with bright star shapes that glowed green when you turned out the light.
The head of R
ant’s bed was a negative night sky. There, sticky black dots outlined other constellations. Until that day, Rant didn’t see the difference.
Edna Perry: If you can keep a secret, the first life that maniac Rant Casey wrecked was Irene’s. The first bright future he ever ended was his mama’s.
Echo Lawrence: That two o’clock when Rant stopped being an angel, his mother was tucking him in for his nap. Leaning over his pillow, she kissed her little Buddy sweet dreams. His round face sunk into his pillow. Rant’s long eyelashes fanned down against his pink cheeks.
If you look at old pictures, Irene Casey is so pretty. Not just young, but pretty the way you look when your face goes smooth, the skin around your eyes and lips relaxed, the pretty you only look when you love the person taking the picture.
Rant’s mother is the pretty young mom, the nudge of soft lips on his face beside his ear. She’s the breath, the whisper of “Sleep tight” with the smell of cigarettes. The candy smell of her shampoo. The flower smell of her skin cream.
Her breath saying, “You’re Mommy’s little treasure.”
Saying, “You’re our little angel.”
Most mothers talk the same way, in the moment they’re still one person with their child.
“You’re Mommy’s perfect little man…”
That moment, before the cow eyeballs and the rattlesnake bites and high-school erections, here’s the last moment Rant and his mom will ever be that close. That much in love.
That moment—the end of what we wish would last forever.
Dr. David Schmidt ( Middleton Physician): In my opinion, both the Caseys made unlikely parents. It’s been my experience that plenty of young people look at their newborns as a practical joke. Maybe a punishment. A baby just is; it ain’t made of chrome for you to tool around in. A baby ain’t going to land you a job behind a desk with air-conditioning.
Chet Casey, he looked at that baby like his worst enemy and best friend, combined.
Echo Lawrence: That naptime, Rant’s mother leans over the bed. With one hand, she finger-combs the hair off his little forehead, his bright-green eyes looking up at her, his eyes too big for his face. His eyes counting her stars.
She stands to go back to the kitchen or the garden or the television, and Rant’s pretty young mother, she stops. Still half leaned over his bed, she looks at the wall above his pillow, her eyes squinting and twitching to see something on the plaster. Her lips peel open a little. Her gray eyes blinking and blinking, looking hard at the wall, her pretty, pointed chin sags against her neck. And with one hand she reaches forward, one finger poked out a little, the fingermail ready to pick at something on the white paint. The smooth skin puckered into a ditch between her eyebrows.
Rant twists on his bed, arching his back to look.
His mother says, “What’s this…?”
And her fingernail taps something, a black lump, a wad, a bump of something almost soft, a mashed raisin that flakes off and falls next to Rant’s head on the pillow. A little black fingerprint next to his face.
Rant’s mother, her eyes roll to follow the sweep of black dots across the wall, the swarm of gummy smudges that spiral down to her angel’s head on the pillow.
As Rant used to say: “Some folks are just born human. The rest of us…”
In one way, we’re all the same. After a heartbeat of looking, we all see dried snot. We know the sticky feel of it underneath chairs and tables.
Reverend Curtis Dean Fields ( Minister, Middleton Christian Fellowship): Little Rant, wasn’t no sin he wouldn’t commit. No, little Buddy growed up sinner enough for their whole entire family.
Echo Lawrence: Here’s one of those moments that last the rest of your life. A scene Rant saw flash before he died. Time slowed down, stopping, stopped, frozen. The only island you’ll find in the vast, vague ocean of your childhood.
In the years of that moment, Rant’s mother, her face buckled and clenched into wrinkles. Her face turned to muscles instead of skin. Her lips peeled back, thin, to show the full length of each tooth, beyond that her pink gums. Her eyelids twitched and trembled, her hands curled up, withered into claws. In the forever of that moment, the pretty young woman leaning over Rant’s bed, she looked her new hag’s face down at him and said, “You…”
She swallowed, her throat jumping inside her stringy neck. Shaking her ancient claws at the spotted wall, she said, “You are…”
On his back, Rant twisted to see his pride, his collection.
We all have this moment, when your folks first see you as someone not growing up to be them.
Irene’s fake, pasted-on stars versus Rant’s mural of real snot.
His pride as her shame.
Logan Elliot ( Childhood Friend): It’s no lie. That Casey kid done nothing above ordinary except pull up roots and burn bridges.
Shot Dunyun ( Party Crasher): Times like that, you look like a failed experiment your parents will have to face for the rest of their lives. A booby prize. And your mom and dad, they look like a God too retarded to fashion anything better than you.
You grow up to become living proof of your parent’s limitations. Their less-than-masterpiece.
Echo Lawrence: His mother looked down at little Rant from the full height of standing straight, and she said, in a deep voice Rant had never heard, a voice that would echo inside him for the rest of his life, she said:
“You disgusting little monster.”
That afternoon, Rant quit being to his mother what his “Bear” was to him. That was the real moment he was born. The start of Rant as a real person.
For the first nap of his new life, that afternoon, Rant fell asleep.
From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms ( Historian): That next Thanksgiving dinner, after the black widow spiders had stung old Granny Esther to death, Irene Casey abandoned her seat in the kitchen. However, Rant’s Great-grandmother Hattie stood next in succession for a place at the adult table. The line of succession was as clear as the names and dates written inside the family Bible.
Shot Dunyun: How creepy is this? By the end of that Thanksgiving, old Granny Hattie’s twitching and scratching. The fox-fur piece she wears to every occasion—two or three red-fox pelts with the fucking heads and feet stuffed, pinned so they run around her neck—the shitty thing is jumping with fleas.
It’s beyond creepy. People that old, it only takes a gust of wind to kill them. A broken hip. A bee sting. Just one mouthful of tuna bake gone bad. Like black widow spiders, flea bites, you’re talking another natural part of the glorious redneck lifestyle. It could’ve been chipmunks or marmots or deer mice, rabbits, sheep, or rock squirrels, but something in their natural world’s left its fleas behind. First, Granny Hattie complained about a sore throat and a headache. A stomach ache. Hattie is gasping for breath. An hour in the hospital, and she’s dead of pneumonia.
From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: The last rat-borne epidemic of bacterium Yersinia pestis occurred in Los Angeles in the years 1924 and 1925. It was traced to the widespread practice of destroying prairie-dog colonies by introducing animals infected with the plague. By the 1930s, 98 percent of the native marmot population was destroyed, but the remaining 2 percent remain asymptomatic carriers of bubonic plague.
Echo Lawrence: He used to wake up with a yelp. In his nightmares, Rant said his grandmother’s little flirtation veil, the black lace would start to shift. The hat seemed to come alive, tearing itself to shreds, and the black threads crawled down her cheeks, biting, and his Grandma Esther, screaming. In those dreams, Rant could hear dogs bark but not see them.
Sheriff Bacon Carlyle ( Childhood Enemy): Them dreams was his feeling guilt, plain and simple. Over Rant’s killing those old women. Over spreading his infection.
Shot Dunyun: Those little fluff balls that look so cute in nature films, every year an average of twenty people cross paths with a plague-infected ground squirrel or chipmunk. Their lymph nodes balloon, their fingertips and toes turn black, and they die. The peo
ple, I mean. Not the fluff balls.
Echo Lawrence: Go ahead, ask Irene Casey about Rant’s bedroom wall. She ended up hanging wallpaper. To her, dried snot was worse than asbestos.
Even as an adult, in his own apartment, the wall above Rant’s bed wasn’t anything you’d ever want to touch.
Irene Casey ( Rant’s Mother): Near as I recall, we did put up wallpaper in Buddy’s bedroom, when he was going on three or four years old. A pattern of cowboys roping horses, and some cactus, on a background of chocolate brown, something that wouldn’t show dirt. Awful dark, but practical for a boy’s room.
The rest, about a wall covered with dried boogers—that never went on. Buddy was a beautiful child. A regular little angel. We did paste stars on his ceiling, those stickers that glowed in the dark, little cowboys under the stars. That part is true, but the rest…I wouldn’t never call my baby a monster or no curse from the Devil.
And Buddy wouldn’t never tell folks that story.
5–Invisible Art
Bodie Carlyle ( Childhood Friend): Weeks out ahead of Easter Sunday, you could smell the vinegar on Mrs. Casey’s hands, worse than pickling season. Mrs. Casey would keep a pot of water boiling. First to hard-cook her eggs. Then another pot of water to boil with vinegar, add chopped junk for color, and dye her eggs.
The Caseys, their house was in the country, but they buyed their chickens already dead. The worst thing you could say about somebody hereabouts is they buyed their eggs, but Mrs. Casey buyed hers. Only the white ones. Leghorn eggs. Mostly on account of Easter.
Coming in through the Caseys’ kitchen screen door—spreee…whap—you’d find Mrs. Casey with both elbows up on the table. Her reading glasses slid down to the tip of her nose. Her head tilted back. In the middle of the table, a white candle, fat as in church, burning with the smell of vanilla. Around the candle flame, a clear pool of melted wax. Mrs. Casey, she’d dip an embroidery needle into that wax, and she’d hold a white egg in her other hand. Holding the egg at the top and bottom, with a finger and thumb, so she can turn it, she’d write with melted wax on the shell.