Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey

folks had switched and took the real money, but I had to act happy.

Cammy Elliot (Childhood Friend): Adults lying about the Tooth Fairy. Kids lying. Everybody knowing that everybody was lying. Then adults selling helium balloons for a hundred bucks to kids who didn't know any better. Adults stealing from kids, then merchants stealing from folks. Greed on top of greed.

Cross my heart, the summer of the Tooth Fairy destroyed all credibility anybody had in Middleton. Since then, nobody's word stands up. To everybody, everybody else is a liar. But folks still smile and act nice.

Shot Dunyun (Party Crasher): That next Thanksgiving, Rant's Granny Bel is in line for a seat at the adult table. Then his Uncle Clem. Then Uncle Walt and Aunt Patty. Rant says his mom stood there and counted on her fingers—four, five, six relatives would have to die before she'd eat like a grown-up.

Before the end of that Thanksgiving dinner, Rant's Granny Bel was already sweating with fever. Bel's running a fever of 105 degrees, but complaining of the cold. Her other symptoms include dizziness, fatigue, and muscle aches. Rant says Granny Bel can't catch her breath because, it turns out, her lungs are filling with fluid. Her kidneys have failed. Halfway to the hospital, Rant says his Granny Bel's stopped breathing.

Echo Lawrence: It turns out, lucky Grandma Bel's been infected by a killer virus. It's called the 'hantavirus,' and you get it from something Rant called the 'white-footed mouse.' The mouse shits, and the shit dries into dust. You breathe the shit dust, and the virus kills you inside of six weeks.

She's an old lady wearing red lipstick, with powder on her nose.

Rant says the county tested the talc in Bel's compact, and of course it was half mouse shit. The dried, ground-up dust of wild-mouse turds. The powder puff was loaded with shit dust. Mystery solved. Kind of solved.

Shot Dunyun: Don't get the idea Rant Casey was some kind of naturopathic serial killer —spiders, fleas, mice, and bees—but you could make that argument.

Bodie Carlyle: Just a little part of my gold bought me that midnight-blue Cub Scout shirt and pants, bought the Scout knife, the belt, and the compass. Since Milt Tommy was a sixth-grader and didn't get no treasure, I paid him a hundred bucks in gold for his sash with every merit badge already sewed to it. Every badge from First Aid to Good Citizenship.

Folks really will sell you anything for the right price.

And I learned a cash-bought merit badge ain't worth shit.

7–Haunted House

Bodie Carlyle (Childhood Friend): The only gold money Rant spent was, one day he pushed a wheelbarrow down the road, all the way to the Perry Meat Packing plant.

Reverend Curtis Dean Fields (Minister, Middleton Christian Fellowship): Inside the grange hall, the annual haunted house consisted of old oilcloth tarps, smelling from train diesel, hung up to make a pitch-dark tunnel you'd walk inside. How folks hung the tarps, it made the tunnel turn right and left, turning back on itself to confuse you and make the walk last long as possible. Kids waited at the start, and Rant took them through one at a time. Kid stuff inside. At the far end was a party with a costume contest, cake, and candy. One year, a pinata.

Inside, the tunnel was pitch-dark except when lights flashed to show something scary. The far end was most dark, and Rant would blindfold you. He'd put your hand in a big mixing bowl full of cooked elbow macaroni stirred with cold butter, and he'd tell you, 'This is brains.' You'd feel a bowl of grapes coated with corn oil, or peeled hard-cooked eggs, and Rant would say, 'These is pulled-out eyeballs.' Pretty tame stuff these days. Hard for a kid's imagination, standing in the dark, feeling a bowl of warm gelatin water while Rant Casey says, 'This is fresh blood…' Anymore, it's pretty hard for imagination to make that seem horrible.

Luella Tommy (Childhood Neighbor): At the party end of the haunted tunnel, kids is gobbling cake and playing Ducky Ducky. Playing Pass the Orange. Kids ask can they have napkins to wipe off their hands, after touching the pretend brains and lungs and scary junk. Other kids just wipe their hands on their costumes or on each other.

The little Elliot girl comes out the tunnel, red up to both elbows. Real red. Crying. Dressed as a little angel with tissue-paper wings stretched on coat-hanger wire and a wire halo dusted with gold glitter, the Elliot girl wipes her eyes with one hand and smears red across her face. The Elliot girl, just sobbing, she says, 'Rant Casey put a real live heart in my bare hand…'

And I told her, 'No, honey. It was make-believe.' I spit on a napkin to wipe her face and said, 'That heart was just a plain old peeled tomato…' My first fear is she's scared. I'm kneeled down, wiping her face with a paper napkin, and the paper's coming apart. Then I see how sticky the red is, gumming her skirt together in folds. Sticky and blotched with dark spots. Clots. Not just red food color. And there's a smell. On top the diesel stink of those old tarps, that creosote smell same as railroad ties on a hot day, I can smell a sweet kind of marigold, kind of potty smell of meat gone bad.

Glenda Hendersen (Childhood Neighbor): For God's sake. All the kids, just their fingers, one hand or both, some their arms and their costumes, little pirates and fairies and hobos, but they're all smeared with blood. Red blood so old it's gone black. Touching the cake, they got blood on the vanilla icing. Blood on the ladle for the fruit punch, and the orange for Pass the Orange. Fingerprints of blood all over the soda crackers for playing Whistling Crackers.

On the concrete floor of the grange hall, leading out of the tarp tunnel, come an army of little footprints, the tread marks of sneakers and sandals, all printed in sticky blood. Lowell Richards, from the high school, he borrows a flashlight and goes to take a look.

Sheriff Bacon Carlyle (Childhood Enemy): Worse than the worse-ever police crime-scene photo.

Luella Tommy: Folks rumored maybe Irene Casey brung home and froze her afterbirth when Buddy was born. My first impression was, could be, Buddy made it a scene in the haunted house: the Hanged Man, the Ghost, the Vision of Hell, and Irene Casey's Placenta…

Thank God I was wrong—but not by far off.

Polk Perry (Childhood Neighbor): Wouldn't have sold Rant Casey those eyeballs if I'd knowed what that runt had planned. What went on, that's a surefire sign the Casey boy would grow up to be a killer.

Lowell Richards (Teacher): In the dark, Rant Casey holds the Hendersen boy's hand, dipping that hand into bowls. In the circle of my flashlight, bowls of blood thick as pudding.