Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey

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