Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey

impossible, but didn't people use to say the Wright brothers would never get off the ground?'

Echo Lawrence (Party Crasher): The last time I saw Green Taylor Simms, we were driving a Mattress Night. Green was roping a mattress to the roof of his red Daimler. We were pit-stopping before the window opened, to fill the tank, standing, leaning against the side of the car, parked next to the gas pumps. Green stood in his pinstriped suit, poking the nozzle and holding the trigger. You could smell gasoline and deep-fried chicken.

I hadn't called Shot about tonight, just so I could ride alone with Green. And, standing there, I told Green Taylor Simms that Rant's dad, Chester, had come to town.

Watching the numbers spin on the gas pump, money and gallons piling up, Green said, 'Tell me, how delusional is the elder Mr. Casey?'

Driving by are Torinos and Vegas and Toronados, all with mattresses roped to their roofs. Faces in those cars all turned to look at us with our mattress. People stand on every street corner you can see, a thumb out for a ride. Some people wave a few bills for gas money.

And I told Green Taylor Simms what Chester Casey had told me.

Green said nothing. Just listened. Watching the other teams watch us.

From DRVR Radio Graphic Traffic: This bulletin just in, and it looks like another repeat redundant case of deja-vu. Three police vehicles are in high-speed pursuit of a burning car, westbound on the Madison Beltway.

This is Tina Something with your Rubberneck Report…

Wallace Boyer: It helps, Chet Casey told me, to start simple. Picture time less like a river than a book. Or a record. Something finished. Like a movie, with a beginning, middle, and end, but already done and complete.

Then picture time travel as nothing more than knocking your half-read book to the floor and losing your place. You pick up the book and open the pages to a scene too early or late, but never exactly where you'd been reading.

Echo Lawrence: And, still listening, Green Taylor Simms left the gas nozzle pumping, walked around the car, and leaned inside the driver's window. He said, 'I'm listening,' and he pushed in the dashboard cigarette lighter.

That's how old his car was. None of us smoked.

Shot Dunyun (Party Crasher): Rant said once that you perceive time the way the people in power want you to. Like it's a speed limit on some freeway. Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. Like time is the Tooth Fairy we're brought up to believe. As a path or a river that only moves in one direction.

But speed limits change. Santa Claus is fake.

Rant told me that time's not the way we think. Time wraps. It loops. It stops and starts. And that's just the little bit he's found out. Most folks, Rant says, move through time like a flightless bird on land. Rant says that view of time was set up so folks won't live forever. It's the planned obsolescence we've all agreed to.

Everybody except the folks who don't die. Historians.

'Nothing says you have to swallow this,' Rant told me. 'You can always just die.'

From DRVR Radio Graphic Traffic: Here's another update on that high-speed police chase. The fire seems to be limited to a burning mattress tied to the car's roof. The driver is still westbound on the Madison Beltway, approaching the CenterPoint Business Park. With more news as it happens, this is Tina Something with your Rubberneck Report…

Echo Lawrence: At the gas station, inside Green's Daimler, the cigarette lighter popped out with a «think» sound.

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms (Historian): Let me, somehow, compress this. The human brain operates at four basic levels of brain frequency. Normally, awake and aroused, you operate in the «beta» level of brain waves, which occur at thirteen to thirty cycles per second. At a resting state, your mind slips to an «alpha» brain-wave level of nine to fourteen cycles per second. As you daydream and feel drowsy, your mind slows to «theta» level, five to eight cycles per second. And as you pass into deep, dreamless sleep, your brain waves slow to a «delta» level of one to four cycles per second.

Wallace Boyer: Nothing says you have to believe this. Nothing says you have to even listen, but consider that plenty of smart, rich, powerful folks in history went to their graves swearing that the sun went around us. Also consider that someday, when you're dead and rotted, kids with their baby teeth will sit in their time-geography class and laugh about how stupid you were.

Echo Lawrence: The gas pump chunked and the numbers stopped turning. The hose jumped and went silent. Green Taylor Simms slipped one hand inside his pinstriped jacket and lifted out his wallet.

'According to Chet Casey,' I told Green, 'we met Rant because you recognized him on that street corner…'

Green pinched a twenty-dollar bill, another twenty, a ten, a fifty. He pinched all the paper money out of his wallet.

I said, 'Pull up your sleeve.' I said, 'Let me see your arms.'

And Green said, 'Who do you think invented this little game you enjoy so much?' He said, 'Who do you think decides the field and flag and window, then sends the word out?' He said, 'What do you suppose would happen to Party Crashing without me?'

Around us, the stink of gasoline.

Green Taylor Simms handed me the cash and said, 'Would you be so kind as to buy me some Red Vines licorice?'

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Of greatest interest is the idea that an average person easily reaches this mystical meditation state, «theta» brain waves, the state most sought by monks and pilgrims, simply by driving an automobile. Any long drive, anytime you've passed time and covered distance with no memory of the process, you've been submerged in deep theta-level meditation. Open to visions. Open to your subconscious. Creativity, intuition, and spiritual enlightenment.

Echo Lawrence: I left him with the nozzle still stuck in the side of his car. I went inside and bought Red Vines, paid for the gasoline, and came out. And—no duh—when I came out, the red Daimler was gone.

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Of special interest is the theta level of brain activity. It's at this frequency that mystics report that visions and inspiration are most likely to occur. In those relaxed moments, while bathing or driving or falling asleep, as you lapse into theta brain waves, you typically retrieve deep, distant memories. You make connections and achieve revelations.

In order to stimulate theta brain activity, Tibetan Buddhist chants follow a droning rhythm which matches the slower brain-wave frequency. Among drumming cultures, shamanic drummers trigger theta activity by a steady, constant four beats per second.