Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey

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 people, 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.

You couldn't help yourself, you had to stop and watch.

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms (Historian): The young hang mirrors in their homes. The elderly hang paintings. And, if I may make an ungenerous observation, residents of rural communities display crafts—those dubious products of spare time, limited motor skill, and inexpensive yarn.

Bodie Carlyle: Invisible as spy writing, only Mrs. Casey could tell where the white wax disappeared on the white egg.

The stove would be crowded, with boiling out of every pot a different smell. Onions. Beets. Spinach greens. The stink of red cabbage. Black coffee. Plus the vinegar smell. In each pot, a different color: yellow, red, green, blue, or brown. Everything boiled down to the color of the cooking water. No lunch ready.

Her eyes crossed, looking straight down her nose, so concentrating on the wax that her mouth hanged open, red lipstick every day of the year, without looking up, she'd say, 'If you two are chewing tar, spit it out.' She'd say, 'You'll find graham crackers over the stove.'

Me and Rant.

If you stood there long enough, maybe she'd say how the wax was to keep dye off the egg. At her elbow would be hard-cooked eggs that still looked white, but in truth were half decorated with the parts where dye couldn't go. Just watching her, it could slip your mind how you had an ant hill waiting outside. Or a dead raccoon. Even a box of wood matches.

Even being hungry for lunch, you'd get nosing into Mrs. Casey's egg work.

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: It's compelling that so many cultures practice a meticulous yet transitory art form as a spiritual ritual, prayer, or meditation.

Bodie Carlyle: Her elbows on the table, one hand dipping her embroidery needle in the wax, her other hand holding the eggs, not looking at Rant and me, one day Mrs. Casey says, 'Pull up an egg or get out.' She says, 'You're making me nervous.'

Mrs. Casey gived us each a needle and a cold hard-cooked egg and told us not to shake the table any. 'Get an idea in your head,' she said. And she showed how to dip the tip of a needle into the candle and bring one clear drop of wax back to the shell of a store-bought leghorn egg. 'Draw your idea with the needle,' she said. Drop by drop. White on white. Invisible. A secret.

Rant says, 'You tell me. I can't figure what to draw.'

And his mom says, 'Something'll come.'

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Whether it's Piranski eggs or the sand mandalas of Tibetan Buddhists, their common theme is to somehow achieve an intense focus and complete absorption of the artist's attention. Despite the fragile nature of the artwork, the process becomes a means of stepping outside of the temporal.

Bodie Carlyle: Rant, me, and Mrs. Casey around that kitchen table, all leaned together around that candle with the little flame drowned in sun from the window over the sink, drawing stuff only we could tell, none of us figured to be hungry. None of us, anything more than the wax and egg in our hands. Even with the pots of greens and onions boiling, the kitchen air nothing but steam and food smell, none of us so much as jumped when the screen door went—spree-whap—and Mr. Casey stood standing there.

'What's for lunch?' he says.

'Thought you were eating at the diner,' says Mrs. Casey, still looking cross-eyed on her egg.

Rant stopped, just holding his egg, not dipping back drops of wax from the candle. Rant's hands and breathing, froze solid.

Me, I was drawing a wax day on my egg, a sun with rays, a tree, my house, a wax cloud in the sky, but only I could tell.

Mr. Casey, he says, 'Irene.' He says, 'Don't do this to the boy.'

And Mrs. Casey says, 'You told me you were eating at the diner.'

Leaned over the stove, sticking his nose in the steam above each pot, sniffing, Mr. Casey says, 'Don't ruin him.'

Still staring cross-eyed at her egg, the invisible secret of her idea, Mrs. Casey says, 'Do what?'

Rant not drawing anything.

And Mr. Casey says, 'Don't ruin the boy for getting married.' And he reached for the bowl of eggs beside her elbow on the table. The eggs, plain white but really halfway decorated with all morning of her secret writing. Invisible art.

'Not those,' Mrs. Casey says, her eyes snapped up, looking over the tops of her eyeglasses.