Shot Dunyun: Our target's cruising slow, too close to parked cars for us to make our tag without costly collateral damage. Putting a dent in a game car is fair, but denting an innocent bystander, you have to fess up. Pay for repairs. Our target banks on this fact and tucks close beside parked cars, staying safe until he can lose us around a quick exit. An alley. Ora cop.
Keeping an eye on my game quadrant, I ask Rant if he's queer or not.
That's the night Green Taylor Simms started calling him Huckleberry Fagg.
And Rant goes, "Truth is, I won't never be a doctor. Don't even ask me to do long division." He goes, "I can't do much to make my folks proud…" And he leans forward, reaching into the front seat to turn up the radio. Tina's yakking. Her taking calls from paramedics and traffic cops and pasting together her rubberneck deal.
"But," Rant goes, "if I get my folks' expectations low, and pester them with the worry they messed me up, then just the simple miracle of me getting a girl in trouble—that will bust them open with joy and relief."
From DRVR Radio Graphic Traffic Reports: One last report from the boys in the meat wagon, regarding the fatality rollover on the 213: The song they died hearing was "My Sharona" by The Knack. And that makes Brian Lambson our newest Death Song winner. Brian, if you're listening, call in the next hour to accept your prize. This has been Tina Something for Graphic Traffic: We Know Why You Rubberneck…
Shot Dunyun: As Rant reaches into the front seat, to fiddle with the radio controls, written on the back of his hand in blue ballpoint pen it says: P295/30 R22…P285/30 R22…425/65 R22.5. Obviously tire sizes. Big tires.
Nodding at the blue numbers, I ask him, "Been car-shopping?"
And Rant goes, "How good do you know Echo?" He sits back.
Good enough, I tell him. Pretty good.
Green Taylor Simms feathers the gas pedal, patient. The target car almost touching-close. Almost brushing the line of parked cars. Our two cars moving first-gear slow. The smell of insecticide. The flavor of rabies.
And Rant goes, "Figured maybe I'd get her a present…"
Echo is off, working, tonight. Doing some bullshit I don't want to explain here. Complicated shit.
Rant goes, "Really truly with her whole entire heart, does Echo hate somebody?"
I go, doesn't Rant mean "love"?
And Rant shrugs and says, "Ain't it the same thing?"
20–Junkyards
From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms (Historian): For sheer spectacle, the peak of Party Crash culture had to be Tree Nights. The idea, as always, was to choose a flag that the unaware public could dismiss as ordinary, normal—or, at worst, an accident.
Among the accident type of flags were coffee cups and sack lunches. Crash teams utilized these flags on Ooops Nights: For example, during an Ooops «Coffee» game, participants indicated they were in the game by bolting or gluing a large travel mug to the roof of their vehicle. The actual coffee was optional. In the event of an Ooops "Brown Bag" game, teams glued a brown-bag «lunch» to their roof. To the general public, these flags occurred as silly accidents, and unaware drivers might pull alongside laughing and pointing, attempting to get the driver's attention and help resolve the misplaced item.
The "Baby on Board" events used another type of mishap flag. Understandably, public reaction was somewhat less jolly at the sight of a speeding car weaving through traffic with an infant carrier and baby seemingly forgotten on the roof.
Shot Dunyun (Party Crasher): The auctioneer starts the bidding at fifty dollars, saying, "Do I hear fifty? Who wants to give me an opening bid of fifty dollars for Lot Number One?"
This is Sammy's Towing, so this must be Tuesday night. The Wednesday police impound auction is at Radio Retrieval. How organized is this? On Fridays, we'd be at Patrol Towing to preview the cars. Police crime impounds. Abandoned cars. Cars seized in drug busts or for unpaid parking tickets. Cars towed out of pay lots and never claimed, they all go for chump change to the highest bidder.
To find a car you can drive for a few days, paint and glue shit all over, and ram into another junker car, here's your market. Marked with neon-bright grease pencil, yellow or orange, in the windows of some cars you can read "Brken Tming Blt." Or "Eng Mnts crakd." In one big four-door, still messy with "Just Married" toothpaste and hanging tin cans, Auction Lot 42, written on the windshield it says, "Cam lobs scord."
The car up for bid right now, dented and crumpled, you'll find dried blood and hair still caked on the dashboard.
From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: The infant doll and the carrier were, of course, bolted in place. Most teams used the same drilled hole and carriage bolts each week, switching the baby carrier for the coffee mug for the bag lunch. Other teams, as their vehicle accumulated dents and scratches, becoming less attractive as a target, these teams would expand on the basic theme. Instead of a coffee mug, they might bolt an espresso machine and a tray of demitasse cups and saucers to their roof. A basket of pain au chocolat. A silver bud vase with a single red rose trembling in the slipstream.
Shot Dunyun: The auctioneer's chanting, "Seventy-five, seventy-five, who'll give me eighty? Who'll bid eighty dollars? Do I hear eighty dollars…?"
Rant and Echo are still poking around the lot, looking under hoods. Echo pointing at bashed, rusted minivans still decorated with shreds of crepe paper and poster-paint words that say "Go Team! Tigers Go to State!" The seats and floor littered with snacks and fast-food wrappers left when the team bailed on a Soccer Mom Night.
Echo opens the driver's door of a coupe, a faded artificial Christmas tree still tied to the roof. With one finger, she punches a button on the stereo, but nothing happens. She punches it again, hard, and a disk pops out. "My favorite chase mix," she says, waving the disk for Rant to see. Echo goes, "I thought I'd never hear it again."
From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Approaching Thanksgiving, the simple misplaced-coffee-cup theme would expand to include papier-mâché turkeys, painted and varnished to a glossy brown. Sloshing stemmed goblets of red wine. Salt and pepper shakers. And tall white candles in brass holders, their flame bulbs glowing, battery-powered. A display of this extent usually signaled the last event in which a team planned to drive a particular automobile: Mounting dishes of yams and green beans required drilling dozens of holes through the roof and headliner.
For these elaborate vehicle send-offs—known as Funerals or Final Runs—teams arrived at the event grid, or field, no less than an hour before the window. Until the play officially began, these cars would parade and model their decorations, bidding one final, grand farewell before the night's play would leave them in a junkyard.
Shot Dunyun: The script artist inside me still looked for events worth out-cording. I'd reach back and touch my port, ready to switch it. Maybe out-cord an interesting moment of my awareness. The way a rusted car looked. Or the way Rant smiled at Echo when it's just her ass end stuck out from under a half-open hood, her voice muffled by grease and sheetmetal, saying, "This butterfly valve is fucked."
A few wrecks away, a bashed hardtop sits up to the rims in mud. Written across the trunk lid in bright-pink paint, sparkle-pink fingernail polish, it says "Cherry Bomb III." Next to the wreck stands Tina Something.
When Tina's fingers curl into fists and she starts stomping through the mud, advancing on Echo's ass, I switch my port to out-cord the carnage.
From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: As I've mentioned, for sheer spectacle nothing surpassed Tree Nights. At those rare events, cars old and new arrived early to show off. The original idea had been to tie an evergreen Christmas tree to the roof of your vehicle, as if you were a happy family bringing it home from the corner lot or the forest. But, like the simple coffee cup that evolved into the feast, soon a plain green pine tree wasn't sufficient.
Teams used artificial trees, of course, tied lengthwise, usually with the stump looming above the car hood and ropes holding it secure to the bumpers. Beginning with the original Tre
e Night, teams draped their branches with silver tinsel. Teams wired bright stars to the crown that hung and bobbed above the car's trunk. People glued or wired shining ornaments among the needles. As early as two hours before a Tree Night window, Party Crashers will parade; atop their cars, their trees twinkle with colored lights, and a cord trails through a window to their cigarette lighter or vehicle wiring harness. Christmas carols will boom from every car stereo.
The moment the game window opens, those Christmas lights go black. The parading cars go silent. Teams scatter, and the real hunting begins.
Shot Dunyun: The auctioneer is saying, "Forty dollars. Do I have forty dollars? Come on, folks, it costs more than that to fill a gas tank. Do I have thirty dollars…?"
Echo's still leaned over, with both arms buried up to the shoulders in engine, her face cheek-to-cheek with a valve cover, when Tina Something comes to stand behind her, saying, "Hey, whore!"
Rant's planted both elbows on a front fender, peering under the hood at Echo.
The auctioneer's saying, "Do I hear twenty-five? Twenty-five dollars…?"
And Tina says, "You, stop calling bogus fouls on me." Talking to Echo's butt, Tina says, "You foul me out and I'll phone in fake shit on you."
From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: With their Christmas lights extinguished, the Tree Cars become black, shaggy, scratchy…monsters. The soft tinkle of swinging glass and crystal drops, a faint clue. A team might drive past any dark hedge or bush only to see it blaze into a hundred colors in their rearview mirror. A squeal of tires, and that mass of sparkling light and color will sideswipe their vehicle and again vanish into the night.
Shot Dunyun: The auctioneer is saying. "Twenty dollars? Can we start the bidding at twenty…?"
And from inside the engine compartment, her face still against the firewall, Echo says, "Forget you. I don't even know your current plate." Still giving Tina nothing but ass, Echo goes, "How do I call fouls on you if I don't know your plate?"
The auctioneer says, "Twenty! I got twenty. Do I hear twenty-five? Who wants to bid twenty-five…?"
Rant watches Echo, still propped on his elbows, leaning into the fender. Me, I'm still watching, out-cording so I can live this at home later.
Tina says, "Hey, Day Boy…" To Rant, louder, she says, "You, with the black teeth! Day Boy!"
Rant looks up. His shirtsleeves rolled back to show the bite scars on his forearms.
And Tina says, "Has your girlfriend told you what she does for work? How she makes the cash she spends on wheels?"
Rant says nothing. Just from habit, I spit. Spit again.
One of Echo's arms pulls back, out of the engine compartment, the elbow bending to show a hand. The hand stuffs an adjustable crescent wrench into one back pocket of her pants.
And to Echo's ass, to the wrench poking out of her pocket, Tina Something says, "Your girlfriend you like so much, she fucks for money." Tina crosses her arms over her chest, leans back, and yells, "Your little girlfriend is a gaddamn whore."
From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: The day following a Tree Night, the streets sparkle. They gleam. Gold and silver strands of tinsel flicker and flutter in the wind. Shattered glass ornaments crunch under passing tires.
Shot Dunyun: The auctioneer is saying, "…I have twenty-three. A bid of twenty-three dollars. Going once…"
Echo steps back, stands, and turns to look at Tina.
And Rant says, "Is that true?"
The auctioneer says, "…going twice…"
Echo twists her head to both sides until her neck pops, and she says, "Is what true?"
Rant says, "What she said." He says, "Are you really my girlfriend?"
And the auctioneer says, "Sold!"
21–Echo
Canada Mercer (Software Engineer): My wife and I hired Echo Lawrence after a dinner party. A couple we knew, the Tyson-Neals, had just given birth to their first child, and the baby's needs kept interrupting the meal. After the mother had disappeared to tend it for the umpteenth time, the father remarked, "I'm glad we experimented with three-ways before we started a family." With a newborn, he said, they'd never have the time and privacy necessary to experiment with bondage and vibrators and police uniforms. But now all of that was behind them, so they had no regrets about this baby. They seemed very happy.
As we left that dinner party, Sarah and I felt so far behind the curve. Here we were considering a child of our own, and we'd never even tried anal. We'd never even discussed a three-way. A few days later, we phoned the Tyson-Neals and asked how they'd met a woman who'd consider intimacy with a couple. They knew a young lady who worked with no one except couples our age. A Nighttimer girl who'd be happy to come to our apartment after the curfew.
Echo Lawrence (Party Crasher): Forget it. The police never found the fucker that smashed into my family. The last I remember of my parents, we were driving. We were always driving. My mother always drove a gray car that came with her job, so covered with dents it looked like tinfoil someone had balled up and then tried to press smooth. As an infrastructure engineer, my mother always lectured me on service flow rates: Level of Service E versus K. She'd stop in the middle of an overpass so we could look at the roadway below with the traffic passing under us, and she'd quiz me about Hourly Volume and the Peak-Hour Factor of measuring traffic flow.
I was asleep across the backseat of that gray car when someone smacked into us, head-on.
Sarah Mercer (Marketing Director): When she arrived, the young woman had what I'd call a withered arm. One of her elbows was crooked, bent a smidgen, and that hand seemed stunted. The fingers curled into the palm, and she never used them to grasp or lift anything. Her leg on that same side was shorter, and she seemed to swing it from her hip with each step, walking into our living room with a pronounced limp.
She would've been very pretty if it hadn't been for a palsy or paralysis that seemed to leave the left side of her face slack and immobile. The poor dear, she'd come to the last word of a sentence, then stop with her mouth gaping open, clearly trying to force out the exact word. It was agony, the effort it took to not jump in and finish her every thought. After a glass of Merlot, she told us her handicaps stemmed from a single brain injury, caused when her mother had struck her in the head.
Echo Lawrence: I do. I tell people that. My mom did hit me. So did my dad, but not the way I let people imagine. Well, technically, I hit them. At the pulse of the car accident, I came rocketing out of the backseat and hit them both in the back of the head. The officer at the scene never put this on paper, but I broke both their necks. My head slammed against my father's so hard it compressed my right temporal lobe. The tiny arm I have now is the arm I had when I was eight. My leg's grown, a little. The aphasia, when I struggle for words, that's a little put-on. I'll pretend the last word in a sentence is almost choking me to…and I'll pause…death. Like I can't quite force out the right…word. That tension makes people really listen to me.
The car that hit us was another gray sedan owned by the county traffic division, exactly like the one my mother drove. Dinged and dented all over. A head-on collision, and they never found the other driver. Sounds…wait for the word…fishy.
Sarah Mercer: The girl had grown up an orphan, dating anyone who asked. One of her boyfriends escorted her to a private swingers' club where people do their business in front of each other. He convinced her to have intercourse standing in the center of this club. Entered her from behind. She's the first woman to arrive that evening, so they have plenty of unwanted attention. To endure this, she shuts her eyes, tight. The entire time, her boyfriend holds her withered hand, whispering "Meine kleine Hure…" in her ear.
Secretly, she's flattered by all the attention, dozens of strange men bothering to watch. When the ordeal is finished, she finds her skin running with something more than sweat. She's awfully glad she kept her shoes on, because she's standing in a little puddle. All their sperm is dripping off of her. Grotesque as it sounds, apparently that eve
ning did wonders for her self-esteem.
Until then, she didn't even know that particular boyfriend spoke German.
Canada Mercer: The subject of venereal disease came up, and she insisted it wasn't a problem. The Lawrence girl, she explained that sex workers regularly perform oral sex as part of foreplay. She told us the true purpose of the act is to routinely test a client for illness. Syphilis, she said, tastes like curried chicken. Hepatitis tastes like veal with capers. Gonorrhea, like sour-cream-and-onion potato chips. HIV, like buttered popcorn. She looked at my wife and said, "Let me lick your pussy and I can tell if you've been exposed to venereal warts, and if you're at risk for developing cervical cancer." Most forms of cancer, she said, taste similar to tartar sauce.
Echo Lawrence: As an adult, I found riding the bus made my hands sweat. Riding in a taxi, I could hardly take a deep breath. Driving, my heart would pound in my ears, and my vision would lose any awareness of colors. I'd get that close to fainting. I was so sure I'd be rammed by another car. On an unconscious level, my memory of the head-on collision was controlling me. It got so bad I couldn't cross the street for fear that a driver might run a red light.
My world kept collapsing down, getting smaller and smaller.
Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey Page 13
