Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey

by Chuck Palahniuk

  All three sons suffered from congenital syphilis. As their father's cerebral syphilis progressed beyond 1564, he subjected thousands to execution by burning and boiling. In the city of Novgorod, the Tsar and his son spent five weeks flogging prisoners to death, roasting them alive, or drowning them below river ice. On November 19, 1581, the Tsar stabbed his son and namesake to death with a steel-pointed spear.

  Carlo Tiengo: Benjamin Searle, people called him "Bernie," he was huge. Easily three hundred pounds. Played professional ball for one season with the Raiders. Bernie spun the psycho around. Pried his jaws off Viv's foot and spun him around, and the psycho sinks his teeth into the side of Bernie's neck. The vein they got there. The juggler.

  Phoebe Truffeau, Ph.D.: Among those crippled and killed by syphilis was England's King Henry VIII, as well as France's Charles VIII and Francis I. Artists include Benvenuto Cellini, Toulouse-Lautrec, and the writer Guy de Maupassant.

  In the Paris of 1500, a third of the citizens carried syphilis. Among the French nobility, those who were not infected, Erasmus reported, were condemned by their peers as being ignorant and crude. By 1579, the surgeon William Clowes reported that three-quarters of Londoners carried the disease.

  Vivica Brawley: Weird what you remember, but I looked at my foot, and I see wire sticking out. Silver wire and pink plastic. And for one crazy second I think, I'm a robot, some kind of an android. And I'm only just finding out…But not really. I'm stoned on the boosted effect, and I'm bleeding and in shock. But I'm no android.

  The wire is, the bald guy wore a partial upper, a partial upper denture, and the two teeth of it are still stuck in my foot. His real teeth are dug into Bernie's throat.

  Phoebe Truffeau, Ph.D.: As with bubonic plague, the transmission rate of syphilis exploded due to a change in the nature of the causative organism. Rather than being imported from the New World, it's more likely the disease was originally the African skin infection known as yaws, which was primarily spread by body contact among children playing nude. Bacteriologically, the two diseases are identical, although yaws is spread by any physical contact involving skin eruptions. Because of the clothing needed in the colder climate of Europe, yaws emerged as a disease spread through the predominant method of greeting: a mouth-to-mouth kiss. Only as syphilis became epidemic did Europeans abandon the kiss for the handshake, and the disease assumed its current venereal form.

  Carlo Tiengo: It's the sight of blood or something, but every Drooler and perv in the club piles on top of Bernie. Viv and the other girls lock themselves backstage. The bartender and me, we're locked in the office, calling to get the cops. The door is solid oak, thick as a telephone book, and we can still hear Bernie bellowing for help.

  Phoebe Truffeau, Ph.D.: It would not be unrealistic to assume that—like bubonic plague and syphilis—the current rabies epidemic is due to casual contact, becoming a zymotic disease common to crowded cities. Like syphilis, the disease brings the subject to an agitated state where he is more likely to seek out and infect others. Additionally, the damage caused by the Lyssavirus to the central nervous system prevents the sufferer from «boosting» or otherwise enjoying the solitary entertainment of neural transcripts. This inability increases the likelihood the infected individual will seek amusement outside his home, indulging in risky social interaction such as "Party Crashing" and casual sex.

  Vivica Brawley: Poor Bernie. After the cops shot everybody, they had to autopsy their stomachs to find all the bites people took. Bernie's ears and nose and his lips. The surgeons at the hospital showed me some toes in a pan of salt water and offered to reattach them. The toenails still had their nice white-tipped French pedicure.

  But I just looked at those toes all chewed up by a Teamster and half digested, and I told the doctors, "Don't bother."

  25–The Patsy

  Irene Casey (Rant's Mother): Depends on if you believe that deformed girl or you believe the police, but their first night together was the same night Buddy was supposed to have killed that lady. The one owned the little pet store, that Libby woman.

  Shot Dunyun (Party Crasher): What's to love most about Party Crashing is how close it matches real life. I mean, a drunk driver doesn't care that you've been painting for years and your first gallery show opens next week. How bogus is that? The fifteen-hundred-pound elk, the one standing in the shadows at the edge of the road, ready to jump, it has no idea that your baby is due next week.

  The greasy brake lining or the cell-phone talker…

  The loose lug nuts or drowsy truck driver…

  It doesn't matter for crap that you've got three years of sobriety or that you finally look good in a two-piece bathing suit or you've met that perfect someone and you've fallen deeply, wildly, passionately in love. Today, as you pick up your dry cleaning, fax those reports, fold your laundry, or wash the dinner dishes, something you'd never expect is already stalking you.

  Officer Romie Mills (Homicide Detective): Edith Libby, the victim, was five-foot-eight, 128 pounds. Her body was discovered during the morning curfew sweep in an area bordering on both Nighttimer and Daytimer districts. The cause of death wasn't readily apparent. Nor were any injuries evident. The location in question was not surveyed by the existing system of street cameras.

  Shot Dunyun: That bullet or drunk driver or tumor with your name on it, the way I tolerate that fact is by Party Crashing. Here's one night when I control the chaos. I participate with the doom I can't control. I'm dancing with the inevitable, and I survive.

  My regular little dress rehearsal.

  From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms (Historian): Any idea of Progress depends on not looking at the past too closely. It's undeniable that the streets are less crowded than they were before the inception of the I-SEE-U curfews, but society will always have to manage a certain amount of resentment among people who feel short-changed by their immediate circumstances.

  Lynn Coffey (Journalist): You study any pretty democracy, from the ancient Greeks forward, and you'll see that the only way each system functions is with a working class of slaves. Peons to haul the garbage so the upper crust can campaign and vote. Nighttimers had become that—an effective and efficient method to sweep the slave class out of sight.

  Forgive me, but after two decades of reporting on local politics, I guess I've earned the right to finally tell the truth. And the truth is, no Nighttimer has ever been elected President.

  Officer Romie Mills: Wade Morrison was another story. Age: twenty-four. A born Nighttimer. Middle of one night, he collapsed, just as dead as the Libby victim. Granted, we weren't treating these deaths as homicides per se, not until they began to form a pattern.

  Lynn Coffey: It's still segregation, only not by space—the backseat of a bus or the balcony of a movie theater. It's segregation by time. Go ahead, call it a social contract, like speed limits or building codes, but it's still living on the graveyard shift. One clock tick past that curfew, and you'll find out just how equal you are.

  The fallback argument is that Nighttimers can always leave an urban area and live in a rural district not subject to the I-SEE-U Act. But that takes money. Plus, the majority of jobs and education opportunities are in cities.

  Officer Romie Mills: With the Morrison killing, we had testimony that the victim had been subject to mood swings and aggressive outbursts. In a typical outburst, the deceased had been denied service by a Daytimer after the morning curfew. A key method of curfew enforcement is to levy fines against businesses that serve or sell merchandise to people who prove to be out of their domiciles in violation of their time status. In the case of Wade Morrison, a clerk at a corner grocery asked to see his status card. When Morrison turned out to be a Nighttimer, the daytime clerk refused to sell him cigarettes, and witnesses report Morrison made verbal threats and left the store.

  Irene Casey: While all this went on, Buddy's squiring that girl with her lopsided face.

  Oh, they had his fingerprints recorded, the government, from when he sent in h
is application to go be a night person. They knowed every detail they needed to set him up as a patsy. A boy like that, somebody coming from nowhere and nothing, they needed to find themselves a nobody, and that's what happened.

  From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Among the protest elements of Nighttime culture, my favorite is the faction that seeks to outlaw the sun. They market clothing and bumper stickers emblazoned with their slogans. For example: "Ban the Sun." Or "Moonlight Is Enough Light." Unfortunately, I can see how this might worry the powers that be. The last ordeal this nation needs is a civil war pitting night against day.

  Another common bumper sticker says: "Take Back the Day!"

  One man's joke can very easily become another's call to arms. Historians speculate that Mein Kampf was created as a rather cunning satire, a parody that the general public interpreted far too literally.

  Lynn Coffey: It was Thomas Jefferson who warned us that any nation would always need a frontier as an escape valve or a place to store the perennial tide of lunatics and idiots. That's not anywhere in the official propaganda, but nighttime is the big trash bin for your mental defectives. Your angry loners. Your cripples. Nighttimers get free health care. It's part of the incentive program. The clinics are shitty and crowded, but they're free. The housing is subsidized. The jobs are more likely to be low-skilled, but they offer a wage differential of a couple bucks over the same dead-end job in the daytime. It's no surprise the misfits of society wash up as Nighttimers.

  From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: In hindsight, we had no idea of the events taking shape. Naturally, one read about the deaths in the newspaper, but I never gave them a second thought. We were far more concerned about preparing for the next Honeymoon Night, or decorating a Christmas tree for the upcoming Tree Night. An ominous shadow was falling over Rant, and we were debating whether to hang white or multicolor lights on our tree. Pontiac versus Dodge? Pine or spruce?

  Officer Romie Mills: The third victim died in the same manner as the first two. An autopsy turned up encephalitis and myelitis of the brain, including Negri bodies in the pyramidal cells of the hippocampus, and Purkinje cells of the cerebellum. The short and sweet version of that is rabies. All three of the victims died of undiagnosed, untreated rabies.

  Irene Casey: Buster wrote to us, saying he was so in love and courting somebody. His dad and me, we only prayed it was the girl, not the boy.

  Officer Romie Mills: According to the Centers for Disease Control, the most recently diagnosed case of rabies in the area had been a twenty-six-year-old male named Christopher Dunyun.

  It was during our preliminary investigation that the fourth victim collapsed and died of previously undiagnosed rabies-related encephalitis. Our fear was that the disease might be spreading exponentially. We could be looking at a hundred or ten thousand people unaware they'd been infected.

  Shot Dunyun: It could've been an earthquake that got Rant Casey. Or a fire. Or a bullshit strain of some killer flu.

  It's comforting to know, after all the Party Crash accidents I've survived, that, the day I finally meet Death, the two of us will be old, long-lost friends.

  Me and Death, separated at birth.

  26–In Denial

  Shot Dunyun (Party Crasher): How weird is this? The last night I go out with Rant Casey, we waste our whole window Mercy Crashing. The more front-end damage your car has, the better you look in Party Crashing. Teams I know, they'll take a sledgehammer to the bumper and front fenders of any new ride, just whale away on their headlights and grille so they won't look like newbies.

  The opposite of status is rear-end damage from getting tagged. First, because it marks you as a loser, you've been nailed so many times. Second, because after too much damage nobody bothers to even stalk you. The damage Sharks inflict, they want it to show. Any team looks for something pristine to ram into. You might take half the night to stalk a battered car, but if something with a perfect paint job and a showroom body drives by flying the flag, you'll go for the cherry.

  Neddy Nelson (Party Crasher): In Party Crashing, you know what a For Sale Night means? You know the flag is to write big prices painted in white across your windshield and rear window? To keep the flag exclusive, you know you have to always make the price thirteen thousand dollars and fifty cents? Can you imagine the mess if the flag was just any price?

  Shot Dunyun: For one Dead Deer Night, we're cruising with our Styrofoam deer tied to the roof and a bullshit Park Avenue charges out of nowhere. It slams into our right headlight, breaks a radiator hose, and our coolant goes down a storm drain. The Park Avenue backs off with nothing but body damage. Even with their windows rolled up, you can hear them laughing. Rant climbs out of our backseat, walks over to the team in the other car. Mr. Money Bags, he leans into the driver's window, and out of his back pocket he pulls a wad of bills. They signed over their pink slip, and took their dead deer home on the bus. We moved our deer to their car, and played the rest of the window in that Park Avenue.

  Bodie Carlyle (Childhood Friend): In a letter Rant wrote to me, he said, everybody being inside cars, you couldn't tell women from men. Black from white. If you asked him, the tough teams to beat were always the gimps. Gimps or queers. You put them in a car on a level playing field and you'd see some pent-up frustration. Nobody drove as hard as paraplegics with hand controls. Or skinny, hundred-pound girls.

  From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms (Historian): The night in question, our last together, was a Mattress Night. Foremost in my memory of the evening is Rant Casey unbuttoning his blue uniform coveralls in a brightly lit parking lot while we drank coffee. I remember his chest was riddled with hundreds of extra nipples, countless raised, round welts. "Hobo spiders," he told me. "Found some at work." He said he'd tried to smuggle them home by dropping them inside his open collar.

  Shot Dunyun: Certain game windows, if you don't tag anything all night and nobody tags you, just so you don't go home disappointed you might slam into some trashed old Shark. Any game window, you'll see beater cars rattling around, each in its own cloud of blue smoke, their rear ends balled up into shivering, creaking sheetmetal. Rolling scrap. You get your hit, and that beater Shark feels like part of the game.

  If you smash into some clunker out of pity or desperation, that's what we call Mercy Crashing.

  Echo Lawrence (Party Crasher): Come on. Dunyun was all, "Don't!" Don't mix with Rant. Don't fall in love. Dunyun kept tugging me aside, all, "Can you still boost anything?" Going, "Rabies!"

  I'd let Rant ride in my backseat for months.

  Shot Dunyun: Our last game as a team, we're playing a Mattress Night. Certain people will spray-paint their mattress black to make it harder to see. You want my advice, crack your side windows and loop the rope through the inside of your car. Tie down your mattress, leaving the slipknot on the inside. That way, if the police come sniffing around, you can yank the slipknot undone and ditch the mattress. It slides off, taking the ropes with it, leaving you just another innocent car on the city street.

  Our last Mattress Night, every sputtering, rattling old rust bucket with a stained mattress roped to the top, Rant says, "Give them a bump." He goes, "Smack 'em, and make their night."

  Echo Lawrence: Check this out. Rant was such a romantic. It's one thing to buy a girl roses she can watch wilt and rot. It's a much nicer thought to give a girl a fully equipped Skylark she can total. One Honeymoon Night, my sweetheart handed me the keys to a white Lincoln Continental with power everything. A very solid set of wheels. A ride so smooth, with a stereo so loud, at some point a Jetta rammed us from behind, hooked its front end under our rear bumper, and we didn't even notice. We drove around half the game, dragging this little car full of angry people.

  Shot Dunyun: Now, how bullshit is this? In Mercy Crashing, the second you pull your bumper out of some pock-marked, saggy, rusted rear end, you regret not just going home without making any tag. You can feel so dirty and sad, you don't bother to get out and yell. You just nail and bai
l. Nail and bail. The rules of Party Crashing call that a foul, but chances are a junk heap will be too grateful to call you on it.

  What's worse is you can picture yourself after a few more years of Party Crashing, dragging your crumpled rear end around, hoping somebody's bored or desperate enough to nail you. A big reason you nail and bail is, it's sad seeing the beater car, but it's unbearable to see the driver. Somebody wearing a cervical collar, walking with a cane, stiff and limping. Most likely that's you in a few more years.

  Echo Lawrence: Let me think. Rant bought me a LeSabre I couldn't total fast enough. He bought me a Cavalier that I rammed into the back of someone's Audi. Then he bought me a Regal that I swerved to trash the side of a Taurus. No, wait, there was a Grand Am in there somewhere. A Grand Am and a Cougar and a Grand Marquis. Oh, and the Lebaron that we caught on fire, trying to eat fondue during one game. Maybe that car shouldn't count.

  Shot Dunyun: We're stopped at a red light when a scrap heap rolls, coughing and shivering, from a block behind us, heading to tag our rear end. You can hear the engine tappets knocking from a block away, the springs squeak, and the headlights flicker. The fan belt's squealing, and a stained mattress quivers on its roof. This monster creeps closer, but we're trapped in traffic, waiting for a green light.