Irene Casey: "Yes," he said, his chin grinding whiskers against the side of my neck. He said, "Yes. Yeah. Oh yeah." He said, "Please."
His hips bucked against me so hard, one crack, two, three lightning-bolted through the ice underneath. Water lapped up from under. White cracks, zigzagging toward shore.
Shot Dunyun: I didn't know why, but my egg said, "Green Taylor Simms."
Irene Casey: When he lifted up on his elbows, the man looked down and said, "You're bleeding."
He looked at my hand, how inside my fist, from holding the coin so tight, I made the gold cut open my palm skin. The edges carved a perfect round scar, deeper at the top and bottom of the circle. The man pried my fingers back, and inside them, the gold coin looked like Christmas in my bright-red blood. Weeks into the new year, I'd have a purple bruise dated 1884.
And the man told me, "Keep it. To pay for cleaning your sweater."
From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Until now, Party Crashing hadn't a face, and it seems imprudent to give it one. There is no such phenomenon as "flashbacks." No immortal «Historians» exist. Which is more likely—all this time-travel rubbish, or the fact that one young man went insane?
To profess otherwise would be extremely reckless and irresponsible.
Irene Casey: The man pulled up his pants, his thing still steaming with pee and blood. Still dripping sperms. He pulled up the zipper and looked his head around. Looking down at me, he said, "Stay until I'm gone."
And he walked upriver on the water, all the way to over the most far-off horizon.
Tina Something: No, the real lie, the real liars, are Echo Lawrence and Shot Dunyun, because they know the truth but won't tell. You can flashback in time and tinker with events. And every night, they still try.
Irene Casey: My legs, open to the blue Christmas sky. My sweater was froze, stitched into the ice a bunch of places. Half sleepy from not breathing, my eyes watched the water bubble up through the cracks around me. My ears heard the whine and moan of the river pulling apart the broke pieces.
The living, alive blood and piss of me, freezing. The man's sperms.
The river ice shifting, breaking up. Coming to life.
Tina Something: That's how most of the people in power have anticipated and profited from current events. It could be, this is how people have always taken control. Or this dropping back might be limited to modern history. I don't know. You can't know. All I know is: People do this. And they don't want you to.
Irene Casey: Me, just letting the ice sink me lower into the deep cold, my ears hear a voice come out of the bushes. In the cattails along the edge of the froze river, a voice said, "Mrs. Casey?" Said, "Irene?"
The voice said, "Mom?"
And a mostly naked boy stepped out, shaking and wrapped in his own arms.
A blue sheet of paper hid the front bit of him. A hospital getup. He stood in paper slippers, saying, "I couldn't catch a ride."
His teeth rattling together, the boy said, "I'm too late." He said, "Am I too late?"
Echo Lawrence: The hospital ID bracelet that Chester wore that day, it's dated from the day they pulled him out of the river. Nineteen years to the day before Rant plowed his car into the same stretch of water. I still have that bracelet. Chet gave it to me.
The day Rant disappeared into the river, and the day Chet washed up, both days December 21.
Irene Casey: The boy stood pigeon-toed on the froze mud, both his hands knotted in the steam coming out of his mouth. His whole body clenched and shaking, like a skinny fist, he said, "It's going to be okay…You're going to be okay…"
Scars running up and down his arms. His chattering teeth black.
Maybe only old as a high-schooler.
Except for some blue paper, standing in those cattail reeds naked as a baby.
Neddy Nelson: Icky as it sounds, didn't Rant marry his mom? Didn't he change his name to Chester Casey and stick around to raise the kid? To help raise himself?
Irene Casey: I couldn't sit up, so much of me froze into the ice. I couldn't reach down enough to find my jeans or some panties.
The sheets of ice shifting and tilting, the naked boy come stumbling out toward me. He kept saying, "Don't move." Kept saying, "You're hurt."
The river gushing up, flooding the ice, he said, "Don't ever try and hitchhike dressed thisaways."
His blue paper slippers slipping and shuffling to come stand next to me, he gets low to help with my panties, my jeans. As his shaking fingers leaned in, close, to reach me, a spark jumps between us. Between his touch and mine, a static spark, it snaps. Loud. Electric-bright in the daylight. Between his fingertip and mine.
Neddy Nelson: Isn't it like—the Trinity? Rant and Chester and old Green Taylor Simms, like in Catholic Church, three people being the same but divided?
Irene Casey: Froze together, crawling off the busted ice, my ears hear the river lap behind us. My Christmas sweater stretched and dirty. Stained red and yellow. Blood and pee. Baggy and ruined.
The naked boy said, "I'm sorry about…this."
And I undid the buttons and peeled my arms out of the muddy sleeves. I held the sweater out, saying, "Take it. You'll catch your death."
Neddy Nelson: Doesn't that explain why Chet Casey wasn't more broken up about his kid being dead? Why Chet just moved in and set up house? Aren't we talking about big backward loops in time?
Irene Casey: Walking back to Christmas dinner, I asked him, "Who exactly are you?"
And this boy says, "You don't want to know…"
Echo Lawrence: Loops, like embroidery stitches.
Shot Dunyun: How impossible is that? Rant Casey isn't dead, he's become Chester. The dad. When Rant's car caught fire and Christmas-treed off the side of the Barlow Avenue Viaduct, he flashbacked in time, but not to kill Irene, as Simms had planned. Rant only went back to stop the attack on Irene. It's beyond impossible.
Irene Casey: And that's how Chet come into my life. I didn't know it for sure, not until my next period never come, but that's how Buddy come to life, too.
Echo Lawrence: The dogs barking woke me up. Still parked, watching Rant's old house. Still night. The front porch light blinked on, and the screen door creaked. The outline of someone leaned out, and a woman's voice shouted, "Fetch!"
The howling, barking, and snarling shrank, smaller, the sound blurred.
Shot Dunyun: The woman on the porch, in the glare of the yellow lightbulb, yelled, "Fetch! Come on, boy!"
From next to the trunk of a locust tree, a shape broke away. A figure stepped out, and a man's voice said, "Mrs. Casey?"
Echo Lawrence: And Irene said, "Bodie? Bodie Carlyle?"
By then, the figure had one foot on the bottom porch step. The screen door squeaked, and Irene said, "Get in here. You're going to catch your death…"
Bodie Carlyle (Childhood Friend): You see, life only turns out good or bad for only a little bit. And then it turns out some other way.
Shot Dunyun: The man stepped inside. The porch light went out.
Neddy Nelson: And isn't this the point when that bogus Sheriff Carlyle arrested us?
38–Communitas
Dr. Christopher Bing, Ph.D. (Anthropologist): The phenomenon commonly known as Party Crashing is simply the latest manifestation of a liminal space which provides a cathartic sublimation, generating a normative communitas, thereby deflecting any pent-up hostility toward the status quo and preserving the existent social structure.
From the essay "Liminality and Communitas" by Victor Turner (Anthropologist): Prophets and artists tend to be liminal and marginal people, «edgemen» who strive with a passionate sincerity to rid themselves of the clichés associated with status incumbency and role-playing and to enter into vital relations with other men in fact and imagination.
Dr. Christopher Bing, Ph.D.: As defined by the anthropologist Victor Turner in his book The Ritual of Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (1969), liminal spaces occur at the interstices between two distinct phases of life. Acc
ording to Turner, absurdity and paradox define regularity. The regularly occurring chaos of liminoid space is what allows for an otherwise organized civilization.
Ina Gebert, M.A. (Theologist): Arguably, the best example of a liminal space is the secular ritual of Halloween as currently practiced in the United States. On that particular evening, the power hierarchy is inverted, permitting children to demand tribute of adults. Said children don masks to mimic symbols of power. These include ghosts and skeletons, agents of the dead; witches, who ruin fertility; savage animals such as wolves and lions; or cultural outsiders such as cowboys, hobos, and pirates. Masquerading thusly, the children threaten to inflict property damage as punishment for adults who fail to reward them.
Dr. Erin Shea, Ph.D. (Theologist): Established examples of large liminoid spaces include the annual Burning Man festival in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, the ConFest held in Australia, the international Rainbow Family gatherings, and the so-called "Celtic Renaissance" held in Glastonbury, England.
Dr. Christopher Bing, Ph.D.: Generally speaking, liminal versus liminoid is defined as follows. The term «liminal» refers to a ritual that marks passage from one phase of life to the next: a baptism, a graduation, a honeymoon. In contrast, a typical «liminoid» event such as a rock concert, a rave, or a polyamorous consensual group sex party occurs outside of the mainstream, but a liminoid event marks no such life transition. The defining characteristic of the liminoid space is that all participants act as equals. Social or caste rankings are discarded, and all present enjoy an egalitarian mutual affection for one another. Turner's name for this spontaneous solidarity and love was the Latin word communitas.
Dr. Erin Shea, Ph.D.: Smaller examples of liminoid spaces include religious pilgrimages, "road trip" vacations, fight clubs, and Party Crashing events.
Ina Gebert, M.A.: Among liminal spaces the most common are rituals in which members of a society temporarily exchange their respective status. The king becomes a servant. The servant, a king. The Roman Catholic Pope kneels to wash the feet of the poor. The well-dressed, respectable Pentecostal celebrant collapses to the floor, twitching and muttering gibberish. Aboard nuclear submarines submerged for three-month tours of duty, the officers and crewmen exchange roles in periodic rituals such as "Hefe Café," a formal midmission dinner during which the commanders must serve and obey their inferiors. In each instance, this short-lived degradation enhances the long-term power of the ruling entity.
Dr. Christopher Bing, Ph.D.: At its worst, the liminal or liminoid event functions as a release for accumulated anxiety, thereby protecting the overall civilization. At its best, liminal and liminoid spaces become social laboratories wherein participants can experiment and develop new forms of self-expression and social structure.
Ina Gebert, M.A.: The living always feel superior to the dead. Consider that death is the ultimate degradation—as well as the opportunity for a community to safely voice its true feelings about an individual. Witness the funeral scene from Tom Sawyer, in which the community believes the title character to be drowned, and they hold a funeral to publicly mourn. Despite their customary disdain for the "deceased," the community expresses its repressed love. Once Tom Sawyer appears, seemingly returning from the dead, the community rejoices.
Dr. Erin Shea, Ph.D.: It's arguable that local authorities are aware of Party Crashing and permit it to continue. The ritual would provide a cathartic release for antisocial and antiauthoritarian impulses, either exhausting those persons, crippling them, or removing them entirely via death. Regardless of the outcome, Party Crashing would serve as a cost-effective, efficient social program for preserving the current social order.
Dr. Christopher Bing, Ph.D.: A typical liminal ritual occurs in three stages. The pre-liminal. The liminal. And the post-liminal. Applied to the Party Crashing phenomenon, these stages manifest as: decorating and parading the vehicles; the actual hunting and accidents; and the post-accident public performance of arguing and acting out, commonly known as "milking the accident."
Dr. Erin Shea, Ph.D.: Inherent in Party Crashing culture is the tendency to subvert traditional liminal symbols. The woman dressed in a wedding gown is not an actual bride. Said «woman» may actually be male. The furniture tied to the automobile roof does not indicate a household being relocated. The Student Driver sign is not intended to protect a fledgling driver.
Ina Gebert, M.A.: The same way Tom Sawyer's ritual resurrection suggested that of the Christ—a luminous youth dying and being reborn to immortality—contemporary culture continues to generate deities following this same model. In recent decades, celebrities such as Elvis Presley, Jim Morrison, and John Belushi have been corrupted by their success, died prematurely, and are subsequently rumored to be alive. This resurrection might simply signal a public denial of their demise, but it does follow a general outpouring of grief and recognition that serves to construct a mythology around the now-immortal individual.
Dr. Erin Shea, Ph.D.: Examples of liminality in language include the French phrase for dusk or twilight: "Between dog and wolf." This same phrase is used to describe the final months of life, as a human being's mental and physical abilities dwindle. In English, the phrase for twilight, "when all cats are gray," demonstrates the flattening of social hierarchy and obvious status indicators.
From the essay "Liminality and Communitas" by Victor Turner: It is as though they are being reduced or ground down to a uniform condition to be fashioned anew and endowed with additional powers to enable them to cope with their new station in life.
Ina Gebert, M.A.: Rant Casey and Karl Waxman represent the latest incarnation of this ancient model. Both men, degraded by a violent public death, are rumored to be alive, and not simply alive, but immortal. Waxman is said to have traveled backward in time and murdered his parents before the moment of his conception, preserving himself in a permanent liminal state. Casey, well, Rant Casey is another story—his is a redemption through public recognition and emotional attachment, a mass refusal to accept that he died in a well-documented automobile accident.
Shot Dunyun (Party Crasher ): All that Anthropology 401 garbage is beyond boring. Party Crashing is just a fun time. It's a fun playtime. Please, don't kill it with big words.
39–Werewolves V
Hudson Baker (Student): This is hard to explain, but in every toilet stall in every bathroom at the high school we go to, somebody wrote in every stall: "Amber Nye Is Dripping with Rabies!"
Only, really, Amber wrote that herself.
It's really hard to explain.
Toni Wiedlin (Party Crasher): High-school kids would do a dance they called "The Drooler," meaning they'd mimic the partial leg paralysis of an end-stage rabies victim. Kids would stagger around the dance floor, foaming from Alka-Seltzer on their tongue, crashing into each other, and snarling. The word is, doing that dance is a good way to get shot by the police.
Shot Dunyun (Party Crasher): People who want to catch the bug, we call them "spittoons." People willing to pass along the rabies virus are "hawkers."
From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms (Historian): As Charles Dickens once described the French Reign of Terror: During times of plague there will always be those who can't rest until they've become infected.
Hudson Baker: Amber and me would cover our whole, entire bodies in sunblock, SPF 200 or something. We so wanted people to whisper we were Nighttimers, and for the curfew police to try and bust us. Looking back, we wanted people to be scared of us. Like we could run totally wild at any moment and bite everybody's throat at the Christian Pathways Academy.
Toni Wiedlin: I remember hearing some silly Nighttimers teens bragging about what they called their "lineage," meaning the original source of their rabies strain. Without exception, every kid swears she or he was infected by Rant Casey or Echo Lawrence. Everyone wants to feel special—attain a special status among their peers—but not too special. Most kids only want to be special the same way their friends are special.
Hudson Bak
er: Amber's mom and dad had no idea how we were sneaking out every night. We'd wear these dark-black wigs and white makeup. Looking back, we had to look, like, ruthlessly lame and dumb to real Nighttimers. We wore black tights under black dresses we found at thrift stores, and that Mr. and Mrs. Nye didn't even know we had. We'd stand on a corner and wait for a car full of Party Crashers to stop.
It's really hard to talk about this now.
Toni Wiedlin: I remember everybody saying Rant Casey was the father of Party Crashing and he wasn't dead. These same kids will tell you Elvis and Jim Morrison and James Dean just got sick of the spotlight and faked their deaths so they could write poetry in the south of France. When everyone lies about seeing Rant and kissing him, all their lies prop up a win-win reality. The government says Rant's alive because they need a villain. The kids say he's alive because they need a hero.
Hudson Baker: Amber was so in love with Rant, she'd go into the post office and steal his "Most Wanted" posting off the clipboard they keep for the FBI's top-ten fugitives. Every time the FBI replaced it, Amber would steal another. It had his photo from when he immigrated to the nighttime. Amber wanted to wallpaper her room with those FBI posters, but Mr. Nye would've totally, no-kidding freaked.
Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey Page 23
