Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey

by Chuck Palahniuk

  Toni Wiedlin: To young kids, Rant and Echo became the Adam and Eve of their era—the F. Scott and Zelda, the John and Yoko, Sid and Nancy, Kurt and Courtney. I remember that everyone who traced their rabies lineage back to Rant or Echo's mouth, they called themselves a "Child of Rant" or "Spawn of Echo."

  Every high school has its Romeo and Juliet, one tragic couple. So does every generation.

  Hudson Baker: Our high school, a separate student body used our same desks and classrooms at night. Nighttimer kids. They had their own different nighttime teachers and janitors and everything. Their own nurse, even. Nighttimer kids sat in our desks while we slept at home, and we sat there while they slept. Some days, you'd find a note chewing-gummed to the bottom side of a desk—a night kid trying to make contact so you'd leave a note in the same place. That's how Amber and me met that guy Gregg Denney.

  Gregg Denney (Student): These day bitches come around, not wanting to be virgins no more. I provided myself a bottomless supply of clean pussy. Day bitches only had to hear I was infected and they'd hunt me out. The rest of us, we called them "spittoons," they was after spit so bad.

  Shot Dunyun: Every bullshit little Daytimer who says Rant Casey kissed them, they called themselves "purebloods." Talk about pathetic. Like they were racehorses or vampires—it was beyond pathetic.

  Hudson Baker: Gregg Denney is a totally, no-kidding predator.

  From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: As with the Tooth Fairy, every culture has its own version of the "bogeyman," a mysterious figure who exists, not to reward children, but to punish them. For example, the Dutch figure of Zwarte Piet, who assists St. Nick by whipping children who misbehave. In Spain, El Coco is a shapeless, hairy monster who eats children who refuse to go to bed. In Italy, L'Uomo Nero is a man wearing a black coat who kidnaps those who refuse to finish a meal. Similar to Santa Claus is the Homem do Saco of the Portuguese, the Torbalan of Bulgaria, and the Persian Lulu-Khorkhore, who carries a huge sack, not to bring gifts to good children, but to spirit away unruly ones.

  Hudson Baker: Amber and me had a promise: We'd never get in a car without the other. If a Party Crash team only had room for one of us, we'd wave them off and wait for another car. Both or neither, that had always and forever been our true promise.

  Phoebe Truffeau, Ph.D. (Epidemiologist ): Modern society has struggled with the issue of superspreaders since Mary Mallon refused to modify her behavior. Because "Typhoid Mary" insisted on working as a cook, she spent the last twenty-three years of her life quarantined on New York's North Brother Island. More recently, in 1999, The New England Journal of Medicine reported a nine-year-old boy in North Dakota whose lungs held unusually deep pockets of tubercule bacilli, infecting his family and fifty-six schoolmates while the boy himself appeared to be in perfect health. In a similar case from 1996, the Annals of Internal Medicine documented the post-surgical intensive-care unit of a hospital where an outbreak of antibiotic-resistant staph infections was traced to colonies of Staphylococcus aureus deep in the sinuses of a seemingly healthy medical student.

  Neddy Nelson (Party Crasher ): You ever heard of the Emergency Health Powers Act? It was put in place by that president, right after the September 11 fiasco, remember? Did you know that act allows the government to brand anyone as a public-health menace, then lock them up for the rest of their life? You ever hear of due process? You think you're going to get a trial by a jury? Are you kidding?

  Phoebe Truffeau, Ph.D.: In rural China, the social stigma associated with leprosy prompted many of the infected to hide their condition. In response, the government offered a cash bounty to anyone who could report a leper, thus forcing the infected into treatment and eliminating the disease from the country.

  In India, where a more democratic form of administration prevents such a program, cases of leprosy remain common.

  The Emergency Health Powers Act simply enables the federal government to suspend all state and local powers, seize property, and quarantine populations in order to effectively deal with any infectious agent.

  Hudson Baker: Amber saw getting infected as the ultimate commitment. Like her and the guy would be doomed to be with each other. Looking back, she figured a brush with death would make her really enjoy her life. Like she would feel more alive. Regular people would feel sorry for her, or some might be afraid or grossed out, but Amber just saw that all as added attention.

  Amber said it would stop her from boosting peaks. She really wanted to live a real, alive life. I mean, it's really hard to explain.

  From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: The term «bogeyman» is derived from "Boney," the British derogatory nickname for Napoleon Bonaparte. Over time, the name evolved into «boneyman» and later "bogeyman," but it was always used as a threat by the British in order to keep their children obedient.

  Hudson Baker: Amber and me, she wanted us to double-team Gregg Denney. That's the night I didn't get in his car. I let her go alone.

  Phoebe Truffeau, Ph.D.: As was most likely the case with Buster Casey, an asymptomatic, infectious carrier tends to be immuno-compromised by a previous illness. For example, one massive superspreader of Coronavirus, commonly known as SARS, suffered from a pre-existing kidney condition which allowed the patient to incubate and transmit huge amounts of the virus.

  Gregg Denney: Some bitch gets herself knocked up and says she wants to have my rabid baby. She wants to see, can she go all the way to a baby without curing her infection. I don't know what you're talking about.

  Hudson Baker: Amber was always telling me, "Rant Casey is the father of my rabies…" Like Amber met him and knew him and everything. Their love was, like, sealed with a kiss.

  Gregg Denney: Maybe I put babies inside some daytime bitch, but, no, I never had the rabies for real. I only let on I was infected, to keep me in clean tail.

  Hudson Baker: Amber was living with Gregg Denney by then. She expected her baby to be, like, part man, part animal. Like, one time she told me, "I'm taking human evolution one giant step backward…"

  Phoebe Truffeau, Ph.D.: As with the Rant serotype of the Lyssavirus, most modern epidemics have «jumped» from animals to human beings: SARS being a form of bovine Coronavirus, or cattle "shipping fever"; Creutzfeld-Jakob disease being the human form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or "mad cow disease"; and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome most likely being derived from the simian immunodeficiency virus.

  From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Once he'd died, or at least disappeared, Rant Casey became a very effective bogeyman for our government. Anytime the federal government needed to distract public attention from its own incompetence, the surgeon general simply announced a new development in the rabies epidemic, or the hunt for Rant, or both.

  Neddy Nelson: Don't you see how there is no actual rabies epidemic? Can't you see how Rant Casey is just a political scapegoat? Do you really accept that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone? Or that James Earl Ray really was a "lone gunman" when he assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.? How about Sirhan Sirhan? Or John Wilkes Booth?

  Do you really believe one man caused an entire nationwide rabies outbreak?

  Gregg Denney: A bitch with her hormones exploding and some serious brain damage happening from the rabies, that sounds like nothing I'd want to hang around. Forget it. People I heard of can carry the spit around for years; could be she was one of those.

  Phoebe Truffeau, Ph.D.: Other terms for superspreaders include «superinfectors» or "supershedders." Due to the deadly, invisible fog of saliva and mucous droplets that surround these infectious individuals, epidemiologists sometimes refer to them as "cloud cases."

  Neddy Nelson: Doesn't it scare you that the Emergency Health Powers Act now preempts all legal rights of the individual?

  Shot Dunyun: The way you lock up all your enemies without charging them with any crime, or providing lawyers, it's called a quarantine. Doctors are the new judge and jury. Disease is the new weapon of mass destruction.

  Neddy Nelson:
Why do you think every political radical gets «diagnosed» as rabid, then locked up until his inevitable death is announced? Don't you see how this is legalized assassination?

  Hudson Baker: When I couldn't help it any longer, I called Mr. and Mrs. Nye and told them everything about Amber and the chewing-gum notes and Party Crashing, and they went and hired a detective.

  Only, when they went to where Gregg Denney lived, Amber was gone.

  Neddy Nelson: How can you say Rant Casey overreacted? How's an intelligent person supposed to react when he discovers that he's merely the product of a corrupt and evil system? How do you continue to live after you learn that your every breath, every dollar you pay in taxes, every baby you conceive and love will only perpetuate some evil system?

  How do you live knowing your every cell and drop of blood are part of the big evil?

  40–Final Connections

  Wallace Boyer (Car Salesman): Right now, if you scratched your ear, I'd scratch my ear. If you cocked your head to one side, I'd cock my head—pacing you—selling you with eye contact and proof that I care.

  I'd say, "Look here" — another embedded command.

  If you said, "Time travel is impossible," I'd bridge your objection, saying, "Yes, many people claim it's 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 déjà-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.

  Pattie Reynolds (Bartender): I was at Pump Seven. The man you're talking about was at Pump Five. I heard splashing and turned to look, and this old man was hosing gasoline all over the mattress tied to the roof of his red car. He wore a dark-blue business sui
t. Gray hair. Good wingtip shoes. The gasoline soaked into the mattress, except a few drips of it rolled down the sides of the car, the windows. The smell was suffocating.

  I remember he climbed into the driver's seat and started to drive off. He had to turn on the windshield wipers, so much gasoline was running down the windshield.

  Wallace Boyer: Like I told you, I didn't really meet Rant Casey until after he was dead. The remainder of that flight, the time I sat next to Chester Casey, he tried to teach me the impossible. He drank my scotch and told me that time is not a straight line.

  Time is not a river. Or a clock or hourglass. It doesn't only run one way.

  You could hire a gaggle of brilliant experts to dissect how it might happen, but some people will still look at the proof and argue that the world is flat. Humans didn't evolve from something else. And Elvis Presley is still alive.

  From DRVR Radio Graphic Traffic: I'm Tina Something with a Graphic Traffic emergency bulletin. All westbound lanes of the Madison Beltway are closed, due to the crash of a burning car at the CenterPoint exit. Emergency crews are on the scene trying to control the fire. Already traffic is backed up to the Market interchange and the 287 Freeway. Traffic on the eastbound Madison is also slowed to stopping…

  Shot Dunyun: Shit. I don't know how flashbacks work. I couldn't tell you exactly how a lightbulb works, much less make you one from scratch. But I can use one.