Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey

My fear was that she'd stolen the coin, so I asked how she'd come to have it. That Elliot girl, she told me the Tooth Fairy left it in exchange for a tooth she'd lost, and she pointed a finger to show me a gap in the side of her smile. A molar toward the front was gone, just a baby tooth.

Bodie Carlyle: Bicuspids brung five dollars, gold. A molar, ten. Silas Hendersen claimed to lose twelve incisors, nine canines, and sixteen wisdom tooths in the passing of that summer vacation. Was older kids selling their teeth to fifth-graders for a half-cut of the Fairy money. Kids 'tempting to pass off horse tooths, dog tooths, big cow tooths chewed down to the stub and roots. Got so Rant Casey turned tooth expert. Knowed a silver filling from mercury amalgam. A real broke tooth from a pried-off crown. Piled up in Rant's bedroom, he had soup cans of folks' teeth, then cigar boxes, shoe boxes, then shopping bags. The Middleton Tooth Museum.

Making all the fifth grade rich, it didn't look as suspect, Rant and me being rich. But for every gold or silver coin we passed on to a kid, we held back two for each of us. Rant holding back double what I did, not spending his.

After plenty of money come into play around town, what Rant and me spended only looked reasonable. Regular, compared to the new standard of living.

Team captains took money on the side, so even the loserest ball player could pitch an inning. Teachers at Middleton Elementary would take a couple hundred under the table in exchange for a report card of straight A's. Was babysitters bribed a hundred dollars in sterling silver so kids could stay up, watching movies past midnight.

Livia Rochelle: Mr. Reed at the Trackside Grocery was only too happy to sell them candy. Another reflection of the time, the grocery took out the "Gifts for M'Lady" section and extended the toy and hobby selection all the way down to frozen foods. For a year, it seemed as if half the store was candy bars and air rifles and dolls. You had to drive clear to Pitman Mills for a new filter for your furnace, but the Trackside stocked seventeen different colors and sizes of bottle rockets.

Bodie Carlyle: We learned folks will sell anything to anybody if the money's enough. Inflated the whole entire Middleton economy. Flush with Tooth Fairy cash, kids didn't clamor to mow lawns. Returnable pop bottles and beer bottles piled up alongside the shoulder of roads.

Hereabouts, folks called it the «trickle-up» theory of prosperity. All the kids rich. All the adults smiling and wheedling and playing nice to get that money.

Looking back, we sparked a boom and rebirth of little downtown Middleton. Kids buyed new bikes, and the Trackside finally paved its parking lot. Kids going back to school that fall, they wore lizard-skin cowboy boots. Rodeo belt buckles studded with turquoise. Wristwatches so heavy they made a kid lope to one side when he walked.

The second boom come at Christmas, with Santy Claus stuffing gold and silver in the stockings of fifth-graders, didn't matter good or bad.

Livia Rochelle: In my classroom, I tried to impress on the students that reality is a consensus. Objects, from diamonds to bubble gum, only have value because we all agree they do. Laws like speed limits are only laws because most people agree to respect them. I tried to argue that their gold was worth infinitely more than the junk they wanted to trade for, but it was like watching Native Americans sell their tribal lands for beads and trinkets.

The children of Middleton really were driving our economy. Within the week, that little Elliot girl was sneaking Tootsie Rolls in class. By junior high school, she had a face like raw hamburger meat.

Echo Lawrence (Party Crasher): The spooky part is, except for Rant, most people in Middleton had no idea how far someone had gone to acquire that gold.

Mary Cane Harvey (Teacher): The children told me about one woman selling shaved ice in a paper cone with cherry syrup, two cones for a gold dollar. You'd watch kids take two bites and drop the rest in the playground grass.

Money you don't work to earn, you spend very quickly.

Brenda Jordan: The Tooth Fairy come different to every family. At the Elliots', they wrapped a lost tooth in tissue and slept with it under a pillow. In the morning, inside that tissue was the money. The Perrys, they dropped the tooth in a glass half full of water and set it on the kitchen windowsill. In the morning, instead of the tooth was money. The Hendersens done the ritual same as the Elliots, but they used a lace doily they called "the tooth hankie." The Perrys always used the same glass, a fancy cut-glass jigger they called the "tooth glass." My family, we put the tooth in water but we left it sitting, overnight, on the bedside table. Near a window left open a crack for the Fairy to fly inside.