Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey

Something really did happen that only belonged to Middleton.

Shot Dunyun (Party Crasher): It wasn't only the boosted experiences that bothered Rant. It was dipshit kids done up as soldiers and princesses and witches. Eating cake flavored with artificial vanilla. Celebrating a harvest that didn't occur anymore. Fruit punch that came from a factory. A ritual to placate ghosts, or whatever bullshit Halloween does, practiced by people who had no awareness of that. What bothered Rant was the fake, bullshit nature of everything.

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms (Historian): In Africa, people don't believe in the Tooth Fairy. Instead, they have the Tooth Mouse. In Spain: Ratoncito Pérez. In France: La Bonne Petite Souris. A tiny, magical rodent that steals teeth and replaces them with spare change. In some cultures, the lost tooth must be hidden in a snake or rat burrow to prevent a witch from finding and using the tooth. In other cultures, children throw the tooth into a roaring fire, then, later, dig for coins in the cold ashes.

By first believing in Santa Claus, then the Easter Bunny, then the Tooth Fairy, Rant Casey was recognizing that those myths are more than pretty stories and traditions to delight children. Or to modify behavior. Each of those three traditions asks a child to believe in the impossible in exchange for a reward. These are stepped-up tests to build a child's faith and imagination. The first test is to believe in a magical person, with toys as the reward. The second test is to trust in a magical animal, with candy as the reward. The last test is the most difficult, with the most abstract reward: To believe, trust in a flying fairy that will leave money.

From a man to an animal to a fairy.

From toys to candy to money. Thus, interestingly enough, transferring the magic of faith and trust from sparkling fairydom to clumsy, tarnished coins. From gossamer wings to nickels…dimes…and quarters.

In this way, a child is stepped up to greater feats of imagination and faith as he or she matures. Beginning with Santa in infancy, and ending with the Tooth Fairy as the child acquires adult teeth. Or, plainly put, beginning with all the possibility of childhood, and ending with an absolute trust in the national currency.

Shot Dunyun: Talk about frustrating. All that pretense and reality in flux: Gold worth penny candy. Sugar worth gold. Macaroni passing as brains, and adults swearing the Tooth Fairy was real. Even the way a bizarre cultural delusion like Santa Claus can drive half of annual retail sales. Some mythological fat asswipe drives our national economy. It's beyond frustrating.

That night, even as a little boy, Rant Casey just wanted one thing to be real. Even if that real thing was stinking blood and guts.

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Each holiday tradition acts as an exercise in cognitive development, a greater challenge for the child. Despite the fact most parents don't recognize this function, they still practice the exercise.

Rant also saw how resolving the illusions is crucial to how the child uses any new skills.

A child who is never coached with Santa Claus may never develop an ability to imagine. To him, nothing exists except the literal and tangible.

A child who is disillusioned abruptly, by his peers or siblings, being ridiculed for his faith and imagination, may choose never to believe in anything—tangible or intangible—again. To never trust or wonder.

But a child who relinquishes the illusions of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy, that child may come away with the most important skill set. That child may recognize the strength of his own imagination and faith. He will embrace the ability to create his own reality. That child becomes his own authority. He determines the nature of his world. His own vision. And by doing so, by the power of his example, he determines the reality of the other two types: those who can't imagine, and those who can't trust.

Reverend Curtis Dean Fields: No matter how well you seal it, wax or varnish, a wood floor can hold an odor. Clear cedar, tongue-in-groove boards like the grange has, the end part of summer you can still smell what happened. Hot weather. Took only one child to vomit her cake—Dorris Tommy, I believe—and the stink set off so many others you couldn't never tell who was number two.

Danny Perry (Childhood Friend): Weren't nothing but blood and barf, like a sticky carpet covered the whole floor. Blood and barf. History is, that's how come folks started calling Buster Casey his nickname—"Rant." On account of every kid doubled over and making nearabouts the same sound. Kids yelled "Rant!" and up comes vanilla cake and frosting. Yelling "Rant!" and spouting out purple fruit punch.