Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey

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 bail. 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.

The light goes green, and this monster behind us still drags itself along, crawling toward our bumper. Echo starts to gun the engine, but Rant tells her, "Wait."

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Young Rant was committing the most kind and gracious act of generosity.