14 – Going Away

Bodie Carlyle ( Childhood Friend): It took the both of us to haul off Rant’s clothes. A night before he left home, he only pretended to pack them in his suitcase. Got garbage bags and filled those instead, folding those shirts and pants just so. Half his mom’s life wasted in embroidery-ing. The young part of her life spent punching rivets and sewing extra trim on regular blue jeans. Rant, he’d hold each shirt tucked under his chin, petting the wrinkles smooth against his chest, then folding the sleeves. He’d button all the buttons. He piled all the folded pants and shirts into the black plastic bags.

Over the horizon, beyond the windbreak of Russian olives, three horizons off from the Casey farm, we walked, until we almost got to morning. Getting to nowhere, Rant fished a shirt out from a bag. Holding the collar with one hand, Rant shook a cigarette lighter in his other hand. Rant sparked a little flame and stood there, looking at the bright tie-dyed colors in the weak light. His mom’s masterpiece. That shirt looked brighter and brighter, until Rant had to let go, let it fall, flaming, to his feet. In the firelight, little snake bites of yellow stood around us, dog and coyote and skunk eyes flickering, scavengers, watching, all having sunk teeth into Rant’s skin.
Echo Lawrence ( Party Crasher): The first time you met Rant, the first part you met was his teeth. Instead of chewing gum, him and his redneck friends, they used to pinch up clean tar from the county roads. In summer, black tar oozed up from cracks in the blacktop, and they used to chew it. Teeth they sold to the Tooth Fairy were pitch-black.
Bodie Carlyle: Rant used to carry his radio out, nights, into the desert. He’d walk, monkeying with the dial to pick up traffic reports from all over the world. Car crashes and whatnot. Holding that radio to his ear, Rant used to smile and listen. Eyes closed, he’d say, “It’s always rush hour somewheres.”
From DRVR Radio Graphic Traffic: Northbound on the 417 Freeway, at Milepost 79, look for a totally cherry Dodge Monaco, maybe the heaviest coupe ever in mass production, four thousand pounds of Winchester Gray powered with a 175-horsepower V8. Very nice hidden headlights. Word from the officer on the scene is, the driver of the Monaco apparently hit a slick patch and went sideways in the right lane. The driver was a thirty-one-year-old female with the dicing injuries typical of shattered safety glass.
Echo Lawrence: On Party Crash nights, Rant used to talk about leaving Middleton. How, on his last night at home, he was chewing tar. That night, Rant sat out with his dad on the gravel shoulder of the highway, down the road three mailboxes from the barbed-wire fence at the edge of their farm. The sun going flat-tire against the soft, wheat-field horizon. Chester Casey, squatting on his cowboy-boot heels in the dust smell of the gravel. Rant, butt up on a cardboard suitcase heavy with gold and silver coins.
Bodie Carlyle: Rant’s old suitcase he had was full to busting with Tooth Fairy money.
From DRVR Radio Graphic Traffic: The Monaco was T-boned by a Continental Mark IV that’s really worth crying over: California Sunshine Yellow with a cream leather interior, the first model of American automobile to feature “loose cushion” upholstery. The meat-wagon boys called to say the Monaco suffered predominantly left-side injuries, including lacerations of the liver, the spleen, and the left kidney. Immediate cause of death looks like transection of the aorta.
Echo Lawrence: Rant’s chewing tar that last night of his childhood. His suitcase packed and dragged to the shoulder of the highway, father and son waiting next to the metal bus-stop sign shot Swiss cheese with bullet holes. The wind twisting the sheetmetal sign a hair, side to side. With the wind whistling through those rusty holes, Rant says, “I got a secret I needs to tell.”
And Chester Casey says, “No.” He says, “No, you don’t. You ain’t got no secrets from me.” A hand pushing down on the top of each thigh, Chet Casey stands up from squatting. Arching and twisting his spine until it pops, Chester kicks the pointed toe of one cowboy boot, just tapping the side of the cardboard suitcase printed to look like leather. His toe tapping the brown cardboard, Rant’s father says, “You ain’t never told me as much, but I knowed you’re packing nothing but cash money here.”
From DRVR Radio Graphic Traffic: Smart money says the Mark IV has myocardial contusions and lacerations of the pericardial sac, but we can’t confirm that until the coroner opens him up at the morgue. I’m Tina Something with your DRVR Rubberneck Report, every ten minutes or as the wrecks happen…
Echo Lawrence: The future starts tomorrow, and Rant needs to say this before the bus pulls up. This moment, it’s something his dad won’t want to know. This here, Rant says, is the fact that starts a new future. Or a brand-new past. Or both.
Rant slapping flies, cupping wind and sand away from his face, he says, “Just so you know,” he swats a bite on the back of his neck and says, “I’m never getting hitched.”
A star blinks on the edge of the world, getting bright, blinding bright, growing so fast it goes past before you can hear the sound, the wind and dust of it—only a car, already come and gone. The headlights fading over the far side of the world.
And Rant’s dad, he says, “No.” He squats in the gravel and says, “You only figure that way to put a fright in me.” Chester Casey says, “Soon as you meet a girl name of Echo Lawrence, you’ll figure otherwise.”
The wind bowing every weed and clump of cheatgrass in the same direction. Shaking every sagebrush. On the wind, you can smell the smoke of embroidery silk and smoldering denim. Chrome rivets.
Look here. It’s impossible Chester Casey could’ve known my name. We’d never met. At this point, I’d never heard of Middleton or Rant.
Logan Elliot ( Childhood Friend): The only worst part of the Casey house, when you visited, was how his ma used to listen outside the bathroom door. No lie. The first time I was over, I opened the door, and she stood there blocking the way, telling me, “I would appreciate it, upon future visits to this household, if you would urinate from a seated position…”
It didn’t matter I didn’t know the word “urinate.”
Echo Lawrence: That night, waiting for the bus, Rant and his dad squinted as a new star blinked on the horizon, getting big, blowing by in a gust of wind and diesel smoke, the star exploded into white headlights, yellow running lights, red taillights. A cab, sleeper box, double trailer. Then—gone.
Rant says, “I’m meeting some girl?” He says, “How do you figure that?”
And his dad says, “Same as I knowed an old man pulled up and talked to you before you come running about your Granny Esther.” Chester says, “Old man in a Chrysler, told you that he was your for-real pa.”
Spitting black, a sideways stream into the gravel, Rant says, “What model of Chrysler?”
And Chester Casey says, “Same as I knowed your Granny Esther screamed at the sight of him, called him the Devil, and telled you to run.”
East of the bus-stop sign, the real stars come on. Straight overhead, more stars blink on. Flicker, and stay bright.
Scratching at bug bites, rubbing away goosebumps, Rant says, “Supposing that’s the truth,” he says, “what else did that old man tell me?”
Cammy Elliot ( Childhood Friend): At the Casey house, if you used their peanut butter, Mrs. Casey wanted for you to smoothe what was left in the jar. So it always looked fresh store-bought.
Echo Lawrence: Chester Casey tells his son, “That old man telled you he was your real pa, he telled you to come find him in the city, soon as you was able.” Chester’s cowboy boot, the pointed toe taps the cardboard suitcase, and he says, “And that old man telled you where to find all this cash money.”
And Rant spits black tar, close enough to splash the side of the suitcase. Rabies-infected saliva. Black spattered on the brand-new of the cardboard. Rant just sits there, shaking his head no.
Chester Casey says, “That old man, he telled the truth about being your for-real pa.”
Sheriff Bacon Carlyle ( Childhood Enemy): Don’t ask for my feeling sorry. Your average city’s nothing except different levels of pervert. Rant only told that story to fit in. Him and Mr. Casey, they just took their pissing matches a little more far than your average father and son.
Echo Lawrence: At the edge of the world, another star pops up.
Rant says, “You’re only lying so I won’t get homesick…” He shifts his ass on the top of that cardboard suitcase full of gold.
In the city, Chester tells him, Rant will find his real father, and his grandfather. Rant will discover his true nature. “First thing,” Chet says, “soon as you meet Echo Lawrence for the first time, you give her a big kiss for me.” He says, “Let her know, does her cholesterol taste too high.”
Brenda Jordan ( Childhood Friend): Don’t say I told, but Rant showed me a gold twenty-dollar coin his mama gived him for his going away. Dated 1884. Mrs. Casey told how Chet Casey weren’t Rant’s real daddy, but she’d never tell how come she had that coin she gived him for good luck.
Echo Lawrence: And his dad, whether it’s good night or goodbye, Chet Casey leans over the top of Rant’s hair. His face bent over the skin of Rant’s forehead, where the wind combs the bangs back, that bare spot, his dad bumps. His lips press and bounce off.
Chester says, “Tell Shot Dunyun not to let his little-bitty pug dog, Sandy, drink out of the toilet.”
Another impossible piece of advice. Shot had never met Chet Casey. Even I didn’t know the name of Shot’s little dog.
The next new star gets big. The headlights of the bus, one bright spot breaking into two separate stars. As those lights come closer to Rant and his dad, the headlights spread farther and farther apart.
“Soon as you discover your true nature,” Chester tells his son, “you hightail it back to Middleton.”
Irene Casey ( Rant’s Mother): Anytime anybody in Middleton opens their mouth, you need to ask: “Why are you telling me this?”
Shot Dunyun ( Party Crasher): How weird is this? But the last words Rant’s old man says to him, while Rant’s waving from the window of the bus, is Chet Casey yells, “Find the truth and hurry back, and maybe you can save your ma from getting attacked by that crazy-insane lunatic…”
Echo Lawrence: Chester Casey, both his thumbs hooked in the front belt loops of his blue jeans, he says, “Don’t think on this any too hard. None of this is gonna make sense until it’s close to, just about, almost too late.”
Rant’s father shouts, “It pains me, I’ll never put eyes on you again.”