Chuck Palahniuk - Rant: The Oral Biography of Buster Casey

Bodie Carlyle ( Childhood Friend): Living, alive animal fur is what my fingers would finally come across. Rant just egging me to push my arm deeper into the ground. My fingers slippery with grease. Most of me sun red, stretched out on the sand, my hands crawling down, colder than cool, into the dark of a varmint hole. Skunk, maybe. A coyote or gopher den.

Rants eyes on my eyes, he says, Feel anything?

My hand blind, touching a tangle of sagebrush roots, smooth rocks, thenhmmmfur. The soft hairs moving off, out of my reach down the tunnel.

Rant saying, Go after it.

A gust of wind takes off with our crumpled sheet of tinfoil still greasy from Mrs. Caseys leftover meatloaf. The ground beef and oregano we each worked our digging hand through, the meatloaf wedged deep under our fingernails and slippery between our fingers. And my hand, lost somewheres underground, stretched beyond where I figured it would get, I reach to feel that fur and the rattle of a fast heartbeat underneath. That heartbeat almost as fast as mine.

LouAnn Perry ( Childhood Friend): History is, the girls Rant liked, he used to kiss. Boys, he took them out animal-fishing. Both ways it was a test of your faith.

Bodie Carlyle: Summers, most folks would go fishing, over along the river in hot weather; Rant would head the other way.

It wasnt nothing to find Rant walked straight all morning out in the desert, laid down flat on one side, his arm disappeared up to the elbow in some dirty hole. Didnt matter what critterscorpion, snake, or prairie dogRant would be reaching blind into the dark underground, hoping for the worst.

That black widow spider on Easter Sunday, since it didnt kill him, Rant figured to hunt down what might. I been vaccinated against measles and diphtheria, Rant used to say. A rattlesnakes just my vaccination against boredom.

A cottonmouth bite he called my vaccination against doing chores.

Pit vipers, just about half the time they forget to inject their venom. According to books, Rant says, rattlesnakes, cottonmouths, they truly are more scared of you. A human being, giving off so much heat, thats what a pit vipers sees. Something so big and hot shows up, and its all a snake can get done to unfold those swing-down fangs andkah-powsink them in your arm.

Nothing more pissed off Rant than getting a dry bite. Pain but no poison. A vaccination without the medicine. Those double holes marching up his arms, ringed around his shins, no red welts. Dry bites.

Instead of river fishing, Rant walked out beyond the back porch, beyond the barrel for burning trash, past the machine shed, out into the fields leased out for alfalfa, the Rain Bird sprinklerstick-tick-tickingshots of water into the hot sunshine. After the alfalfa came the horizon of Russian-olive trees, shaggy with their long silver leaves. Over that horizon come the sugar beets. After the beets, another horizon. Beyond that, a barbed-wire fence piled solid with tumbleweeds trying to get inside. Kotex and rubbers snared and flapping, full of Middleton spunk and blood.

Beyond that, another horizon. Three horizons outside the Caseys back door, you found yourself in the desert. Rant called his walking out to get animal bit, he called it: gone fishing.

Irene Casey ( Rants Mother): The fire ants shouldve been a red flag. Buddy never come in the house without his hands and feet being all over a red rash of ant bites. Pain youd expect to make most kids cry, Buddy wore it no worse off than a heat rash.

Bodie Carlyle: His folks didnt hear the half of it. Rant could roll up his sleeve at school and count off the bites: red ant, hobo spider, scorpion.

More of my vaccinations, Rant used to say.

All through ninth grade, Rant would ask to be excused from playing Friday dodgeball against the twelfth-graders on account of a fresh rattlesnake bite. While the rest of us got creamed to hell, Rant would pull off one sweat sock and show the coach a fat, red foot. The two poke holes leaking clear ooze youd take for venom.

Between him and me, this was his vaccination against playing dodgeball.

To Rant, pain was one horizon. Poison, the next horizon. Disease was nothing but the horizon after all them.

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms ( Historian): The black widow spider only kills about 5 percent of those it bites. An hour after the bite, the neurotoxin a-latrotoxin spreads throughout the victims lymphatic system. Your abdomen contracts into a solid washboard of rigid muscle tissue. You might vomit or sweat profusely.

Another common symptom is priapism. Its natures cure for erectile dysfunction. Rant never told his parents, but that Easter was the first time hed ever experienced an erection. Sex and insect venom were completely collapsed in his childhood psyche.

Echo Lawrence ( Party Crasher): Thats the secret behind Rants craving for snakes. Even in the city, he needed to find a black widow or a brown recluse before he was worth anything in the sack. Getting a booster shot, he used to call it.

Dont try this at home, but the result is a dick that stays hard for hours. On demand, and big as a gearshift. A little calcium gluconate and everything goes back to normal.

Sheriff Bacon Carlyle ( Childhood Enemy): The only why Rant Casey got himself bit was to catch a buzz. Poison being just another drug to abuse. Another high. Speaking as an officer of the law, I can tell you an addicted addict aint like regular folks. By the end of this story, youll be pretty near shocked what Rant done to get and stay strung out.

Bodie Carlyle: Dont ask me. I never did figure out the attraction. While other kids was sniffing gasoline or model-airplane glue, most summer days, Rant would be belly-down in the sand next to a sagebrush. Most kids around here, theyd be escaping from reality, while Rant was trying to get ready for it.

Those dirty holes, under those rocks hed tip up a crack, those places where he couldnt see, that was the future we was so scared about. After hed stuck his hands into the dark, and not died from it, after then Rant wasnt so scared. Hed roll up one pant leg and point his foot out straight. Hed sit in the desert and poke this bare foot down in a coyote burrow, slow, the way folks test bathwater with their big toe. In case its too hot or cold. Watching him, Rant would plant both hands braced in the sand, his eyes shut tight, holding one big breath inside his chest.

In the bottom of that hole, a skunk, a raccoon, a mother coyote with pups, or a rattlesnake. The feel of soft fur or smooth scales, warm or cool to the touch, thenkah-powthe mouth grab of teeth, and Rants whole leg would shake. And Rant never pulled back, not the way most folks would, doing more damage as the teeth hung tight. No, Rant let the mouth let loose. Maybe snatch tight a second time. Sink deep. Let go. Get bored. Then a sniff of warm breath against his toes. Underground, the feel of a wet tongue licking up his blood.

Out of that hole Rant would pull his foot, the skin tore up and mangled, but licked clean of dirt. His clean skin bleedingdrip-drip-drippure blood. His eyeballs nothing but big black pupil dialed all the way open, Rant would be pulling off his other shoe and sock, rolling up the second pant leg, and shoving another bare part of himself into the dark to see what might happen.

The whole length of summer, Rants toes and finger would be frayed skin, fringed with dripping blood. One bite of venom, one little squirt of poison at a time, Rant was training for something big. Getting vaccinated against fear. No matter the future, any terrible job or marriage or military service, it had to be an improvement over a coyote chomping on your foot.

Echo Lawrence: Get this. The first night I met Rant Casey, we were eating Italian, and he says, You never been snake-bit?