Shot Dunyun: I didn't know why, but my egg said, "Green Taylor Simms."
Irene Casey: When he lifted up on his elbows, the man looked down and said, "You're bleeding."
He looked at my hand, how inside my fist, from holding the coin so tight, I made the gold cut open my palm skin. The edges carved a perfect round scar, deeper at the top and bottom of the circle. The man pried my fingers back, and inside them, the gold coin looked like Christmas in my bright-red blood. Weeks into the new year, I'd have a purple bruise dated 1884.
And the man told me, "Keep it. To pay for cleaning your sweater."
From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Until now, Party Crashing hadn't a face, and it seems imprudent to give it one. There is no such phenomenon as "flashbacks." No immortal «Historians» exist. Which is more likely—all this time-travel rubbish, or the fact that one young man went insane?
To profess otherwise would be extremely reckless and irresponsible.
Irene Casey: The man pulled up his pants, his thing still steaming with pee and blood. Still dripping sperms. He pulled up the zipper and looked his head around. Looking down at me, he said, "Stay until I'm gone."
And he walked upriver on the water, all the way to over the most far-off horizon.
Tina Something: No, the real lie, the real liars, are Echo Lawrence and Shot Dunyun, because they know the truth but won't tell. You can flashback in time and tinker with events. And every night, they still try.
Irene Casey: My legs, open to the blue Christmas sky. My sweater was froze, stitched into the ice a bunch of places. Half sleepy from not breathing, my eyes watched the water bubble up through the cracks around me. My ears heard the whine and moan of the river pulling apart the broke pieces.
The living, alive blood and piss of me, freezing. The man's sperms.
The river ice shifting, breaking up. Coming to life.
Tina Something: That's how most of the people in power have anticipated and profited from current events. It could be, this is how people have always taken control. Or this dropping back might be limited to modern history. I don't know. You can't know. All I know is: People do this. And they don't want you to.
Irene Casey: Me, just letting the ice sink me lower into the deep cold, my ears hear a voice come out of the bushes. In the cattails along the edge of the froze river, a voice said, "Mrs. Casey?" Said, "Irene?"
The voice said, "Mom?"
And a mostly naked boy stepped out, shaking and wrapped in his own arms.
A blue sheet of paper hid the front bit of him. A hospital getup. He stood in paper slippers, saying, "I couldn't catch a ride."
His teeth rattling together, the boy said, "I'm too late." He said, "Am I too late?"
Echo Lawrence: The hospital ID bracelet that Chester wore that day, it's dated from the day they pulled him out of the river. Nineteen years to the day before Rant plowed his car into the same stretch of water. I still have that bracelet. Chet gave it to me.
The day Rant disappeared into the river, and the day Chet washed up, both days December 21.
Irene Casey: The boy stood pigeon-toed on the froze mud, both his hands knotted in the steam coming out of his mouth. His whole body clenched and shaking, like a skinny fist, he said, "It's going to be okay…You're going to be okay…"
Scars running up and down his arms. His chattering teeth black.
Maybe only old as a high-schooler.
Except for some blue paper, standing in those cattail reeds naked as a baby.
Neddy Nelson: Icky as it sounds, didn't Rant marry his mom? Didn't he change his name to Chester Casey and stick around to raise the kid? To help raise himself?
Irene Casey: I couldn't sit up, so much of me froze into the ice. I couldn't reach down enough to find my jeans or some panties.
The sheets of ice shifting and tilting, the naked boy come stumbling out toward me. He kept saying, "Don't move." Kept saying, "You're hurt."
The river gushing up, flooding the ice, he said, "Don't ever try and hitchhike dressed thisaways."
His blue paper slippers slipping and shuffling to come stand next to me, he gets low to help with my panties, my jeans. As his shaking fingers leaned in, close, to reach me, a spark jumps between us. Between his touch and mine, a static spark, it snaps. Loud. Electric-bright in the daylight. Between his fingertip and mine.
Neddy Nelson: Isn't it like—the Trinity? Rant and Chester and old Green Taylor Simms, like in Catholic Church, three people being the same but divided?
Irene Casey: Froze together, crawling off the busted ice, my ears hear the river lap behind us. My Christmas sweater stretched and dirty. Stained red and yellow. Blood and pee. Baggy and ruined.
The naked boy said, "I'm sorry about…this."
And I undid the buttons and peeled my arms out of the muddy sleeves. I held the sweater out, saying, "Take it. You'll catch your death."
Neddy Nelson: Doesn't that explain why Chet Casey wasn't more broken up about his kid being dead? Why Chet just moved in and set up house? Aren't we talking about big backward loops in time?
Irene Casey: Walking back to Christmas dinner, I asked him, "Who exactly are you?"
And this boy says, "You don't want to know…"
Echo Lawrence: Loops, like embroidery stitches.
Shot Dunyun: How impossible is that? Rant Casey isn't dead, he's become Chester. The dad. When Rant's car caught fire and Christmas-treed off the side of the Barlow Avenue Viaduct, he flashbacked in time, but not to kill Irene, as Simms had planned. Rant only went back to stop the attack on Irene. It's beyond impossible.
Irene Casey: And that's how Chet come into my life. I didn't know it for sure, not until my next period never come, but that's how Buddy come to life, too.
Echo Lawrence: The dogs barking woke me up. Still parked, watching Rant's old house. Still night. The front porch light blinked on, and the screen door creaked. The outline of someone leaned out, and a woman's voice shouted, "Fetch!"
The howling, barking, and snarling shrank, smaller, the sound blurred.
Shot Dunyun: The woman on the porch, in the glare of the yellow lightbulb, yelled, "Fetch! Come on, boy!"
From next to the trunk of a locust tree, a shape broke away. A figure stepped out, and a man's voice said, "Mrs. Casey?"
Echo Lawrence: And Irene said, "Bodie? Bodie Carlyle?"
By then, the figure had one foot on the bottom porch step. The screen door squeaked, and Irene said, "Get in here. You're going to catch your death…"
Bodie Carlyle (Childhood Friend): You see, life only turns out good or bad for only a little bit. And then it turns out some other way.
Shot Dunyun: The man stepped inside. The porch light went out.
Neddy Nelson: And isn't this the point when that bogus Sheriff Carlyle arrested us?
38–Communitas