Rant twists on his bed, arching his back to look.
His mother says, "What's this…?"
And her fingernail taps something, a black lump, a wad, a bump of something almost soft, a mashed raisin that flakes off and falls next to Rant's head on the pillow. A little black fingerprint next to his face.
Rant's mother, her eyes roll to follow the sweep of black dots across the wall, the swarm of gummy smudges that spiral down to her angel's head on the pillow.
As Rant used to say: "Some folks are just born human. The rest of us…"
In one way, we're all the same. After a heartbeat of looking, we all see dried snot. We know the sticky feel of it underneath chairs and tables.
Reverend Curtis Dean Fields (Minister, Middleton Christian Fellowship): Little Rant, wasn't no sin he wouldn't commit. No, little Buddy growed up sinner enough for their whole entire family.
Echo Lawrence: Here's one of those moments that last the rest of your life. A scene Rant saw flash before he died. Time slowed down, stopping, stopped, frozen. The only island you'll find in the vast, vague ocean of your childhood.
In the years of that moment, Rant's mother, her face buckled and clenched into wrinkles. Her face turned to muscles instead of skin. Her lips peeled back, thin, to show the full length of each tooth, beyond that her pink gums. Her eyelids twitched and trembled, her hands curled up, withered into claws. In the forever of that moment, the pretty young woman leaning over Rant's bed, she looked her new hag's face down at him and said, "You…"
She swallowed, her throat jumping inside her stringy neck. Shaking her ancient claws at the spotted wall, she said, "You are…"
On his back, Rant twisted to see his pride, his collection.
We all have this moment, when your folks first see you as someone not growing up to be them.
Irene's fake, pasted-on stars versus Rant's mural of real snot.
His pride as her shame.
Logan Elliot (Childhood Friend): It's no lie. That Casey kid done nothing above ordinary except pull up roots and burn bridges.
Shot Dunyun (Party Crasher): Times like that, you look like a failed experiment your parents will have to face for the rest of their lives. A booby prize. And your mom and dad, they look like a God too retarded to fashion anything better than you.
You grow up to become living proof of your parent's limitations. Their less-than-masterpiece.
Echo Lawrence: His mother looked down at little Rant from the full height of standing straight, and she said, in a deep voice Rant had never heard, a voice that would echo inside him for the rest of his life, she said:
"You disgusting little monster."
That afternoon, Rant quit being to his mother what his «Bear» was to him. That was the real moment he was born. The start of Rant as a real person.
For the first nap of his new life, that afternoon, Rant fell asleep.
From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms (Historian): That next Thanksgiving dinner, after the black widow spiders had stung old Granny Esther to death, Irene Casey abandoned her seat in the kitchen. However, Rant's Great-grandmother Hattie stood next in succession for a place at the adult table. The line of succession was as clear as the names and dates written inside the family Bible.
Shot Dunyun: How creepy is this? By the end of that Thanksgiving, old Granny Hattie's twitching and scratching. The fox-fur piece she wears to every occasion—two or three red-fox pelts with the fucking heads and feet stuffed, pinned so they run around her neck—the shitty thing is jumping with fleas.
It's beyond creepy. People that old, it only takes a gust of wind to kill them. A broken hip. A bee sting. Just one mouthful of tuna bake gone bad. Like black widow spiders, flea bites, you're talking another natural part of the glorious redneck lifestyle. It could've been chipmunks or marmots or deer mice, rabbits, sheep, or rock squirrels, but something in their natural world's left its fleas behind. First, Granny Hattie complained about a sore throat and a headache. A stomach ache. Hattie is gasping for breath. An hour in the hospital, and she's dead of pneumonia.
From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: The last rat-borne epidemic of bacterium Yersinia pestis occurred in Los Angeles in the years 1924 and 1925. It was traced to the widespread practice of destroying prairie-dog colonies by introducing animals infected with the plague. By the 1930s, 98 percent of the native marmot population was destroyed, but the remaining 2 percent remain asymptomatic carriers of bubonic plague.
Echo Lawrence: He used to wake up with a yelp. In his nightmares, Rant said his grandmother's little flirtation veil, the black lace would start to shift. The hat seemed to come alive, tearing itself to shreds, and the black threads crawled down her cheeks, biting, and his Grandma Esther, screaming. In those dreams, Rant could hear dogs bark but not see them.
Sheriff Bacon Carlyle (Childhood Enemy): Them dreams was his feeling guilt, plain and simple. Over Rant's killing those old women. Over spreading his infection.
Shot Dunyun: Those little fluff balls that look so cute in nature films, every year an average of twenty people cross paths with a plague-infected ground squirrel or chipmunk. Their lymph nodes balloon, their fingertips and toes turn black, and they die. The people, I mean. Not the fluff balls.
Echo Lawrence: Go ahead, ask Irene Casey about Rant's bedroom wall. She ended up hanging wallpaper. To her, dried snot was worse than asbestos.
Even as an adult, in his own apartment, the wall above Rant's bed wasn't anything you'd ever want to touch.
Irene Casey (Rant's Mother): Near as I recall, we did put up wallpaper in Buddy's bedroom, when he was going on three or four years old. A pattern of cowboys roping horses, and some cactus, on a background of chocolate brown, something that wouldn't show dirt. Awful dark, but practical for a boy's room.
The rest, about a wall covered with dried boogers—that never went on. Buddy was a beautiful child. A regular little angel. We did paste stars on his ceiling, those stickers that glowed in the dark, little cowboys under the stars. That part is true, but the rest…I wouldn't never call my baby a monster or no curse from the Devil.
And Buddy wouldn't never tell folks that story.
5–Invisible Art
Bodie Carlyle (Childhood Friend): Weeks out ahead of Easter Sunday, you could smell the vinegar on Mrs. Casey's hands, worse than pickling season. Mrs. Casey would keep a pot of water boiling. First to hard-cook her eggs. Then another pot of water to boil with vinegar, add chopped junk for color, and dye her eggs.
The Caseys, their house was in the country, but they buyed their chickens already dead. The worst thing you could say about somebody hereabouts is they buyed their eggs, but Mrs. Casey buyed hers. Only the white ones. Leghorn eggs. Mostly on account of Easter.
Coming in through the Caseys' kitchen screen door—spreee…whap—you'd find Mrs. Casey with both elbows up on the table. Her reading glasses slid down to the tip of her nose. Her head tilted back. In the middle of the table, a white candle, fat as in church, burning with the smell of vanilla. Around the candle flame, a clear pool of melted wax. Mrs. Casey, she'd dip an embroidery needle into that wax, and she'd hold a white egg in her other hand. Holding the egg at the top and bottom, with a finger and thumb, so she can turn it, she'd write with melted wax on the shell.