Read Rant for Free Online Page B

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. Electricbright 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?
    36–Hit Men II
    Tina Something ( Party Crasher): On my last date with Wax, and I mean our final gaddamn date, the two of us were cruising a Honeymoon Night in a hot, and I mean stolen, gaddamn Maserati GranSport, and Wax sees this mess of emergency-vehicle lights down along the train yards off Wentworth Avenue, so he goes to cruise by for a peek.
    All’s left is smoking metal. Even the middle part of the train looks torched, and the fire guys are wrestling to haul the Jaws of Life over to the biggest balled-up chunk of a Lincoln Town Car. All down this side of