Rant

parading the vehicles; the actual hunting and accidents; and the post-accident public performance of arguing and acting out, commonly known as “milking the accident.”
    Dr. Erin Shea, Ph.D.: Inherent in Party Crashing culture is the tendency to subvert traditional liminal symbols. The woman dressed in a wedding gown is not an actual bride. Said “woman” may actually be male. The furniture tied to the automobile roof does not indicate a household being relocated. The Student Driver sign is not intended to protect a fledgling driver.
    Ina Gebert, M.A.: The same way Tom Sawyer’s ritual resurrection suggested that of the Christ—a luminous youth dying and being reborn to immortality—contemporary culture continues to generate deities following this same model. In recent decades, celebrities such as Elvis Presley, Jim Morrison, and John Belushi have been corrupted by their success, died prematurely, and are subsequently rumored to be alive. This resurrection might simply signal a public denial of their demise, but it does follow a general outpouring of grief and recognition that serves to construct a mythology around the now-immortal individual.
    Dr. Erin Shea, Ph.D.: Examples of liminality in language include the French phrase for dusk or twilight: “Between dog and wolf.” This same phrase is used to describe the final months of life, as a human being’s mental and physical abilities dwindle. In English, the phrase for twilight, “when all cats are gray,” demonstrates the flattening of social hierarchy and obvious status indicators.
    From the essay “Liminality and Communitas” by Victor Turner: It is as though they are being reduced or ground down to a uniform condition to be fashioned anew and endowed with additional powers to enable them to cope with their new station in life.
    Ina Gebert, M.A.: Rant Casey and Karl Waxman represent the latest incarnation of this ancient model. Both men, degraded by a violent public death, are rumored to be alive, and not simply alive, but immortal. Waxman is said to have traveled backward in time and murdered his parents before the moment of his conception, preserving himself in a permanent liminal state. Casey, well, Rant Casey is another story—his is a redemption through public recognition and emotional attachment, a mass refusal to accept that he died in a well-documented automobile accident.
    Shot Dunyun ( Party Crasher ): All that Anthropology 401 garbage is beyond boring. Party Crashing is just a fun time. It’s a fun playtime. Please, don’t kill it with big words.
    37–Resolving Origin
    From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms ( Historian): In Middleton, sleeping dogs have the permanent right-ofway…both metaphorically and literally.
    Echo Lawrence ( Party Crasher): So we went back to Middleton. To see the Middleton Christian Fellowship. The Sex Tornado. If we were lucky, the Tooth Museum and the wild dogs.
    Neddy Nelson ( Party Crasher): Didn’t we go to Middleton to see if Irene Casey was dead? Wasn’t our real reason to see if Rant had fulfilled the mission Simms sent him to do?
    Shot Dunyun ( Party Crasher): We parked Neddy’s Cadillac at the end of a gravel driveway that ran to a white farmhouse on the horizon, Rant’s house. All around that house, the yard where Rant had buried those stinking Easter eggs for his dad to find with the lawn mower.
    Echo Lawrence: We parked in the middle of the night and watched the house with a dark outline of Irene in the yellow square of the kitchen window. One of her hands holding a shape in her lap, while her other hand touched the shape and pulled away. Touched and pulled away. Her head bowed down, the light behind her, embroidering. We watched until Shot and Neddy fell asleep.
    Shot Dunyun: Until Echo fell asleep.
    Irene Casey ( Rant’s Mother): For Christmas one year, my mother and Granny Hattie gave me a sweater they’d made. I figure it was Hattie who’d knitted it, and my mother who’d embroidered the fancy detailing. Satin-stitched down the front were pink roses, padded with felt, with green cord-padded stems. All complicated. Mixed in the roses were violet periwinkle blossoms, made with long and short stitching. Scattered in the background were so many navy-blue bullion knots and smaller French knots, they made the white yarn of the sweater look light blue. Not a single pucker or stray bit of floss.
    It was a sweater for indoors, maybe for church on Sunday. Looking back, I should’ve pressed