Rant

pain.”
    He said, since he didn’t stick around and meet her folks, stay like a stray dog she wanted to keep, that Hattie gal must’ve told her folks he jumped her.
    Echo Lawrence: The way Simms told it to Rant, when he kissed this Hattie person, Simms tasted the meatloaf with onions and sausage that she’d eaten for lunch in the school cafeteria. Her dinner the night before, of fried calves’ liver. Her dinner three nights before, of chicken-fried hanger steak with creamed pearl onions and orange gelatin salad. The moment their future child was conceived, the man’s eyesight and hearing, his senses of smell and touch and taste just—exploded.
    Shot Dunyun: Driving, just trawling around, Rant told me that Green Taylor Simms had somehow fallen into the past some sixty years. After riding in the backseat of his own Great-grandmother Hattie Shelby, Simms says he felt great. Nights, he only needed two hours of sleep. Like some kind of Superman.
    Tina Something ( Party Crasher ): It’s only one of the secret goals in Party Crashing. Most people call it a Flashback. Others called it Reverse Pioneering. Breeding yourself, the way Simms had, we call it Stoking.
    Echo Lawrence: Pay attention. That supposed twenty-three-year-old refugee stuck in the past, he desperately wishes he’d studied more of recent history. At least memorized some winning lottery numbers. He washes dishes to save a little capital. He works every waking minute, asking strangers, “Has Microsoft gone public yet?”
    These people, they would reply, “What’s a Micro…?” “Microsoft,” he’d say.
    But people would only shake their heads and shrug.
    Shot Dunyun: He asked someone, “Has boosted-peak technology been invented yet?” When they shrugged, it didn’t matter. He really, really wished he’d paid more attention during math and science class.
    Every few years, he returns to spy on his daughter, Esther, his future grandmother. And because he can’t invent anything, he says he seduced her, meeting her in secret, giving her money, he tells her his dream for a future dynasty, about his accidental fall backward through time. The car accident.
    Echo Lawrence: Whether she believed him or not, if he raped her or not, that girl had a child she named Irene, and the man, now calling himself Green Taylor Simms, disappeared for another thirteen years.
    Jarrell Moore: According to the elderly man in question, every generation, each of the thirteen-year-old virgins was willing, even excited, to participate in his project. His experiment.
    Echo Lawrence: With every sperm that met an egg, Simms claims he felt stronger. He was hoarding more gold, making a fortune, and stashing it for his future self.
    Shot Dunyun: Totally, balls-out crazy.
    Jarrell Moore: Geriatric dementia, to say the least.
    Shot Dunyun: The moment of every conception got him high. It jacked him up, all his chromosomes or whatall, changed in that instant. Rearranged. New and improved. And, same as any addiction, it was all this guy knew to do, so he did it, over and over and over.
    He just kept fucking with the past. Filling the future with a new himself.
    Chester Casey: After telling my boy his crazy story, this old nutcase, he asked Buster to roll up his shirtsleeves. The old miser pointed at the shadow bites, the dirt tattooed by teeth into Buster’s hands and arms, and he said, “Badger…coyote…pit viper…” Getting every scar exactly right.
    Echo Lawrence: Supposedly, Green Taylor Simms asked Rant to go back in time, to crash in a car accident. People were living longer now. Rant could go back a hundred years. Seed more generations of himself. Rant could memorize lottery numbers and invention plans over time, building an even larger fortune.
    Jarrell Moore: Along the way, diddling thirteen-year-old girls.
    Shot Dunyun: And Simms promised some way Rant could live forever. Become immortal.
    Echo Lawrence: Plus, possibly to hide his tracks, or maybe because he’s inbred, hybrid crazy, Simms has been sneaking back to murder those Middleton girls in their old age, using poison spiders, bubonic fleas, and killer bees…
    Shot Dunyun: Rant tells this crazy old Simms, “Memorize? You don’t figure what rabies does to a brain…”
    Echo Lawrence: And Green Taylor Simms says, “I know exactly what you’re capable of doing.” He tells Rant, “I am you…”
    Neddy Nelson ( Party Crasher): Nobody wants to go there, but…wasn’t the Virgin Mary, wasn’t she God’s