Rant

before she’d eat like a grown-up.
    Before the end of that Thanksgiving dinner, Rant’s Granny Bel was already sweating with fever. Bel’s running a fever of 105 degrees, but complaining of the cold. Her other symptoms include dizziness, fatigue, and muscle aches. Rant says Granny Bel can’t catch her breath because, it turns out, her lungs are filling with fluid. Her kidneys have failed. Halfway to the hospital, Rant says his Granny Bel’s stopped breathing.
    Echo Lawrence: It turns out, lucky Grandma Bel’s been infected by a killer virus. It’s called the “hantavirus,” and you get it from something Rant called the “white-footed mouse.” The mouse shits, and the shit dries into dust. You breathe the shit dust, and the virus kills you inside of six weeks.
    She’s an old lady wearing red lipstick, with powder on her nose.
    Rant says the county tested the talc in Bel’s compact, and of course it was half mouse shit. The dried, ground-up dust of wild-mouse turds. The powder puff was loaded with shit dust. Mystery solved. Kind of solved.
    Shot Dunyun: Don’t get the idea Rant Casey was some kind of naturopathic serial killer—spiders, fleas, mice, and bees—but you could make that argument.
    Bodie Carlyle: Just a little part of my gold bought me that midnight-blue Cub Scout shirt and pants, bought the Scout knife, the belt, and the compass. Since Milt Tommy was a sixth-grader and didn’t get no treasure, I paid him a hundred bucks in gold for his sash with every merit badge already sewed to it. Every badge from First Aid to Good Citizenship.
    Folks really will sell you anything for the right price. And I learned a cash-bought merit badge ain’t worth shit.
    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.
    You couldn’t help yourself, you had to stop and watch.
    From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms ( Historian): The young hang mirrors in their homes. The elderly hang paintings. And, if I may make an ungenerous observation, residents of rural communities display crafts—those dubious products of spare time, limited motor skill, and inexpensive yarn.
    Bodie Carlyle: Invisible as spy writing, only Mrs. Casey could tell where the white wax disappeared on the white egg.
    The stove would be crowded, with boiling out of every pot a different smell. Onions. Beets. Spinach greens. The stink of red cabbage. Black coffee. Plus the vinegar smell. In each pot, a different color: yellow, red, green, blue, or brown. Everything boiled down to the color of the cooking water. No lunch ready.
    Her eyes crossed, looking straight down her nose, so concentrating on the wax that her mouth hanged open, red lipstick every day of the year, without looking up, she’d say, “If you two are chewing tar, spit it out.” She’d say, “You’ll find graham crackers over the stove.”
    Me and Rant.
    If you stood there long enough, maybe she’d say how the wax was to keep dye off the egg. At her elbow would be hard-cooked eggs that still looked white, but in truth were half decorated with the parts where dye couldn’t go. Just watching her, it could slip your mind how you had an ant hill waiting outside. Or a dead raccoon. Even a box of wood matches.
    Even being hungry for lunch, you’d get nosing into Mrs. Casey’s egg work.
    From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: It’s compelling that so