Rant

when your face goes smooth, the skin around your eyes and lips relaxed, the pretty you only look when you love the person taking the picture.
    Rant’s mother is the pretty young mom, the nudge of soft lips on his face beside his ear. She’s the breath, the whisper of “Sleep tight” with the smell of cigarettes. The candy smell of her shampoo. The flower smell of her skin cream.
    Her breath saying, “You’re Mommy’s little treasure.” Saying, “You’re our little angel.”
    Most mothers talk the same way, in the moment they’re still one person with their child. “You’re Mommy’s perfect little man…”
    That moment, before the cow eyeballs and the rattlesnake bites and high-school erections, here’s the last moment Rant and his mom will ever be that close. That much in love.
    That moment—the end of what we wish would last forever.
    Dr. David Schmidt ( Middleton Physician): In my opinion, both the Caseys made unlikely parents. It’s been my experience that plenty of young people look at their newborns as a practical joke. Maybe a punishment. A baby just is; it ain’t made of chrome for you to tool around in. A baby ain’t going to land you a job behind a desk with air-conditioning.
    Chet Casey, he looked at that baby like his worst enemy and best friend, combined.
    Echo Lawrence: That naptime, Rant’s mother leans over the bed. With one hand, she finger-combs the hair off his little forehead, his bright-green eyes looking up at her, his eyes too big for his face. His eyes counting her stars.
    She stands to go back to the kitchen or the garden or the television, and Rant’s pretty young mother, she stops. Still half leaned over his bed, she looks at the wall above his pillow, her eyes squinting and twitching to see something on the plaster. Her lips peel open a little. Her gray eyes blinking and blinking, looking hard at the wall, her pretty, pointed chin sags against her neck. And with one hand she reaches forward, one finger poked out a little, the fingermail ready to pick at something on the white paint. The smooth skin puckered into a ditch between her eyebrows.
    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