Those dirty holes, under those rocks he'd tip up a crack, those places where he couldn't see, that was the future we was so scared about. After he'd stuck his hands into the dark, and not died from it, after then Rant wasn't so scared. He'd roll up one pant leg and point his foot out straight. He'd sit in the desert and poke this bare foot down in a coyote burrow, slow, the way folks test bathwater with their big toe. In case it's too hot or cold. Watching him, Rant would plant both hands braced in the sand, his eyes shut tight, holding one big breath inside his chest.

In the bottom of that hole, a skunk, a raccoon, a mother coyote with pups, or a rattlesnake. The feel of soft fur or smooth scales, warm or cool to the touch, then—kah-pow—the mouth grab of teeth, and Rant's whole leg would shake. And Rant never pulled back, not the way most folks would, doing more damage as the teeth hung tight. No, Rant let the mouth let loose. Maybe snatch tight a second time. Sink deep. Let go. Get bored. Then a sniff of warm breath against his toes. Underground, the feel of a wet tongue licking up his blood.

Out of that hole Rant would pull his foot, the skin tore up and mangled, but licked clean of dirt. His clean skin bleeding—drip-drip-drip—pure blood. His eyeballs nothing but big black pupil dialed all the way open, Rant would be pulling off his other shoe and sock, rolling up the second pant leg, and shoving another bare part of himself into the dark to see what might happen.

The whole length of summer, Rant's toes and finger would be frayed skin, fringed with dripping blood. One bite of venom, one little squirt of poison at a time, Rant was training for something big. Getting vaccinated against fear. No matter the future, any terrible job or marriage or military service, it had to be an improvement over a coyote chomping on your foot.

Echo Lawrence: Get this. The first night I met Rant Casey, we were eating Italian, and he says, "You never been snake-bit?"

He's wearing a coat, so I have no idea about how mutilated his arms look.

As if this is my shortcoming, he keeps goading me, saying, "I can't believe a person could live so long and never been sprayed by a skunk…"

As if mine has been a life of utter caution and deprivation.

Rant shakes his head, looking and sighing at his plate of spaghetti. Then, turning his head sideways and giving me a look with only one eye, he says, "If you never been rabid, you ain't never lived."

The nerve of him. Like he's some redneck holy man.

Get him. He couldn't even work a three-speed mounted on the steering column.

Until that night, he'd never seen ravioli.

Dr. David Schmidt (Middleton Physician): The little screw-up, that Casey boy, he was presenting symptoms before he bothered to let his folks know he'd been bit. With rabies, the virus is carried in the saliva of an infected animal. Any bite or lick, even a sneeze, can spread the disease. Once you have it, the virus spreads through your central nervous system, up your spine to your brain, where it reproduces. The early stage is called the «eclipse» phase of the disease, because you present no symptoms. You can be contagious as all getout, but still look and feel normal.

This eclipse phase can last a couple days to years and years. And all that time, you can be infecting folks with your saliva.

Bodie Carlyle: Instead of boosting peaks, Rant wanted to go fishing. He used to say, "My life might be little and boring, but at least it's mine—not some assembly-line, secondhand, hand-me-down life."

Shot Dunyun (Party Crasher): Getting bit by a rattlesnake, that's pretty low-tech.

Dr. David Schmidt: The intolerable aspect was that Buster Casey was a popular boy. He must've been. In the past ten years, we've treated six cases of rabies infection in a male. All six cases being Buster himself. But we've had forty-seven infections in girls, most of those girls he attended school with, and two of those being his female teachers. Out of those, three chose to terminate pregnancies by unnamed fathers at the same time.

LouAnn Perry: Any way you look at it, Buster was a hazard to have around playing Spin the Bottle.

Polk Perry (Childhood Neighbor): History is, Rant Casey had rabies more of his life than he didn't. And hatching that much of any bug in your brain had to make him some crazy. Still, there's plenty of folks who find crazy people to be very attractive.

LouAnn Perry: Buster didn't never get me pregnant, but he gave me rabies plenty often. First time, standing under the mistletoe at the school Christmas pageant, fifth grade. One kiss, me wearing my red velvet jumper with underneath it a white blouse, standing in the middle of the front row onstage, and singing "Oh Holy Night," singing notes sweet as any angel, my hair blond as angel hair in curls going halfway down my back, me the picture of sweetness—and I had rabies.

Courtesy of Buster Casey.

Dr. David Schmidt: In all fairness, I can't blame all the infections on that one boy, but we haven't had a single case of rabies since Buster Casey left town.

LouAnn Perry: Loads of girls went rabid my exact same way. Maybe half our class, freshman year. Brenda Jordan blamed her rabies on bobbing for apples during a Halloween party, taking her turn behind Buster, but fact is—she kissed him.

Buster Casey was for some girls what snakes was for him. A kind of place your folks tell you never to go. But a kind of small mistake that'll save you from a bigger mistake later on.

Mistakes like kissing Buster, most times it's a worst mistake if you don't make them. After a good-looking boy gives you rabies two, three times, you'll settle down and marry somebody less exciting for the rest of your life.

Echo Lawrence: For our second date, Rant wanted to rake up leaves in a park. One of the surefire ways to contract rabies is to mess with bats. Look under enough leaves and you'll find a bat to bite you. Keep that in mind the next time you go to jump in a pile of dead leaves.

LouAnn Perry: History is, that boy was very popular. Except maybe with his daddy.

Shot Dunyun: How weird is that? A sexually conflicted thirteen-year-old rattlesnake-venom junkie with rabies—well, it's safe to say that's every father's worst nightmare.

LouAnn Perry: History is, Buster Casey was the kind of mistake a girl needs to make while she's still young enough to recover.

Bodie Carlyle: Us out in that desert, three horizons apart from the rest of the world, Rant's still looking into my eyes, saying, "You feel a heartbeat?"

Me, feeling fur. Petting fur. Underground. Buried. That hand of me still pale as bone. Slippery with the smell of meatloaf grease.

Me in the sun, sunburned, I still nod yes.

Rant smiling, he says, "Don't pull out."

The feel of that fur, soft and warm, until—kah-pow—the punch of something pushing through the slack between my thumb and next finger, that web of skin there sunk through with something sharp, and my arm shaking so hard it hammers the tunnel walls already tight around my elbow, far up as my shoulder, me collarbone-deep in pain and trying to pull out.