Steve Toltz - A Fraction of the Whole

It was true. He was so enormous he gave the impression he was indestructible, that he could survive any cataclysm. The zoo of animal tattoos Dad had described to me many years ago had stretched into shapeless swirls of color.

Dad had stiffened. He looked like he wanted to say something but his tongue wasn’t cooperating. “Alive…fat,” was all he could manage.

It dawned on me that Terry was sort of confused himself. He didn’t know who to look at. Every now and then he turned and gazed searchingly at me, perhaps his best chance of immediate love and acceptance. He wasn’t getting it, because despite the incredible news that a family member so thoroughly mythologized was alive and well, more than anything I felt a bitter disappointment that this had nothing to do with my mother after all.

“Isn’t anybody going to give me a hug?”

No one moved.

“So who is Tim Lung?” Dad said finally.

“Tim Lung doesn’t exist. Neither did Pradit Banthadthan or Tanakorn Krirkkiat, for that matter.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m doing it, Marty. I’m finally doing it.”

“Doing what?”

“The democratic cooperative of crime.”

Dad spasmed as though he’d been jump-started with cables. “You’re what ?!” he screamed. This was the first emotive response he had given.

“Well, mate, the first time I stuffed it up good and proper. Harry was onto something, though. This thing works like a charm.”

“I can’t believe it! I can’t fucking believe it!”

This apparently was a bigger shock to Dad than the news that Terry had been alive all this time.

Caroline said, “What’s the democratic-”

“Don’t ask,” Dad interjected. “Oh my God.”

Terry clapped his chubby hands with delight and hopped up and down on his stumpy legs. I was thinking how utterly different he was from the young renegade who had so often appeared in my mind’s eye. This fat man was the same sporting hero, the same fugitive, the same vigilante worshipped by the nation?

Suddenly his knees locked up and he looked embarrassed.

“Eddie tells me you’ve been ill,” Terry said.

“Don’t change the subject,” Dad said, his voice turbulent with emotion. “I scattered your ashes, you know.”

“You did? Where?”

“I put them in bottles of cayenne pepper in a small supermarket. The rest I dumped in a puddle on the side of the road.”

“Well, I can’t say I deserved any better!” Terry laughed loudly and put his hand on Dad’s shoulder.

“Don’t touch me, you fat ghost!”

“Mate. Don’t be like that. Are you pissed off about the millionaires thing? Don’t be. I just couldn’t resist. As soon as I heard about what you were doing in Australia, Marty, I knew what I had to do. I’ve been rescuing you from one drama or another your entire life. And helping you has made me who I am. I don’t regret it. I love who I am, and just taking those millions in such an obvious scheme was the easiest way for me to rescue you one last time. You see, mate, I wanted you to come here. I thought it was high time we saw each other again, and I was long overdue to meet Jasper.”

I could see that Dad’s inward rage had almost made its way out. An evil storm was churning in him, and it had everything to do with Caroline. He noticed that she was demonstrating none of the rage; she was quiet, still literally gaping at Terry in horror and wonder. Terry, meanwhile, aimed his smiling eyes back at me.

“Hey, nephew. Why don’t you say something?”

“How did you get out of solitary confinement?”

Terry’s face looked empty of thought for a moment, before he said, “The fire! Of course! And Marty, you told him the whole story. Good for you! Good question, Jasper, right at the beginning.”

“Were you even in solitary?” Dad asked.

We all leaned forward with utter absorption as Terry began.

“I sure was! That was a close one. I almost did get baked- in solitary there are no windows, of course, but I heard a lot of screaming, guards shouting orders to each other, and when the smoke came under the door I knew I was cooked. It was pitch-black in that cement cage, hotter than hell and full of smoke. I was terrified. I started shouting, ‘Let me out! Let me out!’ But no one came. I banged on the door and nearly burned my arm right off. There wasn’t anything I could do, and it took all the psychological effort I could muster to calm myself down enough to settle in for an unpleasant death. Then I heard footsteps in the corridor. It was one of the guards, Franklin. I recognized his voice: ‘Who’s in there?’ he shouted. ‘Terry Dean!’ I answered. Good old Franklin. He was a good man who loved cricket and he was a big fan of my rampage. He opened the door and said, ‘Come on!’ and in his panic to save me, he let down his guard. I knocked him unconscious, took his clothes, threw him in the cell, and locked the door.”

“You murdered the man who came to save you.”

Terry paused a moment and gave Dad a strange look, like a man deciding whether or not to explain a complex natural phenomenon to a child, then continued. “After that it was easy. The whole prison was on fire, and I didn’t even have to use the keys I’d stolen- all the doors were open. Somehow I made my way through the smoke-filled corridors and out of the prison, I saw the town up in flames and disappeared into the smoke. That was it.”

“So it was Franklin who burned in your cell.”

“Yeah, I guess it was his ashes you scooped up.”

“What happened next?”

“Oh yeah- I saw you in the fire. I called out to you, but you didn’t see me. Then I saw that you were running into a trap. I shouted, ‘Left, turn left!’ and you turned and disappeared.”

“I heard you! I thought it was your bloody ghost, you mongrel!”

“Spent a couple of days in Sydney lying very low. Caught a freighter to Indonesia. Worked my way around the globe checking out the other continents to see what they had to offer, and wound up here in Thailand. That’s when I started the democratic cooperative of crime.”

“What about Eddie?”

“Eddie started working for me at the beginning. I tried to track you down, Marty, but you’d already left Australia. So the best I could do was get Eddie to go and wait near Caroline. I had her address from a letter she’d sent me in jail, and Eddie took a room next to hers and waited for you to show up.”

“How could you be so sure I’d go see Caroline?”

“I wasn’t sure. But I was right, wasn’t I?”

“Why didn’t you just get Eddie to tell me you were alive?”

“By then I felt like I’d caused you enough trouble. You were really looking out for me back then, Marty, and you probably thought I didn’t notice, but I knew you’d worried yourself sick about me. I figured you’d had enough.”

“You told Eddie to make Caroline a millionaire!”

“Of course!” Turning to Caroline, he said, “When I heard about your son, I was so sorry.”

“Go on, Terry,” Dad said.

“That’s it. I had Eddie keep tabs on you. When he told me you were with some nutty lady who you got pregnant and you didn’t have any money, I told him to give you some. But you wouldn’t take it. I didn’t know how to help, so I gave you a job working for me. Unfortunately, it was a bad time- you waltzed right into the middle of a little gang warfare. I didn’t know your lunatic girlfriend was going to jump on the boat and blow herself up. It was a nutty way to do yourself in, wasn’t it? Sorry, Jasper.”

“What else?”

“Anyway. When you took Jasper to Australia, I got Eddie to follow. He came back with some crazy reports. I gave you a job again, running one of my strip clubs, and you smashed the place and wound up in hospital. Then I gave you some dosh so you could build your maze, and that’s that. Then you warped the whole of Australia with your strange ideas and here we are. That pretty much brings us up to date.”