But the most dangerous aspect of Terry’s crusade was that, understandably, the bookies did not go quietly. Their links to the underworld guaranteed them guns and protection, and reports of gun battles in the backs of restaurants and bars filtered through the news. Terry had broken the last of Harry’s laws- not only was he as far from anonymity as a person could be, but he had won the ire of the criminal world. He was not just on the ladder, he was shaking it. Along with the state and federal police, the criminal superstructure wanted him dead.
My parents dealt with the situation in their own way. Rather than face up to the awful truth, they extended their delusions about their son. While my mother doggedly pursued her double theory, my father put a positive spin on the whole dirty mess, turning rationalizing into a high art. If Terry shot a policeman in the leg, my father praised his mercy for not going for the heart; if Terry shot a policeman in the heart, my father praised his aim. To hear him talk, his son’s eluding the police was evidence of his brains, his craftiness, his blanket superiority.
Lionel Potts was calling me five times a day, begging me to come to his house and give him updates. As I read him every newspaper report, he would remove his dark sunglasses. His dead eyes seemed to see for miles, and he’d lean back and vigorously shake his head. “I know a great lawyer- he’d defend Terry. I’m only sorry I didn’t recommend him last time. I was a little pissed off. He did blind me, after all. Still, this lawyer would be perfect for him.” I sat listening to Lionel go on and on, gritting my teeth. I couldn’t stand it. As crazy as it sounds, I was overcome with jealousy. Terry was doing something with his life. He had found his calling; insane and bloodthirsty as it may have been, it was still a calling, and he was pursuing it vigilantly.
Every morning I ran to the corner shop for the newspaper to read about his atrocities. Not all his victims were dead. The snooker player who allegedly sank the white after the black accidentally on purpose only had his right hand broken, and strangely, he, along with some of Terry’s other victims, came out in support of Terry’s crusade. Through a public emotional hazing, they confessed their sins and said that Terry Dean was cleaning up an institution that had once been pure but had become soiled by the lure of big money. They weren’t the only ones.
Sportsmen, commentators, intellectuals, talk-show hosts, writers, academics, politicians, and radio shock jocks- everyone was talking about sporting ethics, ideals, heroes, and the Australian spirit. Terry had jump-started a dialogue in the nation, and all the sportsmen and -women were on their best behavior.
One day during this chaos, Caroline came back into town, dragging a suitcase. I was sitting on the town hall steps counting the lines on my index finger when I spotted her coming down the street. She saw me, dragged that suitcase in a run, and threw her arms around me, plastering my cheeks with platonic kisses. I knew then and there that we would never discuss that night in her bedroom. I took a good look at her. She had really blossomed into a woman, but there were strange changes too: her hair was a lighter color, almost blond, and though her face was fuller and her lower lip more mature, there seemed to be something that had left her, a light or a glow. I thought maybe on her travels she had seen something that had scared it away.
“You heard about Terry?” I asked.
“It’s incredible.”
“Is that why you came home?”
“No, I only heard when I saw a newspaper at the airport, and the bus driver filled me in on the rest. You don’t hear about Australia in Europe, Marty. It’s strange. No one knows anything about us.”
That’s when I first discovered that living in Australia is like having a faraway bedroom in a very big house. All the better for us, I thought.
“I only came to pick up Dad. I’m taking him back overseas.”
“Where?”
“ Paris.”
I drew my name on the ground with a stick. Martin Dean. Little clumps of earth lay in brown piles around it.
“Have you heard from him?” she asked.
“No.”
“He’s going to get himself killed.”
“That seems likely.”
Next to my name I wrote her name in the dirt. Our names were lying side by side.
“He’s doing something important,” she said.
“He’s a murderer.”
“But he believes.”
“So?”
“So nothing. He believes in something, that’s all.”
“Rapists and pedophiles believe in something too. Hitler believed in something. Every time Henry the Eighth cut off another wife’s head, he believed in something. It’s not hard to believe in something. Everyone believes in something.”
“You don’t.”
“No, I don’t.”
The words had left my mouth before I realized what I’d said. On reflection, I could see that this was absolutely true. I couldn’t name a single thing I believed in. For me, 1 percent of doubt has the same effect as 100 percent. So then, how could I believe in anything when what might not be true might as well not be true?
I drew a heart around our names in the dirt.
“If you’d heard from Terry, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”
I quickly covered our names with dirt. I was being foolish. She didn’t love me. She loved him. I suddenly flushed with embarrassment.
“You’ve heard from him.”
She grabbed my wrist, but I jerked it away from her.
“I haven’t.”
“Yes, you have!”
“I haven’t, I tell you!”
She pulled me toward her and grabbed my face with both hands and gave me a long, long kiss on the lips. She pulled away, leaving me stunned and speechless. I couldn’t open my eyes.
“If you see Terry, give him that for me.”
That opened my eyes. I smiled to stop myself foaming at the mouth. I hated her. I wanted to throw her in the dirt. I said something like “I hate you and will hate you for all remembered time” and walked away, toward home, even though home was the last place I wanted to go. It had transformed into a place of minor historical importance, like the restaurant toilet Hitler used before the Reichstag fire, and thus the reporters were back with their bad manners and zero empathy, shouting their inane questions through the front windows.
When I got home, it became clear that my father had had enough. He was standing at the door, swaying on his feet, drunk. His face was stiff, as if he had lockjaw.
“You want to come in, you cunts? Well, come in!” he shouted.
The reporters looked at each other before stepping tentatively into the house. They thought it was a trap. It wasn’t. It was merely a man teetering off the precipice of his sanity.
“Here. Take a shot of this,” my father said, opening the kitchen cupboards. He ripped up the floorboards. He led them into our bedroom. He shoved a pair of Terry’s underpants under their noses. “Sniff it! Sniff it!” He turned everything inside out. “You need to see where he originated from.” My father unbuttoned his fly, pulled out his penis, and waved it around. “Here, you maggots! He was a delinquent sperm! Beat the other sperms to the egg! He came out of here! Film it! Film it, you grubby parasites!” The reporters laughed while my mother chased them around the house. But they didn’t want to leave. They were having a high old time doubled over in laughter. This man’s drunken maudlin despair was the best thing they’d seen in ages. Couldn’t they see my mother crying? Oh yes, they could see it all right; they could see it through the zoom lens.