Dad opened it, and I followed close behind.

VI

We entered a large square room with so many pillows on the floor that part of me just wanted to lie down and be fed grapes. Large indoor ferns made me feel we were outside again. The walls didn’t quite reach the ceiling and sunlight poured through the space above them, except for the far wall, which was made of glass and looked out on the overgrown Buddha in the garden. There, at the wall of glass, was a man, his back to us, staring out at that Buddha. They were the same build. In the bright light that came through the window, we could see only the man’s giant silhouette. At least, I think it was a man. It looked more or less like one, only bigger.

“Mr. Lung,” Eddie said, “may I present Martin and Jasper Dean. And Caroline Potts.”

The man turned. He was not Thai, Chinese, or Asian at all. He had blond scraggly hair and a bushy beard covering pulpy, blemished skin, and he was wearing shorts and a cut-off flannelette shirt. He looked like an explorer recently returned from the wilds, enjoying his first taste of civilization. That’s an off-the-point description, though, one ignoring the elephant in the room, because most of all he was the elephant in the room, the fattest man I’d ever seen or was ever going to see, an astounding freak of nature. Either he had a hormone disorder or the man must have eaten fiendishly for decades with the express ambition of becoming the biggest man alive. His body shape was unreal to me- his hideousness was suffocating. I could no more kill this monstrosity with a bullet than I could dent a mountain by slapping it.

He stared at us without blinking an eye, even while he put out his cigarette and lit a fresh one. Clearly he was planning to stare us into submission. It was working. I felt exceedingly meek, as well as fantastically thin. I looked at Dad to see if he was feeling meek too. He wasn’t. He was squinting at the enormous man as if he were one of those magic puzzles that reveal a hidden image.

Dad spoke first, as though talking in his sleep. “Bloody hell,” he said, and at once I knew.

Caroline said it before anyone. “Terry,” she said.

Terry Dean, my uncle, looked from one of us to the other and broke into the widest smile I had ever seen.

VII

“Surprised? Of course you are,” he said, laughing. His echoey, powerful voice sounded like it came from deep within a cave. He limped toward us. “You should see the look on your faces. You really should. Do you want me to get a mirror? No? What’s the matter, Marty? You’re in shock? Understandable, very understandable. We’ll all just wait here until the shock dies down and makes way for anger and resentment. I don’t expect any of you to take this lying down. This isn’t one of those things you laugh about straightaway, right up front, but later, when it’s all sunk in. Don’t worry- it’ll sink. In a few days you’ll be hard-pressed to recall a single day I wasn’t alive. But tell me, did you suspect it? Even a little? What am I thinking? Here you are, seeing your long-dead brother after all these years, and not only does he have the effrontery to be living and breathing, he hasn’t even offered you a beer! Eddie, get us some beers, will you, mate? And Jasper! I’ve been wanting to meet you for a long time. Do you know who I am?”

I nodded.

“My nephew! You have your grandmother’s nose, did your dad ever tell you that? I’m so happy to see you. Eddie’s told me all about you. You must be some kind of rock, living with your dad without shattering into a million little pieces. But you look like you’ve turned out all right. You look so normal and healthy and adjusted. How is it that you’re not crazy? It’s crazy that you’re not crazy! Though maybe you are. That’s what I’m looking forward to finding out. And Caroline! Seeing you comes as a bit of a shock, I’ll admit. Of course Eddie told me you’d married…”

Terry stared at her for a long moment before snapping himself out of it.

“I know, you’re all caught off guard. Drink your beers, you’ll feel better. I’ll wait until you calm down. There’s time. Christ, if there’s one thing we all have, it’s time. Marty, you’re giving me the heebie-jeebies with that look. You too, Caroline. But not you, Jasper, eh? Maybe because you’re still young. When you’re older, it’s a surprise that you can still be surprised. I wonder, what’s the bigger surprise, that I’m so wonderfully alive or that I’m so wonderfully fat? You can say it- I don’t mind. I like being fat. I’m Henry the Eighth fat. Buddha fat. Let’s get it out of the way so we’re not bogged down in it. I’m a fat fuck. I’ll just take off my shirt so you can see the extent of it. See? OK? I’m a whale. My belly is unrelenting! Invincible!”

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.”