A Fraction of the Whole

by Steve Toltz

You have to know they didn’t want to run out of days. You have to know they are dead and that the dead have bad dreams. They dream of us.”

If you’re Australian, you will at least have heard of Terry Dean. If you aren’t, you won’t have, because while Australia is an eventful place, what goes on there is about as topical in world newspapers as “Bee Dies in New Guinea After Stinging Tree by Mistake.” It’s not our fault. We’re too far away.

the differences between the rich and the poor are nothing. It’s the chasm between the healthy and the sick that you just can’t breach.

I said goodnight, closed the door, and left him alone in his nakedness, thinking of normal families who have normal problems like alcoholism and gambling and wife-beating and drug addiction. I envied them.