Disclaimer: Tobias Beecher, Chris Keller and Vern Schillinger are all the property of Levinson/Fontana et al., not me. Written for non-profit only and as a tribute to Oz.
In the Eye of the Storm
For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. – Hosea 8:7.
Because he believes in an ideology that is obviously, patently, false - a paper-thin justification for hatred, sadism and cruelty; because the brotherhood he leads is composed of barely sentient misfits who found careers as gas jockeys, janitors and ditch diggers too challenging; and because he claims to stand up for the literal truth of the Bible while denying everything that document says about Jesus' life as a Jew and His message of love and compassion; an observer might think that Vern Schillinger is stupid. He would be wrong. Schillinger is shrewd. He took one look at Toby and knew who he was.
Toby was the kind of guy who had it easy all his life and just assumed that, no matter what, his easy life would always be there. He acted according to the rules he had been taught in childhood, as if those flimsy constructs were inflexible natural laws. He actually believed that if he behaved reasonably to other people and was polite, they would have to be nice to him in turn. If this same observer wanted to be kind he would have called Toby an innocent, but Toby and Vern both know better. Toby was easy prey, and Vern Schillinger was, according to his own hateful code, perfectly justified in using him any way he wanted.
But Toby the naive fool is not the only Toby.
There's the Toby who sat beside his parents in church trying to reach beyond the staticky background noise of his own thoughts and the sonorous sermons of Father Alpert, listening for the voice of God. He never heard that voice and after a while he stopped listening for it.
There's the Toby who looks at the whole world from a slightly skewed angle and makes snippy observations disguised as jokes. He's both the merciless judge who sees all of his own weaknesses and hypocrisies, and the self-absorbed jerk who makes endless excuses for his bad behaviour and always lets his family down. There's the highly trained legal mind that can spot the tiniest flaws in his opponents' arguments and loves the order and method and history of the law. There's the family man who fusses about laundry, reminds Holly and Gary to brush their teeth, and marks regularly scheduled oil changes on the kitchen calendar.
Inside Toby is the child who can't quite believe what has happened to him, who still cries out that it isn't fair, that he shouldn't be punished so harshly for something he never intended. However, there's also an adult who mourns Gen and mourns Kathy Rockwell and struggles to bear the burden of his responsibility for their deaths. Somewhere too there's a husband and father who hates Gen for giving up and for abandoning their children.
Then there's the Toby that Gen knew and that he thought Chris Keller knew - the one who needs to love someone and to be loved. Love is not an optional extra in Toby's life. His emotional and sexual connection to the person he loves is the glue that holds him together and it's the source of a fierce, primal power. It would be easy to underestimate the strength and ruthlessness of Toby's capacity for love. Until now, he has never had to show how vicious he can be in pursuit of love or how vengeful he can be when deprived of it. Things have changed.
Finally, there's a black beast in Toby. It's ugly and crazy and wild, and even at the best of times, when his life was a picture book and Gen and the kids were right there beside him, it took everything that Toby had to keep that beast quiet. He tried alcohol and drugs and sex, but still he could feel that beast inside him, pulling on its chain, snapping and growling, howling for meat. Toby's always been afraid of the beast. He knows that it could devour every other part of him and annihilate the people he loves. Right now, he doesn't care.
Yesterday, Chris showed up at the prison hospital. His eyes were soft and loving and he said he was sorry. His said that his part in this devastation he called Operation Toby was just payment of a debt and nothing personal. Toby was immobilized by his casts so he couldn't force Chris to leave, and he was too foggy from the painkillers to tell Chris what he really thought.
Chris has relied on his charm and his sexuality all his adult life; he thinks he can talk Toby around. He thinks he knows Tobias Beecher. When he gets out of the hospital, Chris Keller and Vern Schillinger and even that brain-dead hack Metzger are all going to meet a Toby that they've never seen before. They have no idea.