“Train hard, win easy.”
“Team before individual.”
“We play for the bear on the front of our jerseys, not the name on the back.”
A recent addition with extralarge print right in the middle says:
“We’re bad losers, because a good loser is someone who’s used to losing!”
Amat’s concentration wanders for a moment, and a little too late he sees Bobo walking across the floor. When the junior back leans his substantial bulk over him, Amat disappears into his shadow and waits for Bobo to hit him, but instead Bobo smiles. Which is much worse.
“You’ll have to excuse the guys here, they haven’t been brought up properly, you know.”
Amat blinks hard, unsure how to respond. Bobo clearly enjoys this, and turns solemnly to the rest of the players, who are now silent and expectant. Bobo points angrily to the pieces of tape littering the floor.
“Look at this mess! Well? Is this how it’s supposed to look? Do you think your mothers work here or something?”
The juniors grin. Bobo marches around demonstratively picking up pieces of tape until they fill his cupped hands. Then he holds them up toward the ceiling like a newborn child and proclaims:
“Guys, you need to remember that Amat’s mother works here.”
He meets the newcomer’s gaze, smiles, and says:
“It’s Amat’s mother who works here, guys.”
The pieces of tape hang in the air for a moment before raining down like small, sharp projectiles over the boy in the corner. Bobo’s warm breath hits his ear as he commands:
“Can you give your mom a call, maggot? It really is very messy in here.”
* * *
The locker room empties in ten seconds flat when Lars bellows “TIME!!!” Kevin hangs back till last. He passes Amat, who is on his knees gathering together the pieces of tape.
“It’s only teasing,” Kevin tells him, without a trace of sympathy.
“Sure. Only teasing,” Amat repeats quietly.
“You know that girl . . . Maya . . . don’t you?” Kevin says quickly on his way out through the door, as if it had only just occurred to him.
Amat looks up. He’s watched every single junior training session this season. Things never just occur to Kevin. Everything he ever does is carefully considered and planned.
“Yes,” Amat mumbles.
“Has she got a boyfriend?”
The answer is slow coming. Kevin taps the end of his stick expectantly on the floor. Amat stares down at his hands for a long time before his head finally and reluctantly moves a few inches from side to side. Kevin nods with satisfaction and walks out toward the ice. Amat stays where he is, chewing the inside of his lower lip and breathing hard through his nose, before tossing the tape in the trash and adjusting his pads. The last thing he sees before he goes through the door are words written in almost faded pencil on crumpled yellowed paper: A great deal is expected of anyone who’s been given a lot.
He joins the juniors at the center circle. In the middle of it is an image of a large, threatening bear. The emblem of the club: strength, size, fear. Amat is the smallest person on the ice; he always has been. Ever since he was eight years old everyone has always told him that he won’t be able to handle the next level, that he isn’t tough enough, strong enough, big enough. But now he looks around him. Tomorrow this team is playing a semifinal game—they’re one of the four best junior teams in the whole country. And he’s here. He looks at Lyt and Bobo, at Lars and David, at Benji and Kevin, and thinks that he’s going to show them he can play. Even if it kills him.
* * *
There’s hardly anything that can make Peter feel as bad as hockey can. And, absurdly, there’s hardly anything that can make him feel better. He keeps going over and over his situation, until the air in his office seems to run out. When the frustration and nausea start to get unbearable, he gets up and goes out to sit in the stands. He usually thinks better there, so he sits there bouncing his ball up and down on the concrete for so long he doesn’t even notice the junior team start their training session down on the ice.
* * *
Sune emerges from his office to get some coffee, and on the way back he sees Peter sitting on his own in the stands. Sune knows that the GM is a grown man now, but it’s hard for an old coach to stop thinking of his boys as boys.
Sune has never told Peter he loves him. It can be just as hard for father figures to say that as it is for real fathers. But he knows how afraid Peter is of disappointing everyone. All men have different fears that drive them, and Peter’s biggest one is that he isn’t good enough. Not good enough as a dad, not good enough as a man, and not good enough as GM. He lost his parents and his firstborn child, and every morning he’s terrified that he’s going to lose Kira, Maya, and Leo. He couldn’t bear losing his club as well.
Sune sees him lift his head at last and look out across the juniors on the ice. Absentmindedly to start with—he’s so used to following this team now that he counts them without thinking about it. Sune remains standing in the shadows just so he can see Peter’s face when the penny finally drops.
For ten years Peter has helped shape this group of boys. He knows all their names, knows the names of all their parents. He ticks them off one by one in his mind to see if anyone’s missing, if anyone might be injured, but they all seem to be there. In fact there’s actually one too many. He counts again. Can’t make sense of it. Until he sees Amat. Shortest and slightest of them all, still in equipment that looks a bit too big, just like in his skating classes. Peter just stares. Then he starts to laugh out loud.
He’s been told so many times that the boy ought to stop playing, that he doesn’t stand a chance, and now there he is, down on the ice. No one else has fought harder for this opportunity, and David is giving it to him today of all days. It’s a small dream, nothing less, and Peter could do with a dream today.
Sune nods with both joy and sadness as he sees this. He goes back to his office and closes his door. This evening he’ll hold one of his last training sessions with the A-team, and when the season is over he’ll go home and—deep down—will wish what we all wish whenever we leave something: that it’s going to collapse. That nothing will work without us. That we’re indispensible. But nothing will happen, the rink will remain standing, the club will live on.
* * *
Amat adjusts his helmet and skates straight at an opponent, is checked and falls, but bounces up again. He gets hit and falls, but bounces up again. Peter leans back, smiling the way Kira says he only smiles when he’s starting to fall asleep after a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches and half a glass of red wine. He allows himself fifteen minutes in the stands before he goes back to his office, with his heart feeling much lighter.
* * *
Fatima is standing in the washroom stretching her back, slowly and carefully, so no one hears her whimpering in pain. Sometimes she quite literally rolls off the sofa bed in the morning because her muscles refuse to let her body sit up. She hides it as well as she can, always lets her son sit by the aisle on the bus so he’s facing away from her when they stand up to get off and can’t see the expression on her face. She discreetly lets the ends of the plastic bags in the trash cans at work hang so she doesn’t have to bend down quite so far to get hold of them when she empties them. Every day she finds new ways to compensate.
She apologizes as she creeps into Peter’s office. If she hadn’t he would never even have heard her. Peter glances up from his papers, checks what time it is, and looks surprised:
“But Fatima, what are you doing here now?”
Horrified, she takes two steps back.
“Sorry! I didn’t mean to disturb you. I was just going to empty the trash and water the plants. I can come back when you’ve gone home!”
Peter rubs his forehead. Laughs.
“Hasn’t anyone told you?”
“Told me what?”
“About Amat.”
Peter real
izes far too late that you can’t say something like that to a mother. She immediately assumes that her son has either been in a terrible accident or has been arrested. There’s nothing neutral when you say “Have you heard about your child?” to a parent.
Peter has to take her gently by the shoulders and lead her through the hallway, out into the stands. It takes her thirty seconds to realize what she’s looking at. Then she claps her hands to her face and weeps. A boy training with the junior team, a head shorter than all the others. Her boy.
Her back has never been straighter. She could run a thousand miles.
13
The juniors are taking it easy; they’ve been told to play at seventy-five percent, no one wants any injuries before the game. Amat doesn’t have that luxury. He throws himself into every situation, presses his skates down as hard as if he were trying to cut through to the concrete. He gets nothing for it. The juniors hack and trip him, force him into the boards, bring their sticks down on his wrists, and seek out every little weakness in every piece of equipment in order to hurt him. He gets cross-checked from behind, falls on all fours, sees Lyt’s skates swerve, and doesn’t have time to shut his eyes before the shower of ice hits his cheeks. He doesn’t hear a word from David. After three-quarters of an hour Amat is so sweaty and exhausted and furious that it takes an epic exertion of will not to shriek, “Why am I here? Why did you bring me here if you’re not going to let me play?” He hears them laughing behind his back. He knows that saying anything would only make them laugh even louder.
“I said as much. He’s too weak,” Lars snorts as Amat picks himself up off the ice for the thousandth time.
David looks at the time.
“Let’s do some one-on-one. Amat against Bobo,” he declares.
“Are you kidding? Amat’s done two training sessions in a row, he’s on his last legs!”
“Line them up,” David replies bluntly.
Lars shrugs and blows his whistle. David stays by the boards. He knows his views on hockey aren’t entirely uncontroversial; he knows he has to keep on winning for the club to continue to let him play his way. But it’s also the only thing he cares about. And there are no winners without losers, no stars are born without others in the collective being sacrificed.
* * *
David’s one-on-one training is simple: a line of cones is laid out on the ice, from one end all the way to the other, forming a sort of corridor between them and the boards. One defenseman and one forward meet. If the puck leaves the corridor the defenseman wins, so the exercise forces the forward to find a way to get past in a very confined space.
Lars is setting the line up seven or eight yards from the boards, but David tells him to make it even narrower. Lars looks surprised but does as he says, but then David gestures to him to make it even narrower. A couple of the juniors squirm uncomfortably but say nothing. In the end it’s so narrow that it’s only a couple of yards wide, so narrow that Amat doesn’t stand a chance of using his speed against Bobo; there’s nowhere for him to escape, he has to meet him, body to body. Amat, some ninety pounds lighter than Bobo, can see this too. His thighs are screaming with lactic acid when he sets off with the puck. The exercise naturally presupposes a certain sporting distance between attacker and defender, but Bobo gives him none. He comes straight at him and hits him with all his weight. Amat lands on the ice like a sack of flour. Loud laughter from the bench. David gives a slight gesture to indicate that they should do it again.
“Stand up like a man!” Lars shouts.
Amat adjusts his helmet. Tries to breathe normally. Bobo approaches faster this time, Amat’s vision goes black for a moment, and when he opens his eyes again over by the boards he’s not quite sure how he ended up there. He can’t hear the laughter from the bench anymore, just a muffled echo in his ears. He gets to his feet and collects the puck. Bobo slams him in the chest with his stick. It’s like hitting a low-hanging branch at full speed.
“Get up!” Lars roars.
Amat crawls to his knees. There’s blood dripping from his mouth. He realizes he must have bitten his lip or tongue, or both. Bobo is leaning over him, but no longer cruelly. Almost concerned this time. A glimpse of sympathy in his eyes. Or at least humanity.
“What the hell, Amat . . . ? Just lie there. Don’t you get it, this is what David wants? This is why you’re here?”
Amat glances toward the bench. David is standing there with his arms folded, calmly waiting. Even Lars looks concerned now. And only then does Amat realize what Bobo means. The only thing that matters to David is winning, and only teams with self-confidence win big games. So what do you do the day before the biggest game ever? You let them bulldoze something weaker. Amat isn’t here as a player—he’s here as a sacrifice.
“Just stay lying down,” Bobo tells him.
Amat disobeys him.
“Again,” he whispers, his thighs trembling.
When Bobo doesn’t reply, Amat hits the ice with his stick and roars:
“AGAIN!!!”
He shouldn’t have done that. The whole bench hears him. He hasn’t given Bobo a choice. The back’s eyes darken.
“Okay. Whatever you want. Stupid idiot.”
Amat sets off, Bobo waits toward the center, forcing him out toward the boards, and as Amat skates Bobo ignores the puck altogether and goes straight for his body. Amat’s head hits the boards, he collapses onto the ice, and it takes him ten seconds before he can even get to his knees.
“Again?” Bobo growls through gritted teeth.
Amat doesn’t answer. He leaves a small trail of blood behind him as he goes over to the far blue line, collects the puck, and straightens up. He sees Bobo’s body tense as he circles threateningly across the bear in the center circle and into the corridor of cones to put an end to this, once and for all. “Like a man,” Amat thinks to himself. Like a man.
He shouldn’t have the energy to take off the way he does. He ought to refuse to skate straight at Bobo after the beating he’s taken. But at a certain point in a person’s life you either sink or swim, and nothing really matters anymore. What else could they do to him now beyond this? Fuck them. Bobo heads toward him at full speed, but at the very last instant Amat doesn’t stand up like a man, he folds himself double. When he sees Bobo’s skates change angle he slips the puck between them and nimbly spins his body out of and away from the check.
In one stride he’s past Bobo, in two he’s caught up with the puck, in three he’s inside the offensive zone. He hears Bobo crash into the boards behind him, but now he only has eyes for the goalie. He pulls the puck off to the right, left, right, and waits for the goalie to move sideways, waits, waits, waits, and when he finally sees the goalie’s skates tilt a quarter of an inch he shoots midskate into the opposite corner. Against the flow.
* * *
A lion among bears.
* * *
Bobo sets off in blind fury, all the way from the other side of the rink. He’s one of the worst skaters on the team, but when he reaches Amat with his stick raised he still has enough speed and weight-advantage to put the boy in the hospital. Bobo doesn’t hear the sound of skates approaching rapidly from off to one side behind him, so the pain in his jaw when the shoulder hits it is jarring.
Amat slumps in exhaustion some distance away, untouched. Bobo lies on his back on the ice, blinking up at the lights as Benji’s face leans over him.
“That’s enough, Bobo,” he says.
Bobo nods stiffly. Benji helps him up and then ruefully rubs his own shoulder.
* * *
The sound of a puck hitting the net can be the most wonderful sound in the world when you’re fifteen. When you’re thirty-two as well.
“Write him up for tomorrow,” David says as he leaves the bench.
When the juniors head off to the locker room, Amat is still lying on the ice. Lars’s voice reaches him through a milky haze:
“Gather up the pucks and cones. I usually tell the guys that there’s a fuck
-embargo the night before a game, but there’s no chance of you getting a fuck so just lay off the wanking, because you’re playing tomorrow.”
It takes the boy an hour to half crawl, half stagger to the locker room. It’s empty. The heating has been switched off. His shoes have been shredded and his clothes are lying soaking wet on the floor of the shower. It’s the best day of his life.
14
It’s Saturday, and everything is going to happen today. All the very best, and all the very worst.
* * *
The time is quarter to six in the morning when Maya is hunting through the kitchen cupboards in search of painkillers. She goes back to bed feeling feverish and full of snot, and curls up next to Ana. She’s almost asleep when Ana kicks her and mutters sleepily:
“Play for me.”
“Be quiet.”
“Play for me!”
Maya grunts:
“All right, I’ve got a question for you: always hear me play the guitar every time you ask me to, or have me not KILL YOU WITH IT!?”
Ana sulks in silence for a long time. Then she gently touches Maya’s thigh with her permanently ice-cold toes.
“Please?”
So Maya gives up and starts playing. Because Ana loves falling asleep to the sound of the guitar, and because Maya loves her. The last thing Maya thinks before she, too, falls asleep, with her headache and cough, is that it feels like she ought to spend the day in bed.
* * *
The yard lies in thick darkness as Peter parks the little car outside the garage, beside the last building before the town stops and the forest takes over to the west. He slept for three anxious hours and woke up feeling overwhelmed.
Hog, his childhood friend, is standing in a poorly lit workshop bent over the engine of a Ford so old that it looks like it needs magic rather than a wrench. He’s always been known as Hog, because he played like a wild boar. He’s the same height as Peter but looks twice as wide. His stomach may have softened a little since their hockey years, but his arms and shoulders still look hard enough to have been beaten out of steel. He’s wearing a T-shirt even though the garage door is open, and shakes Peter’s hand, unconcerned about the fact that Peter doesn’t have anything with which to wipe off the sticky mixture of oil and dirt left on his skin. Hog is well aware that the sticky mess will drive his friend mad.