Beartown

She remembers sitting there and thinking of a physics lesson in high school about liquids and cold. Water expands when it freezes; you need to know that if you build a house in Beartown. In the summer the rain seeps into the cracks in the bricks, then when the temperature slips below zero the moisture freezes to ice, and the bricks break. She will remember that that’s how it felt to grow up as the little sister of a dead big brother. A childhood that was one long, desperate attempt not to be liquid, not to seek out the cracks in your parents.

  When you grow up so close to death, you know that it can be many different things to many different people, but that for a parent, death, more than anything else, is silence. In the kitchen, in the hall, on the phone, in the backseat, on Friday evening, on Monday morning, wrapped in pillowcases and crumpled sheets, at the bottom of the toy box in the attic, on the little stool by the kitchen counter, under damp towels that no longer lie strewn across the floor beside the bath. Everywhere, children leave silence behind them.

  Maya knows all too well that this silence can be like water. If you let it make its way too far in, it can freeze into ice and break your heart. Even then, in the police station in Hed, she knew she would survive this. Even then she knew that her mom and dad wouldn’t. Parents don’t heal.

  What an uncomfortable, terrible source of shame it is for the world that the victim is so often the one left with the most empathy for others. There will be days when Maya is asked if she really understood the consequences, and she will nod yes, and of all the feelings inside her then, guilt will be the greatest. Because of the unimaginable cruelty she showed toward the people who loved her the most.

  They sat there in the police station. She told them everything. And she could see in her parents’ eyes how the story made the same terrible sentence echo through them, over and over again. The one every mom and every dad deep down most fear having to admit:

  * * *

  “We can’t protect our children.”

  * * *

  There’s a bus, painted green, parked outside the rink. There’s already a large crowd—parents and players and sponsors and board members. They’re all hugging and waving.

  Kevin’s dad drives right up. Gets out and shakes people’s hands, takes time to talk. Kevin’s mom hesitates for a long while before putting her arm around her son’s shoulders. He lets her do it. She doesn’t say she’s proud, he doesn’t say he knows.

  * * *

  Fatima is standing unhappily in the hall, asking Amat several times if there’s something wrong. He promises that there isn’t. He walks out of the apartment with his skates in his hand. Lifa is waiting outside the door; he looks like he’s been waiting for a while. Amat smiles weakly.

  “Do you want to borrow some money, or what? You don’t usually wait for me.”

  Lifa laughs and holds out his clenched fist, and Amat touches his to it.

  “Kill them!” Lifa demands.

  Amat nods. He pauses, perhaps thinking about saying something, but decides against it. Instead he asks:

  “Where’s Zach?”

  Lifa looks surprised.

  “At training.”

  Amat’s face fills with red shame. Now that he’s been promoted to the juniors, it’s taken no longer than this for him to forget that the boys’ team always has a training session at this time. Lifa holds out his fist again, then changes his mind and hugs his childhood friend hard.

  “You’re the first person from the Hollow to play with the juniors.”

  “Benji’s from the Hollow, sort of . . . ,” Amat says, but Lifa shakes his head firmly.

  “Benji lives in a row house. He’s not one of us.”

  Amat thinks of how he can see Benji’s house from his balcony, but that’s not enough. Lifa arrived in Beartown a few years after Amat. His family lived in Hed first, but the apartments here were cheaper. He played hockey with Amat and Zacharias for a couple of years, until his older brother told him to stop. It was a snobs’ game; only rich men’s kids played hockey, according to his brother. “They’ll hate you, Lifa. They hate us, they’re not going to want someone from around here to be better than them at anything.” He was right. They kept hearing that in the locker room and on the ice when they were young. No one in Beartown ever lets you forget where you’re from. Amat and Zacharias put up with it, Lifa didn’t. While they were at middle school some of the older players snuck into the locker room with markers, scribbled out Beartown Ice Hockey from their tracksuits, and wrote Shantytown Hockey instead.

  All the boys knew who had done it. No one said anything. But Lifa never played again. Now he stands outside an apartment block in the Hollow, hugs Amat with tears in his eyes, and whispers:

  “I saw some little kids, six or seven, playing with hockey sticks outside my block yesterday. They were pretending to be their idols. One was Pavel Datsyuk, one was Sidney Crosby, one was Patrick Kane . . . and you know what the last one shouted? He shouted, ‘I’M AMAT!’ ”

  “That’s a load of crap,” Amat says with a smile, but Lifa shakes his head, holds his friend tight, and says:

  “Kill them, bro. Win the final and turn professional and kill them all. Show them you’re one of us.”

  * * *

  “You can tell the guys there’s a surprise in the locker room,” Kevin’s dad says surreptitiously into his son’s ear.

  “Thanks,” the boy replies.

  They shake hands, but the father puts his other hand on the back of the boy’s shoulder as they do so. Almost a hug.

  The locker room is already echoing with cheerful swearing when Kevin arrives, his teammates bouncing about like sparky little fireworks. Bobo slaps Kevin on the back, clutching his new stick happily in the other hand, and roars:

  “Do you have any idea what these cost? Your dad’s a fucking LEGEND!”

  Kevin knows exactly what the sticks cost. And there’s one for every player on the team in the box on the floor.

  * * *

  Zacharias is last to leave the ice after the boys’ team’s training session; he’s gathered the pucks and cones on his own. He manages to duck at the last moment, and the impact behind him makes the Plexiglas sway. He looks around wildly. The puck came whistling toward him from the wrong direction—from the corridor rather than out on the ice.

  “Watch out, fatso!” Lyt mocks, waving his new stick.

  Zacharias knows exactly how much it cost; if there’s one thing teenagers know the price of, it’s all the things they can’t afford.

  “Suck cock,” he mutters.

  “What did you say?” Lyt snarls instantly, his face darkening.

  “I said: Suck. Cock.”

  Bobo is standing behind Lyt in the corridor, and mumbles something like, “It’s only a joke,” and tries to hold him back. Says something like, “Think of the final.” Lyt restrains himself, at least superficially, and snorts derisively toward Zacharias.

  “Nice stick! Did Social Services buy it for your mom, or what?”

  Zacharias raises his head instead of bowing it.

  “Has your mom been in the locker room putting your jockstrap on again, little Willy? Does she cup your balls carefully, the way you like it? Does she still buy far too big . . .”

  Lyt rushes at him with his stick at head height before he can finish the sentence, and if Bobo hadn’t gotten in the way he would have sent a player two years his junior to the hospital. Amat rushes in behind them, panic-stricken, and stands between them, addressing Lyt as much as Zacharias.

  “For fuck’s sake . . . STOP IT! PLEASE, STOP!”

  Lyt thrusts his arms out, making Bobo let go of him, then he casts a quick, evaluating glance at Amat before he goes over to Zacharias, grabs his stick from him, and smashes it against the wall as hard as he can, breaking it. He drops the pieces on the floor in front of Zacharias and snarls:

  “You’ll have to tell Social Services to buy a better-quality one next time. Someone could get hurt.”

  Lyt turns and goes into the locker room and is met by
the jubilant cries of his teammates who are chanting “the bears from Beartown” and each others’ names in turn.

  Amat picks up the pieces of the broken stick. Zacharias doesn’t help.

  “It’s broken, you idiot . . .”

  Amat loses his cool and flies up, yelling:

  “What the FUCK is wrong with you, Zach? Well? What’s got into you? Why do you have to provoke everyone the whole time?”

  Zacharias just glares back. Years of friendship fall from his eyes.

  “Good luck today, big shot.”

  Amat walks off. Zacharias stands there watching him. When Amat goes into the locker room and throws the pieces of an old stick in the trash, a new stick is waiting for him by his place. It’s the first time in his life he’s had one that isn’t secondhand.

  * * *

  Bobo sits down in the bus, two rows in front of Lyt. He hears Lyt telling the story of Zacharias’s stick, to the accompaniment of jokes about “benefit scroungers” and the “little bastard.” Zach’s mother is on disability benefits. Before that she worked on the same ward of the hospital as Bobo’s mom. When Amat gets on the bus, Bobo makes space for him.

  “I tried to stop him,” Bobo mutters.

  “I know.”

  They both remember the tracksuits with Shantytown Hockey scrawled on them. It was Lyt’s idea. And Bobo did the writing. Lyt lives in the Heights, Bobo lives one minute away from the Hollow. Bobo feels like saying something to Amat about that, but he doesn’t have time to finish the thought. Because a moment later someone cries, “What the hell are the cops doing here?” as a police car rolls into the parking lot and blocks the bus’s exit.

  * * *

  David is late. It’s actually the first time he’s ever been late for anything. Yesterday he threw up three times, and even tried to persuade his girlfriend to have a glass of wine with him to help him calm down. And he never drinks. He has always felt like an outsider in every team he has ever played in, precisely because that seemed to be a ritual that everyone followed, drinking themselves senseless at least a couple of times a year. It was like David became less trustworthy in their eyes because he wasn’t prepared to vomit alongside a teammate on the parquet floor of a hotel bar somewhere.

  His girlfriend looked so surprised. David shrugged his shoulders.

  “People always say it calms the nerves.”

  She started to laugh. Then she started to cry. Then she leaned her forehead against his and whispered:

  “Idiot. I didn’t want to say anything. But I can’t drink wine.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t want to say anything until after the final. I didn’t want . . . to distract you. But I . . . I can’t drink.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She giggled between his lips.

  “You’re as thick as a brick sometimes, you know. Darling, I’m pregnant.”

  So today David is late, and confused, and happy. He walks straight into the tumultuous chaos in the parking lot, and almost gets run down by the police car. It’s simultaneously the happiest and the unhappiest and the most peculiar day of his life.

  * * *

  If it had been a home game maybe they would have let Kevin play. But the final is taking place several hours away, in another city, and they use words like “security” and “risk of absconding.” They’re all just doing their jobs. The police push their way through the surprised parents in the parking lot and climb onto the bus. All the boys start shouting when they ask Kevin to get out. A heavily built man in uniform grabs Kevin’s arm and lifts him up from his seat, and the whole bus explodes in fury. Bobo and Lyt try to block the policeman’s path, and they’re big enough to require four more officers just to get him off the bus. Kevin looks so small in the confusion, vulnerable, defenseless. Perhaps that’s why all the adults around react the way that they do, or perhaps there are thousands of other reasons.

  * * *

  Kevin’s dad grabs the policeman holding his son and yells at him, and when another officer pulls him off, Tails gets the police officer in a headlock. One board member slams his fist as hard as he can into the hood of the police car. Maggan Lyt takes photographs of all the police officers from a distance of less than half a yard, and promises them all personally that they’ll lose their jobs.

  * * *

  Amat and Benji are the only ones who sit quietly in their seats on the bus. Words are difficult things.

  * * *

  Peter is standing at the far side of the parking lot, where the pavement stops and the trees begin. He hates himself intensely for driving here. Because what’s he going to do? Violence is like whisky: children in homes that have too much of it grow up either full of it, or entirely without it. Peter’s dad was capable of murder, but his son can’t fight. Not even on ice. Not even now. Not even Kevin. Peter can’t harm anyone, but he stands here anyway, because he dearly wants to watch when someone else does.

  * * *

  David is the only person who notices him. Their eyes meet. Peter lowers his.

  31

  What makes someone a leader?

  * * *

  Maya undergoes all the obligatory examinations at the hospital. Answers all the questions. Doesn’t cry, doesn’t complain, doesn’t argue, is helpful, accommodating. Kira, on the other hand, is so beside herself that at times she can’t even be in the same room. Her phone rings nonstop. She has activated her whole legal practice now, and her daughter is lying on a cold bed in a bare room and knows that she’s started a war. Her mother needs to take command, charge the enemy, act—she won’t be able to cope otherwise. So Maya gets her own phone and sends Ana a text message, saying: “War now.” A few seconds later the reply arrives: “You and me against the world!”

  * * *

  David has seen hundreds of leaders during the course of his career in hockey. Formal ones and natural ones, those who shout, and those who keep quiet. He didn’t know he could be one himself until Sune sent him out onto the ice with a whistle and a gang of seven-year-olds. “I’m not a good coach,” David said, and Sune ruffled his hair and replied: “People who think they’re good coaches never are.” The old bastard was both right and wrong.

  After the police car drove off with Kevin, it took an hour for David to get all the players back on board the bus, and to get all the parents to realize that nothing was going to get better as a result of them standing there shouting. Now they’ve been driving for three hours and the bus is still vibrating with cell phones, rocking as the juniors rush up and down reading each others’ screens. So far no one in Beartown seems to know why Kevin was taken away—the police are refusing to give any information—so the rumor mill rolls on between the seats with greater and greater intensity. Even the adults are involved; Lars is so agitated that he’s salivating.

  David, on the other hand, sits alone and silent at the front, staring at the text on his own phone. It’s from Kevin’s dad. He’s just found out what his son is accused of. One of the first things you learn as a leader, whether you choose the position or have it forced upon you, is that leadership is as much about what you don’t say as what you do say.

  * * *

  A mother is sitting beside a bed, holding her daughter’s hands tightly in hers, all four of them shaking. The daughter leans her forehead against her mother’s.

  “We’re going to survive this, Mom.”

  “Darling child, you’re not supposed to be consoling me, I’m the one who ought to be consoling you.”

  “You are, Mom. You are.”

  Kira’s phone rings again. Maya realizes it’s the law firm. She nods to her mother and strokes her cheek, and her mother kisses her and whispers:

  “I’ll be just outside in the hallway. I’m not leaving you.”

  All four hands are still shaking.

  * * *

  For ten years David has nurtured these players for this precise moment. He has gotten them to sacrifice everything, burn themselves out; he has taught them t
o stand tall under pressure even when their shoulders and necks are howling with pain. What’s that worth if they don’t win the final now? What is a game if you don’t want to be the best at it?

  David’s strongest belief about hockey has always been that the world outside the rink mustn’t encroach upon the world inside it. They need to be separate universes. Outside, real life is complicated and frightening and hard, but inside the rink it is straightforward and comprehensible. If David hadn’t kept the worlds so clearly divided, these guys, with all the shit they’ve had to deal with out in the real world, would have been broken even as little kids. But the rink was their refuge. Their one happy place. No one could take that from them: the fact that they were winners there.

  That doesn’t just apply to the boys. David himself has often felt odd and out of place, but never on ice. It’s the last place where the collective functions, where the team takes precedence over the self. So how far are you allowed to go to protect your universe? How much of leadership is what you say, and how much is what you don’t say?

  * * *

  The nurse is well aware of who Maya is, but she tries not to let it show. The nurse’s husband, Hog, is one of Peter’s best friends, and played hockey with him half his life. But just now, when she came along the corridor, it was as if Peter and Kira didn’t even recognize her. They spoke to her as if through glass, but she didn’t take offense. She’s seen it before; it’s caused by trauma, and means that they only register her uniform when they talk to her, not her face. The nurse is used to being seen as a function to the point where patients and relatives forget that she’s a person. It doesn’t bother her. In fact, if anything, it actually makes her take greater pride in her work.

  When she’s alone in the room with Maya, she leans forward and says:

  “I know this is really unpleasant. We’re trying to do everything as quickly as we can.”

  The girl looks her in the eye and nods, biting hard on the inside of her lip. The nurse is usually very careful to maintain a professional distance; that’s what she teaches her younger colleagues. “There’ll be people here that you know, but you need to treat them as patients. It’s a question of leadership,” she usually says. But the words catch in her throat now.