Beartown

  She wants to kill him. She wants to kill Kevin.

  * * *

  Ann-Katrin and Hog are standing in the parking lot waiting for the team bus to get back from the final. Ann-Katrin will always remember how it sounds, the silence in the town tonight that still hums like a dense buzz of voices, the darkened houses all around where she just knows people are awake, phones and computers sending words to each other, more and more angry, more and more vile. People don’t talk much in Beartown. Even so, sometimes it feels like it’s the only thing they do. Hog touches her arm gently.

  “We have to wait, Ann-Katrin. We can’t get involved in this until . . . we really know.”

  “Peter’s one of your best friends.”

  “We don’t know what happened, darling. No one knows what happened. We can’t get involved.”

  Ann-Katrin nods. Of course they can’t get involved. There are always two sides to every story. You have to listen to Kevin’s version. She tries to convince herself of that. By every god and heaven and all the holy mothers of eternity, she really does try.

  * * *

  Ana is standing on the floor with her hands covering her face in shame. Maya is sitting in bed, shocked, and the remains of the computer are spread about the room. Kira goes in and takes each of their hands in hers.

  “Ana, you know how much I love you. Like one of my own.”

  Ana wipes her face as big drops fall to the floor from her nose. Kira kisses her hair.

  “But you have to go home for a little while, Ana. We need to be . . . on our own as a family.”

  Maya wants to protest on Ana’s behalf, but she’s too tired. When the front door closes again, Maya lies down and goes back to sleep. And sleeps and sleeps and sleeps.

  * * *

  Peter drives his daughter’s best friend home. The houses are all dark, but he can still feel eyes looking out of the windows. When Ana gets out he wishes he could say something, be a wise parent offering comfort and encouragement and instruction. But he has no words. So all that comes out is:

  “It’s going to be okay, Ana.”

  Ana tugs her jacket tight around herself and pulls her woolly hat down over her forehead, and tries to look like she believes it, for his sake. She doesn’t succeed. Peter can see the girl shaking with silent rage, and thinks back to a time, several years ago, when Kira and Maya had had an argument. Their daughter had one of her first teenage outbursts, and Kira was left sitting in the kitchen, crushed, sniffing: “She hates me. My own daughter hates me.” Peter held his wife tight and whispered: “Your daughter admires you and needs you. And if you ever doubt that, just look at Ana. Of all the people your daughter could have chosen as her best friend, she’s picked one who’s just like you. One who wears her heart on her sleeve.” Peter feels like getting out of the car and giving Ana a hug now, telling her not to be frightened, but he’s not that sort of person. And he’s too frightened himself to be able to lie.

  * * *

  When the car has gone Ana creeps into the house and wakes the dogs, then takes them as far out into the forest as she can. Then she sits there with her face buried in their fur and cries. They breathe on her neck, lick her ear, nudge her with their noses. She will never understand how some people can prefer other people to animals.

  * * *

  The Ovich family house has no empty beds tonight. Gaby’s two children are sleeping in their uncle’s bed, Adri and Katia in their mother’s, their mother on the sofa. The daughters insist that they can sleep on the furniture in the living room, but their mother yells at them until they back down. When Gaby gets back from the hospital with Benji early the next morning, his sisters and mother look at his crutches and his foot in a cast and hit him over the head and shout that he’ll be the death of them and that he means the world to them and that they love him and that he’s an imbecile.

  He sleeps on the floor beside his bed, below his sister’s kids. When he wakes up the pair of them have both moved down with their covers and have curled up next to him. They’re sleeping in their hockey jerseys. Number “16” on the back.

  * * *

  Kira is sitting on the edge of her daughter’s bed. When Maya and Ana were children, Peter used to joke about how different they were, especially when they were asleep. “When Maya’s slept in a bed you don’t even have to make it afterward. When Ana’s slept there you have to start by moving it back to the right side of the room.” Maya would wake up with the body language of a sleepy calf; Ana like a drunk, angry middle-aged man who was trying to find his pistol. The only thing anyone could think of that the two little girls had in common was how protective they were of their names. Maya has never been more angry than the first time she realized there were other children with her name, which is saying a lot seeing as she was at the age when it was perfectly normal to demand that the plastic handles on her cutlery always matched the color of the food, or to have a tantrum at bedtime because “Daddy, my feet are the same size and I DON’T WANT THAT!!!” Nothing made her more angry than the fact that she wasn’t alone in being called what she was called. For both her and Ana, a name was a personal possession, physical property in the same way as lungs and eyeballs, and in her world all the other Mayas and Anas were thieves. These girls wanted to be anything but ordinary.

  * * *

  People grow up mercilessly fast.

  * * *

  Peter closes the door without a sound. Hangs the keys to the Volvo on the hook in the hall. He sits in the kitchen with Kira for a very long time without a word being spoken. Eventually Kira whispers:

  “This isn’t about us now. It’s all about how she’s going to get through this.”

  Peter stares fixedly at the table.

  “She’s so strong,” he says. “I don’t know what to say to her; she’s already stronger than me.”

  Kira’s fingernails dig fresh grooves in her skin.

  “I want to kill him, Peter. I want . . . I want to see him die.”

  “I know.”

  Kira is shaking as he crosses the force field and holds her, and they whimper and sniff together, holding back hard so as not to wake the children. They will never stop blaming themselves for this.

  “It’s not your fault, Peter. It wasn’t hockey’s fault. What is it they say . . . ‘it takes a village to raise a child’?” she whispers.

  “Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe we picked the wrong village,” he replies.

  * * *

  The juniors are picked up from the rink by their parents. They go home in silent cars to silent houses where the only lighting comes from an assortment of screens. Before dawn, Lyt goes over to Bobo’s. They don’t talk much, just share the feeling that they have to do something. Have to act. They walk through the town, picking up more juniors outside their homes. Like a black swarm they move between gardens, fists clenched under the dark sky, wild eyes staring out across empty streets. Hour after hour, until the sun goes up. They feel threatened, feel that they’re under attack. They want to shout out to each other what this team means to them—loyalty and love—and how much they love their team captain. But they don’t have the words, so they try to find other ways to show it instead. They walk side by side, like a menacing army. They would dearly like to rescue something. Damage something. Destroy. They’re on the hunt for an enemy, any will do.

  * * *

  Amat gets home and goes straight to bed. Fatima sits quietly in the other room. The next morning they take the bus to the rink. No one says a word there either. Amat puts his skates on, picks up his stick, and skates furiously across the ice, hurting himself by crashing into the boards at the other end. He doesn’t allow himself to cry until he’s sweating so much that no one can see.

  * * *

  In a house a mom and a dad are sitting at a kitchen table.

  “I’m just saying . . . what if . . . . . .?” the mother says.

  “Do you believe that of our SON!? What sort of mother are you if you can seriously BELIEVE THAT OF OUR CHILD!??
? the father roars.

  She shakes her head in despair, staring down at the floor. He’s right, of course. What sort of mother is she? She whispers, “Of course not,” of course she doesn’t believe that of their son. She tries to explain that everything’s just so mixed up, no one’s thinking rationally right now, we just need to try to get some sleep.

  “I’m not going to sleep as long as Kevin’s being held by the police, you can be very fucking clear on that point!” the father declares.

  She nods. She doesn’t know if she’s ever going to sleep again.

  “I know, darling. I know.”

  * * *

  In another house, another mom and another dad are sitting at another kitchen table. Ten years ago they left Canada and moved to Beartown, because it was the safest, most secure place they could think of. Because they so desperately needed somewhere in the world where it felt as if nothing bad could happen.

  They’re not talking now. They don’t say a word all night long. Each of them knows what the other is thinking anyway. “We can’t protect our children.”

  * * *

  We can’t protect our children we can’t protect our children we can’t protect our children.

  35

  Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion. The world becomes much easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn’t through love, because love is hard. It makes demands. Hate is simple.

  So the first thing that happens in a conflict is that we choose a side, because that’s easier than trying to hold two thoughts in our heads at the same time. The second thing that happens is that we seek out facts that confirm what we want to believe—comforting facts, ones that permit life to go on as normal. The third is that we dehumanize our enemy. There are many ways of doing that, but none is easier than taking her name away from her.

  So when night comes and the truths spread, no one types “Maya” on their cell phone or computer in Beartown, they type “M.” Or “the young woman.” Or “the slut.” No one talks about “the rape,” they all talk about “the allegation.” Or “the lie.” It starts with “nothing happened,” moves on to “and if anything did happen, it was voluntary,” escalates to “and if it wasn’t voluntary, she only has herself to blame; what did she think was going to happen if she got drunk and went into his room with him?” It starts with “she wanted it” and ends with “she deserved it.”

  It doesn’t take long to persuade each other to stop seeing a person as a person. And when enough people are quiet for long enough, a handful of voices can give the impression that everyone is screaming.

  * * *

  Maya does everything she has to do, everything everyone asks her to do. She answers all the questions from the police, goes for all the tests at the hospital, spends several hours travelling in the car to see a therapist who keeps wanting her to remember, over and over again, the things she just wants to forget. Wanting her to feel what she wants to suppress, cry when she wants to scream, talk when she wants to die. Ana calls her, but Maya’s switched off her phone. It’s full of anonymous text messages. People were so quick to decide what the truth was that they bought pay-as-you-go phones just to be able to tell her what she is without her knowing who they are.

  She gets home and her jacket slips off onto the hall floor, as if she has shrunk out of it. She becomes smaller and smaller, her organs deserting her one by one. Lungs, kidneys, liver, heart. In the end there is only poison left.

  * * *

  Leo is sitting at his computer when he hears her stop in the doorway of his bedroom. She hasn’t been in here since they were little.

  “What are you doing?” she asks, barely above a whisper.

  “Playing a game,” Leo replies.

  He’s disconnected his computer from the Internet. His phone is lying at the bottom of his backpack. His big sister is standing a couple of yards away with her arms clasped tight around her, looking at the bare walls where there were jerseys and posters hanging yesterday.

  “Can I play?” she whispers.

  He fetches an extra chair from the kitchen. They play without talking for hours.

  * * *

  Kira is at the office. Sitting in meeting after meeting with other lawyers. Fighting. Peter is at home cleaning every square inch of it, scrubbing the sink until he can feel the lactic acid, washing all the bedclothes and all the towels, washing every glass they have by hand.

  When they lost Isak there were moments when they wished they had an enemy, someone who was guilty, just to have someone to punish. There were people who advised them to talk to God about it, but it’s hard to maintain an ordinary conversational tone with God when you’re a parent, hard to believe in a higher power when your fingertips are tracing the years marked on a gravestone. It’s not the fault of mathematics; the equation for calculating a lifetime is simple: take the four-figure number to the right of the stone, subtract the number to the left, and multiply the result by 365, then add an extra day for each leap year. But however you do it, it doesn’t make sense. You count, count again, count again, but it never comes right. However you do the sums it’s never enough. The days are too few to amount to a whole life.

  They hated it when people spoke of “the condition,” because conditions are untouchable. They wanted to have a face, a perpetrator. They needed someone to drown under the weight of all the guilt, because otherwise they themselves would be dragged beneath the surface. They were so selfish, they know that, but when they didn’t have anyone to punish there was only the sky left to scream at, and then their rage was too great for any human being to bear.

  They wanted an enemy. Now they’ve got one. And now they don’t know if they ought to sit next to their daughter or hunt down the person who harmed her, if they ought to help her live or see to it that he dies. Unless they’re the same thing. Hate is so much easier than its opposite.

  * * *

  Parents don’t heal. Nor do children.

  * * *

  Every child in every town in every country has at some point played games that are dangerous to the point of being lethal. Every gang of friends includes someone who always takes things too far, who is the first to jump from the highest rock, the last to jump across the rails when the train comes. That child isn’t the bravest, just the least frightened. And possibly the one who feels he or she doesn’t have as much to lose as the others.

  Benji always sought out the strongest physical sensations because they displaced other feelings. Adrenaline and the taste of blood in his mouth and throbbing pain all over his body became a pleasant buzz in his head. He liked scaring himself, because when you’re scared you can’t think of anything else. He’s never cut his own skin, but he understands those who do. Sometimes he has longed so much for a pain he can see and focus on that he’s taken the train to a town several hours away, waited until dark, and then sought out the biggest bastards he could find to start a fight with, and then fought until they had no choice but to give him a serious beating. Because sometimes, when it seriously hurt on the outside, it hurt a little bit less in other places.

  The bass player sees him before he gets off the stage. He’s so surprised that he forgets to hide his smile. He’s wearing the same black clothes.

  “You came.”

  “The entertainment on offer around here is pretty limited.”

  The bass player laughs. They drink beer three steps apart, and overweight, drunk men come up from time to time and slap Benji on the back. Praise him on account of his broken foot, curse the fact that the referee was evidently a bastard. Then they mutter, “And that business with Kevin, that’s a fucking disgrace.” The same back-and-forth with seven or eight men of varying ages. They all want to buy number sixteen a beer. The bass player thinks he’s probably imagining it, but for every slap on the back, it feels as if Benji retreats slightly. The bass player has been here before; this isn’t the first bo
y he’s met who behaves like he’s living under an assumed identity. And perhaps it is different in a place like this, where you don’t want to let anyone down.

  When they’re alone at last, the bass player empties his glass and says quietly:

  “I’m gonna get going. I can see you’ve got . . . a lot of people who want to talk about hockey.”

  Benji grabs hold of his arm and whispers, “No . . . let’s go somewhere,” and he catches fire.

  The bass player goes out into the night and takes the path off to the right of the building. Benji waits ten minutes before going outside and heading off to the left, taking a shortcut up through the forest before limping back to meet the boy among the trees, swearing and stumbling.

  “Are you sure you know how to play hockey? You look like you’ve been doing something wrong,” the bass player says, smiling at Benji’s crutches.

  “Are you sure you know how to play the bass? It sounded like you were tuning up the whole way through the gig,” Benji retorts.

  They smoke. The wind gets up in the darkness, whistling across the snow, but at the last moment it seems to decide to leave the boys alone. Only touches them fleetingly, tentatively, like hesitant fingertips touching someone else’s skin for the first time.

  “I like your hair,” the bass player says, breathing through it.

  Benji shuts his eyes, lets go of his crutches; he wishes he’d had more to drink. Smoked more. He’s misjudged his impulse control, left the little bastard awake when he should have knocked it out properly. He tries to let everything happen, but when he lays his palms on the other boy’s back they clench automatically. The boy jerks in surprise, Benji’s body tenses, and he purposefully puts his weight on his broken foot until the pain fires burning arrows up through his whole skeleton. Gently he pushes the bass player away from him. Picks up his crutches and whispers:

  “This was a mistake . . .”

  The bass player stands alone in the darkness among the trees with his feet lost in the snow while number sixteen limps back toward the Barn. He says:

  “Big secrets turn us into small men.”