Beartown

  So Amat creeps out into the hall and puts his jacket on. He’s not going to let Zacharias get beaten up for his sake, and he can’t risk anyone trying to break into his mom’s apartment in their hunt for him.

  When Zacharias comes back into the room, his best friend is gone. Out of loyalty.

  Bang. Bang.

  Ann-Katrin is standing at the kitchen window when the young men come through the trees. Lyt at the front, with a further eight or nine behind him. Some are from the juniors’ team—she recognizes them—and a few are older brothers, even bigger. They’re all wearing hoodies and dark scarves. They’re not a team, not a gang, they’re a lynch mob.

  Bobo goes out into the snow to meet them. Ann-Katrin stands in the window and watches her son stand with his head bowed while Lyt lays his hand on his shoulder, explains the strategy, gives him orders. All his life Bobo has wanted just one thing: to be allowed to belong to something. His mom watches her boy try to explain something to Lyt, but Lyt is way beyond reasoning now. He shouts and shoves Bobo, presses his index finger to his forehead, and even from the window his mother can read the word “betrayal” on his lips. The young men pull their hoods over their heads, mask themselves with their scarves, disappear among the trees. Ann-Katrin’s son is left standing there alone, until he changes his mind.

  Hog is bent over an engine when Bobo comes into the garage. His dad half gets up, and father and son glance at each other without either of them properly looking up. The father bends over the engine again without speaking. Bobo fetches a hoodie and a scarf.

  Bang.

  Filip is eating dinner with his parents. They don’t say much. Filip is the best back on the team; one day he will be much more than that. When he was little and hopelessly behind boys the same age as him in every measure of physical development, everyone kept waiting for him to stop playing, but the only thing he never stopped doing was fighting. When he was the weakest on the team, he learned to compensate by reading the game and always being in the right place at the right time. Now he’s one of the strongest. And one of the most loyal. He would have been a force to be reckoned with, dressed in a hooded top and a scarf.

  The restaurant in Hed isn’t particularly good, but his mother insisted that they come here tonight, right after the meeting, the whole family. They stay until it closes. So when the boys—boys Filip has never been able to say no to if they ask for something—knock on the door of the family’s house, Filip, just as he always is in hockey, is in the right place at the right time. Not at home.

  Bang.

  Amat shivers in the wind, but stands still beneath one of the streetlights on purpose. He wants them to see him from a distance, so that no one else has to get involved. He will never be able to explain how he dares to do this, but perhaps you get tired of being frightened if you’ve been frightened long enough.

  He doesn’t know how many there are as they make their way between the buildings, but they look so obviously violent that he knows he won’t manage to get a single punch in before they’re all over him. His heart is beating in his throat. He doesn’t know if they want to scare him, if they want to mark him to make an example out of him, or if perhaps they’re seriously planning to make sure he can never play hockey again. One of them is holding something—a baseball bat, perhaps. As they pass the last streetlight before his, a metal pipe glints in another hand. Amat shields himself from the first blow with his lower arm, but the second hits him on the back of the head, then a flash of pain shoots up his spine as the metal pipe hits him across the thigh. He swipes and bites and drags his way through the horde of bodies, but this isn’t a fight, it’s an assault. He’s already bleeding by the time he hits the snow.

  Bang.

  Bobo has never been good at much except fighting. That’s something it’s easy to be appreciated for when you grow up in the right surroundings. He isn’t just strong and disconcertingly resilient, his reaction time is pretty astonishing considering how sluggish and slow he is otherwise. But he’s never been very fit; he’s too heavy to run long distances, so he’s struggling to keep up with the other masked figures without wearing himself out before they get there. He knows he won’t have many seconds to show them who he really is. How loyal he can be, how brave, how selfless.

  They slow down when they see Amat. The fifteen-year-old is standing alone, waiting for them.

  “He’s got balls, I’ll give him that, for not running and hiding,” Lyt mutters.

  When the first blow comes, Amat shields himself with his lower arm, but he doesn’t see much after that. Bobo has a couple of seconds in which to step forward from the back and punch Lyt just once in the face as hard as he can, knocking his scarf from his face and sending the huge young man’s body crashing into a wall. Bobo elbows another guy—one he’s played hockey with since they could barely skate—in the nose, making it explode in a shower of blood.

  He only has those few seconds before his teammates realize what he is. A traitor. Amat is lying on the ground, and Bobo fights like a wild animal, headbutting and kneeing and whirling his hands around like hammers. In the end he succumbs to their superior numbers and the collective weight of his attackers. Lyt sits on his chest and rains down blow after blow after blow, bellowing, “You bitch! You bitch! You lying fucking cowardly little traitor bitch!” into the darkness.

  Bang.

  A car stops twenty yards away between the buildings. Someone who evidently doesn’t want to get involved, but who still puts the car’s headlights on full beam. For a few moments the whole scene is illuminated. A voice in Lyt’s ear shouts: “Someone’s coming! Let’s go! Let’s go!” And then they’re gone. Some are swearing, some limping, but the boots march off into the night and disappear.

  Amat lies curled up in the fetal position for a long time, not daring to believe that they’ve stopped kicking him. Slowly, slowly, he moves his limbs one after the other to check that nothing’s broken. He turns his head slightly to one side; it’s throbbing with pain, his vision is clouded, but he sees his teammate lying in the snow beside him.

  “Bobo?”

  The huge boy’s face is as battered as his knuckles. At least a couple of their opponents must have been left barely able to get away under their own steam, they must have helped each other leave. When Bobo opens his mouth, a steady trickle of blood oozes from where there should have been a front tooth.

  “Are you okay?” Bobo asks.

  “Yes . . . ,” Amat groans.

  Bobo’s mouth cracks into a smile.

  “Again?”

  Amat snorts. It takes an immense effort for him to hiss:

  “AGAIN!”

  “AGAIN!” Bobo yells.

  Smiling, they slump back on the ground, wheezing and shaking.

  “Why? Why help me?” Amat whispers.

  Bobo spits some red slime on the ground.

  “Well . . . I’ll never get a place in Hed’s A-team anyway. But Beartown might actually be so bad next season that even I stand a chance.”

  Amat starts to laugh, but he shouldn’t have done that, because only then does he realize that one of his ribs is probably broken. He screams, and Bobo might have laughed at him even louder if his jaw hadn’t been so painful.

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  * * *

  The car a little distance away, a Saab, switches off its headlights. There are two men in black jackets sitting in it. They hesitate for a few moments. It’s always hard to know who you can trust in Beartown. But the men in the black jackets have grown up in the Bearskin pub, where loyalty is perhaps prized above all else. And they’re violent men, they know how to terrify people, so perhaps they appreciate the courage of someone who knows he’s going to get a beating but still doesn’t run. So in the end they get out and walk between the streetlights. Amat squints through swollen eyelids as they lean over him.

  “Was that you in the car?” he whimpers.

  They nod almost imperceptibly. Amat tries to sit up.

  “You saved our li
ves, thanks.”

  One of the men leans closer and says gruffly:

  “Don’t thank us, thank Ramona. Hell, we still don’t know if we can trust you. But you could have kept your trap shut at that meeting; you had a fuck of a lot to lose saying what you did about Kevin. And Ramona looked into your eyes. She trusts you. And we trust her.”

  He hands Amat an envelope. As he does so, the other man fixes his eyes on the boy and says, perhaps in jest, perhaps not:

  “You’d better make sure you really do end up being as good at hockey as everyone thinks.”

  When the Saab’s engine starts up again and the men disappear into the night, Amat looks down into the envelope. Inside it are five crumpled thousand-kronor notes.

  * * *

  It’s hard to know who you can trust in Beartown; the man in the black jacket who’s driving the Saab knows that as well as anyone else. So he judges people by what he can see: he saw Kevin’s dad go to the Hollow and give Amat enough money to pay his mom’s rent that month, and he saw the boy throw it in the snow. He saw the same boy stand up at the meeting in front of the whole town, with everything to lose, without wavering. And he saw the boy tonight, when he knew he was going to be attacked. He didn’t run, he stood out here and waited.

  The man in the black jacket doesn’t know if that’s enough to trust someone, but the only person in the world he really trusts is Ramona, and he’s only tried to lie to her once. He was a teenager, she asked if he’d found a lost wallet on the pool table, he said, “No,” and she called him out on it instantly. When he asked her how she knew, she hit him in the head with a broom handle and roared: “Stupid boy, I own a fucking BAR! Don’t you think I’ve had a bit of experience when it comes to working out if men are lying or not?”

  * * *

  Perhaps one day the man in the black jacket will think about this too: why he only wondered if it was Kevin or Amat who was telling the truth. Why Maya’s word wasn’t enough.

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  In a rehearsal room in Hed, a boy puts down an instrument to open a door that someone has just knocked on. Benji is standing outside, leaning on his crutches, with a pair of skates in his hand. The bass player bursts out laughing. They go to a small outdoor rink behind Hed’s indoor rink. Benji has better balance on his crutches than the bass player has on the skates. They kiss each other for the first time on that ice.

  Bang.

  Two girls are walking through a pitch-black forest. They stop in a clearing and switch their flashlights on. Do their secret handshake. Swear loyalty to each other. Then they each raise a shotgun, and fire shot after shot out across the lake.

  * * *

  Bang.

  * * *

  In the rink in Beartown, a father stands at the center circle. Stares down at the bear painted on it. When he was really small, his first day in skating class, he was terrified of that bear.

  * * *

  Sometimes he still is.

  Bang-bang-bang.

  46

  Another morning comes. It always does. Time always moves at the same rate, only feelings have different speeds. Every day can mark a whole lifetime or a single heartbeat, depending on who you spend it with.

  * * *

  Hog is standing in his garage, wiping oil from his hands on a cloth, scratching his beard. Bobo is sitting on a chair with a wrench in his hand, staring out into space with his face covered in scabs and bruises. They’re taking him to the dentist tomorrow; hockey has caused gaps before, but this is different. His dad’s breathing sounds strained as he pulls up a stool.

  “Talking about feelings doesn’t come naturally to me,” he says, addressing the floor.

  “Don’t worry,” his son murmurs.

  “I try to show in other ways that I . . . I love you, and your brother and sister.”

  “We know, Dad.”

  Hog clears his throat, his lips barely moving beneath his beard.

  “We need to talk more, you and me. After this business with Kevin . . . I should have talked to you. About . . . girls. You’re seventeen, practically a grown man, and you’re incredibly strong. That brings with it a certain responsibility. You need to . . . behave.”

  Bobo nods.

  “I’d never, Dad . . . to a girl . . . I’d never . . .”

  Hog stops him.

  “It’s not just about not hurting anyone. It’s about not keeping your mouth shut too. I’ve been cowardly. I should have stood tall. And you . . . Christ, boy . . .”

  He pats his son gently on his bruises. Doesn’t want to say that he’s proud, because Ann-Katrin has forbidden him to be proud of the boy for fighting. As if you could forbid pride.

  “What Kevin did, Dad, I’d never . . . ,” Bobo whispers.

  “I believe you.”

  His son’s voice cracks with embarrassment.

  “But you don’t get it . . . With a girl, I mean, I’ve never, you know . . .”

  His dad rubs his temples awkwardly.

  “I’m not good at this, Bobo. But . . . you mean . . .”

  “I’m a virgin.”

  His dad massages his beard and tries to look like he wouldn’t rather be hit in the head with a chisel than have this conversation.

  “Okay, but you know about, well . . . the birds and the bees and all that crap . . . you know how it all happens?”

  “I’ve seen porn, if that’s what you’re asking,” Bobo says, with big, uncomprehending eyes.

  His dad makes a restrained cough.

  “I need . . . Okay, I don’t even know where to start. It was easier telling you how an engine works.”

  Bobo clasps the wrench in his lap in his big hands. His shoulders will soon be as broad as his dad’s, but his voice still sounds young when he asks:

  “Okay, I . . . Does it make you an idiot if you . . . if you want to get married first? I mean, I’m thinking I want it to be special, the first time . . . I want to be in love with someone, I don’t want to just . . . fuck. Does that make me an idiot?”

  His dad’s laughter echoes around the garage so suddenly that Bobo drops the wrench. Laughter isn’t a sound this garage is used to.

  “No, boy, no, no, no. Christ. Pull yourself together. Is that what you wanted to know? That doesn’t make you anything. That’s your private life, and it’s no one else’s damn business.”

  Bobo nods.

  “Can I ask something else, then?”

  “Okay.”

  “How do you know if you’ve got a nice-looking cock?”

  His dad shuts his eyes and rubs his temples.

  “I need whisky if I’m going to talk about this.”

  * * *

  Ann-Katrin is standing hidden behind one of the doors outside the garage. Hears everything. She’s never been more proud, of either of them. The idiots.

  * * *

  Fatima takes the bus through the forest with her son; they are going to Hed. She sits in the next room while he makes his witness statement. She’s never been more scared, for both herself and him. The police ask if he was drunk, if it was dark in the room, if it smelled of marijuana, if he has any particular feelings for the young woman in question. He doesn’t hesitate on a single detail, doesn’t stammer over his answers, his eyes don’t flit about.

  * * *

  Kevin is sitting in the same room a couple of hours later. They ask him if he’s sticking to his version of the story, if he still claims that the young woman had sexual intercourse with him entirely voluntarily. Kevin looks at his lawyer. Then he glances at his dad. And then he looks the police officer right in the eye and nods. Promises. Swears. Sticks to his story.

  * * *

  All their lives, girls are told that the only thing they need to do is their best. That that will be enough, as long as they give everything they’ve got. When they themselves become mothers, they promise their daughters that it’s true, that if we just do as well as we can, if we’re honest and work hard, look after our family and love each other, then everything wi
ll be all right. Everything will be fine, there’s nothing to be frightened of. Children need the lie to be brave enough to sleep in their beds; parents need it to be able to get up the next morning.

  Kira is sitting in her office, and stares at her colleague when she comes in. Her colleague is holding her phone in her hand; she’s got a friend in the police station in Hed, and her face is red with sorrow and rage. She can’t bring herself to say the words to Kira. She writes them down on a piece of paper, when Kira takes it her colleague is still holding onto it, and when Kira’s body hits the floor her colleague is there to catch her. Screams with her. There are two sentences on the piece of paper. Six words. Preliminary investigation closed. Lack of evidence.

  All our lives we try to protect those we love. It’s not enough. We can’t. Kira stumbles out to the car. Drives straight out into the forest, as far as she can. The snow muffles the sound between the trees as she slams the door so hard that the metal buckles.

  * * *

  Then she stands there and howls, with an echo that will never fall silent in her heart.

  * * *

  At lunchtime Kevin’s mom takes the garbage out. All the houses are silent, all the doors closed. No one invites her in for coffee. The lawyer has sent her an email today, two sentences and six words that say her boy is innocent.

  But the street is silent. Because it knows the truth. Just like she does. And she has never felt more alone.

  * * *

  The voice comes gently, the hand is placed on her shoulder with emphatic empathy.

  “Come and have some coffee,” Maggan Lyt says.

  When Kevin’s mom is sitting in the kitchen of her neighbor’s house, cozy and homey with family photographs hanging slightly askew on the walls without anyone seeming to care, Maggan says to her:

  “Kevin’s innocent. This sanctimonious town may think it can pass its own laws and mete out its own justice, but Kevin is innocent. The police have said so now, haven’t they? You and I know he’d never do what they accused him of. Never! Not our Kevin! This damn town . . . hypocrites and morality police. We’re going to take over the club in Hed, your husband and my husband and the other sponsors, the boys on the team, and we’ll crush Beartown Ice Hockey. Because when this town tries to oppress us, we stick together. Don’t we?”