He was worried his son wouldn’t want to play hockey, because that would have left him excluded. Tails was terrified at the thought of the boy taking up a sport that Tails didn’t know anything about, so he’d end up being the lost dad in the stands who kept getting the rules wrong and couldn’t take part in discussions. He didn’t want his son to be ashamed of him.
“Give me the charger, then!” his son is yelling at his big sister.
He’s almost a teenager. You used to have to drag him to training, and now you can barely get him away, and he begs and pleads about other things now. In the past few days, about being allowed to play hockey in Hed instead. Like all the best players are going to start doing.
“It’s not YOUR charger, you stupid asshat, it’s MINE!” the boy shouts at his sister as she goes into her room and slams the door.
Tails reaches out his arm to touch him and say something, but the boy hasn’t seen his dad yet, and has time to kick the door and yell:
“Give me that charger, you fucking BITCH, you haven’t got any guys to talk to on the phone anyway! Everyone knows you WISH you’d been raped but there’s no one who WANTS to do it!”
Tails doesn’t remember exactly what happened after that. He remembers Elisabeth desperately tugging at his arms from behind, trying to make him let go. His son is dangling, horrified, in the grip of his father’s huge hands, and Tails hits him against the wall time and time again, shouting at him. His daughter opens her door, numb with shock. Elisabeth finally manages to wrestle her almost 220-pound husband to the floor, and he lies there hugging his son. They’re both crying, one out of fear and the other out of shame.
“You can’t become that sort of man. I won’t let you . . . I love you, I love you so much . . . you need to be better than me . . . ,” Tails repeats, over and over again, in his son’s ear, without letting go of him.
* * *
Fatima rather hesitantly puts the little car in reverse. She’s borrowed it from Bobo’s parents; they had to nag her to agree to take it. She saw Bobo’s battered face, just like Amat’s, but she said nothing. Still says nothing. She just drives her son past Hed, through the forest, all the way to a city that has the kind of store her son is looking for. She asks if he “needs any hockey things” as they pass a sports store. He shakes his head, and says nothing about the fact that he may not even have a team to play on by the autumn. His mom may not have a job then, either. Neither of them points out to the other what they might be able to do with five thousand kronor. She waits outside the store while he goes in. The clerk takes the time to help him get the best value for his money, and eventually he emerges with it, carrying it awkwardly to stop his rib feeling like it’s puncturing his lung with each step he takes.
They drive home, turn off a short way before they reach the Hollow, in among the houses in the center of town. Fatima waits in the car as Amat leaves it on the steps.
* * *
Maya isn’t home. The guitar will be waiting for her when she gets back. “You won’t get a better instrument than this for five thousand. She’ll still love it in ten years’ time!” the store clerk promised.
* * *
Tails steps inside the Bearskin. Stands in front of the bar, cap in hand, hair messed up. Ramona puts her hands down on the bar.
“Well?”
Tails clears his throat.
“How many sponsors does Beartown Ice Hockey have at the moment?”
Ramona coughs and pretends to count on her fingers.
“I reckon there’s a sum total of one right now.”
“Would you like some company?” he asks, his jaw tensing.
Ramona looks at him skeptically. Then turns her back on him and goes to serve another customer. When she comes back she fills two glasses, puts one in front of Tails, and downs the other herself.
“You’re a businessman, lad. Go and sponsor Hed instead; that’ll be good for your supermarket over there.”
“Hed Ice Hockey isn’t my club.”
She wrinkles her nose.
“I’m not sure you’ve got the money to rescue your club.”
He sucks his lips in, his eyes close, then open again, rather unhappily.
“I’m going to sell the store in Hed. Elisabeth is always complaining that I work too hard anyway.”
“You’d do that for a hockey club?”
“I’d do that for a better hockey club.”
“So what do you want with me? I don’t know what you think I sell here, but it sure as hell isn’t gold.”
“I want to get you elected to the board.”
“Are you drunk, lad?”
“It will take a strong man to rescue the club now. And there’s no stronger man in Beartown than you, Ramona.”
She laughs hoarsely.
“You always have been a bit thick, you have. Anyone would think you’re a goalie.”
“Thanks,” Tails mutters, genuinely moved.
Because Holger was a goalie. That’s a compliment in the Bearskin. Ramona goes and serves another customer. When she comes back she puts a beer in front of Tails, and gets herself a coffee.
When she sees Tails’s surprise she mutters:
“I should probably try to sober up if I’m going to sit on the board. And considering how much I’ve drunk over the past forty years, I might need a couple of months.”
* * *
Benji and the bass player are lying side by side on their backs in the rehearsal room. Surrounded by instruments along all the walls, watched over by dormant music. Sometimes it’s easy to learn to play anything at all. You just have to not play, and then you stop doing that.
“I have to go home soon,” the bass player says.
He doesn’t mean his apartment in Hed. He means home. Benji doesn’t say anything, and the bass player really wishes he would.
“You could . . . come too . . . ,” he finds his mouth saying, even though his heart struggles against it.
He doesn’t want to hear the answer. Doesn’t get one anyway. Benji stands up and starts to put his clothes on. The bass player sits up, lights a cigarette, smiles sadly.
“You could move away from here, you know. There are other lives, other places.”
Benji kisses his hair.
“I’m not like you.”
When Benji heads out into the last snowfall of the year and the door closes softly behind him, the bass player thinks how true that is. Benji isn’t like him, but he’s not like the people who live here either. Benji isn’t like anyone else at all. How can you not love someone like that?
* * *
When night comes to Beartown, Kevin runs alone along the illuminated jogging track. Around and around and around. Until the pain in his muscles is greater than everything else that hurts. Around, around, around. Until his adrenaline grows stronger than the insecurity, so that rage defeats humility. Again, again, again.
He will think he’s imagining it at first, that the shadows are playing tricks on his eyes. For a moment he will even think he’s just so tired that he’s hallucinating. He will slow down, his chest heaving. Wipe the sweat from his face with his sleeve. And only then will he see the girl. The shotgun in her hands. Death in her eyes.
He’s heard hunters describe the way animals behave when they fear for their lives. Only now will he understand what that means.
* * *
Ana wakes up and looks around the room, murmurs vaguely and sleepily for a few seconds before flying up and hitting her head on the bedside table. She grabs the covers, hoping that Maya is just hidden beneath them, but when she realizes what’s happened, terror seizes hold of her like a wild animal’s claws. She throws herself down the stairs, thunders into the cellar, screams with her lips tightly closed as if the blood vessels in her head were exploding one by one, when she opens the gun cabinet and sees what’s missing.
* * *
There’s a note in the cabinet. In Maya’s neat handwriting.
Happy, Ana. In ten years’ time I see myself bein
g happy. You too.
49
In ten years’ time, a twenty-five-year-old woman, in a big city far away from here, will walk across a parking lot outside a shopping center. There will be an ice rink right next to it, but she won’t even look at it, because it doesn’t belong to her life. Before she gets in her car she will cast a glance across the roof at her husband. He will put the bags of shopping in the trunk, and laugh when he catches her eye. He won’t look at the rink either; isn’t interested. She’ll rest her chin on the car roof for a moment, he’ll do the same. They will giggle, and she’ll think to herself that he’s all she wants, everything she’s ever wished for, he’s perfect for her. She’s pregnant. And happy. In ten years’ time.
* * *
The illuminated jogging track is quiet, but not deserted. Kevin can only see the outline in the distance, he slows down without actually stopping. When Maya steps forward into the light, he doesn’t have time to escape. When he sees the shotgun it’s too late. She stops three yards away from him, the gun held calmly, her breathing even and relaxed. Her eyes don’t leave him for an instant, she doesn’t blink, her voice is cold and merciless when it demands that he get down on his knees.
* * *
In ten years’ time, in a big city far away from here, an illuminated sign will shine out above a rink, bearing a performer’s name. There’s going to be a concert rather than a hockey game that evening. It won’t make any difference to the woman in the parking lot; she’ll get in her car and hold her husband’s hand across the seat. She won’t be under any illusions that love is simple; she will have made a lot of mistakes and felt a lot of pain, and she will know that her husband has too. But when he looks at her, he sees her, deep down inside of her, and even if he isn’t perfect, he is for her.
* * *
Kevin kneels on the snow, his skin stiffening in the wind; his arms tremble as his head sinks to the ground, but Maya presses the barrel of the shotgun to his forehead and whispers:
“Look at me. I want to see your eyes when I kill you.”
Tears are streaming from his eyes. He tries to say something, but the sobbing and gasping overpower his lips. Snot and saliva are dripping from his chin. When the cold metal of the shotgun’s twin barrels presses against his skin, an acrid smell of ammonia rises up. The stain on his grey jogging pants grows until it covers all of his thighs. He’s wet himself in terror.
Maya had been expecting that she would be nervous. Possibly even scared. But she feels nothing. It was a simple plan: she knew Kevin wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight, and she hoped he would go out for a run. She was right, she just needed to wait outside his house for long enough, and seeing as she had timed his circuits last time she was standing here, she knew exactly how long it would take him to run around. Where she should hide. When she should step out from the darkness. The shotgun holds two cartridges, but she has always known that the most she would ever need is one. His forehead touching the barrel. After tonight it’s all over.
She had been expecting to feel hesitant. To change her mind. To spare him this moment, in spite of everything. She doesn’t.
When her forefinger pulls the trigger back, his eyes are closed, hers open.
* * *
In ten years’ time a man will reverse a car out of a parking lot. When he looks out through the side window he will freeze to ice. A straight-backed woman with a guitar case in her hand will get out of another car. She was given the instrument by a friend when she was fifteen years old; she still refuses to play any other. She will see the man in the car, and she will stop, and for a few terrible seconds they will be back in a small town in a forest far away. Ten years before. When the man was a boy who was on his knees in the snow, begging for his life, and she stood over him with a shotgun and pulled the trigger.
* * *
Kevin falls to the ground. He has time to understand that he’s dying. His brain is convinced that it’s exploding in blood and snot. His heart stops beating. When it starts again, it beats so hard that it bursts his chest. He’s screaming with tears, with an infant’s senseless hysteria and panic.
Maya is still standing over him. She lowers the shotgun. From her pocket she takes out the single cartridge and drops it in the snow in front of him. She crouches down and forces him to look her in the eye as she says:
“Now you’ll be scared of the dark, too, Kevin. For the rest of your life.”
* * *
In ten years’ time the parking lot will be full of other people. Kevin’s wife will be pregnant. Maya will be standing a few yards away, with every possibility in the world of ending his life. She could walk right over and say what he is, humiliate and annihilate him in front of the person he loves most.
She will have all the power in that moment, but she will let him go. She will not forgive him, she will not pardon him, but she will spare him. And he will always know that.
* * *
And she will always know that he still, ten years later, sleeps with the light on.
* * *
When he drives away, sweaty and shaking, his wife will ask who the woman was. And Kevin will tell the truth. All of it.
* * *
In ten years’ time Maya will walk toward the rink. The security guards will hold back eager hands and try to quiet the voices calling out to her, but she will stop patiently and sign everything that’s handed to her, have photographs taken with everyone who asks. On the sign above them the words “Sold out!” will be flashing alongside the name of the performer who is appearing that night.
* * *
Hers.
50
Ana runs straight out into the night without knowing where she’s going. Her eyes flit about in panic until she sees the lights of the jogging track and hears the scream. When she reaches the edge of the forest she sees it all. Kevin and her best friend. He’s on his knees, crying hysterically. Maya turns and leaves him, passing between the trees before stopping dead when she catches sight of Ana. The fifteen-year-old girls look into each others’ eyes. Then they hug, without words, and go home.
Early the next morning, Ana will go and pick up the cartridge from the jogging track. She will put it back in its place with the rest of her dad’s ammunition. If anyone ever asks her where she was that night, she will say, “At home.” If anyone ever asks her what her best friend was doing, she will reply: “Sorry, I didn’t see that incident.”
* * *
The door of the rink opens. A boy on crutches comes in. Peter is on his way through the corridor outside the locker room, heading in the other direction, but stops in surprise.
“Benjamin . . .”
He doesn’t know what to say after that. He’s never known things like that. So all that comes out is:
“How’s your foot?”
Benji looks past him, toward the rink. Like everyone who loves that last inch where the floor turns to ice, he can feel the wing-beats from over here. His eyes swing back to Peter when he replies:
“It’ll be healed in time for the first A-team game. If Sune thinks I’m ready.”
Peter’s eyebrows knit together. He clears his throat uncomfortably.
“Benji . . . we aren’t even going to be able to pay any wages to the A-team. Christ, we might not even have a club by the autumn.”
Benji puts his weight down on his foot. The good one this time, not the broken one.
“I just want to play.”
Peter laughs.
“Okay, but, God, Benji, with your talent and your passion, you could really be something. I mean, seriously. You could be playing at an elite level in a couple of years. Hed Hockey are going to have a fantastic team, financial resources, you’ll have much better opportunities to develop there.”
Benji gives a nonchalant shrug. His answer is as short as it is uncompromising:
“But I’m from Beartown.”
* * *
When skating classes start in the rink that year, four teenagers have been asked to attend as instr
uctors. They stand in the center circle, in the team’s colors: green, white, and brown; like the forest, ice, and earth. This place built a club that was like itself. Tough and unyielding—in love as in everything else.
The boys look down at the bear painted beneath them. When they were little they were scared of it, and sometimes they still are. Amat, Zacharias, Bobo, and Benjamin: two have just turned sixteen, two will soon be turning eighteen. In ten years’ time two of them will be playing professionally. One will be a dad. One will be dead.
* * *
Benji’s phone rings. He doesn’t answer. It rings again, he takes it out of his back pocket and looks at the number. Takes a deep, cutting breath, and switches it off.
* * *
At a bus stop stands a bass player with a suitcase. He calls the same number, for the last time. Then he gets on the bus and leaves town. He will never come back here, but in ten years’ time he will suddenly see Benjamin’s face on television, and will instantly remember everything again. Fingertips and glances. Glasses on a battered bar top, smoke in a silent forest. The way snow feels on your skin when it falls in March, and a boy with sad eyes and a wild heart teaches you to skate.
* * *
When the children tumble over the edge out onto the ice, passing that last inch and losing their foothold, the boys at the center circle laugh and help the little things get up again. Try to teach them that there are other ways to stop than just drifting headfirst into the boards.
None of them sees the first skate of the child who’s the last one out. She’s four years old, a scrawny little kid in gloves that are too big for her, with bruises everyone sees but nobody asks about. Her helmet slips down across her eyes, but the look in them is clear enough.
Adri and Sune come after her, ready to hold the girl up, until they realize that there’s no need. The four boys at the center circle will build a new A-team next season, but that doesn’t matter, because in ten years’ time it won’t be their names that make the people of this town stand taller.