Sune was like Beartown: a firm adherent of the old faith that no tree should grow too tall, naively convinced that hard work was enough. That’s why the club has collapsed at the same rate that unemployment in the town has rocketed. Good workers aren’t enough on their own, someone needs to have big ideas as well. Collectives only work if they’re built around stars.
There are plenty of men in this club who think that everything in hockey “should be the way it’s always been.” Whenever he hears that, David feels like rolling himself up in a carpet and screaming until his vocal cords give out. As if hockey has ever been constant! When it was invented you weren’t even allowed to pass the puck forward, and two generations ago everyone played without a helmet. Hockey is like every other living organism: it has to adapt and evolve, or else it will die.
David can no longer remember how many years he has been arguing about this with Sune, but on the evenings when he gets home in his very blackest mood his girlfriend usually teases him, asking if he’s “fallen out with daddy again?” It was quite funny to start with. Sune was more than just a coach when David himself became one, he was a role model. The end of a hockey player’s career is an endless series of doors closing with you on the wrong side, and David couldn’t have lived without a team, without feeling he was part of something. When injury forced him off the ice at the age of twenty-two, Sune was the only person who understood that.
Sune taught David to be a coach at the same time as he was teaching Peter to be GM. In a lot of ways they’re each other’s opposite. David could get into an argument with a door, and Peter was so averse to conflict that he couldn’t even kill time. Sune hoped they’d complement one another, but they’ve developed a mutual loathing instead.
For years David’s deepest shame was the fact that he could never get over the jealousy he felt whenever Sune and Peter would go into Peter’s office without inviting him along. His love of the camaraderie of the sport was grounded in a fear of exclusion. So eventually he did what all ambitious pupils do to their teachers: he rebelled.
He was twenty-two when he began coaching this group of seven-year-old boys, Kevin, Benji, and Bobo among them. He has been coaching them for ten years now, melding them into one of the best junior teams in the whole country, and he has finally realized that he can no longer stay loyal to Sune. The players are more important; the club is bigger than that.
David knows what people in the town are going to say when he gets Sune’s job. He knows a lot of them aren’t going to be happy. But they’re going to like the results.
Lars blows his whistle to signal the end of the practice so close to Zacharias’s ear that the boy trips over his own stick. Lars grins unkindly.
“And worst in training today was, as usual, little Miss Zach. So you get the honor of collecting the pucks and cones!”
Lars leaves the ice with the rest of the boys’ team trailing behind him. A few of them laugh at Zacharias and he tries to give them the finger, but it’s surprisingly hard to do that when you’re wearing hockey gloves. Amat has already started circling the ice to gather the pucks. Their friendship has always been like that: as long as Zacharias is left on the ice, Amat doesn’t leave.
Once Lars is out of sight, Zacharias gets angrily to his feet and mimics the coach’s exaggeratedly forward-leaning style of skating as he scratches himself hard between the buttocks:
“COLLECT THE PUCKS! DEFEND THE FORTRESS! DON’T GET FUCKED UP THE ASS! NO ASS-FUCKING ON MY ICE! HOLD ON . . . WHAT THE . . . ? WHAT’S THIS? IN MY ASS?! IS IT A FUCK? IS IT A LITTLE FUCK? THERE’S A LITTLE FUCK IN MY ASS, AMAT! I ORDER YOU TO GET IT OUT AT ONCE!”
He tries to reverse into Amat, who slips nimbly out of the way, laughing, leaving Zach to back straight into the open team bench and land in a heap.
“Do you want to stay and watch the juniors practice?” Amat wonders, even though he knows Zach would never do that of his own accord.
“Stop saying ‘juniors’ when you mean ‘watch Kevin.’ I know he’s your idol, Amat, but I have actually got a life. Carpe diem! Laughter and love!”
Amat sighs.
“Fine, forget it . . .”
“IS THAT KEVIN ERDAHL IN YOUR ASS, AMAT?” Zacharias cries.
Amat taps his stick restlessly on the ice.
“Do you want to do something this weekend, then?”
He really does try to make the question sound nonchalant. As if he hadn’t actually been thinking about it all day. Zacharias gets up from the bench with the body language of a baby elephant that’s been shot with a tranquilizer dart.
“I’ve got two new games! But you’ll have to bring your own handset, seeing as you broke my other one last time.”
Amat looks offended by his friend’s recollection of events, given that he had broken the handset with his forehead when Zacharias threw it at him in a fit of temper because he was losing. He clears his throat and collects the last of the pucks.
“I just thought we could go . . . out.”
Zacharias looks as if his friend has suggested pouring poison in each other’s ears.
“Go out where?”
“Just . . . out. People go . . . out. That’s what they do.”
“You mean Maya does?”
“I mean PEOPLE.”
Zacharias gets up on his skates and starts dancing on tiptoe and singing:
“Amat and Maya, sitting in a treeee, Amat squirts her with his seeeed . . .”
Amat slaps a puck hard into the boards beside him, but can’t help laughing.
* * *
David is standing with Lars in the corridor outside the locker room. “It’s a mistake!” Lars insists.
“However unlikely it might sound, I heard you the first twelve times. Go and get the juniors ready for practice,” David replies coldly.
Lars lumbers off. David massages his temples. Lars isn’t an entirely useless assistant coach. David can put up with the shouting and swearing because that’s part of locker-room culture, and, dear God, some of the guys on the team do need a tyrant at practice to make sure they actually put the pads on the right parts of their body. But sometimes David can’t help wondering how the junior team will function if Lars is going to take charge of it. The man knows no more about hockey than the average noisy fan in the stands, and David could go out into the street, throw a stone, and whatever he hit that had a pulse would know as much as them.
Amat and Zach are laughing as they approach but fall silent abruptly when they catch sight of David. The boys squeeze against the wall so as not to get in his way. Amat visibly starts when David holds up his hand.
“Amat, isn’t it?”
Amat nods.
“We . . . we were just collecting the pucks . . . we were only messing about . . . I mean, I know Zach was imitating Lars but it was only a j . . .”
David looks baffled. Amat gulps.
“Actually, well, if you didn’t see anything, then . . . it was . . . nothing.”
David smiles. “I’ve seen you sitting in the stands during the junior team’s training sessions. You’ve been there more often than some of the players.”
Amat nods nervously. “I . . . Sorry . . . I just want to learn.”
“That’s good. I know you’ve been studying Kevin’s moves; he’s a good example. You ought to check out how he always looks at the defenseman’s skates in any one-on-one situation: as soon as they angle their skates and shift their center of gravity, Kevin taps the puck and makes his move.”
Amat nods dumbly. David is looking him right in the eye, and the boy isn’t used to adult men doing that.
“Anyone can see that you’re fast, but you need to practice your shooting. Practice waiting for the goalie to move, shoot against the flow. Can you learn that, do you think?”
Amat nods. David slaps him hard on the shoulder.
“Good. Learn it fast, because you’re training with the juniors in a quarter of an hour. Go into the locker room and get a jersey.”
Amat’s han
d moves instinctively toward one ear, as if he needs to clean it out to make sure he hasn’t misheard. David has already walked off.
* * *
Zacharias waits until the coach has swung around the corner before wrapping his arms around his friend’s neck. Amat is hyperventilating. Zacharias clears his throat:
“Seriously, though, Amat . . . if you had to choose between sleeping with Maya and sleeping with Kevin, you’d pick . . . ?”
“Shut up,” Amat says, laughing.
“I’m just checking!” Zacharias grins, then pats him on his helmet and growls: “Kill them, my friend. Kill them!”
Amat takes a breath as deep as the lake behind the rink, then for the first time walks past the boys’ team’s locker room and steps across the threshold into the juniors’. He is met instantly by a hurricane of booing and swearing and a chorus of “GET OUT OF HERE, YOU FUCKING MAGGOT!” from the older players, but when David emerges from the hallway a silence so complete settles that you could hear a jockstrap drop. David nods to Lars and Lars reluctantly tosses a jersey at Amat. It stinks. Amat has never been happier.
* * *
Standing outside in the hallway is his best friend.
* * *
There are no almosts in ice hockey.
12
A long marriage is complicated. So complicated, in fact, that most people in one sometimes ask themselves: “Am I still married because I’m in love, or just because I can’t be bothered to let anyone else get to know me this well again?”
Kira knows that her complaining drives Peter mad. That he sometimes feels browbeaten. Sometimes she calls him five times a day simply to check that he’s done something he promised to do.
* * *
Peter’s office is perfectly organized, the desk so clean you could eat off it. The shelves are lined with LPs that he doesn’t dare take home because he’s worried Kira will force him either to throw them away or buy a bigger house. He orders them online and has them delivered to the rink, effectively turning the receptionist into his dealer. Some people hide the fact that they smoke from their spouse. Peter hides his online shopping.
He buys the records because they calm him down. They remind him of Isak. He’s never told her that.
* * *
Kira can’t remember exactly how old the children were when the snowstorm hit, but they hadn’t been living in Beartown long enough for her to get used to the forces of nature. It was around Christmas, the children weren’t at school, but there was a crisis at work so Kira had to go off to an important meeting. Peter took Maya and Leo out tobogganing and Kira stood by the car and watched them disappear into the swirling whiteness. It was so beautiful and so ominous at the same time. She felt so bereft once they had vanished from sight that she cried all the way to the office.
* * *
When Peter got injured in Canada and Kira started work, Peter was left at home alone with Isak. One day the child had a stomachache and wouldn’t stop screaming. Panic-stricken, Peter tried everything. He rocked him and took him out in the stroller and tried all the home remedies he had ever heard of, but nothing worked. Until he put a record on. Perhaps it was something about the old record-player—the crackle in the speakers, the voices filling the room—but Isak fell completely silent. Then he smiled. And then he fell asleep in Peter’s arms. That’s the last time Peter can remember really feeling like a good father. The last time he had been able to tell himself that he actually knew what he was doing. He’s never told Kira that, has never told anyone. But now he buys records in secret because he keeps hoping that feeling might come back, if only for a moment.
* * *
After her meeting that morning close to Christmas, Kira called Peter. He didn’t answer. The man who otherwise always answers. Then she heard on the radio that the snowstorm had hit the forest and people were being advised to stay indoors. She called a thousand times, left shouted messages for him, no response. She threw herself in the car and drove with her foot to the floor, even though she could barely see a yard in front of the hood. She ran out into the trees where they had left her that morning and started yelling hysterically, then collapsed and dug desperately at the snow with her hands, as if she might find her children there. Her ears and fingertips froze, and afterward she didn’t know how to explain what had happened inside her. Only several years later did she realize that it was a nervous breakdown.
Ten minutes later her phone rang. It was Peter and the children, carefree and untroubled, wondering where she was. “WHERE ARE YOU?” she yelled. “At home,” they replied, their mouths full of ice-cream and cinnamon buns. When Kira asked why, Peter replied uncomprehendingly: “There was a snowstorm, so we came home.” He had forgotten to charge his phone. It was in a drawer in the bedroom.
Kira has never told him, has never told anyone, but she’s never really recovered from that snowstorm. From the feeling she had in the car that she’d lost them too. So now she sometimes calls her husband and children several times a day just to complain to them. To reassure herself that they’re still there.
* * *
Peter puts a record on, but today it doesn’t help. He can’t stop thinking about Sune. The same thoughts keep going around his head for hours as he stares at a dark computer screen and throws a small rubber ball harder and harder against the wall.
When his phone rings, the interruption is so welcome that he even forgets to be annoyed at his wife for always taking it for granted that he’s going to forget everything he’s promised to do.
“Did you drop the car off at the garage?” she asks, even though she can already hear the answer.
“Yes! Of course I did!” Peter says, with the absolute conviction he only demonstrates when he’s lying.
“How did you get to the office, then?” she asks.
“How do you know I’m at the office?”
“I can hear you bouncing that stupid ball against the wall.” He sighs.
“You ought to work as a lawyer or something, has anyone ever told you that?”
The lawyer laughs.
“I’ll consider it if I can’t go professional with rock-paper-scissors.”
“You’re a cheat.”
“You’re a liar.”
Peter’s voice is shaking when he suddenly whispers:
“I love you so much.”
Kira laughs so he won’t hear her crying when she answers:
“Same here.”
They both hang up. Kira is eating lunch four hours late in front of her computer so she can get her work done and still have time to stop to buy new guitar strings for Maya before she rushes home to take Leo to his evening practice. Peter isn’t eating at all—he doesn’t want to give his body the chance to throw up again.
* * *
A long marriage is complicated.
* * *
The juniors’ locker room is quieter than usual. The significance of tomorrow’s game has started to get under their skin. William Lyt, who’s just turned eighteen but has a beard as thick as an otter’s coat and weighs as much as a small car, leans toward Kevin and whispers in a voice that suggests he’s in a prison film and is asking for a knife made out of a toothbrush, “Have you got any chewing tobacco?”
On one occasion last season David happened to mention to Lars that he had read that a single portion of chewing tobacco did more damage to a person’s fitness than a whole case of beer. Since then the juniors have been able to count on being yelled at so hard by both Lars and their parents that their hairline shifts backward if anyone so much as glimpses the telltale signs of wear on the pocket of their jeans from carrying a puck-shaped can of chewing tobacco.
“No,” Kevin replies.
Lyt nods gratefully anyway, then sets off around the locker room in search of some. They play in the first line together, but no matter how much bigger and stronger Lyt is, Kevin has always been the obvious leader. Benji, who could perhaps be described as having certain issues with authority figures, is lying half asleep on
the floor, but reaches for a stick and pokes Kevin in the stomach with it.
“What the . . . ?” Kevin snarls.
“Give me some chewing tobacco,” Benji asks.
“Are you deaf? I just said I’ve run out.”
Benji just lies there calmly on the floor looking at Kevin. Poking him in the stomach with the stick until Kevin snatches it from him, reaches for his jacket, and fishes out an almost full can of chewing tobacco.
“When are you going to learn that you can’t lie to me?” Benji smiles.
“When are you going to start buying your own chewing tobacco?” Kevin replies.
“Probably around the same time.”
Lyt returns without any chewing tobacco. He nods cheerily at Kevin.
“Are your parents coming to the game tomorrow? My mom’s bought tickets for pretty much all my relatives!”
Kevin says nothing and starts to wrap tape around his stick. Benji sees this out of the corner of his eye and knows exactly what it means, so he turns to Lyt and grins:
“Sorry to disappoint you, Lyt, but your family comes to your games to see KEVIN play.”
The room bursts into mocking laughter. And Kevin is spared having to say if his parents are coming to the game. Apart from the fact that Benji never has his own tobacco, it would be hard to find a better friend.
* * *
Amat is sitting in a corner, doing his very best imitation of an empty corner. As the youngest in the locker room, the maggot, he has good reason to be terrified of attracting attention. He keeps his gaze focused high, to avoid eye contact but still have time to react if anyone throws something at him. The walls of the locker room are covered with posters bearing slogans: