And it might be easy to call the inhabitants paranoid when they keep saying that the politicians focus all their resources on Hed and don’t give a damn if Beartown even survives another generation, but the worst thing about paranoia is that the only way to prove you’re not paranoid is to be proved right.
* * *
Some children never quite manage to escape their parents; they’re guided by their compass, see through their eyes. When terrible things happen, most people become waves, but some people become rocks. Waves are tossed back and forth when the wind comes, but the rocks just take a beating, immovable, waiting for the storm to blow over.
Adri was a child, but she took the rifle from her father and sat on a stump holding his hand in hers. Perhaps it was shock, unless she was consciously saying good-bye, both to him and to herself. She became someone different after that. When she stood up and walked back through the forest to Beartown, she didn’t scream for help in panic; she walked purposefully to the homes of the best and strongest hunters, so that they could help her carry the body. When her mother collapsed screaming in the hall, Adri caught her, because the girl had already done her crying. She was ready to be the rock. Has been ever since.
Katia and Gaby were their mother’s children, but Adri and Benji were their father’s. Causes of conflict, finders of war. So every time Adri has set off into the forest to look for her little brother since then, she knows she’s going to find him, as if he had magnets under his skin. That’s not what she’s scared of. She scared he’s going to be dead, every time. Younger brothers never know what they put their big sisters through. Anxiety hidden behind eyes, words hidden behind other words, keys to gun cabinets hidden under pillows at night.
* * *
Benji isn’t sitting in a tree. He’s lying on the ground.
* * *
Elisabeth Zackell walks into the Bearskin. It’s long past dinnertime, but she takes a seat in one corner and Ramona takes her a large plate of potatoes without her having to ask.
“Thanks,” the coach says.
“I don’t know what vegetariables like you eat, apart from potatoes. But there are mushrooms in the forests around here. They’ll soon be in season!” Ramona replies.
Zackell looks up. Ramona nods sternly. The bar owner isn’t big on emotions, either, but this is her way of saying she hopes the hockey coach is going to stick around for a while.
* * *
Benji’s body is still, his eyes open but his gaze far away. Adri can still remember how her dad’s hand felt when she sat there on the stump as a child. How cold it was, how still without the pulse running through it.
Carefully, gently, without making any noise at all, the big sister lies down on the ground beside her little brother. Her hand on his, just to feel the heat and heartbeat within.
“You’ll be the death of me. Don’t you dare lie on the ground when I’m looking for you, you stupid pea brain!” she whispers.
“Sorry,” Benji whispers.
He is neither drunk nor high. He isn’t running from his feelings today. That makes her more worried.
“What’s happened?”
The last light of summer bounces off the tears clinging to Benji’s eyelashes. “Nothing. Just a . . . mistake.”
Adri doesn’t reply. She isn’t the sister who talks about broken hearts, she’s just the sister who fetches her brother home from the forest. She waits until they’re getting close to the edge of town before she says, “The new coach is thinking of making you team captain.”
She sees something in Benji’s eyes that she hasn’t seen for many years.
* * *
He’s scared.
* * *
Zackell has almost finished her meal when Ramona returns to the table and puts a beer down in front of her.
“From the regulars,” Ramona says.
Zackell looks over at the five old men at the bar. “Them?”
Ramona shakes her head. “Their wives.”
In the far corner sit five old women. Gray hair, handbags on the table, wrinkled hands tightly clutching glasses of beer. Several of them have children and grandchildren who work at the factory; some of them worked there themselves. The old women have old bodies but new T-shirts. All the same. Green, with four words written on them, like a war cry:
BEARTOWN
AGAINST
THE
REST
22
Team Captain
There’s no real autumn in Beartown, just a quick blink before winter. The snow doesn’t even have the manners to let the leaves decompose in peace. The darkness comes fast, but at least these months have been full of a lot of light: a club that fought and survived. A grown man who put a reassuring hand on a four-and-a-half-year-old’s shoulder. Hockey that was more than a game. Beer on a stranger’s table. Green T-shirts that said we fight together, no matter what. Boys with the biggest dreams. Friends who formed an army.
Unfortunately, that isn’t what we’re going to remember in a few years’ time. Many of us will just look back on these months and remember . . . the hatred. Because that’s how we function, for better or worse: we always define different periods by their worst moments. So we will remember two towns’ loathing for each other. We will remember the violence, because it’s only just started. Of course we won’t talk about it; we don’t do that here. We’ll talk about hockey games that were played instead, so that we don’t have to talk about the funerals that took place between them.
* * *
Darkness has settled comfortably upon Beartown and Hed as a thin figure makes its way through the forest. It’s starting to get cold now; the days don’t let on, but the nights are honest, not hiding temperatures below freezing behind rays of sunlight. The figure shivers and hurries on, as much from nerves as to keep warm.
The ice rink in Hed doesn’t have an alarm, and the building is old and full of back doors that someone might forget to lock. The figure doesn’t have a detailed plan of how the break-in is going to work, just a vague idea of padding around the building and feeling all the door handles. He has no luck there but does better with one of the bathroom windows. He manages to pry it open, even if it takes the full strength of the twelve-year-old’s arms.
Leo climbs inside, runs through the gloom. He’s played enough away games in Hed to know where the locker rooms are. The A-team has its own lockers. Most of them don’t have the players’ names on them, but some of the players are too infatuated with their own names to be able to resist the opportunity to write them on the labels at the top. Leo uses the flashlight on his cell phone to find William Lyt’s. Then he does what he came to do.
* * *
Adri, Katia, and Gaby Ovich bang on the door of the Bearskin after closing time. Ramona yells, “I’VE GOT MY SHOTGUN LOADED!” which is her way of saying “I’m afraid we’re closed,” but the Ovich sisters march inside all the same, and Ramona jumps when she sees all three of them.
“What have I done now?” she pants.
“Nothing, we just want to ask a favor of you,” Katia says.
“Nothing? When the three of you come through that door together, an old bag can’t help but think she’s going to get a beating, surely to God you can understand that?” Ramona whimpers, clutching her chest theatrically.
The sisters grin. As does Ramona. She puts beer and whisky on the bar, then pats each of them fondly on the cheek. “It’s been a long time since I saw you. You’re still too beautiful for this town.”
“Flattery like that won’t get you anywhere,” Adri says.
Ramona nods. “That’s why the good Lord gave us strong liquor.”
“How are you?” Gaby asks.
Ramona snorts. “I’m starting to get old. And it’s shit, let me tell you. Your back aches, and your eyesight starts to go. I don’t give a damn about dying, but this aging business, I can’t see the point of it.”
The sisters smile. Ramona slams her empty glass down on the counter and goes on, “So? What can I
do for you?”
“We need a job,” Adri says.
* * *
When the Ovich sisters emerge from the Bearskin, their little brother, Benjamin, is leaning against the wall. Adri knocks the cigarette out of his hand, Katia folds his collar down roughly, and Gaby licks her fingers and combs his hair with them. They curse him and tell him they love him in the same sentence, the way only they can. Then they push him through the door. Ramona is standing behind the counter, waiting.
“Your sisters say you need a job.”
“Apparently so,” Benji mutters.
Ramona can clearly see Alain Ovich’s eyes in his son’s face. “Your sisters say you’re restless, that you need to be kept busy. They can’t stop you from ending up at the counter in a bar, but they can at least try to make sure you end up on the right side of it. I told Adri that giving you work as a bartender could be like leaving a dog to guard a steak, but she’s not the sort of person you can reason with, that one. And Katia swore you’ve got experience of being behind a bar, from her place in Hed. Is that the place the Reds call the Barn?”
Benji nods. “The Reds” is what Ramona calls people from Hed.
“I’m not welcome there anymore because a degree of conflict about aesthetic matters arose between me and the . . . native population,” he explains.
Ramona doesn’t have to roll up Benji’s sleeve to know that there’s a tattoo of a bear under it. She has a weakness for boys who love this town more than they should have the sense to.
“Can you pour a beer without spilling it?”
“Yes.”
“What do you get if you ask to run a tab?”
“A slap in the face?”
“You’re hired!”
“Thanks.”
She snorts. “Don’t say that. I’m only doing this because I’m frightened of your sisters.”
Benji smiles. “Everyone with any sense is.”
Ramona gestures toward the shelves on the walls. “We have two types of beer, one type of whisky, and the rest is mostly for decoration. You wash the glasses and clean, and if there’s a fight you don’t get involved, you hear me?”
Benji doesn’t disagree, which is a good start. He clears the backyard of a pile of wood and tin that’s been lying there for months; he’s strong as an ox and knows how to keep his mouth shut. Ramona’s two favorite character traits.
When it’s time to turn the lights out and lock up, he helps her up the stairs to her apartment. There are still photographs of Holger, her husband, everywhere. Him and Beartown Ice Hockey, her first and second loves, green flags and pennants on every wall.
“You can ask what you want to ask now,” Ramona says mildly, patting the young man on the cheek.
“I don’t want to ask anything,” Benji lies.
“You’re wondering if your dad used to come to the Bearskin. If he used to sit in the bar down there before he . . . went off into the forest.”
Benji’s hands disappear into the pockets of his jeans, and the years are stripped away from his voice.
“What was he like?” the boy asks.
The old woman sighs. “Not one of the best. Not one of the worst.”
Benji turns toward the stairs. “I’ll take the garbage out. See you tomorrow evening.”
Ramona takes hold of his hand and whispers, “You don’t have to become like him, Benjamin. You’ve got his eyes, but I think you can become someone else.”
* * *
Benji isn’t ashamed of crying in front of her.
* * *
Early the next morning Elisabeth Zackell sticks her head into Peter Andersson’s office. Peter is wrestling with an espresso machine. Zackell watches. Peter presses a button, and brown water dribbles out of the bottom of the machine. Peter panics and presses all the buttons at the same time while simultaneously reaching with an impressive display of acrobatics for a roll of paper towels while he balances in front of the leaking machine on one foot.
“And I’m supposed to be the weird one for not drinking coffee,” Zackell notes.
Peter looks up, still in the middle of some sort of modern dance interpretation of office cleaning, swearing in a way that Zackell has reason to believe is very unlike him. “For f— I’m so bloo— Shi—”
“Shall I come back later?” Zackell wonders.
“No, no . . . I . . . this damn contraption is a complete nightmare, but it was a gift from my daughter!” Peter admits, embarrassed.
Zackell offers no reaction. “I’ll come back later,” she concludes.
“No! I . . . sorry, what can I do for you? Have your wages been paid okay?” Peter wonders.
“It’s about rope,” Zackell says, but Peter has already launched into his defense. “The new sponsor, our contract isn’t quite in place. But everyone should have been paid by now.”
He wipes the sweat from his brow. Zackell repeats, “I’m not here about my paycheck. I’m here about rope.”
“Rope?” Peter echoes.
“I need rope. And a paintball gun. Can you buy those around here?”
“A paintball gun?” Peter echoes again.
Zackell explains in a monotone, but not impatiently, “Paintball is a war simulation game played on a specially designed course. Two teams shoot at each other with small pellets of paint fired from guns. I need one of those guns.”
“I know what paintball is,” Peter assures her.
“It didn’t sound like it,” Zackell says in her own defense.
Peter scratches his hair, getting coffee on his forehead. He doesn’t notice, and Zackell spares him the panic that telling him would probably trigger.
“They probably have rope in the hardware store opposite the Bearskin pub.”
“Thanks,” Zackell says, and is already out in the corridor before Peter has time to call out, “What do you want rope for? You’re not going to hang anyone, are you?”
Then he says it again, with genuine concern in his voice: “ZACKELL! YOU’RE NOT GOING TO HANG ANYONE, ARE YOU? WE’VE GOT ENOUGH PROBLEMS AS IT IS!!!”
* * *
Benji’s former coach, David, used to say that Benji would be late for his own funeral. If his teammates didn’t check that number 16 was out on the ice, he could easily be lying asleep in the locker room when the game started. Sometimes he missed practices, sometimes he showed up high or drunk. But today he arrives at the rink on time, gets changed at once, and goes straight out onto the ice. Elisabeth Zackell turns toward him as if she’s surprised that a hockey player has turned up for hockey practice. Benji takes a deep breath and apologizes, the way you learn to do if you’ve big sisters who hit hard: “Sorry I didn’t come to practice yesterday.”
Zackell shrugs. “I don’t care if you come to practice.”
Benji notices that there are five thick ropes lying on the ice, several yards long. Zackell is holding a paintball gun in her hand: the hardware store in Beartown didn’t have any, but the one in Hed managed to find one in the storeroom. A scattering of small paint spatters on the plexiglass at one corner of the rink indicates that Zackell has already practiced firing the hard little pellets of paint.
“What are you doing?” Benji asks, baffled.
“What are you doing here so early?” Zackell counters.
Benji looks at the time. He’s right on time for the practice, but the only other players on the ice are Amat and Bobo. He grunts, “My sister says you’re thinking of making me team captain. That’s a bad idea.”
Zackell nods without blinking. “Okay.”
Benji waits for her to go on. She doesn’t. So he asks, “Why me?”
“Because you’re a coward,” Zackell says.
Benji has been called many things in his life, but never that.
“You’re full of crap.”
She nods. “Maybe. But I’m giving you the thing you’re most terrified of: responsibility for other people.”
Benji eyes darken. Hers are expressionless. Amat is standing behind them, his skates twit
ching with restlessness, until he eventually loses patience and blurts out, “Practice is supposed to start now! Why don’t you go and get the others from the locker room?”
Zackell shrugs her shoulders nonchalantly. “Me? Why would I care about that?”
Benji squints at her, increasingly frustrated. He looks at the time again. Then he leaves the ice.
* * *
A lot of the older players in the Beartown locker room are only half changed when Benji walks in.
“Practice is starting,” he says.
Some people can make themselves heard without raising their voice. Even so, some of the older players misinterpret Benji at first and reply, “She doesn’t care if we’re on time or not!”
Benji’s reply is brief, but the silence that follows it is deafening: “I care.”
Power is the ability to get other people to do what you want. Every adult man in that locker room could have rendered the eighteen-year-old powerless by remaining seated on the benches. But he gives them thirty seconds, and when he walks back to the ice, they get up and follow him.
That’s not when he becomes their team captain. That’s just when they all—including him—realize that he already is.
* * *
Benji doesn’t want to lead his team, but he does so anyway. William Lyt is over in Hed, and he wants nothing more than to be told to lead his team, but he isn’t. It isn’t fair, but sports isn’t fair. The player who spends the most hours practicing doesn’t always end up being the best, and the player who deserves to be made team captain isn’t always the most suitable. It’s often said that hockey isn’t a contemplative sport: “We just count goals.” That isn’t strictly true, of course. Hockey counts everything, it’s full of statistics, yet it’s impossible to predict. It’s governed too much by things that aren’t visible. One term that is often used to describe talented players, for instance, is “leadership qualities,” even though this is an utterly immeasurable concept seeing that it is based on things that can’t be taught: charisma, authority, love.