Maya expected Ana to be angry, but she just laughed and said, “Now I’m going to see that crack in every photo I take, so you’re going to be in all my pictures from now on, you idiot!”
Maya loved her best friend for that, but now she sits alone in front of her computer, looking at the pictures of Benji and the teacher over and over again, and all she can see is that little line up in the top corner. The same line in every picture.
* * *
A tiny, almost invisible crack. Where all the darkness gets out.
* * *
Long afterward none of us will be able to prove exactly who said what or where the different photographs that ended up online actually came from. But everyone has the chance to see the pictures of Benji kissing the teacher. A lot of people don’t care, but they’re silent, so only the others are heard. And that will be their excuse: they care, that’s all. About the town, about the hockey team, about Benjamin himself. They care about the school. They care about the children.
A group of parents phone the headmaster, demanding a meeting. Maggan Lyt, William’s mother, is one of them. She’s on the parent-teacher association, she’s just doing her job, it’s “nothing personal.” As she points out at the meeting, “We don’t harbor any ill will to anyone, we’re just concerned parents.” But she demands that obviously the teacher must be dismissed. Not because he’s . . . different, of course not! But we can’t tolerate the fact that he’s had sexual relations with a pupil! Not after everything that’s happened! First the rape, and now this? It doesn’t really make any difference if it’s a boy or a girl, surely everyone should be treated equally?
Things are always connected—when it suits us.
“How will we be able to feel safe with this teacher educating our children now that we are aware of his . . . agenda?” one parent wonders.
When the headmaster asks exactly what the parent means by “agenda,” Maggan Lyt snaps, “You know exactly what we mean!”
“What about this, then?” another parent cries, tossing a sheet of paper onto the headmaster’s desk.
“It was on a noticeboard in the corridor! So that teacher, Jeanette, is going to teach pupils how to fight?” Maggan Lyt adds.
“It’s . . . martial arts . . . she’s offering the pupils training in—” the headmaster says but is predictably interrupted: “Violence! Training in violence! So one teacher has sexual relationships with his pupils, and another wants to fight with them! What sort of school are you running here, exactly?”
Then Maggan Lyt says, “I’m going to call the council!”
* * *
And she does. The first councillor who answers is Richard Theo.
* * *
Maya bangs on the door of Ana’s house so hard that the dogs start barking, as if she wants to tear the building apart. Ana opens the door, pale and lifeless, crushed and full of self-loathing. But Maya is too angry to stop her fury, she just yells, “YOU TOOK THOSE PICTURES! HOW COULD YOU DO THAT?”
Ana is panting hysterically, sobbing and sniffing so hard she can barely get her words out. “I wasn’t . . . I kissed him, Maya! I kissed him! He could have said he was . . . he could have said something, because I just . . . I just thought he had a girlfriend, but he . . . I kissed him! I . . . if he’d only said he was . . .”
Maya doesn’t let her finish; she just shakes her head and spits on the ground between herself and her best friend, and then she isn’t that anymore. “You’re just like everyone else in this town, Ana. As soon as you don’t get what you want, you think you have the right to hurt other people.”
* * *
Ana is crying so hard that she can’t stand up. She collapses in the doorway. Maya doesn’t catch her; she’s already walking away.
* * *
Perhaps what everyone says is true; perhaps it isn’t personal. Perhaps it’s just the last straw for a few people who have long felt that they’re living with their backs against the wall. Jobs are disappearing, the politicians are corrupt, the hospital is going to be closed down, and the factory is changing owners. Reporters show up here only when something negative happens, and all they ever want is to be able to depict the inhabitants as backward and prejudiced. But perhaps some people around here feel that there’s just too much politics all at the same time. Too much change forced upon hardworking people who have already been through enough. Maybe it’s nothing to do with Benji or the teacher or Elisabeth Zackell or anyone else. Perhaps the people posting online are just “isolated malcontents.” Perhaps no one meant any harm. “In the heat of the action people have a tendency to overreact, that’s all.” Perhaps we’ll explain it by saying that there were too many things going on at once, it was a complex issue, and people have to be allowed to respond emotionally.
* * *
It’s always the aggressors’ feelings we have to defend. As if they’re the ones who need our understanding.
* * *
The news that a teacher at the school has had “a long-term relationship with a pupil” and “is now suspended while the matter is investigated” quickly reaches the local paper. At first the comments section is cautious, but soon the questions start: “Do you think this is a coincidence, then?? First that coach, and now a teacher??” No one says “woman,” no one says “homosexual.” Everyone says “people like that,” “like them.” Someone writes, “And you’re not allowed to complain either, because then you’re made out to be the bad guy! But surely we have to be allowed to react, for the sake of the children? What sort of town do want to live in? Why do we have to be some sort of experiment for everything?”
Most of them don’t even mention Benji. That makes it easier. But a picture appears. The first time it is published is from an anonymous online account, no one remembers where, and as soon as it starts to spread, the account is deleted. No one asks where the picture came from; rumors spread out in all directions, but it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is what the picture shows.
It’s a hockey helmet. It looks as though it’s been photographed on a bench in a locker room, and on the side is a picture of the bear, the logo of Beartown Hockey. A rainbow has been painted around it. Someone writes, anonymously, “I think it looks great! I don’t even like hockey, but I think we should take the opportunity to do something symbolic with the whole club to show our support! Like a political gesture, hand in hand with hockey!”
Then the picture spreads beyond Beartown, and a newspaper in a big city posts it on its website with the caption, “Hockey player comes out as gay—this is his club’s admirable response!”
* * *
By the time the reactions start to appear, Richard Theo has already closed his laptop. He’s closed the window after letting out the last of the flies; it’s cold out there, and they’ll soon freeze to death. But they’ve had their summer, served their purpose.
As Richard Theo is leaving his office, someone is already writing online, “Beartown isn’t going to become some bullshit rainbow town, and Beartown Ice Hockey isn’t going to become some bullshit rainbow team! The Pack will never allow that to happen!”
* * *
When the image turns out to be a fake, manipulated using a common computer program, reporters from all over the country start calling the general manager of Beartown Ice Hockey, asking, “Why don’t you want to show support for homosexual players? Why have you distanced yourselves from those helmets with the rainbow flag on them?”
Peter Andersson tries to explain, without knowing what he really wants to say. Everything is going so fast. In the end he doesn’t dare answer his phone anymore.
* * *
But when the reporter from the local paper calls Richard Theo and asks what he thinks of all the “turbulence” surrounding Beartown Ice Hockey, naturally Theo has a very simple answer: “I don’t think we should mix hockey and politics. Just let the guys play.”
* * *
That will be heard more and more often in coming days. “Just let the guys play!” It wil
l mean different things to different people.
* * *
Maya gets home to a house where the only sound is the gentle tapping of a computer mouse and keyboard. Leo is sitting in his room, so close to the screen that the world disappears, as usual. Maya is envious of his escape route.
“What are you doing?” she asks, ridiculously.
“Playing a game,” he replies.
She stands in the doorway for a few moments, opens her mouth as if to ask something, but nothing comes out. So she shuts the door and walks toward the kitchen. Perhaps he can hear from her footsteps that something’s wrong, unless little brothers just know things that other people miss, because without taking his eyes from the computer he calls, “Do you want to play?”
32
Then He Takes the Shotgun and Goes Out into the Forest
Hockey is the simplest sport in the world, if you’re sitting in the stands. It’s always so easy to say what everyone should have done when you know that what they actually did didn’t work.
* * *
Peter heads to the rink with tunnel vision. His phone is still ringing, but he’s stopped answering. He tries calling Benji, but Benji doesn’t answer. He opens his email. It’s an avalanche.
He slumps forward, blinded by a migraine, unable to breathe. For a few minutes he worries that he’s having a stroke. He can still remember the terrible emails and text messages that appeared after Maya reported Kevin to the police. It’s starting again. It’s all happening again.
Most of them don’t use the word itself, they use words such as “distraction” and “politics” instead. “We just don’t want any distractions or politics in the club so close to the game against Hed, Peter!” Everyone means well, obviously. No one has anything against Benji, of course. “But for the boy’s own sake, perhaps it’s best if he has . . . a little break? You know how sensitive . . . some people . . . not us, but there are others who might react negatively, Peter! We’re only thinking of the boy’s best!” Naturally. “Just let the guys play!” several correspondents urge.
* * *
Just not all the guys.
* * *
But one of the emails is different. It comes from one of the parents of the little league players, and there’s a picture attached, taken in the A-team’s locker room, but it’s not of Benji. It shows Elisabeth Zackell, who appears to be leaning forward and examining Bobo’s genitals. It may have been a harmless joke when it happened, but someone on the A-team took a photograph. No one knows how the picture spread, but there’s another email containing the same picture. Then another one appears. “First teachers sleeping with their pupils, then teachers training their pupils to fight, and now THIS??!!!”
The emails that follow stick to the usual progression: First worried emails. Then hate-filled emails. Then threatening emails. Finally an anonymous email: “If that bitch and that queer take part in one more Beartown training session, you’re going to be in serious trouble!!!”
* * *
It’s so easy to be wise in hindsight; hockey is so simple from the stands. If Peter hadn’t had a daughter who had been depicted as the enemy of the entire hockey club back in the spring, he might have reacted better now. Or perhaps worse. But his instincts are heading in all different directions, so in the end he prints out the picture of Zackell and Bobo, finds the coach down on the ice, and shouts, “Zackell! What the h— what’s this?”
Zackell is standing on her own, shooting pucks, and she skates calmly over to the boards and looks at the picture. “That’s me. And that’s Bobo. And that little thing is a penis.”
But you . . . it’s . . . what’s . . . ?”
Zackell taps her stick on the ice. Shrugs. “You know how it is. Hockey teams test the boundaries when they get a new coach. It’s between them and me.”
Peter is clutching his head as if it’s cracked and he’s glued it back together and is waiting for it to dry. “But, Zackell . . . it isn’t between you and them anymore. Someone’s posted the picture online! The whole town is going—”
Zackell examines the tape on her stick. “I’m a hockey coach. I’m not the mayor. The town’s problems are the town’s problems. In here we just play hockey.”
Peter groans. “Society doesn’t work like that, Zackell. People will interpret this as . . . they’re not used to . . . first this business with Benji, and now this, with you and this . . .”
“Penis?” Zackell suggests helpfully.
Peter glares at her. “We’ve received a threat! We have to cancel today’s practice!”
Zackell doesn’t seem to hear him, and asks instead, “What’s happening with Vidar? Our new goalie? Are you going to let him play?”
“Did you hear what I said? We’ve received a threat! Never mind about Vidar! We have to cancel practice!”
Zackell shrugs again. “I heard. I’m not deaf.”
She goes back out onto the ice, as if he’s finished. Then she calmly carries on firing pucks. Peter storms up to the office and calls the A-team players. They all answer apart from Benji. Peter explains the threat in the email. All the players understand. Not one of them stays at home.
* * *
When the practice begins, the team gathers on the ice in front of Zackell. She taps her stick on the ice and says, “Have you heard that the club’s received a threat?”
They nod. She clarifies, “If I coach you and if Benjamin plays with us, apparently we’re ‘going to be in serious trouble.’ So if you don’t want to train today, I won’t hold it against you.”
No one moves. A lot of shit has been said about this team, but they don’t scare easily. Zackell nods. “Well, then. I understand that there are a lot of . . . emotions right now. But we’re a hockey team. We play hockey.”
The older players wait for her to demand to know who posted the picture of her and Bobo on the Internet. She doesn’t even mention it. Perhaps that wins her some respect, because eventually one of them calls out, “We mostly turned up for the beer!”
The laughter that follows is liberating. Even Bobo looks a little less embarrassed.
* * *
It’s only words. Combinations of letters. How can they possibly hurt anyone?
* * *
Benji is standing in Adri’s kennels; the dogs are playing in the snow around his feet. They don’t care, and he wishes no one else did either. He doesn’t want to change the world, doesn’t want anyone to have to adapt themselves to him, he just wants to play hockey. Go into the locker room without it falling silent because nobody dares to mess around anymore. He just wants all the usual things: sticks and ice, a puck and two nets, the desire to win, to struggle. You against us, with everything we’ve got. But that’s over now. Benji is no longer one of them.
Perhaps one day he’ll find words for that feeling of being different. How physical it is. Exclusion is a form of exhaustion that eats its way into your skeleton. People who are like everyone else, who belong to the norm, the majority, can’t possibly understand it. How can they?
Benji has heard all the arguments, he’s sat next to adults in the stands and in buses on the way to tournaments, people who say, “There are no homosexuals in ice hockey.” There were jokes, all the usual stuff, but that never really affected Benji. It was the little choices of vocabulary that everyone seemed to find obvious that cut deepest, when “fag” was used as an insult. “You play like fags!” “Fag referee!” “Damn fag coffee machine doesn’t work!” Three little letters used to describe weakness, stupidity, anything that didn’t function properly. Anything that was defective.
Naturally there were adults who never said the word. Some of them said other things instead. They didn’t even think about it, but Benji stored up tiny splinters of conversations for years. “They don’t bother with hockey. How would that even work? With the locker room and everything? Are we going to have three different locker rooms, just in case?” The people saying these things were ordinary parents, kind and generous people who did all they
could for their children’s hockey team. They didn’t vote for extremist parties, they didn’t wish anyone dead, they’d never dream of being violent. They just said obvious, self-evident things such as, “People like that probably don’t feel at home in hockey, they probably like other things. You have to bear in mind that hockey’s a tough sport!” Sometimes they said it straight out: “Hockey’s a sport for men!” They said “men,” but even as a small boy Benji would stand alongside in silence, knowing that what they actually meant was “real men.”
* * *