It’s only words. Only letters. Only a human being.
* * *
Benji doesn’t train with his team today, because he knows he’s no longer one of them. He doesn’t know who he ought to be instead. And he doesn’t know if he wants that.
* * *
When the practice starts, Sune is sitting in the stands. Peter sinks down beside him.
“Have you reported the threat to the police?” Sune asks.
“They don’t know if it’s serious or not. Could just be some kid.”
“Try not to worry.”
“I don’t know what to do,” Peter admits impotently.
Sune doesn’t offer any comfort, he never does. He demands that people take responsibility. “You don’t know what to do, or what you ought to do?”
Peter sighs. “You know what I mean. It’s a messy situation to try to handle . . . Zackell and the team . . .”
Sune nods toward the ice. “They chose to come. Let the guys play.”
“What about Benjamin, then? How am I going to help him?”
Sune adjusts the fold of his T-shirt over his stomach. “You can start by giving up the idea that he needs help. It’s everyone else who needs help.”
Peter snaps back, hurt: “Don’t come here and try to tell me that I’m prej—”
Sune snorts. “Why are you still involved in this sport, Peter?”
Peter takes a deep breath. “I don’t know how to stop.”
Sune nods.
“I tell myself that I’m still here because the ice is the only place I know where everyone is equal. Out there it doesn’t matter who you are. All that matters is if you can play.”
“There may be equality on the ice. But the same thing doesn’t apply to the sport in general, Peter.”
“No. And that’s our fault. Yours and mine and everyone else’s.” Peter throws his arms out. “But what are we supposed to do?”
Sune raises an eyebrow. “We see to it that the next kid who says he’s different in some way is met with a shrug of the shoulders. We need to say, ‘So what? That doesn’t matter, does it?’ And one day perhaps there won’t be homosexual hockey players and female coaches. Just hockey players and coaches.”
“The community isn’t that simple,” Peter says.
“The community? We are the community!” Sune replies.
Peter rubs his eyes. “Please, Sune . . . I’ve had reporters calling me for hours now . . . I . . . hell, maybe they’re right. Maybe we ought to do something symbolic for Benjamin. If we painted our helmets . . . would that help?”
Sune leans back in his seat. “Do you think that’s what Benjamin wants? He chose not to tell anyone. Some lowlife gave it away. I’m sure loads of journalists would like to make him into some sort of figurehead now, and loads of nutters on the other side will want to vent all their hatred on him. And neither side knows a damn thing about hockey. They’ll turn every game he plays in into a battle between their conflicting agendas, a political circus, and that may be what he’s most frightened of: becoming a burden to the team. A distraction.”
Peter snaps back in frustration, “So what do you think Benjamin wants us to do, then?”
“Nothing.”
“We have to do something!”
“Do you care about his sexuality? Does it change the way you look at him?”
“Of course not!”
Sune pats Peter on the shoulder. “I’m a silly old man, Peter. I don’t always know what’s right and what’s wrong. But Benjamin has been the cause of a lot of crap outside this ice rink over the years, fighting and smoking dope and God knows what else. But he’s a damn good player, so you and everyone else has said, every time, ‘That has nothing to do with hockey.’ So why should this have anything to do with hockey? Let the boy live his life. Don’t force him to become a figurehead. If we’re uncomfortable with his sexuality, then he’s not the one with the damn problem—we are!”
Peter flushes and swallows. “I . . . I didn’t mean . . .”
Sune scratches his remaining hair. “Secrets weigh a person down. Can you imagine what it must have been like to carry around that secret about yourself your whole life? Hockey was his refuge. The ice may have been the only place where he felt just the same as everyone else. Don’t take that away from him.”
“So what do I do?”
“Let him earn his place in the team on the strength of his hockey alone, just like everyone else. He’s going to be treated differently everywhere else now. Don’t let that happen to him here.”
Peter says nothing for a long time. Then he says, “You’ve always said we should be ‘more than just a hockey club,’ Sune. Isn’t that exactly what we should be now?”
Sune considers this. Eventually he whispers sadly, “Maybe. Like I said, Peter, I’m an old man. I don’t know what the hell I’m saying half the time.”
* * *
Benji isn’t his father. He doesn’t do what Alain Ovich did. He doesn’t leave any gifts, doesn’t give any signs or symbols.
His mom and sisters call him; they’ve read the same things online as everyone else, and they’re worried. So he says everything’s okay. He’s good at that. He goes to Adri’s kennels, because one of the dogs was ill last night; Adri got home late from the vet’s and is still asleep.
Benji closes the door downstairs just hard enough to wake his sister from her slumber, and she falls asleep again straight away. Adri only ever sleeps really deeply if she knows her little brother is home, otherwise it’s just anxious dozing. Benji takes the garbage out, folds his bedsheets, and puts them neatly into a cupboard the way she’s always nagging at him to do. Then he goes out to see the dogs. They’re also asleep when he goes silently upstairs, knowing exactly which floorboards creak and which ones don’t, like a boy taking part in the world’s slowest game of hopscotch.
He very carefully slides his hand under Adri’s pillow and takes the key. He kisses his sister’s forehead for the last time.
* * *
Then he takes the shotgun and goes out into the forest.
* * *
After practice, Zackell stands in the parking lot smoking a cigar. Peter comes outside, stops beside her, and asks, “Do you really want Vidar on the team?”
She lets the smoke out through her nose. Yes.”
Peter groans. “Hold an open tryout, then. Say that anyone who hasn’t got a contract with another club can attend. If Vidar is good enough, he can play. But he only gets his place if his hockey’s good enough, like everyone else!”
Peter opens the door to go back inside, but Zackell asks, “Why are you so angry with Vidar? Is it normal to be that angry if someone shits on your desk?”
Peter suppresses his gag reflex at the thought of Vidar’s visiting card. He ended up with shit between the keys on his computer keyboard, and that’s not the sort of thing you get rid of easily, either from the keyboard or from your memory. But he shakes his head.
“Vidar’s unreliable. A team has to be able to rely on its goalie, but Vidar is completely unpredictable. Egotistical. You can’t build a team made up of egoists.”
“So why have you changed your mind?” Zackell asks.
Peter doesn’t know what to say. So he replies honestly, “I want this to be a club where we make people better. Maybe we can make Vidar a better person. Maybe ourselves, too.”
The snowflakes turn somersaults in the wind, and Peter is horrified that he has realized this too late. Benji might never come back. You can say a lot of things about Benjamin Ovich, but he was never an egoist.
* * *
It will be claimed that this happened to one person. It will be a lie. We will say, “Things like this are no one’s fault,” but of course they are. Deep down we will know the truth. It’s plenty of people’s fault. Ours.
33
Not Waking Up
Benji is deeper in the forest than ever when he finally stops. The snow is still falling, its flakes tentatively brushing his skin before meltin
g with his body heat and trickling angrily through the hairs on his lower arms. The freezing temperature colors his cheeks, his fingers stiffen around the rifle, the breath from his mouth forms smaller and smaller clouds. In the end he isn’t breathing at all.
* * *
There’s a long period of silence. Then a single shot echoes between the trees.
* * *
In Beartown we bury those we love beneath our most beautiful trees. It’s a child who finds the body, but the child doesn’t walk calmly through Beartown the way Adri did when she found her father, Alain Ovich, all those years ago. This child is running.
* * *
Amat and Bobo are sitting in the locker room. They’ll remember this as their last conversation, their last raucous laughter, before they found out that someone had died. It will feel as if they’ll never really be able to laugh as loud ever again.
“What do girls find sexy?” Bobo asks.
He says it the way he says everything: as if his brain is a coffee machine that someone has forgotten to put a coffeepot under, so his thoughts drip straight onto the hot plate beneath and spray everywhere.
“How should I know?” Amat says helplessly.
It’s not long since Bobo asked if it was true that contact lenses are made out of jellyfish. Another time he wondered, “You know how it’s supposed to be unlucky to leave your keys on the table? Okay, but what if someone borrows my keys and leaves them on a table when I’m not even there, do I still get the bad luck?” Back in the spring he wanted to know: “How do you know if you’ve got a nice-looking dick?” At school the other day he asked Amat, “How long should shorts be?” then almost immediately afterward, “You know, in a vacuum, like in space, if you cry there . . . what happens to your tears?”
“I heard some girls in school say an actor was sexy because he had ‘a defined chin and high cheekbones.’ How do you know if you’ve got those?”
“I’m sure you have,” Amat says.
“You think?” Bobo says hopefully.
His face is as shapeless as an overboiled potato, but Amat still nods kindly.
“I’m sure you’re sexy, Bobo.”
“Thanks,” Bobo says, clearly relieved, as if he can tick that off his list of things to worry about. Then he asks, “Have you ever been anyone’s best friend?”
Amat groans. “Please, Bobo . . . yes . . . of course I’ve had a best friend.”
Bobo shakes his big head. “No, I mean have you been someone’s best friend? I’ve had lots of best friends, but I don’t think I’ve ever been anyone else’s best friend. Do you understand what I mean?”
Amat scratches his ear. “Can I be honest? I hardly ever understand what the hell you’re going on about.”
Bobo starts to laugh. So does Amat. The loudest, most uproarious laughter for a long time.
* * *
“You’re never alone in the forest.” All the children around here learn that. Benji stops dead when he sees the animal appear, thirty feet away. Benji looks it right in the eye. He’s hunted in these forests all his life, but this is the first time he’s seen such a large bear.
Benji has been walking into the wind, it hasn’t caught his scent. The bear is close enough to feel threatened, and Benji has no chance of running. All the children around here learn the same things when they’re small: “Don’t run, don’t scream, if the bear runs toward you, curl up on the ground and play dead, and cover your head with your backpack! Don’t fight until you’re sure you have no other choice!”
The rifle is shaking in Benji’s hands; he shouldn’t fire. The animal’s heart and lungs are shielded by its powerful shoulders; only extremely skilled hunters stand any chance of shooting a bear and staying alive long enough to talk about it afterward. Benji ought to know better. But his heart is pounding, he hears his own voice roar from the depths, and then he fires into the air. Or directly at the bear, he doesn’t remember. And it vanishes. It doesn’t run away, it doesn’t slope off into the forest, it just . . . vanishes. Benji stands in the snow, and the forest eats up the echo of the shot until nothing remains but the wind, and he isn’t at all sure if he’s dreaming. If there really was a bear, or if he imagined it, a genuine threat or an imaginary one. He goes over to where the bear ought to have been standing, but there are no tracks in the snow. Even so, he can still feel its stare, like when you wake up early in the morning and don’t have to open your eyes to know that the person next to you is looking at you.
* * *
Benji is breathing hard. There’s a sense of invincibility about deciding to die and then not going through with it. A sense of power over yourself. He walks home with a feeling that his body doesn’t belong to him, without knowing who’s going to inhabit it now.
* * *
But at least he goes home.
* * *
Amat and Bobo are still laughing. But Bobo stops abruptly, before Amat has time to realize what’s happened. Bobo has always been told that he’s a bit slow on the uptake, he knows all the jokes by heart: “That boy couldn’t pour water out of a boot if it had holes in the toes and the instructions under the heel” and “Bobo’s so stupid he can’t piss his own name in the snow.” But that doesn’t mean his brain isn’t busy; his mom always says that it just works in a different way from other people’s.
So Bobo has been expecting this. Outside he may appear unfocused, but inside he has been preparing for this moment ever since his mom took him out into the forest and told him she was ill.
* * *
The child runs through Beartown, in through the door of the ice rink, gesticulating wildly at the people who ask where she’s going. Some of them recognize her, it’s Bobo’s little sister. One of them may even have realized and whispered, “Oh, no . . .”
When his little sister stands in the doorway of the locker room sobbing, “She’s not waking up, Bobo! Dad’s gone to get a car, and Mom won’t wake up even though I’ve tried shouting at her!” Bobo has already dealt with his own grief. His tears trickle into his little sister’s hair, but mostly for her sake. She was brave enough to run through the whole town, but she’s in pieces now, and there’s no one she trusts as much as her big brother.
Only then does the girl feel safe enough in his arms to dare to shatter into a billion pieces. She will always run to Bobo when she feels sad, all her life, and he stands with his arms around her and knows that he has to be strong enough to bear that responsibility now.
* * *
Amat hugs them both, but Bobo doesn’t feel it. He’s already wondering about how he’s going to find a tree beautiful enough for his mom to sleep under. That’s when he becomes an adult.
* * *
Adri Ovich wakes up from a terrible dream. She fumbles in a daze under her pillow and feels her pulse throb in her temples when her fingers finally close around the key. She’s breathing so hard that it hurts. She goes downstairs and finds her little brother sleeping on the sofa. The rifle is standing in the gun cabinet, as if nothing had ever happened.
* * *
She kisses him on the forehead. Sits on the floor beside him for hours. Can’t quite seem to get beyond just waking up.
34
Violence Against a Horse on Official Service
In many years’ time we may not know what to call this story. We will say it was a story about violence. About hate. About conflict and difference and communities that tore themselves apart. But that won’t be true, at least not entirely.
* * *
It’s also a different sort of story.
* * *
Vidar Rinnius is in his last year as a teenager. His psychologist’s report suggests that he has “a lack of impulse control,” but most people would probably expand that to say “a complete lack.” He’s always gotten into fights; sometimes he and his big brother Teemu tried to defend their mother, and sometimes they defended each other. And if there wasn’t anyone to defend, they would fight with each other. The bit about impulse control is true, Vidar has
never been able to stop himself. About the time that other people get an idea into their heads along the lines of “I wonder what would happen if . . .” Vidar would already have done it. When Vidar was a boy, his coach once said that was what made him such a good goalie. “You just don’t know how to not stop those pucks!” Everyone says that Vidar’s problem is that he “doesn’t think,” but the opposite is actually the case. He can’t stop thinking.
He was twelve years old when he realized that he was alone. He went to another town with his brother and his brother’s friends when the Beartown A-team was playing an away game there. After the game, Teemu told Vidar to go to McDonald’s and wait there, because he had a feeling there was going to be trouble. Vidar was sitting there eating when a group of opposing fans burst in through the doors. Teemu and the Pack had been stopped by the police, and Vidar was sitting alone in a corner dressed in the wrong colors, and the opposing fans knew who he was. During the game they had seen the twelve-year-old yelling insults about their club and giving them the finger. “You’re not so tough without your brother, are you?” they cried as they attacked him.
That was when Vidar realized he was on his own. Everyone is. We are born alone, die alone, and fight alone. So Vidar fought. He thought he was going to die, he watched adults leave the fast-food restaurant, he might have been a child but no one tried to help him. The staff ran to the kitchen, he didn’t know how many enemies there were, all he knew was that he didn’t stand a chance. He lashed out anyway. Then Spider appeared out of nowhere, Vidar’s memory has him jumping through a window, but who knows? Spider defended him as if they were family, and after that they were. That was when Vidar realized that you don’t have to be alone. Not all the time. Not if you have a pack.