“Teemu Rinnius!” she snarls, sounding more threatening than she feels.
He turns around. “Yes?”
Kira walks up to him so close that she can feel his breath. She’s holding a folded moving box. A window opens above the Bearskin, and an old woman peers out, but Kira is too agitated to notice.
“Do you know who I am?” Kira asks.
Teemu nods, his face five inches from hers. “You’re Peter Andersson’s wife.”
Her head moves back, just a fraction, but her voice grows louder. “I’m Leo Andersson and Maya Andersson’s mother! And I’m a lawyer! So maybe I am afraid of you, just like everyone else, but you need to get one thing very clear. If you come after my family again, I’ll come after your family!”
She throws the box on the ground between them. Teemu raises an eyebrow. “Are you threatening me?”
Kira nods. “You can be damn sure I am, Teemu Rinnius! And you can tell all the cowardly little lowlifes in your little ‘pack’ that next time they leave a rifle cartridge on my drive, I’ll put it in your head!”
Teemu doesn’t answer, and his eyes aren’t giving a thing away. Perhaps Kira should have been satisfied with that, but she’s past the point where that’s even possible. So she takes something out of her bag. Empty pill bottles. She holds them up mockingly in front of him.
“You lot came to my family’s home, so I went over to yours, Teemu. This was in your mom’s garbage bin. Classified medication. Does your mom have a prescription for drugs like this? Because if not, she’s breaking the law. And above all, her supplier is breaking the law. And that’s you, isn’t it, Teemu? What do you think will happen when I come after you?”
Teemu blinks slowly, evidently fascinated. But when he takes a step toward Kira, she backs away. Because everyone does. His words are an order: “Go away. Now.”
* * *
Kira lowers her head involuntarily. She’ll end up cursing herself many times for doing this, but we don’t know what we’re capable of until someone pushes us far enough. She leaves the street, trying not to break into a run as she heads back to her car, and almost succeeds.
* * *
Up at the kennels Adri is feeding her dogs. There are no cars with their trunks full of drink coming today. There won’t be any hunters calling in for coffee, either. She doesn’t know if it’s because they don’t want to or because they don’t dare. It’s never easy around here to know if people want to say something and are just not saying it or if they’re not saying anything because they don’t know what to say.
So Adri calls her friend Jeanette, who’s still at school catching up on her grading. Throughout their childhood it was always Jeanette who called Adri and asked if she wanted to play, never the other way around. But now Adri asks, “Do you want to come over and train?”
Jeanette goes at once. They lift weights and beat the punching bag until they can no longer lift their arms. Jeanette doesn’t tell Adri that everything is going to be all right, because she doesn’t have a little brother and doesn’t know if it ever will be all right. But she trains and trains for as long as Adri wants to continue, and when the road remains empty, with no sign of cars or hunters, Jeanette can’t help thinking that may be just as well—she can see in Adri’s eyes that if anyone shows up here and says the wrong thing about her brother, that person will have to be carried out.
* * *
Teemu is still standing outside the Bearskin, and the window on the first floor is still open. Ramona’s voice carries down to him. “Rumor has it that you left a black jacket for Leo Andersson in school, Teemu. But you gave Leo’s dad a rifle cartridge. Where’s the logic in that?”
Teemu sounds sure of himself, because he has a little brother he shares only the same mother with. “Maybe we recognize that men don’t have to become the bastards their fathers were.”
It’s an excuse, Ramona is well aware of that as she stubs her cigarette out on the window ledge. “If it was you who left that cartridge, then I don’t actually know what to think about you.”
Teemu interrupts her in a tone that he never uses with anyone else, apologetic and shamefaced: “It wasn’t me. But I can’t control every—”
Ramona interrupts him in turn, and her voice is anything but affectionate. “Don’t try that on me! You may not control everything your boys do, but you know damn well that none of them would do anything if you’d expressly forbidden it!”
“I—” Teemu begins, but Ramona cuts him off. “You and I don’t judge each other, Teemu. We never have. But children are the only people who don’t have to take responsibility for anyone but themselves. The rest of us have to take responsibility for the things we cause to happen. You’re a leader. People follow you. So frankly, if you can’t take responsibility for the actions of your followers, that makes you nothing but a monster.”
* * *
Kira never mentions the rifle cartridge to Peter or the children, or anyone else for that matter. But when she gets back to the house two of the neighbors, an old woman and an even older man, are sitting on tatty folding chairs in their driveway, wearing green T-shirts. Their front door is open, the light is on in the hall, Kira can see the old man’s hunting rifle leaning against the wall inside. He’s old and slow, and perhaps the rifle isn’t even loaded, but it doesn’t matter. The old woman nods to Kira and says, “Go in and get some sleep, Kira. We thought we’d just sit here and watch the cars go by for a bit.”
The old man opens a thermos flask and mutters, “There are rumors that a few moving companies have been given the wrong information and have been going to wrong addresses recently. That’s not going to happen around here again.”
Small words. A small gesture. But that’s all it takes to say that we live here, too. And nobody messes with us.
* * *
Teemu is standing thoughtfully outside the ice rink. Beartown is dark, and the only window still lit up is in Peter’s office. What will a person do for his club? For his town? Who does it belong to? Who do you allow to live in it? Eventually Teemu calls Spider and asks, “Who left the moving box outside Peter’s house?”
Spider clears his throat in surprise. “You don’t usually want to know who does what. You usually . . . what is it you always say? ‘I’ll let you know when you’ve gone too far’?”
It’s true. That’s the Pack’s way of protecting Teemu. No one can ever hold him responsible for something he knows nothing about in any court case. He says, “You went too far. Don’t do it again.”
Spider’s stubble scrapes against the phone. “It wasn’t . . . us. It was some youngsters, the kids in the standing area. Dammit, Teemu, you know how everyone feels! The kids hear their dads talking about all the jobs going to Hed, and then they hear us talking about Peter ripping out the standing area. They’re just trying to impress you! They thought you’d be pleased!”
Teemu covers his eyes with his hand and lets out a deep sigh. “Don’t be too hard on them. Just make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Spider clears his throat again. “The business with the moving box or . . . anything aimed at the family . . . ?”
Teemu’s voice gets sharper: “We don’t attack people in the club. We’ll stand tall once those bastards have gone, and we’re standing tall now, but we don’t attack people in the club.”
“What about the standing area, then?”
Teemu admits, for the first time, “I’ve had a meeting with a . . . politician. A friend. He’s going to give us back our standing area. And we’re going to be standing long after Peter Andersson has left this town.”
* * *
When darkness falls, Benji is sitting on the outhouse roof out at the kennels. He stubs out his cigarette and makes a decision, at last. Then he walks alone through Beartown. He doesn’t hide in the shadows, he walks in the middle of the glow from the streetlamps. He hasn’t been going to school, hardly anyone has seen him since they found out that he was gay. But now here is he is, walking along out in the open.
>
Perhaps it’s stupid. But sooner or latter he has to confront everyone. This is too small a town to have many hiding places, and where would he go? What do you do when you just want everything to be the same as normal? You go to work. You hope for the best.
When he walks into the Bearskin, the bar falls silent. A stranger might not have noticed, might have thought the chat and arguments and clink of glasses were the same as usual. But every cell in Benji’s body hears the oxygen being sucked out of the room. He stands still. The very fact that he’s come here might seem crazy, but he was never the sort of child who lay in bed afraid of ghosts and monsters. He’d rather open all the doors, upturn all the mattresses, tell them to come and get him straight away if they were going to do it anyway.
* * *
Sooner that than just waiting.
* * *
A group of men at a table toward the back of the Bearskin stand up. First one, then all of them. Black jackets. None of them finishes his beer, their glasses are left demonstratively half full. Everyone moves out of the way as they walk toward the door, but none of the men touches Benji. They just stalk past, out, away. Within two minutes a dozen more, old and young, some in black jackets, someone without, some in hunting jackets, some in white shirts, have done the same thing.
* * *
Feelings are complicated. Actions are simple.
* * *
Vidar is one of the people sitting at the table at the back of the bar. When he was younger, he asked Spider why he hated queers so much. Spider replied without a trace of hesitation, “Because it’s disgusting! Men are men and women are women, and that’s just some bullshit made-up sex in between! There’s research, you know? They’re missing something in their brains, some substance, and you know who else hasn’t got it? Pedophiles and people who screw animals and that sort of shit. It’s a disease, Vidar, they’re not like us!”
Vidar didn’t believe that at the time. He doesn’t believe it now. But when Spider and Teemu and the others stand up and walk out, Vidar does the same. Because since he was little he’s learned that soldiers stick together. He doesn’t have to hate Benji, he just needs to love his brothers. Which is both complicated and not complicated at all.
* * *
Long after closing time, Ramona and Benji are still sitting in the bar. Just the two of them.
“It’s . . . people have so much crap in their heads . . . it might not even be about you,” Ramona says tentatively, but she knows the boy knows she’s lying.
“They left their beer. They don’t want to drink with people like me,” Benji whispers.
His words are dry twigs, snapping under the slightest weight. Ramona sighs. “It’s a lot all to take in at once, Benjamin. A female coach, those damn politicians, sponsors getting involved in how the club’s run . . . it’s making people nervous. Everything’s changing. The don’t hate you . . . they’re just . . . people just need a bit of time to digest things.”
“They do hate me,” Benji corrects.
Ramona scratches her chin with the whisky glass. “Teemu and the boys saw you as one of them, Benjamin. That’s what’s making it worse. Some of them may have thought . . . I don’t know . . . they might have thought stuff like this only happened on television. That men like that . . . well, that they only lived in the big cities and . . . you know . . . dressed in a particular way. They’ve lived their whole lives assuming it was something you could tell about a person at first glance. But you were . . . like them. They drank with you, you fought together, they yelled your name in the rink. You were a symbol, you proved that one of them could lead this team, this town . . . when they felt that every other bastard was out to get them. You were the middle finger they stuck up at the world. You were the bandit who proved they didn’t have to adapt, that they could win anyway, that those of us out here in the forest could take on anyone who wanted to have a go at us.”
“I don’t want . . . I never asked anyone to give a damn . . . I just want everything to be the same as normal.”
Ramona grabs hold of Benji’s head, hard, with both hands. Until his ears feel like they’re going to fall off. Then she yells, “You’ve got nothing to apologize for, boy. You hear me? Nothing! I’m not defending any of the men who walked out of that door tonight, I’m just saying . . . the world turns quickly. Don’t judge us too hard when we . . . well . . . just don’t judge us too damn hard. Everything’s changing at such a speed that some of us can’t always keep up. We sit here and hear about ‘quotas’ for all sorts of things, and it’s easy to wonder when it’s going to be our turn. When do we get a turn? I’m not defending anyone, boy, I’m just saying that some people around here feel they’re being attacked from all sides. That everyone’s telling them their way of life is wrong. No one likes having change forced upon them.”
“I’m not forcing anyone to do a damn thing . . . I just want things to be normal!”
Ramona lets go of him. Sighs. Pours more whisky. “I know, boy. It is what it is. We’re just going to have to find a new normal, that’s all. There are two types of people now. Some of them need more time, and some need more sense. There’s no hope for the second group, but we might have to wait to see how many there are in the first group before we start beating it into their heads.”
Benji is avoiding eye contact. “Are you disappointed in me, too?”
Ramona starts to laugh, coughing up smoke. “Me? Because you want to sleep with men? You sweet boy, I’ve always been very fond of you. I wish you a happy life. So I can only lament the fact that you want to sleep with men, because one thing I can tell you here and now is that it’s impossible to be happy with men. They’re nothing but a load of damn trouble!”
38
The Game
There’s going to be an ice hockey game. Beartown Ice Hockey against Hed Hockey. The rest of the country is barely aware that it’s taking place; no one cares except for here. But here everyone cares.
Some people can’t understand things unless they’ve experienced them for themselves. The overwhelming majority of the world’s population will live their whole lives in the belief that a hockey game is just a hockey game. That it’s just a silly game. That it doesn’t mean anything.
They’re in a fortunate position. They don’t have to go through all this.
* * *
What would you do for your family? What wouldn’t you do?
* * *
Hog has never had any business cards, but if he did, there would be four things on it: “Hockey player. Car mechanic. Father of three. Ann-Katrin’s husband.” She still sings in his head, she still dances on his feet, he’s never going to let her stop. He finishes work in the garage, just like on a normal day, even though things will never be normal again. When he goes into the house, Bobo, his eldest, is washing the dishes. It was Bobo who went to the undertaker’s and organized the funeral and cremation. Then he came to grips with everything else. There’s food on the table, the younger kids are already eating, and Bobo has done the laundry. Everything his mom used to do. Hog gulps hard when he sits down at the table, so that the younger children won’t see him shatter. Then he says to Bobo, “You should go and play in the game.”
Bobo whispers, “I’m needed here . . . I’ve still got washing and—”
“Harry Potter!” his little brother says, even though his sister hushes him.
“Yes, I’ll read some Harry Potter tonight. Like I always do,” Bobo promises, blinking as he stares down at the washing-up bowl.
Hog chews, directing his own blinking at his plate. “This is good. Really good.”
“Thanks,” Bobo whispers.
They say no more until the younger children have gone to brush their teeth. Then Hog gets up, washes his plate, and hugs Bobo as he whispers an order in his ear: “I can read that damn Barry Trotter tonight. It’s about time I learned how to. You hear what I’m saying?”
Bobo nods silently. Hog holds his cheeks and says, “You and I are going to get through this
, because Mom will never forgive us otherwise. So go and play your game now, because Mom’ll be watching from wherever she is. Not even God or the angels or whatever else there may be could stop her watching her eldest son’s first game on the Beartown A-team!”
* * *
Bobo packs his bag. When he walks out of the door, Hog expects the other children to beg and plead to be allowed to go, too. But they don’t. Instead they stand on the steps with their hockey sticks and a tennis ball and ask, “Do you want to play, Dad?”
* * *
So Hog watches his eldest son go off to his first A-team game, and then he plays hockey with his two younger children in the garage. They struggle and sweat and chase the ball for hours. As if it were the only thing that mattered. Because it is, at that moment. And that’s the whole point.
* * *
What would you do for your family?
* * *
Peter Andersson goes from room to room in the house before he sets out from home. Kira is sitting in the kitchen with her laptop and a glass of wine.
“Do you want to come to the game?” he asks without much hope.
“I need to work,” she replies, predictably.
They look into each other’s eyes. At least they do that. He moves on and knocks on the door to Maya’s room. “Do you . . . I . . . I’m going to the game now,” he whispers.
“I have to study, Dad. Good luck!” she calls from the other side of the door.