Mother and daughter say that because it makes things easier for him. They’re giving him a chance to pretend that everything’s fine. He knocks on Leo’s door, too, but Leo isn’t home. He’s already gone to Hed. He’s planning to watch the game from the standing area.
* * *
Peter knows he should stop him. Punish his son. But how do you do that when all you’ve ever done is nag your son to go to hockey games with you?
* * *
Ana is standing in front of the mirror trying to choose an outfit. She has no idea how she ought to look. She’s been to a thousand hockey games but never one where Vidar has been playing. It’s a stupid fantasy, but she wants him to turn toward the stands and catch sight of her. And realize that she’s there for his sake.
Her dad is stumbling about in the kitchen downstairs. He knocks something over, then something else. She hears him swear. It aches so deeply in her, all his drinking. She throws on some clothes without picking them as carefully as she planned, because she wants to be out of the house before her dad gets so drunk that he needs help. She doesn’t want to let the bad version of him steal this game from her. Not today.
He calls out to her when she reaches the door, and her first thought is to pretend she hasn’t heard him, but something in his voice brings her up short. It’s too clear, too steady—it’s unusual. She turns around. Her dad has showered and combed his hair and is wearing a clean shirt. The kitchen behind him has been tidied up. There are bottles in the recycling bin, and he’s tipped their contents down the sink.
“Have a good time at the game. Do you need any money?” he asks tentatively.
She looks at her good dad for a long time. The bad one seems so far away right now. “How are you feeling?” she whispers.
“I want to try again,” he whispers back.
He’s said that before. It doesn’t stop her believing him. She hesitates for just a moment, then says, “Do you feel like going for a walk?”
“Aren’t you going to the game?”
“I’d rather go for a walk with you, Dad.”
* * *
So that’s what they do. While two whole towns head to a hockey game, a father and his daughter go for a walk in the forest that has always been theirs. Him, her, and the trees. A family.
* * *
Bobo cycles through Beartown carrying an invisible backpack of stone. He arrives late at the pickup spot, but no one seems to care, and Zackell hardly seems to notice that he’s turned up. Amat sits next to Bobo on the team bus to Hed but doesn’t know what to say. So they say nothing.
The parking lot in front of Hed’s ice rink is full of people, and there are lines even though there’s still a long time before the game starts. The rink is going to be full, the towns are in an uproar, the hate has had plenty of time to grow. This is going to be war. The bus is silent. All the players are wrestling with their own demons.
Only when the A-team members have gotten off the bus and gone into the hall, along the corridor, and into the locker room and are all sitting down does one of the older players get to his feet. He walks over to Bobo with a roll of tape in his hand.
“What was your mom’s name?” the older player asks.
Bobo looks up in surprise. Swallows hard. “My mom? Ann . . . Ann-Katrin. Her name is . . . her name was . . . Ann-Katrin.”
“With a ‘K’ or a ‘C’?” the older player asks.
“ ‘K,’ ” Bobo whispers.
The older player writes “Ann-Katrin” on a strip of tape. He sticks it onto the sleeve of Bobo’s jersey. Then he repeats the process and fastens the tape onto his own sleeve. The roll of tape passes silently around the locker room. Bobo’s mom’s name is on every arm.
* * *
Amat skates out onto the ice. As he’s done throughout his childhood, he starts skating around, around, around, to warm up. Normally he doesn’t hear anything, he’s gotten good at that, no matter how many people are in the rink. Everything becomes background noise, and he disappears into a zone of concentration that makes whoever is at the other end of the boards irrelevant. But today is different. Something breaks through the noise and yelling: his name. A few people somewhere are chanting it. Louder and louder. Over and over again. Until Amat looks up. Then the cheering gets louder.
In one corner, right at the top, stands a group of idiots jumping on their seats. They’re not there to cheer for either of the teams, they’re there for one single player. Because he’s from the Hollow. They’re singing the simplest, most beautiful, most important thing: “AMAT! ONE OF US! AMAT! ONE OF US! AAAMAT! ONE OF US!”
* * *
Fatima arrives at the rink in Hed on her own, but she’s holding two tickets. She watches the game with an empty seat beside her, Ann-Katrin’s. When Amat comes out onto the ice, she stands up and cheers, and when Bobo comes out, she cheers twice as loudly. She’ll do that at every game Bobo plays and every game his younger siblings play. No matter where their lives take them, there’ll always be a crazy woman in the stands cheering loud enough for two.
* * *
Why does anyone love team sports? Because we want to be part of a group? For some people the answer is simply that a team is a family. For anyone who needs an extra one or never had one in the first place.
* * *
Vidar Rinnius loved playing hockey when he was a child, just like every other kid. But unlike all the other kids, he loved the stands even more. He always promised himself that if he ever had to choose, he’d never pick the ice over the standing area. He said that to Teemu when he was little, and Teemu smiled and said, “It’s our club, remember that. When all the players have switched clubs, when the general managers and coaches have moved on to clubs that pay more, when the sponsors let us down and the politicians have sold out, we’ll still be here. And we’ll be singing even louder. Because it was never their club anyway. It’s always been ours.”
Vidar sat on the team bus today, his gear is in the locker room, but he isn’t there. He puts on a black jacket and goes up to the standing area instead, takes his place beside his brother and yells, “WE ARE THE BEARS! WE ARE THE BEARS! WE ARE THE BEARS! THE BEARS FROM BEARTOWN!”
Teemu looks at him. Perhaps he wants to tell his little brother to go back to the locker room, that a better life awaits him on the ice. But the Pack is their family, and the club belongs to them. So he kisses his brother’s hair. Woody and Spider hug Vidar, their fists clenched behind his back. And they sing, louder, more insistently:
“We are the bears! We are the bears!”
* * *
Love and hate. Joy and sorrow. Anger and forgiveness. Sports carry the promise that we can have everything tonight. Only sports can do that.
* * *
At one end of the rink, the Hed fans’ standing area, the volume rises until nothing can penetrate the wall of noise. Their chanting is laced with schadenfreude. If you ask most people in the stand afterward, several years from now, they’ll just give an embarrassed cough and mumble, “It’s just hockey . . . no harm intended . . . just something you sing in the heat of battle. You know what it’s like! It’s just hockey!” Of course it is. We support our team, you support yours, and we exploit every little weakness we can find. If we get a chance to hit below the belt, we grab it, anything to hurt you, get you off balance. Because we only want the same thing you do: to win. So the fans in Hed’s stands chant the simplest, cruelest, and vilest things they can think of.
Beartown Ice Hockey’s best player used to be Kevin Erdahl. He raped Maya Andersson, the daughter of the club’s general manager. Kevin’s best friend, Benjamin Ovich, is homosexual. What did we expect? That they weren’t going to chant about all that? Those people who hate us?
Their voices don’t number in the thousands, but in a small arena with a low roof, the silence of many can make the chanting of some of them sound as though everyone is shouting the same thing. The red fans turn toward the Beartown section of the stand, toward the Pack, and roar, “Queers! S
luts! Rapists!”
It’s easy to say you should just ignore it. Not let it get to you. It’s only hockey. Only words. Doesn’t mean anything. But chant it enough times, shout it loud enough, repeat, repeat, repeat. Until it eats its way in. One hundred red arms pointing across the ice, directly at the green fans. Their words thundering against the roof and echoing off the walls. Again. Again.
QUEERS!
SLUTS!
RAPISTS!
39
Violence
Over in the seated part of the rink Peter Andersson can’t help hearing the chanting. He does his best to ignore it, but it’s impossible. He leans forward toward the next row, taps Sune on the shoulder, and asks, “Where’s Benji?”
“He hasn’t turned up,” Sune replies.
Peter leans back. The Hed fans’ words hit the roof and bounce back, hitting him like burning oil. He feels like standing up and shouting, too, shouting anything at all. It’s only a damn hockey game, and what’s it worth now? How much has Peter sacrificed for this? How much has he put his family through? His daughter? How many bad decisions must a man have taken when his wife stays at home and his son would rather be with the hooligans than his father? If Beartown Hockey doesn’t win this game after everything Peter’s done, what does that make him worth? He’s sold out his ideals, he’s gambled everything he loves. If the club loses against Hed now, everything is lost. There’s no other way of looking at it.
* * *
“Queers! Sluts! Rapists!”
* * *
Peter looks in silence at the people shrieking in Hed’s standing area and wishes them ill, every last one of them. If Beartown takes the lead tonight, if the team gets the chance to crush those people and destroy every ounce of their desire to get out of bed tomorrow, Peter fervently hopes that his team won’t ease up on them. He wants to see them suffer.
* * *
At some point almost everyone makes a choice. Some of us don’t even notice it happening, most don’t get to plan it in advance, but there’s always a moment when we take one path instead of another that has consequences for the rest of our lives. It determines the people we will become, in other people’s eyes as well as our own. Elisabeth Zackell may have been right when she said that anyone who feels responsibility isn’t free. Because responsibility is a burden. Freedom is a pleasure.
* * *
Benji is sitting on the roof of one of the outhouses at the kennels, watching the snowflakes make their way to the ground. He knows the game is about to start, but he isn’t there. He can’t explain why; he’s never been good at justifying or rationalizing his actions. Sometimes he does stupid things on instinct, sometimes he doesn’t for the same reason. Sometimes he cares too little about things, sometimes too much.
Beside him on the roof sit his three sisters, Adri, Katia, and Gaby. Down on the ground, on a chair next to an unsteady table that’s been pushed down into the snow, sits their mom. She’d do—and has done—almost anything for her children, but climbing a ladder to sit on an icy outhouse roof and ending up with a wet backside is somewhere beyond her limit.
The Ovich family has always loved hockey, even if its members haven’t always loved the same things about it. Adri loved playing and watching games, Katia loved playing but not watching, Gaby never played but watches when Benji plays. Their mom always asks irritably, “Why do there have to be three periods? Wouldn’t two be enough? Doesn’t any of these people eat proper meals?” But if you give her a date and a game ten years ago, she can tell you if her son scored or not. If he fought hard. If she was proud or angry. Often both. The sisters shuffle uncomfortably beside their brother. It’s cold, not only because of the freezing temperature.
“If you don’t want us to go to the game, we won’t go,” Gaby says quietly.
“If you really, really, really don’t want us to . . . ,” Katia clarifies.
Benji doesn’t know what to say. Most of all, after everything that’s happened, he hates himself for having put his family into this position. He doesn’t want to be a burden to them, doesn’t want them to have to fight on his behalf. He was once told by another boy’s mother, “You may not be an angel, Benjamin. But, dear God, you haven’t suffered for the lack of a male role model. All your best qualities come from the fact that you’ve been raised in a house full of women.” Benji will always say she was wrong, because she made them sound like they were perfectly ordinary women. They aren’t, not to him. His sisters did their best to replace their father, they taught their little brother to hunt, drink, and fight. But they also taught him never to mistake friendliness for weakness or love for shame. And it’s for their sake that he hates himself now. Because if not for him, they wouldn’t even consider not going to Hed.
In the end it’s Adri who looks at her watch and says, “I love you, little brother, but I’m going to the game.”
“I’m going too!” their mom shouts from down on the ground.
Because she and Adri are old enough to remember life before Beartown. The other children were too young, but Adri remembers what the family was fleeing from, and what they found here. A safe place to build a home. This is their town. Benji pats Adri’s hand gently and whispers, “I know.”
Adri kisses him on the cheek and whispers that she loves him in two different languages. When she climbs down, Katia and Gaby hesitate, but in the end they follow her. They go to the game for the same reason that they could have stayed at home: for their brother’s sake and for their town’s. They wish Benji was going to play, but they know that nothing they say will change his mind. Because he is after all a member of this family, and there are probably mules that accuse other mules of being “as stubborn as an Ovich.”
* * *
Benji stays on the roof until his mom and sisters have driven off in the car. He smokes all alone. Then he climbs down, fetches his bicycle, and sets off through the forest. But not toward Hed.
* * *
When children first start to play hockey, they are told that all they have to do is try their best. That that’s enough. Everyone knows it’s a lie. Everyone knows that this sport isn’t about having fun; it’s not measured in terms of effort, only by results.
The Beartown Ice Hockey players enter the rink with a mother’s name on their arms, and even though it’s an away game large parts of the arena are filled with green shirts with the words BEARTOWN AGAINST THE REST on them. Men in black jackets unfurl a banner above one of the standing areas, similar to the one that’s going to be demolished in their own rink, and the words are aimed as much at Peter Andersson as Hed’s fans: “Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough!”
* * *
The game starts down on the ice. The volume is unbearable, people’s ears starts to pop, and Beartown Ice Hockey’s players do all they can. They fight for their lives. Give everything they’ve got. Their very, very, very best. But Vidar is in the stands, and no one knows where Benji is. The goalie and the captain. Maybe Beartown deserves to win, maybe it would have been fair for them to have a fairy-tale ending, but hockey isn’t measured like that. Hockey only counts goals.
* * *
Hed scores. Then again. Then again, and again.
* * *
The singing from the red stand is deafening. Peter Andersson doesn’t hear it, though. The ringing in his ears is the sound of his heart breaking.
* * *
At the campsite the teacher has already packed. His bags are in the car. Yet he’s still sitting at the table in the kitchen of the little cabin, looking out of the window as he waits, hoping that someone with sad eyes and a wild heart is going to appear from between the trees. When he finally sees Benji, he’s been waiting so long that at first he thinks he’s imagining it. The teacher stands up and tries to gather all the words inside him when his heart leaps at the sound of the door opening and he finds himself staring at Benji’s lips.
“I . . . was trying to write something . . . ,” he says apologetically, gesturing clumsily to
ward the pen and blank sheet of paper on the table.
Benji says nothing. The cabin is cold, but the teacher is wearing a thin white linen shirt. It’s hanging loose outside his trousers, crumpled like Sunday-morning hair; he smells of warm skin and fresh coffee. Benji opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. He looks around the cabin; all the clothes are gone, all personal belongings removed. Perhaps the teacher detects a note of criticism in Benji’s gaze, because he mumbles embarrassedly, “I’m not as brave as you, Benjamin. I’m not the sort of person who stays and fights.”
There’s still a deep mark in the front door made by the knife. Benji reaches out his hand, touches his skin one last time. Whispers, “I know.”
The teacher holds his hand to his cheek, very briefly, closes his eyes, and says, “Call if you ever want . . . ever want to be somewhere else. Maybe things could have been different for us . . . somewhere else.”
Benji nods. Perhaps they could have been, somewhere else. Something more.
* * *
When the teacher gets into his car, he finds himself thinking of a quote by some philosopher: “Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.” He tries to remember who wrote it. Albert Camus, perhaps? He occupies his mind with this as he drives through Beartown, along the road, and out of the forest, because if he concentrates hard enough on those words, all the other feelings can’t overwhelm him and stop him from seeing the road ahead of him.