“How do you know that?” David wonders.
“I did the same thing when I was his age.”
David hesitates for a long time before asking “Who was your coach?”
“My dad.”
Zackell’s expression doesn’t change at all as she says this. Taken aback, David scratches his neck. “Thanks. I’ll talk to Filip . . .”
Zackell pulls a piece of paper from her pocket and scribbles down a phone number.
“This is the number of a physiotherapist. He’s the best when it comes to this sort of injury. Take Filip to see him, say hi from me.”
Then she walks out of the room. David calls after her, “I’ll call you when I get a job at one of the elite teams! You can be my assistant coach!”
The woman’s response from the corridor is as obvious as it is confident: “You can be my assistant coach!”
* * *
The following morning, David takes Filip to see the physiotherapist. Driving there and back takes all day, and in a few years’ time Filip will talk in interviews about how David used to drive him there once a week for the rest of the season. “Best coach I’ve ever had! Saved my career!” The physiotherapist works for one of the biggest hockey teams in the country, and the following year it recruits Filip. David gets a coaching job there at the same time.
* * *
Elisabeth Zackell will apply for the same job but won’t get it.
* * *
Always fair. Always unfair.
* * *
It’s late when David’s doorbell rings. His pregnant girlfriend answers. Benji is standing outside.
* * *
When David comes down the stairs, he loses his breath for a single moment, and the whole of the boy’s childhood flickers past: Benji and Kevin, best friends, the wild boy and the genius. God, how David loved those two. Will he ever feel like he did as their coach again?
“Come in!” David says delightedly, but Benji shakes his head.
He’s eighteen now. A man. When he and Kevin were children, David used a hundred different ways to motivate them, and perhaps none was more unusual than the fact that he used to let them borrow his watch. He had been given it by his father and the boys used to admire it, so when one of them had a particularly good game, he was allowed to borrow it. Benji holds the watch out to him now.
“Give it to your kid. It doesn’t really suit me.”
Back in the spring, just after David left Beartown Ice Hockey, he saw Benji kiss another boy. There was so much the coach wanted to say at the time but no way he could think of saying it. So he left his dad’s watch on Benji’s dad’s grave, along with a puck on which he had written, “Still the bravest bastard I know.”
“I—” David whispers, but nothing else comes out.
Benji puts the watch into his hand, and David’s fingers close tightly around the metal. His girlfriend is crying quietly for him.
“I’ll keep the puck, that’s enough,” Benji says.
David feels like hugging him. It’s odd that you can forget how to do that. “I’m sorry for everything you’ve had to go through,” he whispers honestly.
Benji bites his cheek. “You’re the best coach I’ve ever had,” he replies with equal honesty.
“Coach.” He doesn’t say “person” or “friend.” Just “coach.” That will never stop hurting David.
“There’ll always be a jersey with the number sixteen on it, on all my teams,” David promises.
He knows what Benji’s response will be before he says it: “There’s only one team for me.”
* * *
Then the boy disappears into the darkness. As usual.
* * *
A couple of days later, Beartown plays its next game. It’s another away game, but the green jerseys and black jackets make the trip, and the same stubborn chant rings out throughout the game: “We’ll stand tall if you stand tall! We’ll stand tall if you stand tall! We’ll stand tall if you stand tall!”
Beartown wins the game 5–0. Amat is a whirlwind, Bobo fights as though it’s the last game of his life, Benji is the best player on the ice. At one point toward the end of the game, Vidar comes close to fighting one of the opponents, but Benji skates across the ice as fast as he can to hold the goalie back, stopping him from throwing the punch.
“If you fight, you’ll be suspended! We need you!” Benji yells.
“He’s talking shit!” Vidar yells back, pointing to the other player.
“What’s he saying?” Benji asks.
“That you’re a fag!”
Benji gives him a long stare. “I am a fag, Vidar.”
Vidar hits the bear on his chest. “But you’re our fag!”
Benji looks down at the ice and lets out a long sigh. That’s the most dysfunctional compliment he’s ever received. “Can we just play hockey now?” he begs.
“Okay,” Vidar mutters.
So they play. Benji scores twice. Vidar doesn’t let a single goal in. When Benji gets to the Bearskin that evening, there’s a beer waiting for him on the bar. He drinks it, with Vidar and Teemu standing beside him. They manage to make it feel almost like normal. Perhaps it will be, one day.
42
They Take It by Storm
In Beartown we bury our dead under our most beautiful trees. We grieve silently, we talk quietly, and we often seem to find it easier to do something rather than say something. Perhaps because there are both good and bad people living here, and that makes us complicated, because it isn’t always so damn easy to see the difference. Sometimes we’re both at the same time.
* * *
Bobo is trying to knot his tie; he’s never really managed to learn how to, it always seems to end up either too long or too short. One attempt fails so badly that his little brother and sister start to laugh. Today, of all days, he manages to make them laugh. Ann-Katrin would have been proud of him for that.
They’re so different, her three children. Bobo has never really figured how three siblings can end up like that. The same genes, the same upbringing, the same home. Yet still utterly different people. He wonders if his mom thought the same or if she saw equal amounts of herself in each of the children. There are so many things Bobo ought to have asked her. Death does that to us, it’s like a phone call, you always remember exactly what you should have said the moment you hang up. Now there’s just an answering machine full of memories at the other end, fragments of a voice that are getting weaker and weaker.
Hog comes into the room and tries to help Bobo with his tie, but it doesn’t end up much better. It was always Ann-Katrin who knotted their ties, both her husband’s and her son’s, whenever the family had to go to a funeral. So Bobo ties it around his head like a headband instead, and his brother and sister burst out laughing. He wears it like that all the way to the funeral, just because it makes them laugh.
The priest talks; no one in the family really hears what’s being said, even though they’re sitting at the front, as close to one another as they can get. Ann-Katrin always liked that, the fact that her family was a little flock that sought warmth from each other. She used to say, “A bigger house? Why would we want a bigger house? We’re always all in the same room anyway!”
People come up to Hog afterward, trying to sum her up. It’s impossible, she was too many things: a talented nurse at the hospital, a much-loved colleague who was always willing to help, a loyal and cherished friend. The great love of one man’s life and the only mother three very different children will ever have.
There’s only one person being buried, but she was many more women than that for those left behind.
All the people in the church wish they had asked her more questions. Death does that to us.
* * *
It’s as if Peter and Kira are living in parallel now rather than together. After the funeral they walk out of the church side by side, but there’s a distance between them, just enough to prevent their hands accidentally brushing against each other. They get into se
parate cars, but neither of them puts the key into the ignition. They’re both falling apart, at opposite ends of the parking lot.
It’s terrible being dependent on other people, the pair of them have always known that. One summer night a few years ago, they were sitting on the steps in front of the house; there’d been a news report of a road accident in which two young children had died, and it had brought their own grief back to them. You never stop losing a child. Kira whispered to Peter, “God . . . it was so painful, darling . . . when Isak died, if I’d had to deal with that much pain alone . . . I’d have killed myself.” Perhaps she and Peter have managed to stick together through everything because they didn’t trust themselves to cope alone. So they were constantly on the hunt for other things to live for: each other, the children, a job with a purpose, a hockey club, a town.
Peter looks through the windshield and sees Kira sitting in her car. So he gets out and walks over to her, opens the passenger door, and says tentatively, “We should go back to their house, darling. To Hog and the children.”
Kira nods slowly and wipes eyeliner from the small lines in the skin around her eyes. When Isak died, Hog and Peter’s other childhood friend, Tails, traveled all the way to Canada as soon as they could. They knew Peter and Kira would be in shock, so Tails helped with the practical arrangements, papers and documents and insurance. To start with, Hog mostly sat on the steps in front of the house, unsure of what to do. He’d never even been abroad before. But he noticed that the handrail of their living room stairs was broken, and handrails in Canada are much the same as they are in Beartown, so Hog fetched some tools and mended it. Then he went on mending things for the next few days.
“Your car or mine?” Peter whispers now.
“Mine,” Kira says, moving her purse from the passenger seat.
She drives to Hog and the children’s house. Halfway there she cautiously reaches across. Peter takes her hand and holds it tight.
* * *
Fatima, Amat’s mother, is already there. She’s standing in the kitchen making food, and Kira helps her. Amat is there, too, he goes to get Bobo and his brother and sister and says the only thing a teenage boy can think of to say to a friend who’s just lost his mother: “Do you want to play hockey?”
They fetch sticks and a puck. Bobo wraps his tie around his head again, holds the younger children’s hands, and sets off toward the lake. It’s frozen over, the world is white, and they play as if nothing else matters.
* * *
Peter finds Hog in the garage, he’s already gone back to work. His hands need to be busy to stop his heart from breaking even further.
“Is there anything I can do?” Peter asks.
Hog is sweaty and distracted when he replies, “The roof got damaged in the storm, can you take a look at it?”
Grief can do that to a person—he’s forgotten that his friend is all thumbs and couldn’t even mend his own handrail in Canada. But Peter loves Hog, the way children love their best friends, so he fetches a ladder and clambers up onto the roof.
While he’s sitting up there, without the faintest idea of where to start, he sees a cavalcade of cars approaching through the forest. At first Peter thinks it’s Hog’s family, but when the cars stop, a group of young men get out.
Teemu and Vidar are first, followed by Spider and Woody, then another dozen men in black jackets. They usually get their cars and snowmobiles fixed here, as do their parents. If a snowblower or piece of forestry machinery or even a kettle breaks around here, people bring them to Hog. So they’re here now, now that he’s broken. Teemu walks into the garage, shakes the mechanic’s oil-smeared hand, and says, “We’re sorry for your loss, Hog. What do you need help with?”
Hog wipes the sweat and dirt from his face. “What have you got?”
“A carpenter, an electrician, a few guys who are just strong, and some who aren’t much use at all,” Teemu says.
Hog gives him a weak smile.
* * *
Peter is still sitting on the roof when Woody and Spider climb up. They look at each other, and Peter takes a deep breath and admits, “I don’t know anything about roofs. I don’t even know where to start . . .”
Woody doesn’t say anything. He just shows Peter what to do. Then the three of them spend several hours working together. When they finally climb back down, they may well be enemies again, but they’ve taken a breather up on the roof. Death can do that to us, too.
* * *
Teemu goes into the kitchen. He stops abruptly when he catches sight of Kira. Her jaw muscles tense and her fists clench, so quickly that Fatima instinctively stands between them without knowing who’s in greater danger. But Teemu takes a step back, his shoulders sink, and he lowers his head, making himself as small as possible. “I just want to help,” he says.
Because sometimes it’s easier to do something rather than say something. So Fatima and Kira glance at each other. Kira gives a curt nod and Fatima asks, “Can you cook?”
Teemu nods. Fatima knows who his mother is, she realizes that the boy had to learn to prepare meals at an early age. She asks him to chop vegetables, and he does it without protest. Kira washes up afterward. Teemu dries. They don’t make peace, but they take a break. The complicated thing about good and bad people alike is that most of us can be both at the same time.
* * *
It’s so easy to place your hope in people. To think that the world can change overnight. We demonstrate after an attack, we donate money after a disaster, we lay our hearts bare online. But for every step forward we take, we take an almost equally large step back. Seen over time, every change is so slow that it’s barely visible when it’s happening.
* * *
The bell rings in Beartown School. Classes start. But Benji is standing a hundred feet from the entrance with feet made of cement. He knows who he is in everyone’s eyes now, one hockey game isn’t going to change that. They may accept him on the ice, as long as he’s the best, but he’s always going to have to give them much more than everyone else now. He will always have to be grateful just for being allowed to take part. Because he isn’t one of them. And never will be again.
He knows people are still writing shit about him, saying shit, making jokes. It doesn’t matter who he is, how good he is at a particular sport, how much he fights, how hard he plays. In their eyes he will still only be one thing. A certain type of person will always take everything he ever achieves and boil it down to the same three letters. Like the note on the door of the cabin at the campsite, where the letter “A” was drawn like a target, flanked by the letter “F” and “G,” with a knife stuck through the middle. That’s all he’s allowed to be now.
* * *
He turns around to walk off in the other direction. For the first time in his life he’s scared of school. But there’s a young woman standing a short distance away, waiting. She doesn’t touch him, but her voice still stops him in his tracks.
“Don’t let the bastards see you cry, Benji.”
Benji stops, his eyes wide open. “I can’t bear it . . . how do you do it?”
Maya’s voice is weaker than her words. “You just go in. With your head held high and your back straight, and you look every single bastard in the eye until they look away. We’re not the ones there’s something wrong with, Benji.”
Benji hears himself crack as he asks, “How did you bear it? Back in the spring, after . . . everything . . . how did you cope?”
The look in her eyes is hard, her voice brittle. “I refuse to be a victim. I’m a survivor.”
* * *
She walks toward the school. Benji hesitates for an eternity before following her. She waits for him. Walks by his side. Their steps are slow; perhaps it looks as though they’re moving slowly, but they don’t creep quietly into that corridor. They take it by storm.
43
We’re Everywhere
The days blur together in Beartown this year; perhaps we can’t bear to keep track of either t
ime or our feelings. At some point the autumn comes to an end and winter arrives, but we barely notice. Time merely passes, most of us are preoccupied just trying to get out of bed each morning.
* * *
Kira keeps going to work, but it never really feels like it. She arrives later and later, leaves earlier and earlier, and she knows that her name won’t be mentioned next time there’s talk of promotion. She doesn’t go to the conference she was invited to attend. She doesn’t have the energy to think about the future, she’s just trying to get through the day, fixed permanently in survival mode.
As usual it’s her colleague who tells her a few home truths. One afternoon Kira manages to go to the wrong room for a conference call and walks in on a planning meeting where her colleague is presenting a strategic plan to an important client. Kira stops in the doorway and looks at her colleague’s notes on the board. They’re brilliant, as always, but if Kira had been involved, they would have been even better. She waits outside after the meeting, and when her colleague comes out, Kira says, “That’s my specialty, you know that! I could have helped you with the presentation! Why didn’t you ask me to help?”
Her colleague doesn’t look angry. She’s not trying to hurt Kira. She just replies honestly, “Because you’ve given up, Kira.”
* * *
Deep down inside most of us would like all stories to be simple, because we want real life to be like that, too. But communities are like ice, not water. They don’t suddenly flow in new directions because you ask them to, they change inch by inch, like glaciers. Sometimes they don’t move at all.