47
A Love Story We Will Never Forget
It’s hard to keep a secret in the locker room. Any sort of secret.
* * *
In the arena in Hed, practices are getting more and more tense. Everyone in there has stopped referring to Beartown inhabitants as people, increasingly preferring to use terms such as “the greens.” Or “the baby bears are going to get slaughtered.” Or “the bitches.” Or “the bastard fags.” William Lyt might have been expected to be one of the loudest voices, but for some reason he’s becoming quieter and quieter.
When his teammates ask why he’s being so quiet, he says he’s “just trying to focus on hockey.” He has no better answer. Something odd has been happening to him this autumn and winter: the more everyone has started to hate each other, the more fed up he is with himself. He has been angry for so long, angry at hockey, angry at school, angry at home, that in the end perhaps he simply doesn’t have the energy to carry on being so angry. “Focus on your hockey,” his mom said, patting his head tenderly. So that’s what he’s done. He’s distancing himself more and more from the rest of the team, training harder on his own. He meets a girl from Hed and starts spending his evenings with her. One day David calls him into his office. He gives him a note with a phone number written on it, belonging to a scout for one of the elite clubs several divisions above Hed. “They’re interested in you, they want you to call them.” As William stares at the note, David walks around the desk and puts his hands on his shoulders. “I’ve seen you focusing more on your hockey recently, William. And noticed that you’ve let go of all that other nonsense outside, the fighting and so on . . . That’s good! That’s why this club is interested. You can be something, William, you can go a long way! But you know I’m going to fight to keep you playing for me. I think you’ll be ready to be captain next season!”
Then David says something terrible. Something that completely destroys a young man who’s scared of showing his feelings: “I’m proud of you, William.” William walks straight out of the office and calls his mother.
* * *
It’s hard to keep a secret in the locker room, so everyone congratulates William when he comes back. He’s proud, obviously, but he also notices that they stop talking when he’s around. He realizes that they’re talking about something they don’t want him to hear.
After practice there are two cars parked outside the ice rink, containing young men with bull tattoos and hooded tops. A couple of William’s teammates, the ones who are young enough to want to fight and not good enough at hockey to have anything to lose, walk straight to the cars.
“Where are you going?” William asks.
One of them turns around. “The less you know, the better, William. You’re too important for the team to be involved in this. We need you on the ice!”
“What the hell are you planning?” William asks, confused.
The men with the bull tattoos don’t reply, but one of the guys from the team is too excited to stop himself. So he shouts, “We’re going to see how well bearskin burns!”
* * *
The cars drive off, leaving William standing there alone.
* * *
When the police question them afterward, the men from Hed will have a thousand excuses. Someone will say they didn’t mean to set fire to the whole building, they just thought the door would burn and they’d have time to put it out before it was too late. One will say they just wanted to “make a point,” and another will say it was only supposed to be “a joke.” None of them knew there was an apartment above the Bearskin pub. Or that Ramona was asleep up there.
* * *
Maggan Lyt picks her son up from Hed ice rink, just as she does after every practice. She has sandwiches and protein smoothies with her; she puts his bag in the trunk, plays his favorite music all the way home. But he doesn’t say a word.
“What is it?” his mom asks.
“Nothing . . . it’s nothing. I’m just . . . nervous about the game,” William mumbles.
He pretends it’s true, and Maggan pretends to believe him. They don’t want to hurt each other’s feelings. They have dinner and listen as William’s father talks about his day at work, laugh when William’s sister talks about her day: she unscrewed the lids of the salt cellars on the teachers’ lunch table so they fell off when the teachers tried to season their lunch! William taught her that. Maggan tries to scold her, but the girl’s laughter is so infectious that she doesn’t have the heart.
Today, more than usual, William watches his parents as they eat and chat. He’s well aware of what people in this town say about his family, that his dad is “so cheap he cries when he takes a shit” and that his mother is a “crazy hockey mom.” That might be true, but there are other things that can be said about them, too. They’ve never had anything handed to them on a plate, they’ve had to fight for everything, and they want to give their children all the things they themselves never had: power over their own lives without having to struggle every day. Maybe they go too far sometimes, but William is only too willing to forgive them. This world isn’t built for kind people. Kind people get exploited and crushed. William just has to look around Beartown to see that.
After dinner he watches a cartoon in his sister’s room. When she was born, the doctors said there was something wrong with her. There wasn’t, she’s just special. People keep wanting to describe her using the name of her condition, but William refuses. She is who she is. The kindest person he knows. When she falls asleep, he goes down to the basement to do some weight training on his own. But those words are gnawing away at him: “We’re going to see how well bearskin burns!” He can’t let go of them. So he puts on his tracksuit and tells his mom he’s going out for a run. Maggan Lyt hopes it’s because her son is nervous.
After the door closes behind him, she goes straight to the kitchen. She always worries about her children; whenever William isn’t home she channels her anxieties into making food. “Say what you like about Maggan Lyt, but she’s a good cook!” people say. The fact that they feel the need to preface the sentence with “Say what you like” doesn’t bother her. She knows who she is. She fights for everything she’s got. She ends up making a pasta salad, then some potato salad. “No one can make so many salads out of things that aren’t supposed to be salads as you, Mom—you can make any vegetable unhealthy!” William usually says with a grin.
* * *
She stays awake until he gets home, worrying the whole time.
* * *
William runs through Beartown. Suddenly he realizes that he’s wearing his red tracksuit with the bull on the chest. Even he appreciates what a stupid provocation that is around here right now. He turns to run home and get changed but stops when he notices the smell. It catches in his nostrils.
* * *
Something’s burning.
* * *
The smoke doesn’t wake Ramona, she wakes up to find someone tugging at her. Ramona may have drunk one or two late-night snacks, so she reacts the way she always does when someone wakes her: she flails her arms, yells obscenities, and tries to find a solid object to use as a weapon.
But when she sees the flames licking the walls and hears the shouting from the street, she opens her eyes and finds herself staring into Elisabeth Zackell’s.
The hockey coach may be bad with feelings, but she’s still capable of getting nervous. She couldn’t sleep tonight, was thinking too much about the upcoming game against Hed, so she went out jogging. She saw some men running away from the Bearskin, saw the fire take hold. Most people would probably have called the fire department and waited out in the street. No one normal would have run into the burning building. But of course Zackell isn’t normal.
When she sinks down onto the street outside, coughing and gasping for breath, Ramona stands beside her in her nightdress muttering, “You’d do that for a few plates of potatoes, girl? What the hell would you have been prepared to do if I’d given you some meat?”
Zackell coughs and laughs. “I have to admit I’m starting to get a taste for beer. Vitamins are important.”
* * *
People come running from all directions, no one faster than Teemu. He throws himself into the snow and wraps his arms around Ramona.
“There, now, lad, calm yourself down. Everyone’s still alive. It’s just a few flames,” Ramona whispers, but he can feel her shaking.
“All your pictures of Holger!” Teemu exclaims, getting to his feet.
Ramona has to hold him back. That’s how much she loves the boy, that she’s prepared to hold him back to stop him rushing into the fire to rescue the photographs of her dead husband.
* * *
But she can’t hold Teemu hard enough to stop him from doing what happens next. No one can.
* * *
The whole of Beartown is awakened by the fire; cries spread through the town faster than drums, faster than sirens. Everyone’s phone rings, everyone’s door opens.
Benji and his sisters come racing down the street. His sisters run toward the Bearskin. People have started to form a chain to pass buckets, cars are bringing tanks of water and hoses.
But Benji stands still, because he realizes that this isn’t a coincidence. It never is. So Benji tries to find a perpetrator, and all he can see is the red tracksuit. William Lyt is standing a short distance behind everyone else, closer to the forest, alone and shocked with his hand over his mouth.
Benji rushes straight at him. For a moment William thinks he’s going to attack him, but Benji stops abruptly as if he’s realized something. People are running back and forth across the road, there are sirens in the distance now, on their way through the forest. Benji turns to William and snarls, “You and me. Now. For real. No friends, no weapons. Just you and me.”
William could have protested, could have tried to calm Benji down and explain that he had nothing to do with the fire. But Benji is too wound up now to believe that, and perhaps William still hates him too much to back down. So he merely whispers, “Where?”
Benji thinks for a moment. “The running track on the Heights. No people, even ground, lights.”
William nods stiffly. “So I won’t have any excuses afterward, you mean?”
Benji’s actions have always been worse than his words. For that reason, his reply is particularly loaded. “There won’t be an ‘afterward’ for you, William.”
* * *
They run to the jogging track. Through the whole town. They’ve done it a thousand times before; when they played hockey on the same team, they used to compete in every training session. Benji could never let William be best at anything—he used to take things from William that he didn’t even want. Now, as they run with snow up to their ankles, they’re those same boys again. They even run a few feet apart, as if Kevin were still running between them.
* * *
When they reach the running track on the Heights, they stop and catch their breath for a few seconds; thick clouds billow from their mouths. Then, still wearing his red tracksuit, William rushes straight at Benji, who’s standing there waiting in his green shirt with his fists clenched. No friends, no weapons, just the two of them. A bull against a bear.
* * *
Spider and Woody find Teemu outside the Bearskin. Their first instinct is to help put the fire out, to protect people. This pub is their home, more than their homes have ever been. But Spider whispers in Teemu’s ear, “We know who they are, those bastards from Hed. Woody’s girlfriend saw them through her kitchen window. They left their cars down by the supermarket. If we set off now, we can catch up with them!”
* * *
When the men in black jackets pull away from the crowd outside the Bearskin and run toward Teemu’s Saab to hunt the enemy through the forest, hardly anyone notices them. The only person watching is a teenage boy. Leo Andersson. He follows them.
* * *
William and Benji don’t pull their punches. Their blows are frenzied, they’re both so strong that their faces are bloody after just a few seconds. William lets out a yell every time he swings and lands a punch, from a mixture of exhaustion and fury. He’s taller than Benji, the only advantage Benji has never been able to take from him, and can punch downward while Benji has to punch up. It’s harder to punch upward. They swing wildly at each other for what seems an age, until lactic acid forces them both to back away, gasping for air, streaming with blood. Benji has lost a tooth, and William can hardly see with his right eye.
“Were you in love with him?” he suddenly snarls.
“WHAT?” Benji shouts, spitting blood onto the snow.
They’re standing a few feet apart, their lungs heaving. William puts his hands on his knees. One of his fingers is broken, and his nose is bleeding like a tap. He lowers his voice, as pain and exhaustion hit him. “Were you in love with Kevin?” he pants.
Benji says nothing for several minutes. He’s got blood in his hair and on his hands; it’s impossible to tell where he’s bleeding from and where he’s just wiped it off. “Yes.”
It’s the first time in his life that Benji has admitted that. William closes his eyes and feels his nose throb as he tries to breathe through it. “If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have hated you so much,” he whispers.
“I know,” Benji says.
William straightens up. Stands with his hands by his sides, his tracksuit top torn and stained with sweat. “Do you remember that summer when we were little, when it rained nonstop for a whole month? When the ice rink flooded?”
Benji looks surprised but nods slowly. “Yes.”
William wipes his nose with the back of his hand.
“You and Kevin were always out in the forest in the summer, but when it rained you both used to come to my place and ask if we could play hockey in the basement. I don’t know why you didn’t go back to Kevin’s, but—”
“Kev’s parents were having their house renovated that summer,” Benji reminds him.
William nods in acknowledgment. “Oh, yeah. That was why. We played hockey in my basement every day that month. And we were friends then. You were okay. We didn’t mess with each other.”
Benji spits more blood on the snow. “We slept on mattresses on the floor so we could start playing the moment we woke up . . .”
William’s smile is heavy with missed opportunities and lost years. “When other people our age talk about their childhoods, they always seem to remember the sun shining the whole time. All I remember is constantly hoping for rain.”
* * *
Benji stands still. In the end he sits down in the snow. William doesn’t know if he’s crying. Doesn’t know if it shows that he is.
* * *
Then the two men go their separate ways. Not as friends and not as enemies. They just go their separate ways.
* * *
It’s late by the time Maya and Ana finally stop training at their martial arts club. Far too late, in Maya’s mother’s opinion, but she still picks her daughter up without protest. She offers Ana a lift, but Ana shakes her head secretively and Maya teases her: “She’s going over to see Viiiiiidar . . .”
It makes Maya so happy, because that’s the kind of thing ordinary sixteen-year-old best friends do. Tease each other about boys. Maya gets into the Volvo, waves to Ana through the rear window.
* * *
Vidar is waiting at the edge of the forest. He and Ana walk hand in hand through the night. He’s humming and whistling, he can’t stop drumming his fingers against his leg, and if they had lived a whole life together perhaps Ana would have started to get irritated by his lack of impulse control. But right now she loves it, the fact that all his emotions live inside him in the same way: instantly.
If they had lived their whole lives together, perhaps they would have gone walking in other places. Perhaps in sunshine in some other country. Perhaps they would have moved away from here and started again somewhere else, grown up and built a home together. Perhaps had children, aged, an
d grown old together. Ana stands on tiptoe to kiss him. His phone rings. She notices the smell of smoke.
* * *
When she sees the sudden look of horror on Vidar’s face and he starts to run, she doesn’t try to stop him. She runs alongside him.
* * *
A white car is driving along the road, far too fast. The men from Hed inside it are little more than boys. Can we forgive them for that? How old do we have to be to be held accountable for our actions, even when the consequences end up being so infinitely worse than we imagine?
* * *
When the Saab appears in the rearview mirror and the men in the white car realize that they’re being pursued, they panic. They speed up, the Saab behind them does the same, the driver of the white car takes his eyes off the road, and a moment later the headlights of a third car shine through the windshield and dazzle him. It’s a large Volvo heading the other way.
* * *
The white car skids on the snow; the men from Hed inside it scream. The tires lose their grip on the road. Thousands of pounds of metal take flight, just for a moment, hanging silently in the darkness. Then comes a collision so terrible that we will never really stop hearing it.