Chapter 6
6
A mat leaves the rink with every scrap of fabric on his body transparent with sweat. From the top row of the stands, Sune watches him go. The boy is lucky, he didn’t notice the A-team coach sitting there; if he had, his nerves would have sent him diving headfirst onto the ice.
Sune remains seated after Amat’s gone. He’s been old for a long time, but is really feeling it today. There are two things that are particularly good at reminding us how old we are: children and sports. In hockey you’re an experienced player at twenty-five, a veteran at thirty, and pensioned off at thirty-five. Sune is twice that. And with age he has become shorter and broader, he’s got more face to wash and less hair to comb, and finds himself getting annoyed by narrow chairs and poor-quality zippers.
But when the door closes behind Amat, the old man can still smell cherry blossom in his nostrils. Fifteen years old. Bloody hell, what a future. Sune is ashamed of the fact that he’s only just noticed him; the boy has clearly developed in an explosive fashion recently while everyone else has had their eyes on the junior team, but a few years ago Sune would never have missed a talent like that. He can’t blame it all on his old eyes; he’s got an old heart as well.
He knows he won’t be here long enough to get the chance to coach the boy, but he hopes no one ruins his talent by cutting him down. Or by letting him grow too quickly. But he knows there’s no point wishing for anything like that, because when all the others realize how good this boy is they’ll want to start squeezing results out of him immediately. The club needs that; the town demands that. Sune has had this argument with the board time and time again over the years, and he always loses.
It would take days to recount the long version of why Sune is being fired from Beartown Ice Hockey Club. But the short version is only two words long: “Kevin Erdahl.” The sponsors, the board, and the club’s president have all demanded that Sune let the seventeen-year-old wunderkind play in the A-team, and Sune has refused. In his world it takes more than hormones to turn boys into men. Senior hockey requires maturity just as much as it does talent, and he’s seen more players crushed by opportunities proffered too early than too late. But no one’s listening anymore.
The people of Beartown are proud of being bad losers. Sune knows that he himself bears much of the blame for that. He’s the one who imprinted the words “club comes first” into every player and coach since his first day here. The good of the club must always come first, never anyone’s ego. They’re using that against him now. He could have saved his job by letting Kevin play in the A-team, and he wishes he was certain he’s done the right thing. But he genuinely doesn’t know any longer. Maybe the board and the sponsors are right—maybe he’s just a stubborn old goat who’s lost his grip.
***
David is at home, lying on his kitchen floor. He’s thirty-two years old and his red hair is so unruly it looks like it’s trying to escape from his head. He got teased about it when he was little; the other kids pretended to burn themselves on him in class. That was where he learned to fight. He didn’t have any friends, which was why he was able to devote all his time to hockey. He never bothered to acquire any other interests, which is how he’s managed to become the best.
Sweat is dripping on the floor as he frantically performs push-ups under the kitchen table. His computer is on top of it; he’s been watching videos of old matches and training sessions all night. Being junior team coach for Beartown Ice Hockey makes him a simple man to understand and an impossible man to live with. When his girlfriend gets annoyed with him, she usually tells him he’s the sort of man “who could take offense in an empty room.” That could be true—his face looks like he’s walking into a headwind. He’s always been told that he’s too serious; that’s why hockey suits him so well. No one on a hockey team thinks it’s possible to take hockey too seriously.
The match tomorrow is the most important in David’s life, as well as the juniors’. A more philosophically inclined coach might tell them that those could be their last sixty minutes on the ice as children, because most of them will be turning eighteen this year, then they’ll be grown men and seniors. But David isn’t philosophical, so he’ll just say his usual single word to them: “Win.”
He doesn’t have the best players in the country, far from it. But they’re the most disciplined, and have received the best tactical training. They’ve been playing together all their lives. And they’ve got Kevin.
They rarely play beautifully. David believes in detailed strategy and a solid defense, but above all he believes in results. Even when the board and parents keep going on about “letting the players lose” and trying to play “more enjoyable hockey.” David doesn’t even know what “enjoyable hockey” is, he only knows one sort of hockey that isn’t enjoyable—the one where the opposing team scores more points. He’s never let anyone else influence him; he’s never given a place on the team to the son of a marketing manager at one of the big sponsors like he’s been told to. He’s uncompromising; he knows that’s not going to make him any friends, but he doesn’t care. Do you want to be liked? It’s easy: just get yourself to the top of the podium. So David does whatever it takes to get up there. That’s why he doesn’t see his team the same way everyone else does, because even if Kevin is the best player he isn’t always the most important.
The computer on the kitchen table is showing a game from earlier in the season, when an opposing player sets off after Kevin with the obvious intention of tackling him from behind, but the next moment is himself lying flat on the ice. Another Beartown player, number sixteen, is standing over him, already missing his gloves and helmet. A torrent of punches rains down on the opposing player.
Kevin might be the star, but Benjamin Ovich is the heart of the team. Because Benji is like David: he’s prepared to do whatever it takes. So ever since he was small, the coach has drummed one single idea into him: “Don’t pay any attention to what people say, Benji. They’ll like us well enough when we start winning.”
***
He’s seventeen years old, and his mom wakes him early by saying his full name. She’s the only person who uses it. “Benjamin.” Everyone else calls him Benji. He stays in bed, in the smallest room in the last row house at the far end of Beartown, just before the start of the Hollows, until she comes in for the third or fourth time. When words from her homeland creep into her exhortations he gets up, because that’s when it gets serious. His mom and Benji’s three older sisters only slip into the old language when they want to express great anger or eternal love, and this country simply doesn’t have sufficiently flexible grammar to express which good-for-nothing part of the laziest useless donkey Benji might be, or how they love him as deeply as ten thousand wells full of gold. His mom can get both elements into the same sentence. It’s a remarkable language in that sense.
She watches him as he cycles off. She hates having to force him out of bed before the sun has risen, but she knows that if she goes to work without driving her son out of the house he wouldn’t leave it at all. She’s a single mother with three daughters, but it’s this seventeen-year-old boy who worries her more than anything. A boy who cares too little about the future and frets too much about the past: nothing could depress a mother more. Her little Benjamin, the fighter with whom it’s far too easy for the girls of Beartown to fall in love. The boy with the most handsome face, the saddest eyes, and the wildest heart they’ve ever seen. His mom knows, because she married a man who looked just the same, and nothing but trouble lies ahead for men like that.
***
David is making coffee in his kitchen. He always brews an extra pot each morning and fills a thermos—the coffee at the rink is so bad you ought to be able to charge someone for assault just for offering it to you. His computer is playing a match from last year, in which Kevin is being pursued by a furious defender until Benji appears at full speed out of nowhere and hits the defender on the back of his neck with his stick, sending him flying headfirst into the opposing team’s bench. Half the team storms onto the ice to get revenge on Benji, who is standing there waiting for them without his helmet, fists clenched. It takes the referees ten minutes to get the fight under control. In the meantime Kevin has gone to sit down quietly on his own bench, unharmed and untroubled.
Some people try to make excuses for Benji’s temperament by blaming his tough childhood, the fact that his dad died when he was young. David never does that; he loves Benji’s temperament. Other people call him a “problem child,” but all the characteristics that make him a problem off the ice are what make him so special on it. If you send him into a brawl it doesn’t matter if serpents, trolls, and all the monsters of hell are in the way, Benji always comes out with the puck. If anyone gets anywhere near Kevin he’ll fight through concrete to place himself in the way, and that sort of thing can’t be taught. Everyone knows how good Kevin is—every youth-team coach on each of the top clubs in the country has tried to recruit him—and that also means that every team they play contains at least one psycho who wants to hurt him. So David doesn’t accept it when people say that Benji ends up “fighting” in every other match. He’s not fighting. He’s protecting the most important investment the town has ever seen.
But David has stopped using that particular word in front of his girlfriend: “investment.” Because, as she put it: “Is that really any way to talk about a seventeen-year-old?” David has learned not to try to explain it. Either you understand that aspect of hockey or you don’t.
***
On the road that links the row houses to the rest of the town, Benji stops his bicycle at the point where his mother can no longer see him and lights a joint. He lets the smoke fill him, feels the sweet calmness rise and fall. His long, thick hair stiffens in the wind, but the cold has never bothered him. He cycles everywhere, no matter what time of year it is. At practice, David often commends him on his calf muscles and sense of balance in front of the other players. Benji never replies, because he suspects that saying, “That’s what you get if you ride a bike through deep snow every day when you’re high as a kite” isn’t the answer the coach wants to hear.
On his way to his best friend’s house he passes through the whole of Beartown: the factory that’s still the largest employer in the town, but which has “effectivized its personnel” three years in a row now—a fancy way of saying people have been laid off. The big supermarket that has closed down its smaller competitors. A street full of stores in varying states of disrepair, and an industrial area that is just getting quieter and quieter. The sports store, which has one section for hunting and fishing and another for hockey, but very little else worth mentioning. A little farther out is the pub, the Bearskin, frequented by the sort of men who make it such an excellent destination for any curious tourist eager to find out what it’s like to get beaten up by the locals.
Toward the forest, off to the west, is a garage and—farther in among the trees—the kennels that Benji’s eldest sister runs. She raises two types of dogs: hunting dogs and guard dogs. No one around here wants dogs for pets anymore.
There’s not much to love about this place apart from hockey. But on the other hand, Benji hasn’t loved very much else in his life. He inhales the smoke. The other guys keep warning him he’ll get kicked off the team if David finds out he smokes weed, but Benji just laughs, secure in the knowledge that would never happen. Not because Benji is too good to be thrown off the team, definitely not, but because Kevin is too good. Kevin is the jewel, Benji the insurance policy.
***
Sune looks up at the roof of the rink one last time. At the flags and jerseys hanging there, memories of men soon no one will be old enough to remember. Alongside them hangs a shabby banner bearing what used to be the club’s motto: “Culture, Values, Community.” Sune helped hang it there, but he’s no longer sure what it means. Sometimes he’s not sure if he knew back then either.
“Culture” is an odd word to use about hockey; everyone says it, but no one can explain what it means. All organizations like to boast that they’re building a culture, but when it comes down to it everyone really only cares about one sort: the culture of winning. Sune is well aware that the same thing applies the world over, but perhaps it’s more noticeable in a small community. We love winners, even though they’re very rarely particularly likeable people. They’re almost always obsessive and selfish and inconsiderate. That doesn’t matter. We forgive them. We like them while they’re winning.
The old man stands up and makes his way toward his office, with his back creaking and heart hardened. The door closes behind him. His personal belongings are already packed in a small box that’s tucked under the desk. He won’t make a scene when he gets fired, won’t speak to the press. He’s just going to disappear. That’s how he was brought up, and that’s how he’s brought others up. The team comes first.
***
No one really knows how the pair of them became best friends, but everyone has long since given up any attempt to separate them. Benji rings the doorbell of the house that’s more than half the size of the entire block where he lives.
Kevin’s mom opens the door with her ever-friendly yet constantly stressed smile, clutching her phone to her ear, while behind her Kevin’s dad walks past talking loudly into his. The walls of the front hall are decorated with family photos, but those framed pictures are the only place Benji has ever seen all three members of the Erdahl family side by side. In real life one of them always seems to be in the kitchen, the other in the study, and Kevin in the garden. Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang . A door closing, an apology directed at a phone. “Yes, sorry, it’s my son. The hockey player, yes, that’s right.”
No one raises their voice in this house and no one ever lowers it either—all communication has had its emotions amputated. Kevin is simultaneously the most and least spoiled kid Benji has ever met: the fridge is full of prepared meals made in exact accordance with the nutrition plan provided by the team, delivered every three days by a catering company. The kitchen in the Erdahl family’s house cost three times more than the whole of Benji’s mom’s row house, but no one ever prepares a meal in it. Kevin’s room has everything a seventeen-year-old could dream of, including the fact that no adult except the cleaner has set foot inside it since he was three. No one in Beartown has ever spent more on their son’s sports career, no one has given more to the team in sponsorship than his dad’s company, yet Benji can count the number of times he’s seen Kevin’s parents in the crowd of spectators on the fingers of one hand, and still have two fingers left. Benji asked his friend about it once. Kevin replied: “My parents aren’t interested in hockey.” When Benji asked what they were interested in, Kevin replied: “Success.” They were ten years old at the time.
When Kevin is top of the class in history tests, which he almost always is, and goes home and says he got forty-nine out of fifty questions right, his dad merely asks in an expressionless voice: “What did you get wrong?” Perfection isn’t a goal in the Erdahl family, it’s the norm.
Their home is white and precise, an advertisement for right angles. When he’s sure no one’s looking, Benji silently nudges the shoe-rack one inch out of line and touches a couple of the photos on the wall so that they’re hanging ever so slightly crooked, and as he walks across the rug in the living room he lets his big toe fleetingly mess up some of the fringe. When he reaches the terrace door he sees Kevin’s mom’s reflection in the glass. She’s going around mechanically putting everything back to how it was, without missing a beat of her telephone conversation.
Benji goes out into the garden, grabs a chair, and goes to sit near Kevin, then closes his eyes and listens to the banging. Kevin pauses, his collar black with sweat.
“Are you nervous?” he asks.
Benji doesn’t open his eyes.
“Do you remember the first time you came out into the forest with me, Kev? You’d never been hunting before and held your rifle like you were scared it was going to bite you.”
Kevin sighs so deeply that half of the air probably escapes from another bodily opening.
“Aren’t you ever going to take anything in life seriously?”
Benji’s broad grin reveals an almost imperceptible difference in the color of his teeth. If you send him into a skirmish, he’ll come out with the puck, even at the cost of one of his own teeth, or someone else’s.
“You almost managed to shoot me in the balls. I take that very seriously.”
“So you’re really not nervous about the game?”
“Kev, you and a gun anywhere close to my testicles make me nervous. Hockey doesn’t make me nervous.”
They’re interrupted by Kevin’s parents calling good-bye. His dad in the same tone he would use to say good-bye to a waiter in a restaurant, his mom with a cautious little “sweetheart” at the end. As if she really is trying but can’t quite manage to make it sound like anything more than a line she’s learned for a play. The front door closes, two cars start up out in the drive. Benji fishes another joint from the inside pocket of his jacket and lights up.
“Are you nervous, Kev?”
“No. No, no...”
Benji laughs; his friend has never been able to lie to him.
“Really?”
“Okay, what the fuck, Benji, I’m shitting myself here! Is that what you want to hear?”
Benji looks like he’s fallen asleep.
“How much have you smoked already today?” Kevin chuckles.
“Nowhere near enough,” Benji mumbles, and curls up on the chair as if he were thinking of hibernating for winter.
“You know we’ve got to be at school in an hour?”
“All the more reason.”
“If David finds out, you’ll get kicked off the tea—”
“No, I won’t.”
Leaning on his stick, Kevin says nothing and just looks at him. Of all the things in the world you can be envious of your best friend for, this is what Kevin would most like to have: the ability that Benji has always had to not give a shit about anything, and to get away with it. Kevin shakes his head and laughs in resignation.
“No, you won’t.”
Benji falls asleep. Kevin turns toward the goal and his eyes turn black. Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang.
***
Again. Again. Again.
***
At home in his kitchen David does his last push-ups. Then he showers, gets dressed, packs his case, and grabs his car keys to drive to the rink and start work. But the very last thing the thirty-two-year-old coach does before leaving the house is put his coffee down on the little table beside the door and run into the bathroom. There he locks the door and turns the taps on in both sink and bathtub so that his girlfriend won’t hear him throwing up.