Chapter 41
41
M orning comes to Beartown, unconcerned about the little lives of the people down below. A sheet of cardboard has been taped up on the inside of a broken window; a sister and a brother are sleeping, exhausted, side by side on mattresses in the hall, far from any other windows. In his sleep Leo curls up close to Maya, the way he used to when he would creep into her room when he was four years old and had a bad dream.
***
Peter and Kira are sitting in the kitchen, holding each other’s hands.
“Do you think I’m less of a man because I can’t fight?” he whispers.
“Do you think I’m less of a woman because I can?” she asks.
“We have to get the kids away from here,” he whispers.
“We can’t protect them. It doesn’t matter where we are, darling, we can’t protect them,” she replies.
“We can’t live like that.”
“I know.”
Then she kisses him, smiles, and whispers:
“But you’re not unmanly. You’re very, very, very manly in lots of other ways. For instance, you NEVER admit that you’re wrong.”
He replies into her hair:
“And you’re very womanly. The most womanly woman I’ve ever met. For instance, you can NEVER be trusted with rock-paper-scissors.”
They laugh, the pair of them. Even on a morning like this. Because they can, and because they must. They still possess that blessing.
***
Ramona is standing outside the Bearskin smoking. The street is empty, the sky is black, but she still sees the puppy from a long way off, even though the weather is bad. She starts to cough hoarsely as Sune rolls out of the darkness; it might have been a chuckle if she’d smoked less. Forty or fifty years less.
Sune calls out, and the puppy totally ignores him. It jumps up at Ramona’s jeans, eagerly demanding attention.
“You silly old fool, have you got a puppy now?” she says with a grin.
“A disobedient little shit, too. I’ll be filling my sandwiches with him soon,” Sune mutters, but his love for the furry creature is already obvious.
Ramona coughs. “Coffee?”
“Can I have a splash of whisky in it?”
She nods. They go inside and stamp their feet and drink while the puppy very methodically sets about eating one of the chairs.
“I assume you’ve heard,” Sune says sadly.
“Yep,” Ramona says.
“Shameful. Shameful, that’s what it is.”
Ramona pours more drink. Sune stares at the glass. “Has Peter been in?”
She shakes her head. “Have you spoken to him?”
Sune shakes his head. “I don’t know what to say.”
Ramona says nothing. She understands that all too well. It’s both easy and difficult to offer someone coffee.
“The club isn’t your job anymore, Sune,” she murmurs.
“I haven’t formally been dismissed yet. They seem to have forgotten about that in the midst of all this. But, sure. You’re right. It’s not my job anymore.”
Ramona pours more whisky. Tops it up with a splash of coffee, sighs deeply.
“So what do we talk about, then? An old bag and an old bastard, sitting here babbling. For God’s sake, just spit it out instead.”
Sune gives her a wry smile.
“You’ve always been a bit of a psychologist, you have.”
“Just a bartender. You were always too cheap to pay for the real thing.”
“I miss Holger.”
“You only miss him when I’m shouting at you.”
Sune guffaws so loudly that the puppy jumps. It lets out an irritable yap before getting back to chewing the furniture.
“I really just miss you shouting at Holger.”
“Me too.”
More whisky. A touch more coffee. Silence and memories, withheld words and suppressed sentences. Until Sune eventually says:
“It’s shameful, what Kevin did. Utterly damn shameful. And I’m worried about the club. It’s been here almost seventy years, but I wouldn’t like to bet that it will be here next year. I’m worried people will try to blame the boy’s actions on hockey, if he gets found guilty. It’s going to be all hockey’s fault.”
Ramona slaps him so quickly and hard across his ear with the palm of her hand that the fat old man almost falls off his barstool. The angry old bag on the other side of the bar snarls:
“Is that why you’re here? To talk about that? Sweet Jesus... you men. It’s never your fault, is it? When are you going to admit that it isn’t ‘hockey’ that raises these boys, it’s YOU LOT? In every time and every place, I’ve come across men who blame their own stupidity on crap they themselves have invented. ‘Religion causes wars,’ ‘guns kill people,’ it’s all the same old bullshit!”
“I didn’t mea...,” Sune tries, but has to duck when she tries to slap him again.
“Keep your trap shut when I’m talking! Fucking men! YOU’RE the problem! Religion doesn’t fight, guns don’t kill, and you need to be very fucking clear that hockey has never raped anyone! But do you know who do? Fight and kill and rape?”
Sune clears his throat. “Men?”
“MEN! It’s always fucking men!”
Sune squirms. The puppy curls up, shamefaced, in a corner. Ramona adjusts her hair, carefully and thoroughly, empties her glass, and admits to herself that perhaps it isn’t so complicated after all, this business about coffee.
Then she fills both their glasses, fetches a bit of salami for the puppy, goes around the bar, and sits down next to the old man. She sighs deeply and reluctantly admits:
“I miss Holger too. And do you know what he would have said if he was here?”
“No.”
“That you and I already know what’s right. So there’s no need for him to tell us.”
Sune smiles.
“He always was a smug bastard, that man of yours.”
“That he was.”
***
In another part of town, Zacharias creeps out of his family’s apartment without waking anyone. He’s carrying a bag on his back and a bucket in his hand. Headphones in his ears, music in his whole body. He turns sixteen today, and all his life he has been teased and rejected. About everything. His looks, thoughts, manner of speech, home address. Everywhere. At school, in the locker room, online. That wears a person down in the end. It’s not always obvious, because the people around a bullied child assume that he or she must get used to it after a while. Never. You never get used to it. It burns like fire the whole time. It’s just that no one knows how long the fuse is, not even you.
***
Jeanette is woken by a call from her brother telling her that the alarm has gone off again. Bleary-eyed and annoyed, she drives to the school. Searches the whole building with her flashlight without finding anything. She’s just about to tell her brother it’s time to give up, thinking it must have been snow on one of the sensors again, when she puts her foot down in something wet.
***
The second-best hunter in Beartown is washing the elk blood off the back of a rusty pickup truck. The girl and her dad followed the trail all night, until they found the badly wounded animal lying down; it had dragged itself deep into the darkness of the forest. They gave it a humane and painless end. Ana closes the tarpaulin over the bed of the truck and gets the two rifles from the cab, and checks them with the practiced hands of a far older hunter.
A few boys of about seven or eight are playing hockey farther down the street. One of the neighbors, a man in his eighties, is standing by his mailbox. His rheumatism makes movement painful, as if he were dragging invisible blocks of stone behind him as he reaches for his newspaper. He’s on his way back to the house when he suddenly stops and looks at Ana. They have lived next to each other all Ana’s life. The neighbor used to go hunting with her dad until just a few years ago; when she was little he used to give her homemade toffee at Christmas. Neither of them says anything now, the man just spits derisively on the ground in front of him. When he goes back into his house he slams the door so hard that a green flag just outside with a bear logo on it sways on its hook.
The boys playing hockey look up. One of them is wearing a jersey with the number “9” on it. They look at Ana with expressions that reveal what their parents are talking about at home. One of the boys spits on the ground as well. Then they turn their backs on her.
Ana’s dad walks over and puts his hand on his daughter’s shoulder. He feels her shaking beneath his fingers, and doesn’t know if it’s because she’s about to cry or scream.
***
For almost half his life, Zacharias has thought about ending it. He has been through the details time and time again in his head. Somewhere they can see it. Force the bastards to live with that image of him. “You did this.” You don’t need much: a rope, a few tools, something to stand on. A stool would be good, but an upside-down bucket would do just as well. He’s holding it in his hand. He’s got everything else he needs in his backpack.
The only thing that’s stopped him from doing it earlier, several years ago, was Amat. One single friend like him—that can be enough. Lifa and Zacharias were never friends in the same way, only through Amat, so when Amat was moved up to the juniors and chose a different life, everything disappeared for Zacharias.
Amat was the reason he stayed alive. Amat was the one who told him, on all the darkest, hardest nights: “One day, Zach, you’ll have more money and influence than all those bastards. And then you’ll do great things. Because you know how much it hurts to have no power. So you won’t hurt them, even though you could. And that will make the world a better place.”
Never again do you have the sort of friends you have when you’re fifteen. Zacharias turns sixteen today. He breaks into the school without caring if he sets the alarm off. Puts the bucket down on the floor.
***
Jeanette looks down at the floor with her heart practically bursting out of her chest. It’s a large puddle, spreading out slowly in front of her. She standing close to the entrance, near the rows of lockers belonging to the high school students. There’s an acrid smell; it catches in her nostrils. Her brother comes closer; two flashlights point in the same direction.
“What’s that on the floor?” he asks.
***
Ana is grinding her teeth so hard that her dad can hear it. He whispers:
“They’re just frightened, Ana, they’re just looking for a scapegoat.”
Ana wants to scream. She wants to yank open the door of the neighbor’s house, tear down the green flag, and shout: “Why isn’t KEVIN the scapegoat, then? WELL?” She wants to scream so loud that all the other neighbors here in the Heights can hear it too. Scream that she loves hockey. LOVES hockey! But she’s a girl, so what happens if she says that to a boy? He says: “Really? You’re a girl and you like hockey? Okay! Who won the Stanley Cup in 1983, then? Well? And who came seventh in the league in 1994? Well? If you like hockey you ought to be able to answer that!”
Girls aren’t allowed to like hockey even just a little bit in Beartown. Ideally they shouldn’t like it at all. Because if you like the sport you must be a lesbian, and if you like the players you’re a slut. Ana feels like pushing her neighbor up against the wall and telling him that the locker room where those boys sit telling their stupid jokes ends up preserving them like a tin can. It makes them mature more slowly, while some even go rotten inside. And they don’t have any female friends, and there are no women’s teams here, so they learn that hockey only belongs to them, and their coaches teach them that girls are a “distraction.” So they learn that girls only exist for fucking. She wants to point out how all the old men in this town praise them for “fighting” and “not backing down,” but not one single person tells them that when a girl says no, it means NO. And the problem with this town is not only that a boy raped a girl, but that everyone is pretending that he DIDN’T do it. So now all the other boys will think that what he did was okay. Because no one cares. Ana wants to stand on the rooftop and scream: “You don’t give a shit about Maya! And you don’t really give a shit about Kevin either! Because they’re not people to you, they’re just objects of value. And his value is far greater than hers!”
She wants so much. But the street is empty, and she stays silent. She hates herself for that.
Ana’s dad still has his fingers resting clumsily on her shoulder as they go inside the house, but she slides away from his hand. He watches her as she carries the rifles down to the cellar. Sees the hatred in her. He will remember thinking: “Of all the men in the world that I wouldn’t like to be, he’s the one I’d like to be least of all: the one who hurt that girl’s best friend.”
***
“What’s that on the floor?” her brother repeats.
“Water,” Jeanette replies.
She knows there aren’t many pupils at the school who know how to break in here, whether or not they set the alarm off. She doesn’t know if the person who did this managed to get out before she and her brother showed up, or if they just didn’t care.
Jeanette’s first lesson that morning is substitute teaching with a grade-nine class. She sees that Zacharias has ink on his hands. He smells faintly of solvent. In the corridor there’s a locker on which the word BITCH is no longer scrawled, because he spent part of the night scrubbing it clean. Because he knows what it’s like to be the one other people hurt, just because they can. Because he knows what the strong do to the weak in this town.
Jeanette doesn’t say anything to Zacharias. She knows this is his silent protest. And her decision not to tell anyone about who broke in last night becomes her own silent protest.