Chapter 26 Whose Town Will It Be?
Whose Town Will It Be?
You try to be a good parent, in every way, but you never know how.
It’s not a difficult job. Just impossible.
Peter is standing outside his daughter’s room with a pair of drumsticks in his hand.
She used to be his little girl, it was his job to protect her, but now he can’t even look her in the eye because he feels so ashamed.
When she was little, they lay together on a bed that was too narrow on one of those nights when it felt as though they were the last two people on Earth.
The little child lay asleep against his neck, and he hardly dared breathe.
Her heart was beating like a rabbit’s, and his kept pace; he was so happy that he was terrified, so complete that he could think only of the fragments if life shattered again.
Children make us vulnerable. That’s the problem with dreams: you can get to the top of the mountain and discover that you’re scared of heights.
She’s sixteen now. Her dad stands outside her room, too much of a coward to knock.
He always used to call her “Pumpkin” when she was little.
She never liked hockey, so when she fell in love with playing the guitar, Peter learned to play the drums, just so he could play with her in the garage.
That happened less and less as the years passed, of course, because he was always so busy.
Work, the house, life. You start to say “Tomorrow” more often.
When his daughter brought him the drumsticks he would ask, “Have you done your homework?”
But now he’s the one standing there with the drumsticks in his hand. He knocks tentatively on Maya’s door. As if he almost hopes she won’t hear.
“Mmm?” she grunts.
“I just thought I’d see if you’ve . . . got your guitar? Do you feel like . . . having a jam in the garage?”
She opens the door. Her sympathy crushes him. “I’m studying, Dad. Tomorrow, maybe?”
He nods. “Sure. Sure, Pumpkin. Tomorrow . . .”
She kisses his cheek and closes the door. He can barely look her in the eye. He’s trying to find a way to be her dad again, but he doesn’t know how. You never know how.
That evening the Andersson family are as far from each other as it’s possible to get in a small house. Maya is lying on her bed with headphones on at high volume. Kira is sitting in the kitchen dealing with emails. Peter is sitting in the bathroom with the door locked, staring at his phone.
Leo hides the bruises on his body under a thick tracksuit and blames his swollen face on the fact that he got hit by a ball in gym class.
Perhaps they believe him. Unless they just want to believe him.
Everyone is caught up in his or her own anxiety this evening, so no one hears when Leo opens his window and sneaks out.
Peter calls Richard Theo. He answers on the third ring.
“Yes?” the politician says.
Peter gulps, even though his mouth is dry, and the only thing he seems to swallow is his pride. “I want to ask something about our . . . agreement,” he says. He’s whispering, sitting in the bathroom because he doesn’t want his family to overhear.
“What agreement?” the politician asks, wiser than anyone who talks about that sort of thing on the phone.
Peter takes a deep breath. “It might be difficult to . . . get hold of a carpenter in Beartown. At this time of year.”
It’s his way of asking the politician not to force him to rip out the standing area in the rink.
Not to force him to confront the Pack. Not right now.
But the politician replies, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.
But . . . if we had an agreement, you and I, then I would have expected you to keep your side of it.
Without exception. Because that’s what friends do! ”
“You’re asking me to do something . . . dangerous. You know a local politician around here has had an ax embedded in her car, and I . . . I’ve got a family.”
“I’m not asking you to do anything. But you’re a sportsman, and I didn’t think sportsmen defended violent hooligans,” Richard Theo replies scornfully.
Peter holds the phone to his ear long after the politician has hung up.
He can still see the announcement of his death in front of him if he closes his eyes.
He’s going to be able to save his club, but what dangers is he exposing his family to?
He’ll be able to give this town a hockey team. But whose town will it be?
They say “Small leaks sink big ships.” But sometimes not fast enough for some men.
Richard Theo makes a call to London. Then an email is sent from the factory’s new owner to the general manager of Beartown Ice Hockey.
Its content is simple: as the new sponsor, he demands a guarantee that Peter Andersson “really does intend to keep his promise to create a more family-friendly, fully seated arena.” No one mentions anything about the Pack or any “hooligans.” The email never reaches Peter; it’s obviously just a harmless mistake—the sender spelled his surname with one s instead of two.
If anyone were to ask later, everyone will be confused: Peter will say he never received the email, the sponsor will say that it negotiated through a go-between, and the harder it is to get a clear idea of what actually happened, the more convinced people will be that everyone involved is hiding something.
No one will ever need to explain exactly how a copy of the email suddenly ended up in the hands of the local paper. The reporter will refer to a “trusted source.” Once the news is out, it won’t matter where it came from.
In the end no one will be able to prove whose idea it was to get rid of the standing area at the rink.
The members of the Pack always embrace when they meet and before they part, with their fists clenched against each other’s backs. Some people see this as a sign of violence. But to them it isn’t.
Teemu Rinnius still lives at home with his mother.
Police investigations have suggested that this is because he can’t get a home of his own using the illegal earnings he lives off of, and he lets everyone believe that.
The truth is that he can’t leave his mother alone.
Someone needs to do the counting at home.
There are lots of jokes about the Rinnius brothers’ criminality, such as “What’s a triathlon for the Rinnius brothers?
Walking to the swimming pool and cycling home!
” and “The Rinnius brothers are sitting in a car; who’s driving?
The police!” When Vidar became the goalie on the boys’ hockey team, someone in the stands joked, “Of course that family make good goalies, they can’t keep their hands off anything!
” That joke was told only once. You can say what you like about the Rinnius brothers, but math was their best subject at school.
They’ve been counting all their lives: How many pills are left in the bottles in the bathroom, how many hours has Mom been asleep?
When Vidar got caught and was sent away, that responsibility fell to Teemu alone.
It was worse then because all their mom wanted to do was sleep longer and deeper once her youngest son was taken off to the treatment center.
Vidar was always her little baby, no matter what he got up to.
Teemu is sitting at her kitchen table now.
She’s clattering with frying pans and saucepans, and he’s not used to it; she laughs out loud, and it’s been a long time since she last did that.
When Teemu told her that Vidar was being released early, she cleaned the whole house in a rush of happiness.
The next morning was the first time in years that Teemu counted the same number of pills in the bottles two days in a row.
“My baby, my baby,” his mom sings happily to herself over at the stove.
She never asked why Vidar is being released or who arranged it, but that anxiety is gnawing away at Teemu.
He tells himself that he just wants the same as all simple men do: to have his little brother home, make his mom happy, live a simple life.
But that isn’t true: he has to protect them, too, that’s always been his responsibility, his obsession.
“My baby, my baby, coming home to Mama!” his mom sings.
Teemu’s mind wanders off. The Pack was never as coordinated or as militarily organized as people thought.
Everyone says “What pack?” or “Teemu who?” if strangers ask, but that isn’t entirely put on.
He isn’t a dictator; the black jackets are basically just a group of friends who stick together because of two simple loves: hockey and each other.
The politicians and board members and journalists talk an awful lot of bullshit about “hooligans” when it suits their purposes, but those greedy bastards don’t love the club or the town the way the members of the Pack do.
Teemu’s two best friends, Spider and Woody, can fight like wild animals.
But they never attack innocent people, and when the worst storm in a century hit the forest a few years ago, those two were the guys who went from house to house clearing trees from gardens and mending roofs and windows without asking for any form of payment.
Where were the journalists and board members then?
Police investigations describe Woody and Spider as gang members, but to this day they can’t walk past any of those houses without being invited in for coffee.
Teemu isn’t a child, he knows his guys haven’t got hearts of gold. But they have honor. Their own sort.
Spider was bullied as a child, never wanted to shower after PE, so a gang of boys in his class thought that meant he was gay.
They threw him into the shower and beat the crap out of him with twisted wet towels.
“Gay” was the worst insult they could think of, the weakest thing a boy could be.
So Spider has hated two things ever since: gays and bullies.