Chapter 28 “Goddamn Homo!”
“Goddamn homo!”
The next morning Ana and Maya stop a hundred feet from the school.
They’ve started to do that every day. It’s become an energy-gathering ritual that armor-plates them.
Ana clears her throat and asks, very seriously, “Okay . . . have diarrhea every day for the rest of your life or always have to go to the toilet with the door open?”
Maya roars with laughter. “What is it with you and shit these days? Is that all you think about?”
“Answer the question!” Ana commands.
“It’s an idiotic question,” Maya points out.
“You’re idiotic! Diarrhea or an open door . . . always open. No matter where you go to the toilet. For the rest of your life!”
Maya giggles. “I’ve got a class now.”
Ana shudders. “How can we possibly have played this game our whole lives without you understanding the rules! You have to answer! That’s, like, the whole point!”
Maya shakes her head teasingly, Ana gives her a shove, Maya laughs and shoves back, but Ana jumps out of the way so nimbly that Maya falls over. Ana sits on top of her, grabs hold of her hands, and yells, “Answer before I mess up your makeup!”
“Diarrhea! Diarrhea,” Maya half laughs, half shouts.
Ana helps her up. They hug each other.
“I love you, you nutter,” Maya whispers.
“Us against the world,” Ana whispers back.
Then they get ready for yet another day.
There’s a flutter somewhere between your stomach and your rib cage, like a flag flapping in a storm, those first moments when you fall in love with someone.
When someone looks at you, those days after the first kiss, when it’s still your incomprehensible little secret.
That you want me. It’s a vulnerability; there’s nothing more dangerous.
By the time school starts for the day, someone has written three words on Benji’s locker with a red pen: “Run, Benji, run!” Because they know that’s what he did last night.
He’s been untouchable for so long in this town that the slightest crack in his armor will be exploited mercilessly by his enemies.
He ran from a fight. He fled. He isn’t the person everyone thought he was. He’s a coward.
They watch him when he arrives, waiting for a reaction when he reads the words, but it’s as if he doesn’t even see them.
Maybe that’s why they start to worry if he’s understood.
So when an entire school day passes without Benji showing the slightest sign of regret or shame, someone yells, “GO ON, RUN, BENJI! RUN!” when he walks past the cafeteria.
William Lyt and his guys are sitting at a table in the far corner.
It’s impossible to know who shouted, but Benji turns around and does as they suggested.
He runs. Straight at them. At top speed, with his fists clenched.
Other pupils throw themselves out of the way; tables topple, chairs go flying.
When Benji stops dead a foot from William Lyt, one of Lyt’s friends has leaped under the table, two more are practically sitting in each other’s laps, and one moves backward so hard that he hits his head against the wall.
But William Lyt hasn’t moved a muscle. He sits still, eyes open, meeting Benji’s stare. And Benji sees himself in him. He, too, has crossed a boundary. The cafeteria is silent, but the two eighteen-year-olds can hear each other’s heartbeats. Calm, watchful.
“Sore feet, Ovich? We heard you ran all the way from the forest,” Lyt snarls.
At first Benji looks thoughtful. Then he takes off his shoes, then both his socks, and drops them into Lyt’s lap. “Here you go, William. Your only chance of a three-way.”
Lyt’s jaw tightens, and his reply is more clenched than he would have liked. “They’re sweaty. Like a coward’s.”
He’s trying not to let his eyes land on Benji’s watch but fails.
He knows who Benji got it from, and Benji knows he knows, so jealousy eats away at William when Benji grins.
“I was actually looking for you in the forest, William. But you never dare take part in fights when the numbers are even, do you? You’re only tough on video. That’s why your team never trusts you.”
Small dots of shame burn on William’s cheeks. “I didn’t know there was going to be a fight, I was at home, it wasn’t me who burned the jersey,” he snaps.
“No, you’re not man enough to do that,” Benji replies.
He turns and leaves the cafeteria, and only then does William Lyt shout something. Benji doesn’t hear what, the only words he hears are “GODDAMN HOMO!”
Benji stops so that no one sees him tumbling into the abyss that’s just opened up in front of him. He sticks his hands into his pockets so no one will see them shaking. He doesn’t turn around so that Lyt can’t see what’s happened as he asks, “What did you say?”
Lyt repeats what he said, encouraged by the unexpected advantage. “I said your coach is a disgusting goddamn homo! Are you proud of that? Playing on a bullshit rainbow team?”
Benji fastens his jacket so his pulse isn’t visible through his shirt.
Lyt shouts something else, and all his guys laugh.
Benji walks out into the corridor, and through the crowd he sees a polo shirt.
Green today. The teacher’s eyes are pleading, as if he wants to say “Sorry” but knows that the word is too small.
There’s a flutter inside Benji then. A flag coming loose in a storm. He can’t let anyone make him that weak, not this season. He leaves the school, walking slowly on purpose, but as soon as he’s out of sight he runs. Right into the forest. Slamming his fist into every tree he passes.
A younger boy stops at a different locker in the same school.
Twelve years old. Covered in bruises. Yesterday he grabbed a branch and threw himself into a fight without hesitation in order to smash the legs of someone who was trying to hurt Benjamin Ovich.
That sort of thing doesn’t go unnoticed in this town.
Today there’s something hanging from his locker.
At first he thinks it’s a trash bag. He couldn’t be more wrong.
It’s a black jacket. No logos or emblems or symbols, just a perfectly ordinary black jacket.
It doesn’t mean anything. It means everything.
It’s far too big for Leo, because they want him to know that he can’t become one of them until he’s much older.
But they’ve hung it on his locker so that everyone in his school will get the message.
He’s got brothers now. You don’t touch him again.
It takes a huge amount of trust to fight at someone’s side.
That’s why violent people prize loyalty so highly and are so sensitive about the slightest sign of treachery: if you retreat and run, you’re exposing me to danger, making me look weak.
So Benji knows he’s let Teemu and the Pack down. And that isn’t tolerated.
Even so, he pulls himself together after a few hours in the forest and walks back into town.
He wipes the tears from his cheeks and the blood from his knuckles.
He can’t let anyone think there’s anything wrong with him; everything has to carry on as normal.
Even when blue polo shirts have torn him apart, even when he knows that the Pack might want to punish him for running from the fight in the forest. Because where would he go if he didn’t have Beartown?
So he goes to work, stands behind the bar in the Bearskin, pours beer.
The more crowded the bar gets, the more he avoids eye contact with other people.
Several of the guys from the forest are there: Spider, about whose intelligence Ramona usually says, “He’s about as smart as mashed potato, that one.
” But he’s loyal; in the forest Benji saw him stick just behind Teemu the whole time, not because he was scared but because he was guarding his leader’s flank.
Spider was bullied all through childhood for being so lanky and crazy, but he found a place in the Pack. You can’t buy that sort of devotion.
Beside Spider sits his physical opposite, a short, neckless man, as wide as a brick shithouse with a beard as thick as an otter’s pelt.
He’s called Woody because he works as a carpenter, because that’s what his father did.
Once someone asked Woody if he’d rather have a more imaginative nickname, but Woody just snorted, “Are you gay or something?” If he’s any smarter than Spider, he keeps it well hidden, but he was in the same class in school as Benji’s sister Gaby and she says, “He’s no genius, but he’s not a bad guy.
” Woody’s first love is having fun: beer, hockey, friends, girls.
Drinking, dancing, and fighting. If there’s any kind of trouble going on, he’ll be there without a thought for the consequences, and if there’s an offer of a scrap in the forest he never hesitates.
But he and Spider have other friends, too, hardly hardened warriors, who seem almost to consider fighting a shared hobby.
Like golf. One of the guys who works with Woody is so sweet that if he sees you on a Tuesday he wishes you a good weekend, just in case he doesn’t see you again before Friday.
Another has four cats. How can anyone with four cats be dangerous? But he is.
The men who make up the Pack aren’t extremists; what makes them dangerous is simply the fact that they stick together.
Against everything, through everything, for one another.
Benji remembers a book he read by some journalist who said on the subject of sport and violence that “every large group you don’t yourself belong to is a threat. ”
There are men in Beartown who grew up with Teemu but who now work in offices; they wear white shirts rather than black jackets, but if Teemu calls them they still come.
One became a father and started studying at college to give his kid a better life, and he got a monthly grant from the kitty at the Bearskin when his student loan wasn’t enough.
Another has a sister in the big city who got beaten up by her boyfriend and the police said they couldn’t do anything.
A third has an uncle whose printing business was threatened by a gang running a protection racket.
The sister is happily married to a better man now, and the uncle never got any more visits from the gang.
If Teemu ever calls in those men, they come.
That’s why they prize loyalty and are so sensitive to betrayal.
Neither Spider nor Woody is looking at him now, but Benji is well aware that if they want to hurt him this evening, they’re not going to warn him first.
Maya and Ana go their separate ways after school.
Ana lies and says she has to check on the dogs, even though it’s actually her dad she’s going to check on.
She feels ashamed. Maya lies and says she’s going out for a run, even though she’s planning to go home and curl up under the covers.
She feels ashamed for different reasons.
They’re like sisters, they’ve never had secrets from each other.
But Kevin broke something between them, too.
It’s almost closing time in the Bearskin when the crowd at one end of the bar parts discreetly. The bar gets a little quieter, not enough to have been noticed by strangers but enough for Benji to notice.
“Two beers,” Teemu says, looking him hard in the eye.
Benji nods and pours them. Teemu watches his hands; they’re not shaking.
Benji respects the situation he’s in, and he isn’t afraid.
Teemu takes one of the beers and leaves the other on the counter.
It takes a long time for Benji to realize what that means.
So he slowly picks it up, and Teemu leans across the counter and touches his glass to his in a toast. So that everyone sees.
“You’re one of us, Ovich. But we can’t take you out into the forest anymore. I got it wrong yesterday. You could have been hurt, and we need you on the ice.”
“A little kid showed up in the forest . . . Leo . . .”
Teemu grins. “We know. Tough kid. If you hadn’t taken him off, he’d had have kept fighting until he got killed.”
“He’s only a boy,” Benji says.
Teemu stretches his neck, and something inside creaks. “Boys become men. If the cops start asking Leo questions—”
“—he won’t say a thing!” Benji promises.
“We’re counting on that,” Teemu says.
Benji can see that Teemu finds the idea that the general manager’s son dreams of rushing through the forest in a black jacket amusing.
That Peter has tried for years to curb the Pack’s influence over the club but now can’t even stop their influence over his own child.
He leans over the counter and touches his glass to Benji’s again.
“Have you heard my little brother’s coming home?
And your coach is going to let him play!
You and my little brother! And that Amat, the one who’s as quick as a weasel after a chili enema.
And Bobo, the big meathead! You’re not like the older players, those greedy mercenaries, most of them don’t even want to live in Beartown!
They just want to get out of here. But you lot, you’re a Beartown team made up of Beartown guys! ”
Before the evening is over, Spider, Woody, and a dozen other black jackets have drunk toasts with Benji. He’s one of them again now. You might think that would make things easier when his secrets are revealed, but the exact opposite is what happens.