Chapter 32 Then He Takes the Shotgun and Goes Out into the Forest
Then He Takes the Shotgun and Goes Out into the Forest
Hockey is the simplest sport in the world, if you’re sitting in the stands. It’s always so easy to say what everyone should have done when you know that what they actually did didn’t work.
Peter heads to the rink with tunnel vision. His phone is still ringing, but he’s stopped answering. He tries calling Benji, but Benji doesn’t answer. He opens his email. It’s an avalanche.
He slumps forward, blinded by a migraine, unable to breathe. For a few minutes he worries that he’s having a stroke. He can still remember the terrible emails and text messages that appeared after Maya reported Kevin to the police. It’s starting again. It’s all happening again.
Most of them don’t use the word itself, they use words such as “distraction” and “politics” instead.
“We just don’t want any distractions or politics in the club so close to the game against Hed, Peter!
” Everyone means well, obviously. No one has anything against Benji, of course.
“But for the boy’s own sake, perhaps it’s best if he has .
. . a little break? You know how sensitive .
. . some people . . . not us, but there are others who might react negatively, Peter!
We’re only thinking of the boy’s best!” Naturally.
“Just let the guys play!” several correspondents urge.
Just not all the guys.
But one of the emails is different. It comes from one of the parents of the little league players, and there’s a picture attached, taken in the A-team’s locker room, but it’s not of Benji.
It shows Elisabeth Zackell, who appears to be leaning forward and examining Bobo’s genitals.
It may have been a harmless joke when it happened, but someone on the A-team took a photograph.
No one knows how the picture spread, but there’s another email containing the same picture.
Then another one appears. “First teachers sleeping with their pupils, then teachers training their pupils to fight, and now THIS??!!!”
The emails that follow stick to the usual progression: First worried emails. Then hate-filled emails. Then threatening emails. Finally an anonymous email: “If that bitch and that queer take part in one more Beartown training session, you’re going to be in serious trouble!!!”
It’s so easy to be wise in hindsight; hockey is so simple from the stands.
If Peter hadn’t had a daughter who had been depicted as the enemy of the entire hockey club back in the spring, he might have reacted better now.
Or perhaps worse. But his instincts are heading in all different directions, so in the end he prints out the picture of Zackell and Bobo, finds the coach down on the ice, and shouts, “Zackell! What the h— what’s this? ”
Zackell is standing on her own, shooting pucks, and she skates calmly over to the boards and looks at the picture. “That’s me. And that’s Bobo. And that little thing is a penis.”
But you . . . it’s . . . what’s . . . ?”
Zackell taps her stick on the ice. Shrugs. “You know how it is. Hockey teams test the boundaries when they get a new coach. It’s between them and me.”
Peter is clutching his head as if it’s cracked and he’s glued it back together and is waiting for it to dry. “But, Zackell . . . it isn’t between you and them anymore. Someone’s posted the picture online! The whole town is going—”
Zackell examines the tape on her stick. “I’m a hockey coach. I’m not the mayor. The town’s problems are the town’s problems. In here we just play hockey.”
Peter groans. “Society doesn’t work like that, Zackell. People will interpret this as . . . they’re not used to . . . first this business with Benji, and now this, with you and this . . .”
“Penis?” Zackell suggests helpfully.
Peter glares at her. “We’ve received a threat! We have to cancel today’s practice!”
Zackell doesn’t seem to hear him, and asks instead, “What’s happening with Vidar? Our new goalie? Are you going to let him play?”
“Did you hear what I said? We’ve received a threat! Never mind about Vidar! We have to cancel practice!”
Zackell shrugs again. “I heard. I’m not deaf.”
She goes back out onto the ice, as if he’s finished. Then she calmly carries on firing pucks. Peter storms up to the office and calls the A-team players. They all answer apart from Benji. Peter explains the threat in the email. All the players understand. Not one of them stays at home.
When the practice begins, the team gathers on the ice in front of Zackell. She taps her stick on the ice and says, “Have you heard that the club’s received a threat?”
They nod. She clarifies, “If I coach you and if Benjamin plays with us, apparently we’re ‘going to be in serious trouble.’ So if you don’t want to train today, I won’t hold it against you.”
No one moves. A lot of shit has been said about this team, but they don’t scare easily. Zackell nods. “Well, then. I understand that there are a lot of . . . emotions right now. But we’re a hockey team. We play hockey.”
The older players wait for her to demand to know who posted the picture of her and Bobo on the Internet. She doesn’t even mention it. Perhaps that wins her some respect, because eventually one of them calls out, “We mostly turned up for the beer!”
The laughter that follows is liberating. Even Bobo looks a little less embarrassed.
It’s only words. Combinations of letters. How can they possibly hurt anyone?
Benji is standing in Adri’s kennels; the dogs are playing in the snow around his feet.
They don’t care, and he wishes no one else did either.
He doesn’t want to change the world, doesn’t want anyone to have to adapt themselves to him, he just wants to play hockey.
Go into the locker room without it falling silent because nobody dares to mess around anymore.
He just wants all the usual things: sticks and ice, a puck and two nets, the desire to win, to struggle.
You against us, with everything we’ve got.
But that’s over now. Benji is no longer one of them.
Perhaps one day he’ll find words for that feeling of being different. How physical it is. Exclusion is a form of exhaustion that eats its way into your skeleton. People who are like everyone else, who belong to the norm, the majority, can’t possibly understand it. How can they?
Benji has heard all the arguments, he’s sat next to adults in the stands and in buses on the way to tournaments, people who say, “There are no homosexuals in ice hockey.” There were jokes, all the usual stuff, but that never really affected Benji.
It was the little choices of vocabulary that everyone seemed to find obvious that cut deepest, when “fag” was used as an insult.
“You play like fags!” “Fag referee!” “Damn fag coffee machine doesn’t work!
” Three little letters used to describe weakness, stupidity, anything that didn’t function properly. Anything that was defective.
Naturally there were adults who never said the word.
Some of them said other things instead. They didn’t even think about it, but Benji stored up tiny splinters of conversations for years.
“They don’t bother with hockey. How would that even work?
With the locker room and everything? Are we going to have three different locker rooms, just in case?
” The people saying these things were ordinary parents, kind and generous people who did all they could for their children’s hockey team.
They didn’t vote for extremist parties, they didn’t wish anyone dead, they’d never dream of being violent.
They just said obvious, self-evident things such as, “People like that probably don’t feel at home in hockey, they probably like other things.
You have to bear in mind that hockey’s a tough sport!
” Sometimes they said it straight out: “Hockey’s a sport for men!
” They said “men,” but even as a small boy Benji would stand alongside in silence, knowing that what they actually meant was “real men.”
It’s only words. Only letters. Only a human being.
Benji doesn’t train with his team today, because he knows he’s no longer one of them. He doesn’t know who he ought to be instead. And he doesn’t know if he wants that.
When the practice starts, Sune is sitting in the stands. Peter sinks down beside him.
“Have you reported the threat to the police?” Sune asks.
“They don’t know if it’s serious or not. Could just be some kid.”
“Try not to worry.”
“I don’t know what to do,” Peter admits impotently.
Sune doesn’t offer any comfort, he never does. He demands that people take responsibility. “You don’t know what to do, or what you ought to do?”
Peter sighs. “You know what I mean. It’s a messy situation to try to handle . . . Zackell and the team . . .”
Sune nods toward the ice. “They chose to come. Let the guys play.”
“What about Benjamin, then? How am I going to help him?”
Sune adjusts the fold of his T-shirt over his stomach. “You can start by giving up the idea that he needs help. It’s everyone else who needs help.”
Peter snaps back, hurt: “Don’t come here and try to tell me that I’m prej—”
Sune snorts. “Why are you still involved in this sport, Peter?”
Peter takes a deep breath. “I don’t know how to stop.”
Sune nods.
“I tell myself that I’m still here because the ice is the only place I know where everyone is equal. Out there it doesn’t matter who you are. All that matters is if you can play.”
“There may be equality on the ice. But the same thing doesn’t apply to the sport in general, Peter.”
“No. And that’s our fault. Yours and mine and everyone else’s.” Peter throws his arms out. “But what are we supposed to do?”