Chapter 41 If You Stand Tall
If You Stand Tall
The Beartown Ice Hockey locker room is quiet. There are only two ways for losing teams to get changed: at once or not at all. Either it takes them five minutes to leave the rink, or it takes them several hours. This time no one can summon up the energy even to have a shower.
Peter Andersson walks in. He looks at them and knows exactly how they feel. He desperately wishes he had something inspirational to say, so he mutters, “Well, guys . . . that was a tough game. But you lost, and I want you to—”
One of the older players snorts and interrupts him: “With all due respect, Peter, don’t try telling us to ‘forget about it’ or some other tired cliché. If you haven’t got anything useful to say, it would be better if you did what you always do: keep quiet and go and hide in your office!”
It’s a direct challenge. They don’t respect him.
Peter stands in the door with his hands in his pockets.
At most times in his life he would have done as he’s been told: gone and hidden in his office.
He would have told himself that he’s the general manager, not the coach, and that it’s not his job to be respected by the players.
But today isn’t like those other days. So he clenches his fists in his pockets and blurts out, “Forget about it? Forget? Do you think I want you to forget this? I want you to remember this!”
He gets their astonished attention with that.
He usually never so much as raises his voice, but now he points at each of the players, from the oldest all the way down to Benji, Bobo, Vidar, and Amat, and roars, “Today you’re losers.
Today you almost made it. Remember exactly how this feels.
So that you and I never have to feel like this again! Never!”
Perhaps he would have gone on to say more, but a monotonous banging sound is echoing through the walls of the arena, and everyone in the locker room looks up.
At first it sounds like a drum, then like someone kicking a door, but soon it grows to a roar and only Peter knows where it’s coming from.
He’s heard it before, but that was twenty years ago, during a magical season when an entire town lived and died with the victories and losses of a hockey team.
Back then Peter heard that sound in every rink.
“Go back out onto the ice,” he tells the team.
They obey. Peter doesn’t go with them; he knows he’s not welcome.
The Beartown Ice Hockey players go back onto the ice.
Almost all the stands are empty now, and the lights have been switched off.
But at one end of the rink a group of men in black jackets are still standing, refusing to be quiet.
They’re jumping up and down, their feet drumming on the wood beneath them.
There aren’t even a hundred of them, but they’re singing like ten thousand.
“We’ll stand tall if you stand tall! We’ll stand tall if you stand tall!
We’ll stand tall if you stand tall!” they chant over and over again.
To let everyone know that they’re still there. To remind them what the club means. That it’s a privilege, not a right.
In the end the whole of the Beartown A-team is standing on the ice joining in.
“WE’LL STAND TALL IF YOU STAND TALL! WE’LL STAND TALL IF YOU STAND TALL!
” The rest of the rink is deserted and dark, but no one else would have been welcome anyway.
This is between the team and their closest supporters: family.
Peter stands alone in the locker room with his hands in his pockets.
Then he leaves the rink and walks the whole way home to Beartown through the forest, taking deep breaths of the winter that’s on its way and feeling more of a loser than ever.
Everything is slipping away from him: his children, his marriage, his club.
Was it worth it? How are we supposed to know that in advance?
The coaches of the Beartown and Hed teams meet after the game in the referee’s room. They talk the way coaches do—politely, but not friendly.
“Good game,” says David, dressed in red.
“You won. So only you had a good game,” replies Zackell, dressed in green.
David smiles. They’re the same type, he and she.
“How are your guys getting on?” he asks.
“My guys in general or one in particular?” she counters.
David tries to find something to do with his hands. “Benjamin. I was wondering how Benjamin is getting on.”
“We’re playing you again in December. He’ll play the whole game then,” she replies.
David grins. That’s not an answer to his question, but it’s her way of saying she’s not planning to lose next time they meet. She’s a hockey coach, first and foremost, just like David.
“Good game!” David repeats.
He holds out his hand, but she gives no indication at all that she’s thinking of shaking it.
“That Filip of yours, your defenseman, he could be very good indeed,” she says instead.
David feels himself standing tall with pride. Filip was the smallest, worst player throughout his childhood, but David continued to give him opportunities, and now he’s grown into a star.
“Yes. He just needs—” David begins, but Zackell interrupts, “Don’t let him go up into the stands again. Don’t let him get dragged into the politics.”
David nods in agreement. He and Zackell really are the same sort.
They know that Filip has the potential to become the best but also that he has nothing to gain by picking fights with the supporters.
Elite sports doesn’t tolerate that sort of distraction.
Players should just play. Hockey should just be hockey.
“He was a bit slower than normal tonight, but he’s probably a bit stiff after the preseason training,” David says.
“He’s got a pain in his hip,” Zackell says without any trace of doubt.
“Sorry?”
“His right hip. He’s overcompensating; look at his back when he’s standing, and you’ll see it’s not straight. He hasn’t mentioned it to you because he’s worried about letting you down.”
“How do you know that?” David wonders.
“I did the same thing when I was his age.”
David hesitates for a long time before asking “Who was your coach?”
“My dad.”
Zackell’s expression doesn’t change at all as she says this. Taken aback, David scratches his neck. “Thanks. I’ll talk to Filip . . .”
Zackell pulls a piece of paper from her pocket and scribbles down a phone number.
“This is the number of a physiotherapist. He’s the best when it comes to this sort of injury. Take Filip to see him, say hi from me.”
Then she walks out of the room. David calls after her, “I’ll call you when I get a job at one of the elite teams! You can be my assistant coach!”
The woman’s response from the corridor is as obvious as it is confident: “You can be my assistant coach!”
The following morning, David takes Filip to see the physiotherapist. Driving there and back takes all day, and in a few years’ time Filip will talk in interviews about how David used to drive him there once a week for the rest of the season.
“Best coach I’ve ever had! Saved my career!
” The physiotherapist works for one of the biggest hockey teams in the country, and the following year it recruits Filip.
David gets a coaching job there at the same time.
Elisabeth Zackell will apply for the same job but won’t get it.
Always fair. Always unfair.
It’s late when David’s doorbell rings. His pregnant girlfriend answers. Benji is standing outside.
When David comes down the stairs, he loses his breath for a single moment, and the whole of the boy’s childhood flickers past: Benji and Kevin, best friends, the wild boy and the genius. God, how David loved those two. Will he ever feel like he did as their coach again?
“Come in!” David says delightedly, but Benji shakes his head.
He’s eighteen now. A man. When he and Kevin were children, David used a hundred different ways to motivate them, and perhaps none was more unusual than the fact that he used to let them borrow his watch.
He had been given it by his father and the boys used to admire it, so when one of them had a particularly good game, he was allowed to borrow it. Benji holds the watch out to him now.
“Give it to your kid. It doesn’t really suit me.”
Back in the spring, just after David left Beartown Ice Hockey, he saw Benji kiss another boy.
There was so much the coach wanted to say at the time but no way he could think of saying it.
So he left his dad’s watch on Benji’s dad’s grave, along with a puck on which he had written, “Still the bravest bastard I know.”
“I—” David whispers, but nothing else comes out.
Benji puts the watch into his hand, and David’s fingers close tightly around the metal. His girlfriend is crying quietly for him.
“I’ll keep the puck, that’s enough,” Benji says.
David feels like hugging him. It’s odd that you can forget how to do that. “I’m sorry for everything you’ve had to go through,” he whispers honestly.
Benji bites his cheek. “You’re the best coach I’ve ever had,” he replies with equal honesty.
“Coach.” He doesn’t say “person” or “friend.” Just “coach.” That will never stop hurting David.
“There’ll always be a jersey with the number sixteen on it, on all my teams,” David promises.
He knows what Benji’s response will be before he says it: “There’s only one team for me.”
Then the boy disappears into the darkness. As usual.
A couple of days later, Beartown plays its next game.
It’s another away game, but the green jerseys and black jackets make the trip, and the same stubborn chant rings out throughout the game: “We’ll stand tall if you stand tall!
We’ll stand tall if you stand tall! We’ll stand tall if you stand tall! ”
Beartown wins the game 5–0. Amat is a whirlwind, Bobo fights as though it’s the last game of his life, Benji is the best player on the ice.
At one point toward the end of the game, Vidar comes close to fighting one of the opponents, but Benji skates across the ice as fast as he can to hold the goalie back, stopping him from throwing the punch.
“If you fight, you’ll be suspended! We need you!” Benji yells.
“He’s talking shit!” Vidar yells back, pointing to the other player.
“What’s he saying?” Benji asks.
“That you’re a fag!”
Benji gives him a long stare. “I am a fag, Vidar.”
Vidar hits the bear on his chest. “But you’re our fag!”
Benji looks down at the ice and lets out a long sigh. That’s the most dysfunctional compliment he’s ever received. “Can we just play hockey now?” he begs.
“Okay,” Vidar mutters.
So they play. Benji scores twice. Vidar doesn’t let a single goal in. When Benji gets to the Bearskin that evening, there’s a beer waiting for him on the bar. He drinks it, with Vidar and Teemu standing beside him. They manage to make it feel almost like normal. Perhaps it will be, one day.