Us Against You Read online

  So Amat has been training alone, putting weights on his bed and lifting it like a primitive bench press, doing push-ups until he cries, and running along the roads until he throws up. He goes down to the communal laundry room at night and practices stick handling pucks and balls between glass bottles, faster and faster. Every other evening, his mom, Fatima, comes home late because she’s helping a friend who’s ill, Amat doesn’t know who. He doesn’t tell her he misses her, because he doesn’t want to make her feel guilty. Fatima is the sort of person who looks after everyone who needs her, and her son is big enough to take his place in line.

  But this evening he isn’t training. Or sleeping. The other kids of his age from the Hollow hang out on “the Hill” at night, on the edge of the forest looking out over the old gravel pit. Amat can see them from the balcony, cooking hot dogs on barbecues and smoking weed, talking about nothing and laughing. Just being . . . teenagers.

  Everything has its price. They say you have to spend ten thousand hours practicing to get really good at something, so how many more is it going to cost Amat to get away from here? He hasn’t even got a team now. After everything he gave up in the spring to stand up and tell the truth about what Kevin did to Maya, he hasn’t got anything left. Even Maya’s father doesn’t give a damn.

  Amat pulls on a jersey, leaves the apartment, and heads up toward the Hill. Most of the teenagers around the fires have known him since he was little, but they still look at him like some captive animal that has just jumped out of its cage. He stops, embarrassed, and looks down at the ground until someone suddenly laughs and passes him a cigarette whose contents he doesn’t bother to ask about.

  “Here, superstar, party time!” the girl who hands it to him says with a grin.

  She’s sweet. So is the smoke. Amat closes his eyes and drifts away, and when she takes hold of his hand he thinks that maybe he could stay here after all. Everything else can go to hell: hockey, the club, the demands, the pressure. He’s going to let himself be normal, just for one night. Smoke until he sabotages himself and fades away into the night air.

  He finds himself holding a beer, doesn’t know where it came from. Then when another hand comes out of nowhere and knocks his arm so hard that he drops both the beer and the joint, Amat yells, “What the hell?” and turns instinctively to shove the idiot in the chest.

  * * *

  Lifa, his childhood friend, is big now. His chest doesn’t budge an inch. Instead he grabs hold of Amat’s jersey and throws him roughly down the slope.

  * * *

  Tails, the tall, thickset supermarket owner who’s almost always in a better mood than a Labrador under a water sprinkler, just sits there in shock as Peter tells him the whole story. They’re sitting in Tails’s office at the back of the shop, full of files containing Beartown Ice Hockey Club’s accounts. Tails is the club’s last big sponsor and is spending all his time trying to figure out how long he can keep the club alive without the help of the council.

  “I don’t get it . . . why would Richard Theo want you to take a stand against . . .”

  He stands up and closes the door before he finishes his sentence in a whisper: “ . . . the Pack?”

  Peter rubs the dark rings under his eyes. “The factory’s new owners want to sponsor a ‘family sport.’ That looks better in the media. They’ve told Theo that they want to get rid of ‘hooliganism.’ And after that business with the ax in the councillor’s car, well . . .”

  “But how’s that going to work?” Tails asks.

  Peter closes his eyes in exhaustion. “I have to say in a press conference that the club is getting rid of the standing area.”

  “The Pack aren’t the only people who use that . . .”

  “I know. But everyone in the Pack uses it. Richard Theo doesn’t care what happens, he’s just bothered about how it looks.”

  Tails’s eyes open wide. “He’s a smart bastard, that Theo. Everyone knows the Pack voted to let you stay on at the meeting in the spring. So if you distance yourself from them in the paper it will be . . . more effective.”

  “And Richard Theo gets everything he wants: the factory, jobs, the hockey club. He can take the credit for everything and won’t be blamed for anything. Not even the Pack will hate him, they’ll just hate me. And we’ll be giving him everything he needs to win the next council elections.”

  “You can’t do it, Peter. The Pack will . . . you know what they’re like . . . there are some crazy bastards in that gang, and hockey’s the only thing some of them have got!” Tails says.

  He knows because a few members of the Pack work in his warehouse. They work hard, and they make sure everyone else on their shift does, too, and if there’s ever a break-in at the store, Tails never has to call a security firm, because it gets taken care of. In return, Tails arranges their shifts so they never have to take holiday in order to go to Beartown Ice Hockey’s away games, but if the police show up a week later their names still appear on the rota, at precisely the time when the police are trying to prove that they were involved in “hooligan-related violence.” “Hooligans? There are no hooligans working here,” their employer exclaims uncomprehendingly. “Pack? What Pack?”

  Peter wrings his hands. “What’s the alternative, Tails? Richard Theo only cares about power, so putting the fate of the club in his hands and those of a bunch of utterly unknown investors is madness. But being realistic, if we don’t, the club will be dead anyway in three months.”

  “I can sell another store or take out a loan on this one,” Tail suggests.

  Peter puts a heavy hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I can’t ask you to do that, Tails, you’ve already done more than enough for the club.”

  Tails looks insulted. “The club? The club’s you and me.”

  Peter’s stern face cracks into a gentle smile. “You sound like Sune, the way he used to go on when we were little: ‘We are the club,’ ” he says, imitating the old coach.

  Tails and Peter used to hate summer when they were children, because the hockey rink was closed. They became best friends in an empty parking lot, along with Hog and a few others, children who didn’t care about swimming in the lake or playing war games in the forest. They used to play hockey on the tarmac with battered old sticks and a tennis ball until it got dark, then drag themselves home with scraped knees and ten World Championship wins in their hearts. They’re sitting in that very same parking lot now, because that’s where Tails built his first supermarket. He puts his hand on an old team photograph on the wall and says to Peter, “I wouldn’t be doing it for the club, you idiot, I’d be doing it for you. When we won silver twenty years ago and you got the puck at the end of the game to take the last shot, do you remember who made that pass?”

  Does he remember? Everyone remembers. Tails made the pass, Peter missed the net. Tails may feel that they won silver, but Peter just thinks they lost gold. It was his fault. But Tails wipes his eyes with the back of his hand and says quietly, “If I had a hundred chances to do it again, I’d pass the puck to you every time, Peter. I’d sell all my stores for you. That’s what you do when you have a star in the team: you trust him. You give him the puck.”

  Peter stares at the floor. “Where can a man find friends as loyal as you, Tails?”

  Tails flushes with pride. “On the ice. Only on the ice.”

  * * *

  An ancient man shuffles into the Bearskin alone. Ramona has never seen him without the other four of the five “uncles.” He looks as though he’s aged half a lifetime, as if the years have hit him all at once.

  “Have they been here?” he wonders, meaning the friends he’s spent every day with for as long as anyone can remember.

  Ramona shakes her head and asks, “Have you tried phoning them?”

  The old man looks miserable. “I haven’t got their numbers.”

  Year after year, day after day, the five uncles have either been in the stands to watch hockey or here in the Bearskin pub to talk about hockey. They’ve all
used the same calendar, where each year starts in September. Why would they need one another’s phone numbers?

  The old man stands for a while at the bar, lost. Then he goes home. He and his friends: five men who sat in a bar every day to talk about sports. They’re not about to become five men who sit in a bar every day and just drink.

  * * *

  The youngsters around the fires have fallen silent. In a very short space of time Lifa has grown from a nobody to the sort of person nobody here messes with. He doesn’t even have to raise his voice.

  “Anyone who gives Amat another beer or cigarette will never enjoy another barbecue here. Understood?”

  Farther down the slope Amat coughs as he gets to his knees. Zacharias is standing a short way behind him with melted cheese on his shirt. When Lifa came around to his apartment a short while ago, saying he’d heard that Amat was up on the hill, Zacharias tried to persuade Lifa to come inside and have a toasted sandwich instead, but Lifa just stared at him until Zacharias grabbed a pair of pants and decided to keep his mouth shut.

  “I’m partying, Lifa! Mind your own business!” Amat manages to say.

  Lifa raises his fist but doesn’t use it. He just walks disappointedly toward the apartment blocks. Zacharias helps Amat to his feet and mutters, “This isn’t like you, Amat . . .”

  “What do you mean, ‘like me’? There isn’t a ‘me’! I haven’t even got a team to play for!”

  Amat is aware how pathetic he sounds. Lifa comes back up the hill, trailing a group of kids with sticks in their hands. Lifa prods one of the kids on the shoulder. “Tell him who you are when you’re playing!”

  The boy clears his throat shyly and looks though his bangs at Amat when he says, “I’m . . . you.”

  Pieces of grit fall from Amat’s hair. Lifa pokes him in the chest. “Are you feeling sorry for yourself?”

  “I’m not—” Amat starts to say, but Lifa interrupts and points at their apartment block. “Zach and I played hockey with you in that yard every day, and how much do you think we enjoyed that, all the damn time? Don’t you think Zach would rather have been playing computer games?”

  “Much, much rather,” Zach confirms, gently brushing cheese from his shirt.

  Lifa’s eyes are blazing. “We played hockey with you every evening because we could see how crazy good you were, Amat. What you could become.”

  “I haven’t even got a team now, I—” Amat whimpers, but Lifa cuts him off.

  “Shut up! You’re going to get away from here, and you know why?

  Because whether you give up or not, these kids here are going to do what you do. So you need to get training! Because when you’re playing in the NHL and get interviewed on TV, you can say you came from here. You came from the Hollow, and you did something with your life. And every kid in these blocks will know that. And they’ll want to be like you, not me.”

  Tears are running down Lifa’s face, but he makes no attempt to hide them. “You selfish bastard! Can’t you see what everyone else here would give to have your talent?”

  Amat’s hands are shaking. Lifa walks over and hugs him as though they’re eight years old again. He kisses his hair and whispers, “We’ll come running with you. Every mad sod here will come running with you all summer, if that’s what it takes.”

  He’s not joking. Lifa runs up and down along the road beside Amat that night until he collapses, and after Amat has carried his friend home on his back, Zacharias starts running in his place. When he can’t run anymore, others kids show up. Two dozen certifiable lunatics who promise Amat not to smoke and drink as long as he needs someone to train with.

  In ten years’ time, when Amat is playing hockey professionally, he won’t have forgotten this. Some of the guys here will have died of overdoses, others will have died violently, some will be in prison, and some will just have made a mess of their lives. But some will have lives—big, proud lives. And they will all know that here, for just one summer, they were running for something. Amat will be interviewed on television in English, and the reporter will ask where he grew up, and he will say, “I’m from the Hollow.” And every single bastard here will know that he remembers them.

  * * *

  He had no team. So they gave him an army.

  14

  A Stranger

  Peter is walking alone through Beartown. Past the row house where he lost his mother and dodged his father’s grief, past the rink where he found a new home, along the lake, and across the parking lots where he found his best friends, Tails and Hog. When Peter was given a professional contract, he played hockey with them that last evening before he went to Canada, with a tennis ball on the tarmac, just like when they were kids. He was almost paralyzed by nerves, but his friends said, “Come on, hockey’s a simple game. If you strip away all the crap around it, the stands and the crowd and the rankings and the money, it’s simple. Everyone gets a stick, there are two nets and two teams.”

  Naturally it was Sune, their coach, who had drummed that into them. They always went to Sune for good advice, about both life and hockey: the coach was more of a father to them than their real dads ever were. So that’s where Peter’s going now. Through his town to the home of his old coach, to tell him that he’s been given one last possibility of saving their club.

  The old man has lost a lot of weight as a result of heart disease; his shoulders have slumped, the T-shirt with the bear logo on it is hanging lower over his stomach. He isn’t married and has no children, like an aged general who has lived his whole life in the service of hockey. “When did he get so old?” Peter wonders, and Sune seems to read his mind, because he grins wearily and replies, “You don’t look much like a sweet little rosebud yourself these days, you know.”

  A puppy is yelping happily around the old man’s feet, and he snaps at it, “At least try to pretend you’ve been trained!”

  “How are you?” Peter asks.

  Sune pats him paternally on the shoulder and nods at the deep circles beneath Peter’s eyes. “You look like I feel. What can I do for you?”

  So Peter tells him everything: how he can save the bear on Sune’s T-shirt, but only with the help of a powerful sponsor he doesn’t know anything about and a politician no one trusts. And only if he gets rid of the standing area and throws the Pack out of the rink, the men who saved his job in the spring.

  Sune listens. Then he says, “Do you want coffee?”

  “I’m here for your advice,” Peter insists impatiently.

  Sune shakes his head and snorts, “Rubbish. When I was your coach and you were going to take a penalty, you always came back to the bench so that everyone would think you were asking my advice. That was kind of you, a way to show your old coach respect, but you and I both know that you’d already made your mind up. And you’ve made your mind up now as well. Come in and have some coffee. It tastes awful, but it’s strong.”

  Peter remains stubbornly where he is in the hall. “But even if I can save the club . . . if you can’t train the team, then I haven’t got a coach!”

  Sune replies with a rumble of laughter. Only when Peter follows him into the kitchen does he realize why. The two men aren’t alone. There’s a stranger sitting at the kitchen table. Sune blinks happily. “This is Elisabeth Zackell, you probably recognize her. She came around a little while ago to tell me she’s here to take my job.”

  * * *

  Kira Andersson is sitting on the steps outside the little house. Waiting for a man who never comes. She knows what her colleague would have said: “Men! You know why you can never rely on men? Because they love men! No one loves men as much as men do, Kira! They can’t even watch sports if it’s not being played by men! Sweaty, panting men fighting against other men, with ten thousand men in the stands, that’s what men want. I bet you they’ll soon invent a type of porn featuring nothing but men but aimed at heterosexual men who don’t really get turned on by men but don’t think women are actually capable of having sex properly!”

 
Kira’s colleague makes her laugh, a lot. Like the time a man in a suit sneezed in the middle of a meeting, deafeningly and shamelessly, without making any attempt to cover his mouth, and her colleague exclaimed, “Men! Imagine if you had periods! You’re incapable of keeping a single bodily fluid inside you in public.”

  But today Kira’s colleague didn’t manage to make her laugh, just feel ashamed. Throughout their friendship, her colleague has kept on saying that they ought to start their own business together. Kira has never really needed to make any excuses because it’s been just an entertaining fantasy, something to talk about once every few months over a box of wine and increasing amounts of hubris. But today her colleague thundered into Kira’s office waving a sheet of paper: “The premises are empty!” The premises they’ve fantasized about for years, in a location where Kira and her colleague wouldn’t have any trouble luring the biggest clients away from their current firm. It would be perfect.

  But Kira replied the way she always does: “I can’t right now, not with Peter’s job and the children, I need to be there for Maya.” Her colleague leaned over her desk. “You know our clients would come with us. I’ve got enough money saved up. If not now, when?” Kira tried to make excuses, but the only one she could find was time. Starting a new business would demand sixteen-hour days, seven days a week, and how could that work with picking up and dropping off at hockey practice and guitar lessons and lottery ticket sales and the volunteer parents’ rotation in the coffee stand at the ice rink?