Us Against You Page 16

  She sees in his eyes that he’s serious. She gasps, “So you want me to demand that some of the jobs in the factory must go to people living in Hed?”

  He nods. “Half.”

  “Do you have any idea how hated that will make me in Beartown?”

  Richard Theo shrugs his shoulders pragmatically. “Yes, but they’ll love you in Hed. And Hed has a bigger population. If you’re already hated in one place, you have to try even harder to be loved in the other. You don’t win elections by having as few enemies as possible, only by having the most friends.”

  “Is this even legal? Can you even . . . what happens if my party expels me?”

  “You misunderstand me. You won’t just have a place in your party after this, you’ll be its leader.”

  Richard Theo is serious when he says this, too.

  18

  A Woman

  Summer in Beartown is capable of enchanting anyone: the way the scent of roses gets stronger in darkened rooms, the way the light in a place so used to darkness is emotionally overwhelming. Greenery suddenly froths around us, it’s light almost all night through, warm breezes chase one another around the corners of buildings like calves let out to pasture. But we have learned never to trust the heat; it’s fleeting and unreliable and always lets us down. The trees shed their clothing quickly in this part of the country, all at once, like a nightdress; the days soon grow shorter, the horizon comes closer. Sooner than we realize, winter falls, white, and erases all the color of the other seasons, the world becomes a blank piece of paper again, a frozen, freshly ironed sheet when we look out of the window one morning. We’ve pulled our boats from the lake, leaving parts of ourselves in the bottom of them. The people we were in July, those summer people, will rest on a bed of wood deep below the snow for so many months that we will almost have forgotten them by next spring.

  * * *

  September is on its way. A time that belongs to those who love hockey. Our year starts now.

  * * *

  Fatima and Ann-Katrin are finishing their shifts at the hospital. Every doctor who passes wants only to talk about hockey; the local paper’s revelation that there’s a “mysterious new sponsor” who’s going to save Beartown Ice Hockey is the big topic of conversation in both Beartown and Hed. “What a season this is going to be!” one nurse exclaims in the staff room and immediately falls out with a nurse who supports the other team: “Hed should have gotten that new sponsor instead!” “This district isn’t big enough for two hockey teams,” one of them says. “Ha! Why not close down Hed if you can’t survive without council money?” the other suggests.

  It starts off as friendly squabbling, but Fatima and Ann-Katrin have followed hockey in these towns long enough to know that it will soon lead to genuine conflict, not just in the hospital but everywhere. People’s best and worst feelings about one another will explode when Beartown and Hed play each other. Sports is so much more than just sports around here. Especially this season.

  * * *

  When Fatima and Ann-Katrin emerge from the hospital at the end of their shifts, a man in a tracksuit top is waiting in the parking lot.

  “Peter? What are you doing here?” Ann-Katrin asks in surprise when she catches sight of Beartown Ice Hockey’s general manager in the distance.

  “I need to ask you both for something,” Peter says.

  “What?” Ann-Katrin wonders.

  “Your sons.”

  Fatima and Ann-Katrin start to laugh; then they realize he isn’t joking.

  “Are you feeling okay, Peter?” Fatima asks anxiously.

  He nods sternly. “We’ve got a new coach, as you may have heard. And she wants to build the club . . . around your boys.”

  Ann-Katrin tries to read his tone of voice. Asks, “And you don’t think that’s a good idea?”

  The corners of Peter’s mouth twitch, but he lowers his gaze. “I’ve always tried to build a hockey club that was . . . more than just a hockey club. I wanted it to foster young men as much as it did hockey players. I didn’t want winning to be the most important thing. But . . . we’ve got a new sponsor now. And if we don’t win this season . . . if we don’t manage to beat Hed and get promoted to a higher league . . . then I don’t know if we’ll still be here next year.”

  “Just say what you came to say,” Ann-Katrin says impatiently.

  Peter’s chest rises and falls. “I’m afraid the club might demand more from your sons than it can give back to them.”

  “How?” Fatima asks.

  Peter turns to her. “Amat stopped me when I was driving awhile back. He asked if he was going to be able to play in the junior team and I . . . I wasn’t very nice to him . . .”

  “Everyone has their bad moments, you’re no worse than anyone else.” Fatima smiles, but Peter cuts her off. “He asked about the junior team, Fatima, but dear Lord . . . we don’t want Amat on a junior team. We want him on the A-team!”

  Fatima swallows. “With . . . with all the grown men?”

  Peter doesn’t attempt to hide the truth from her. “It’s going to make huge demands of him. And all the older players will go for him extra hard. There have been plenty before him who’ve been broken by that. Being the youngest in the team, surrounded by adults . . . it won’t be easy for him.”

  The look in Fatima’s eyes is implacable. “No one’s ever promised my son that it would be.”

  Peter tugs his beard in embarrassment. “I should have told Amat that my daughter and I still owe him a huge debt of gratitude for standing up at that meeting back in the spring and telling the truth . . .”

  Fatima shakes her head. “You can give him your thanks, but Maya doesn’t owe anyone anything. We should be asking her forgiveness, the whole town. As far as my son is concerned, he just wants to play hockey. So he’ll play if you can give him somewhere to do it.”

  Peter nods gratefully. Then he turns to Ann-Katrin. “I’m not going to lie to you . . .”

  Ann-Katrin smiles. “You wouldn’t dare.” She’s married to Hog, Peter’s childhood friend, and has seen Peter get older almost as closely as she has her husband. So Peter tells it like it is: “We need Bobo this season. We’ve got a shortage of defensemen. But to be completely honest, he’s not good enough to play at a higher level . . . so if we win, if he helps us move up to a higher league . . . he won’t stand a chance of making the team next season. This season will be his last. I’ll demand blood, sweat, and tears from him, he’ll have to prioritize hockey ahead of everything else, school, girls . . . everything. But I can only offer him one year in return.”

  Ann-Katrin breathes through her nose. Her body hurts; in hindsight Peter will think she looked thin and exhausted because she’d just worked a difficult late shift. Like almost everyone else, he doesn’t know about her illness. That’s as it should be; she doesn’t want their sympathy. But she does want to watch her son play hockey one last time. So she smiles. “One year? A year is an eternity.”

  Her husband, Hog, had to stop playing hockey after suffering one too many concussions. The doctors forced him to give up, and he was quiet for weeks, grieving for himself as if he’d attended his own funeral. For months he couldn’t bring himself to go near the rink because he felt he’d let his team down. Let them down! Because he wasn’t immortal. Bobo has inherited his broad shoulders and brute strength from his dad, but he’s also inherited his need to be part of a gang. They both hate being alone. They need a context in which they feel loved and accepted, so when Hog no longer had the locker room to go to, it was as if part of him had been amputated. What wouldn’t he have given for one more year? One last game? One last moment where you can feel your whole life in your gut and the spectators are roaring and everything is at stake?

  Ann-Katrin will hardly be able to stand when she gets home tonight, and Hog will fetch her from the car, that big, clumsy lump of a man will carry her into the house and when she’s too tired to dance he’ll spin her around slowly and tenderly in his arms across the kitchen
floor. She’ll fall asleep with his lips against her neck, his still infatuated hands beneath her top. Bobo will read Harry Potter to his brother and sister in another room. Early tomorrow morning, Ann-Katrin will go back to see her doctor again.

  * * *

  One year? What wouldn’t we give for one more year? A year is an eternity.

  * * *

  Five old uncles are sitting at the counter in the Bearskin again. They’ve got something new to argue about.

  “A woman, though? As a hockey coach? Is that really a good idea?” one of them asks.

  “Can’t help thinking this whole equality thing has gone a bit too far,” another says.

  “Oh, shut up! That woman’s probably forgotten more about hockey than the pair of you have ever known, you senile old fools,” a third protests.

  “You think? You can’t tell the difference between icing and ice cream, all last season I had to sit there like a guide dog telling you where the puck was!” the fourth chuckles.

  “Can you get talking guide dogs these days, then? It’s bad enough that you keep lying about watching the 1987 World Championships in Switzerland,” the fifth says.

  “I did!” the fourth insists.

  “Really? Pretty impressive, seeing as the 1987 World Championships were held in Austria!” the fifth points out.

  They laugh, all five of them. Then the first, or possibly the second, says, “But a woman as coach? Is that really a good idea?”

  “She sleeps with women too, they say. Are we really going to have one of those in this town?” wonders the second, unless it’s actually the first.

  The fourth or fifth retorts, “There are probably more here already. They’re everywhere these days.”

  The first snorts, “It’s all very well if they’re discreet about it, but why does everyone have to make such a fuss about things? Does everything have to be political now?”

  The third leans forward on his barstool, and it’s hard to know if it’s the chair or his body creaking when he asks Ramona for another beer. As she pours it, he says, “I tell you, if this new coach beats Hed in the first game, she can sleep with my wife for all I care.”

  They laugh again, all five of them, at one another as much as with them.

  * * *

  Ramona gets out some nibbles for them, the old bastards. Nuts for the nuts.

  * * *

  Peter rings on the door of the Ovich family’s row house. Benji’s mom opens it. “Peter! Come in and eat!” she commands at once as if he were late, even though he hasn’t seen the woman in he doesn’t know how long.

  Benji isn’t home, which Peter is pleased about: he’s not here to see him. All three of his sisters are sitting in the kitchen, Adri, Katia, and Gaby. Their mother cuffs each of them across the forehead in turn for not laying a place for their guest quickly enough.

  “I won’t stay long, I’ve already eaten,” Peter starts to say, but Adri grabs his arm. “Shhh! If you turn down Mom’s food, you’re a braver man than I thought!”

  Peter smiles, at first amused, then alarmed. You can joke about most things with the Ovich family, but not food. So Peter eats, three helpings more than he can manage, plus coffee and four different types of biscuits, and is given the rest to take home in plastic containers and aluminium foil. Adri walks him happily to the door. “You’ve only got yourself to blame if you show up here at dinnertime.”

  Peter puts a hand on his stomach. “I wanted to talk about Benjamin.”

  “We realized that. That’s why we let Mom talk to you about everything else,” Adri says with an even broader grin.

  She composes herself when she sees the serious look in Peter’s eyes.

  “We’ve got a new coach. Elisabeth Zackell.”

  “So I’ve heard. Everyone’s heard that. It’s even been in the paper.”

  Peter holds out a crumpled sheet of paper. Adri reads the names, sees her brother’s, but it’s as if she doesn’t quite grasp the significance of the “(C)” beside it. Peter helps her out: “She wants to make Benji team captain.”

  “Of the A-team? Grown men? Benji’s—”

  “I know. But this Elisabeth Zackell doesn’t seem . . . how can I put it? She doesn’t do things the way other people do,” Peter says forlornly.

  Adri smiles. “No, and thank God for that. But my brother as captain? Does she have any idea what she’s letting herself in for?”

  “She says she doesn’t want a team, she wants a gang of bandits. Can you think of anyone who’d make a better bandit than your brother?”

  Adri tilts her head to one side. “What do you want from me?”

  “You have to help me control him.”

  “No one can do that.”

  Peter scratches his neck nervously. “I’ve never been much good with people, Adri. But this Elisabeth Zackell, she’s—”

  “Even worse?” Adri suggests.

  “Yes! How did you guess?”

  “Sune called me. He said you’d be showing up.”

  “So you let me sit through that whole meal completely unnecessarily?” Peter exclaims.

  “Are you saying there’s something wrong with my mom’s cooking?” Adri snaps, so sharply that Peter backs away with his hands in the air, as if he were being robbed in an old cowboy film.

  “Please, Adri, just help me. We need Benji if we’re going to stand any chance of winning.”

  Adri looks at the sheet of paper in her hand. “But you need a Benji who’s a leader. A bandit but not a lunatic.”

  “We need a Benji who’s not quite . . . not quite so Benji as usual.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Adri promises.

  Peter nods gratefully. “And we need you as coach of the girls’ team, if you’re still up for that. I can’t afford to pay you, and I know it’s a thankless task . . .”

  “It’s not thankless,” Adri says.

  Peter can see the fire inside her. You understand it only if you’re a hockey person. They part with a firm handshake, the general manager and the sister, the father and the girls’ team’s coach. But before Peter leaves Adri asks, “Who are you getting the money from? Who’s this ‘mystery sponsor’ the paper’s been writing about, what do they want?”

  “Who says they want anything?”

  “Everyone with money wants something, Peter. Especially when it comes to money and hockey.”

  “I can’t say anything until it’s official. You can understand that, can’t you?” Peter pleads.

  Adri’s reply sounds almost threatening but is actually sympathetic. “Just don’t forget who stood up for the club when things were at their worst.”

  Adri doesn’t have to mention the Pack. Peter knows what she means by the people who stood up.

  “I’ll do my best,” he promises.

  * * *

  Even though they’re both well aware that that’s never enough in this town.

  19

  The Same Blue Polo Shirt

  It’s still warm when the autumn term starts at Beartown School. The sun is shining, the clouds are drifting light and high, the temperature is still lying treacherously about short sleeves and garden furniture, but if you’ve lived here all your life you can feel winter coming. The cold will soon freeze the lakes, snowflakes will fall, heavy as oven gloves, and darkness will land on the town as if it had been attacked from behind by an angry giant who tosses all the buildings into a black sack to use on the model railway in the secret room in his basement.

  It feels as though in Beartown every year comes to an end in August, which may be why it’s so easy to love a sport that starts in September. Outside the school building someone has hung green flags in the trees. This seems innocent enough to a lot of people, but to others it is a provocation.

  * * *

  It doesn’t start here. But it gets worse from here.

  * * *

  Ana and Maya are standing two hundred feet from the entrance, taking deep breaths and holding each other by the hand. All summer they have be
en free, but a school is a different sort of island. It’s not the sort where you can hide away with your best friend but one where you drift ashore unwillingly after some terrible accident. All the pupils are shipwrecked here, none of them has chosen the company of the others, they’re all just trying to stay alive until the term is over and they can get out of here.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to get my rifle?” Ana asks.

  Maya laughs. “Fairly sure.”

  “I wouldn’t shoot anyone. Not badly, anyway,” Ana promises.

  “You can put laxative in the milk dispenser in the cafeteria if anyone’s stupid,” Maya says.

  “And take the lightbulbs out of all the bathrooms and stretch plastic wrap across all the toilets,” Ana nods.

  Maya laughs. “You’re so sick.”

  “Don’t let the bastards see you cry,” Ana whispers.

  “Never,” Maya replies.

  They walk into the school side by side. The stares cut into their skin, the silence threatens to burst their temples, but they walk with their heads held high. The two of them against the world. The walk to Maya’s locker is less than a hundred feet, but nothing in life will ever frighten them so much. Two young women striding straight through a school full of whispers, without lowering their eyes once. You can’t show these women a damn thing after what they’ve already seen.

  * * *

  William Lyt is marching along the corridor surrounded by four of his teammates. Maybe they’re not actively seeking out foes, maybe they just swing around the corner and bump into Bobo by accident. But the fight is instantaneous, almost instinctive in its clumsiness, and in the narrow corridor the young men flail around as if they’d stumbled into a swarm of bees. In the spring, when Amat stood up at that meeting in the rink and said he’d seen Kevin rape Maya, some of these guys set off toward the Hollow one night to punish him. Bobo was with them but changed sides at the last minute. If he hadn’t taken such a severe beating for his new friend, they might well have killed Amat. That fight isn’t over yet.