When darkness falls, Benji is sitting on the outhouse roof out at the kennels. He stubs out his cigarette and makes a decision, at last. Then he walks alone through Beartown. He doesn’t hide in the shadows, he walks in the middle of the glow from the streetlamps. He hasn’t been going to school, hardly anyone has seen him since they found out that he was gay. But now here is he is, walking along out in the open.

Perhaps it’s stupid. But sooner or latter he has to confront everyone. This is too small a town to have many hiding places, and where would he go? What do you do when you just want everything to be the same as normal? You go to work. You hope for the best.

When he walks into the Bearskin, the bar falls silent. A stranger might not have noticed, might have thought the chat and arguments and clink of glasses were the same as usual. But every cell in Benji’s body hears the oxygen being sucked out of the room. He stands still. The very fact that he’s come here might seem crazy, but he was never the sort of child who lay in bed afraid of ghosts and monsters. He’d rather open all the doors, upturn all the mattresses, tell them to come and get him straight away if they were going to do it anyway.

* * *

Sooner that than just waiting.

* * *

A group of men at a table toward the back of the Bearskin stand up. First one, then all of them. Black jackets. None of them finishes his beer, their glasses are left demonstratively half full. Everyone moves out of the way as they walk toward the door, but none of the men touches Benji. They just stalk past, out, away. Within two minutes a dozen more, old and young, some in black jackets, someone without, some in hunting jackets, some in white shirts, have done the same thing.

* * *

Feelings are complicated. Actions are simple.

* * *

Vidar is one of the people sitting at the table at the back of the bar. When he was younger, he asked Spider why he hated queers so much. Spider replied without a trace of hesitation, “Because it’s disgusting! Men are men and women are women, and that’s just some bullshit made-up sex in between! There’s research, you know? They’re missing something in their brains, some substance, and you know who else hasn’t got it? Pedophiles and people who screw animals and that sort of shit. It’s a disease, Vidar, they’re not like us!”

Vidar didn’t believe that at the time. He doesn’t believe it now. But when Spider and Teemu and the others stand up and walk out, Vidar does the same. Because since he was little he’s learned that soldiers stick together. He doesn’t have to hate Benji, he just needs to love his brothers. Which is both complicated and not complicated at all.

* * *

Long after closing time, Ramona and Benji are still sitting in the bar. Just the two of them.

“It’s . . . people have so much crap in their heads . . . it might not even be about you,” Ramona says tentatively, but she knows the boy knows she’s lying.

“They left their beer. They don’t want to drink with people like me,” Benji whispers.

His words are dry twigs, snapping under the slightest weight. Ramona sighs. “It’s a lot all to take in at once, Benjamin. A female coach, those damn politicians, sponsors getting involved in how the club’s run . . . it’s making people nervous. Everything’s changing. The don’t hate you . . . they’re just . . . people just need a bit of time to digest things.”

“They do hate me,” Benji corrects.

Ramona scratches her chin with the whisky glass. “Teemu and the boys saw you as one of them, Benjamin. That’s what’s making it worse. Some of them may have thought . . . I don’t know . . . they might have thought stuff like this only happened on television. That men like that . . . well, that they only lived in the big cities and . . . you know . . . dressed in a particular way. They’ve lived their whole lives assuming it was something you could tell about a person at first glance. But you were . . . like them. They drank with you, you fought together, they yelled your name in the rink. You were a symbol, you proved that one of them could lead this team, this town . . . when they felt that every other bastard was out to get them. You were the middle finger they stuck up at the world. You were the bandit who proved they didn’t have to adapt, that they could win anyway, that those of us out here in the forest could take on anyone who wanted to have a go at us.”

“I don’t want . . . I never asked anyone to give a damn . . . I just want everything to be the same as normal.”

Ramona grabs hold of Benji’s head, hard, with both hands. Until his ears feel like they’re going to fall off. Then she yells, “You’ve got nothing to apologize for, boy. You hear me? Nothing! I’m not defending any of the men who walked out of that door tonight, I’m just saying . . . the world turns quickly. Don’t judge us too hard when we . . . well . . . just don’t judge us too damn hard. Everything’s changing at such a speed that some of us can’t always keep up. We sit here and hear about ‘quotas’ for all sorts of things, and it’s easy to wonder when it’s going to be our turn. When do we get a turn? I’m not defending anyone, boy, I’m just saying that some people around here feel they’re being attacked from all sides. That everyone’s telling them their way of life is wrong. No one likes having change forced upon them.”

“I’m not forcing anyone to do a damn thing . . . I just want things to be normal!”

Ramona lets go of him. Sighs. Pours more whisky. “I know, boy. It is what it is. We’re just going to have to find a new normal, that’s all. There are two types of people now. Some of them need more time, and some need more sense. There’s no hope for the second group, but we might have to wait to see how many there are in the first group before we start beating it into their heads.”

Benji is avoiding eye contact. “Are you disappointed in me, too?”

Ramona starts to laugh, coughing up smoke. “Me? Because you want to sleep with men? You sweet boy, I’ve always been very fond of you. I wish you a happy life. So I can only lament the fact that you want to sleep with men, because one thing I can tell you here and now is that it’s impossible to be happy with men. They’re nothing but a load of damn trouble!”

38

The Game

There’s going to be an ice hockey game. Beartown Ice Hockey against Hed Hockey. The rest of the country is barely aware that it’s taking place; no one cares except for here. But here everyone cares.

Some people can’t understand things unless they’ve experienced them for themselves. The overwhelming majority of the world’s population will live their whole lives in the belief that a hockey game is just a hockey game. That it’s just a silly game. That it doesn’t mean anything.

They’re in a fortunate position. They don’t have to go through all this.

* * *

What would you do for your family? What wouldn’t you do?

* * *

Hog has never had any business cards, but if he did, there would be four things on it: “Hockey player. Car mechanic. Father of three. Ann-Katrin’s husband.” She still sings in his head, she still dances on his feet, he’s never going to let her stop. He finishes work in the garage, just like on a normal day, even though things will never be normal again. When he goes into the house, Bobo, his eldest, is washing the dishes. It was Bobo who went to the undertaker’s and organized the funeral and cremation. Then he came to grips with everything else. There’s food on the table, the younger kids are already eating, and Bobo has done the laundry. Everything his mom used to do. Hog gulps hard when he sits down at the table, so that the younger children won’t see him shatter. Then he says to Bobo, “You should go and play in the game.”

Bobo whispers, “I’m needed here . . . I’ve still got washing and—”

“Harry Potter!” his little brother says, even though his sister hushes him.

“Yes, I’ll read some Harry Potter tonight. Like I always do,” Bobo promises, blinking as he stares down at the washing-up bowl.

Hog chews, directing his own blinking at his plate. “This is good. Really good.”

“Thanks,” Bobo whispers.

They say no more until the younger children have gone to brush their teeth. Then Hog gets up, washes his plate, and hugs Bobo as he whispers an order in his ear: “I can read that damn Barry Trotter tonight. It’s about time I learned how to. You hear what I’m saying?”

Bobo nods silently. Hog holds his cheeks and says, “You and I are going to get through this, because Mom will never forgive us otherwise. So go and play your game now, because Mom’ll be watching from wherever she is. Not even God or the angels or whatever else there may be could stop her watching her eldest son’s first game on the Beartown A-team!”

* * *