Beartown Ice Hockey’s best player used to be Kevin Erdahl. He raped Maya Andersson, the daughter of the club’s general manager. Kevin’s best friend, Benjamin Ovich, is homosexual. What did we expect? That they weren’t going to chant about all that? Those people who hate us?

Their voices don’t number in the thousands, but in a small arena with a low roof, the silence of many can make the chanting of some of them sound as though everyone is shouting the same thing. The red fans turn toward the Beartown section of the stand, toward the Pack, and roar, “Queers! Sluts! Rapists!”

It’s easy to say you should just ignore it. Not let it get to you. It’s only hockey. Only words. Doesn’t mean anything. But chant it enough times, shout it loud enough, repeat, repeat, repeat. Until it eats its way in. One hundred red arms pointing across the ice, directly at the green fans. Their words thundering against the roof and echoing off the walls. Again. Again.

QUEERS!

SLUTS!

RAPISTS!

39

Violence

Over in the seated part of the rink Peter Andersson can’t help hearing the chanting. He does his best to ignore it, but it’s impossible. He leans forward toward the next row, taps Sune on the shoulder, and asks, “Where’s Benji?”

“He hasn’t turned up,” Sune replies.

Peter leans back. The Hed fans’ words hit the roof and bounce back, hitting him like burning oil. He feels like standing up and shouting, too, shouting anything at all. It’s only a damn hockey game, and what’s it worth now? How much has Peter sacrificed for this? How much has he put his family through? His daughter? How many bad decisions must a man have taken when his wife stays at home and his son would rather be with the hooligans than his father? If Beartown Hockey doesn’t win this game after everything Peter’s done, what does that make him worth? He’s sold out his ideals, he’s gambled everything he loves. If the club loses against Hed now, everything is lost. There’s no other way of looking at it.

* * *

“Queers! Sluts! Rapists!”

* * *

Peter looks in silence at the people shrieking in Hed’s standing area and wishes them ill, every last one of them. If Beartown takes the lead tonight, if the team gets the chance to crush those people and destroy every ounce of their desire to get out of bed tomorrow, Peter fervently hopes that his team won’t ease up on them. He wants to see them suffer.

* * *

At some point almost everyone makes a choice. Some of us don’t even notice it happening, most don’t get to plan it in advance, but there’s always a moment when we take one path instead of another that has consequences for the rest of our lives. It determines the people we will become, in other people’s eyes as well as our own. Elisabeth Zackell may have been right when she said that anyone who feels responsibility isn’t free. Because responsibility is a burden. Freedom is a pleasure.

* * *

Benji is sitting on the roof of one of the outhouses at the kennels, watching the snowflakes make their way to the ground. He knows the game is about to start, but he isn’t there. He can’t explain why; he’s never been good at justifying or rationalizing his actions. Sometimes he does stupid things on instinct, sometimes he doesn’t for the same reason. Sometimes he cares too little about things, sometimes too much.

Beside him on the roof sit his three sisters, Adri, Katia, and Gaby. Down on the ground, on a chair next to an unsteady table that’s been pushed down into the snow, sits their mom. She’d do—and has done—almost anything for her children, but climbing a ladder to sit on an icy outhouse roof and ending up with a wet backside is somewhere beyond her limit.

The Ovich family has always loved hockey, even if its members haven’t always loved the same things about it. Adri loved playing and watching games, Katia loved playing but not watching, Gaby never played but watches when Benji plays. Their mom always asks irritably, “Why do there have to be three periods? Wouldn’t two be enough? Doesn’t any of these people eat proper meals?” But if you give her a date and a game ten years ago, she can tell you if her son scored or not. If he fought hard. If she was proud or angry. Often both. The sisters shuffle uncomfortably beside their brother. It’s cold, not only because of the freezing temperature.

“If you don’t want us to go to the game, we won’t go,” Gaby says quietly.

“If you really, really, really don’t want us to . . . ,” Katia clarifies.

Benji doesn’t know what to say. Most of all, after everything that’s happened, he hates himself for having put his family into this position. He doesn’t want to be a burden to them, doesn’t want them to have to fight on his behalf. He was once told by another boy’s mother, “You may not be an angel, Benjamin. But, dear God, you haven’t suffered for the lack of a male role model. All your best qualities come from the fact that you’ve been raised in a house full of women.” Benji will always say she was wrong, because she made them sound like they were perfectly ordinary women. They aren’t, not to him. His sisters did their best to replace their father, they taught their little brother to hunt, drink, and fight. But they also taught him never to mistake friendliness for weakness or love for shame. And it’s for their sake that he hates himself now. Because if not for him, they wouldn’t even consider not going to Hed.

In the end it’s Adri who looks at her watch and says, “I love you, little brother, but I’m going to the game.”

“I’m going too!” their mom shouts from down on the ground.

Because she and Adri are old enough to remember life before Beartown. The other children were too young, but Adri remembers what the family was fleeing from, and what they found here. A safe place to build a home. This is their town. Benji pats Adri’s hand gently and whispers, “I know.”

Adri kisses him on the cheek and whispers that she loves him in two different languages. When she climbs down, Katia and Gaby hesitate, but in the end they follow her. They go to the game for the same reason that they could have stayed at home: for their brother’s sake and for their town’s. They wish Benji was going to play, but they know that nothing they say will change his mind. Because he is after all a member of this family, and there are probably mules that accuse other mules of being “as stubborn as an Ovich.”

* * *

Benji stays on the roof until his mom and sisters have driven off in the car. He smokes all alone. Then he climbs down, fetches his bicycle, and sets off through the forest. But not toward Hed.

* * *

When children first start to play hockey, they are told that all they have to do is try their best. That that’s enough. Everyone knows it’s a lie. Everyone knows that this sport isn’t about having fun; it’s not measured in terms of effort, only by results.

The Beartown Ice Hockey players enter the rink with a mother’s name on their arms, and even though it’s an away game large parts of the arena are filled with green shirts with the words BEARTOWN AGAINST THE REST on them. Men in black jackets unfurl a banner above one of the standing areas, similar to the one that’s going to be demolished in their own rink, and the words are aimed as much at Peter Andersson as Hed’s fans: “Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough!”

* * *

The game starts down on the ice. The volume is unbearable, people’s ears starts to pop, and Beartown Ice Hockey’s players do all they can. They fight for their lives. Give everything they’ve got. Their very, very, very best. But Vidar is in the stands, and no one knows where Benji is. The goalie and the captain. Maybe Beartown deserves to win, maybe it would have been fair for them to have a fairy-tale ending, but hockey isn’t measured like that. Hockey only counts goals.

* * *

Hed scores. Then again. Then again, and again.

* * *

The singing from the red stand is deafening. Peter Andersson doesn’t hear it, though. The ringing in his ears is the sound of his heart breaking.

* * *

At the campsite the teacher has already packed. His bags are in the car. Yet he’s still sitting at the table in the kitchen of the little cabin, looking out of the window as he waits, hoping that someone with sad eyes and a wild heart is going to appear from between the trees. When he finally sees Benji, he’s been waiting so long that at first he thinks he’s imagining it. The teacher stands up and tries to gather all the words inside him when his heart leaps at the sound of the door opening and he finds himself staring at Benji’s lips.