His London friend laughs again. When he and Theo met at university in England, Theo had only a small academic grant and empty pockets. His mother was a teacher and his father a factory worker, but his dad was active in the union and had gained a reputation as such a tough negotiator that legend has it that the factory managers gave him a job in middle management simply so they wouldn’t have to negotiate with him. His dad grew fat and comfortable, and soon he wasn’t at all dangerous. That taught Richard Theo what it was possible to do with power. So when he got to university, he consciously sought out a particular type of man: those from wealthy families who were also weak and bullied and had low self-confidence. Theo was quick-witted and funny, a good friend and excellent company at parties, as well as being pretty good at talking to girls. Those are valuable qualities anywhere. In return he acquired loyal friends who soon inherited money and power from their parents. That taught Theo the value of contacts.
When he got home to Beartown, he could have joined any political party, but he chose the smallest, for the same reason he had chosen to start his political career in Beartown instead of a larger city: sometimes it’s more effective to be a big fish in a small pond than a small one in a big pond. Political affiliations and colors were unimportant to him; he would have been just as happy on the extreme right or extreme left. Some people are driven by ideals, but Richard Theo was driven by results. Other politicians say he’s an “opportunist” with “simple answers to difficult questions,” the sort who one moment is standing with unemployed men in the Bearskin pub promising council investment, the next is hobnobbing with the bosses on the Heights promising lower taxes. He seeks out simple scapegoats every time a crime is committed in the Hollow so that he can call in the local paper for “more police” while simultaneously criticizing the establishment for “not sticking to the council budget.” He sits with environmentalists and promises to stop the hunting lobby’s influence on local politics, but when it suits his agenda he sits in other rooms and fans the hunters’ frustration with the wolf huggers in the big cities and the gun haters in government agencies.
Theo is, of course, supremely ambivalent about the criticism, because it’s just another way of saying that he doesn’t need flags. Politics is about strategy, not dreams. So what situations can he exploit this summer?
There have long been rumors that the hospital in Hed is going to be shut down. The factory in Beartown has been cutting its staff for years. And now Beartown Ice Hockey is threatened with bankruptcy. You need to know a good deal about wind to understand how to win something from all three of those.
“A hockey club? I didn’t think you liked sports,” his London friend says in surprise.
“I like things that are useful to me,” Richard Theo says.
* * *
Two women, Fatima and Ann-Katrin, are sitting in a small car on their way through the forest. Their sons, Amat and Bobo, became teammates in the spring, and the bear on their sons’ jerseys brought the mothers together as well. Ann-Katrin works as a nurse in the hospital that Fatima cleans in the summers, so they started having coffee together, and realized that although the places of birth in their passports may have been a very great distance apart, they share the same mentality: work hard, laugh loud, and love your children with everything you’ve got.
To start with, of course, much of their conversation revolved around the rumors that the hospital was going to be closed. Fatima told Ann-Katrin that one of the first things she learned to say in the Beartown dialect, where she had just arrived with a little boy in her arms, was “That’s going to be difficult.” Fatima loved the people here because they didn’t try to pretend that the world was uncomplicated. Life is tough, it hurts, and people admitted that. But then they grinned and said, “What the hell? It’s supposed to be hard. Otherwise every bugger in the big cities would be able to do it!”
Ann-Katrin related stories of her own. About her parents, who died young, and about growing up in the forest as the economy was getting worse, and about falling in love with a big, clumsy man called “Hog” because he played hockey like a wounded wild boar and could skate only in a straight line at full speed. Ann-Katrin had never traveled, had never seen the world, had never felt the need. “The most beautiful trees are here,” she promised Fatima, adding “And the men aren’t too bad either, if you’re patient.”
Hog and their three children—Bobo is the eldest—have kept Ann-Katrin busy. She gets up early, feeds and clothes them, helps Hog with the paperwork in the workshop, then goes to the hospital and works long shifts full of the worst days in other people’s lives. Then home again, “homework to be done and the house to sort out and tears to be wiped from cheeks from time to time.”
But in the evenings, she told Fatima, Hog creeps through the kitchen more softly than a man of his bulk ought to be able to. And when he holds her, when she turns around close to him and they dance, with her toes on his feet so that he’s carrying her whole weight with every little step, it’s all worth it. It becomes the whole world. “Do you remember when the children were really small, Fatima? When you’d get to preschool and they’d run toward you and literally jump up into your arms? Jump with complete abandon because they trusted us to catch them, that’s my favorite moment in the whole world.” Fatima smiles and says, “Do you know what? When Amat plays hockey, when he’s happy, I still feel like that. Do you know what I mean?” Ann-Katrin knows exactly. That was how they became friends.
When Ann-Katrin collapsed in the cafeteria of the hospital one afternoon a few weeks ago, it was Fatima who caught her. She was one of the first people Ann-Katrin told about her illness. Fatima went with her to doctor’s appointments, drove her to see specialists at another hospital so that Hog could stay at home and run the garage. They’re sitting in the car now, almost home, and Ann-Katrin smiles tiredly. “You do too much for me.”
Fatima replies firmly, “Do you know what I learned when I came to Beartown? That if we don’t look after each other, no one else will.”
“Bears shit in the forest, and everyone else shits on Beartown!” Ann-Katrin says in the voice of the drunk old uncles in the Bearskin, and the two women laugh out loud.
As they pull up on the grass in front of the workshop, Fatima whispers, “You have to tell Bobo that you’re ill.”
“I know,” Ann-Katrin sniffs with her face in her hands.
She wanted to wait until the hockey season had started so Bobo would have somewhere to take his feelings. But there isn’t time. So how do you do it? How do you tell your children that you’re going to die?
* * *
The Barn is a bar on the outskirts of Hed; it has live music and cheap beer and, like all similar places, it’s become a natural meeting place for people who are trying to forget their problems, as well as for the people who are looking for them. Katia Ovich is sitting in the office huddled over the accounts when one of the bouncers knocks on the door frame.
“I know you didn’t want to be disturbed, but your little brother’s sitting in the bar. In his T-shirt.”
Katia’s lowers her head and lets out a deep sigh. Then she gets up, pats the bouncer on the shoulder, and promises to take care of it.
Sure enough, Benji is sitting in the bar, which in itself isn’t a problem. He’s pretty much grown up in the Barn, and when it’s been short of staff he’s stood behind the bar serving beer long before he was old enough to buy it for himself. But things are different now. The regulars in the Barn support Hed Hockey, but they’ve let Benji come for three reasons: (1) The regulars like Katia. (2) Benji has been only a junior player in Beartown. (3) He’s had the sense to wear long sleeves.
But he’s eighteen now, and if he plays hockey this autumn he’ll be on the A-team, and he’s sitting at the bar wearing a T-shirt so that everyone can see the tattoo of the bear on his arm. The same week someone has posted a clip online of red Hed Hockey flags burning and a politician in Hed who spoke in public about the possible bankruptcy of Beartown Ice Hockey ended up with an ax in the hood of her car.
“Are you going to put a top on?” Katia asks when she arrives behind the bar.
Benji smiles. “Hello, favorite sister.”
That was always his trick when he was little, and her weakness was that she could never get angry, because she wanted him to love her most. She sighs sadly. “Please, Benji, can’t you just do this somewhere else?”
She gestures toward his beer glass. Katia knows she can’t stop anyone in her family from doing anything; she learned that early in life. Tomorrow would have been their dad’s birthday.