“Sorry,” Benji whispers.
He is neither drunk nor high. He isn’t running from his feelings today. That makes her more worried.
“What’s happened?”
The last light of summer bounces off the tears clinging to Benji’s eyelashes. “Nothing. Just a . . . mistake.”
Adri doesn’t reply. She isn’t the sister who talks about broken hearts, she’s just the sister who fetches her brother home from the forest. She waits until they’re getting close to the edge of town before she says, “The new coach is thinking of making you team captain.”
She sees something in Benji’s eyes that she hasn’t seen for many years.
* * *
He’s scared.
* * *
Zackell has almost finished her meal when Ramona returns to the table and puts a beer down in front of her.
“From the regulars,” Ramona says.
Zackell looks over at the five old men at the bar. “Them?”
Ramona shakes her head. “Their wives.”
In the far corner sit five old women. Gray hair, handbags on the table, wrinkled hands tightly clutching glasses of beer. Several of them have children and grandchildren who work at the factory; some of them worked there themselves. The old women have old bodies but new T-shirts. All the same. Green, with four words written on them, like a war cry:
BEARTOWN
AGAINST
THE
REST
22
Team Captain
There’s no real autumn in Beartown, just a quick blink before winter. The snow doesn’t even have the manners to let the leaves decompose in peace. The darkness comes fast, but at least these months have been full of a lot of light: a club that fought and survived. A grown man who put a reassuring hand on a four-and-a-half-year-old’s shoulder. Hockey that was more than a game. Beer on a stranger’s table. Green T-shirts that said we fight together, no matter what. Boys with the biggest dreams. Friends who formed an army.
Unfortunately, that isn’t what we’re going to remember in a few years’ time. Many of us will just look back on these months and remember . . . the hatred. Because that’s how we function, for better or worse: we always define different periods by their worst moments. So we will remember two towns’ loathing for each other. We will remember the violence, because it’s only just started. Of course we won’t talk about it; we don’t do that here. We’ll talk about hockey games that were played instead, so that we don’t have to talk about the funerals that took place between them.
* * *
Darkness has settled comfortably upon Beartown and Hed as a thin figure makes its way through the forest. It’s starting to get cold now; the days don’t let on, but the nights are honest, not hiding temperatures below freezing behind rays of sunlight. The figure shivers and hurries on, as much from nerves as to keep warm.
The ice rink in Hed doesn’t have an alarm, and the building is old and full of back doors that someone might forget to lock. The figure doesn’t have a detailed plan of how the break-in is going to work, just a vague idea of padding around the building and feeling all the door handles. He has no luck there but does better with one of the bathroom windows. He manages to pry it open, even if it takes the full strength of the twelve-year-old’s arms.
Leo climbs inside, runs through the gloom. He’s played enough away games in Hed to know where the locker rooms are. The A-team has its own lockers. Most of them don’t have the players’ names on them, but some of the players are too infatuated with their own names to be able to resist the opportunity to write them on the labels at the top. Leo uses the flashlight on his cell phone to find William Lyt’s. Then he does what he came to do.
* * *
Adri, Katia, and Gaby Ovich bang on the door of the Bearskin after closing time. Ramona yells, “I’VE GOT MY SHOTGUN LOADED!” which is her way of saying “I’m afraid we’re closed,” but the Ovich sisters march inside all the same, and Ramona jumps when she sees all three of them.
“What have I done now?” she pants.
“Nothing, we just want to ask a favor of you,” Katia says.
“Nothing? When the three of you come through that door together, an old bag can’t help but think she’s going to get a beating, surely to God you can understand that?” Ramona whimpers, clutching her chest theatrically.
The sisters grin. As does Ramona. She puts beer and whisky on the bar, then pats each of them fondly on the cheek. “It’s been a long time since I saw you. You’re still too beautiful for this town.”
“Flattery like that won’t get you anywhere,” Adri says.
Ramona nods. “That’s why the good Lord gave us strong liquor.”
“How are you?” Gaby asks.
Ramona snorts. “I’m starting to get old. And it’s shit, let me tell you. Your back aches, and your eyesight starts to go. I don’t give a damn about dying, but this aging business, I can’t see the point of it.”
The sisters smile. Ramona slams her empty glass down on the counter and goes on, “So? What can I do for you?”
“We need a job,” Adri says.
* * *
When the Ovich sisters emerge from the Bearskin, their little brother, Benjamin, is leaning against the wall. Adri knocks the cigarette out of his hand, Katia folds his collar down roughly, and Gaby licks her fingers and combs his hair with them. They curse him and tell him they love him in the same sentence, the way only they can. Then they push him through the door. Ramona is standing behind the counter, waiting.
“Your sisters say you need a job.”
“Apparently so,” Benji mutters.
Ramona can clearly see Alain Ovich’s eyes in his son’s face. “Your sisters say you’re restless, that you need to be kept busy. They can’t stop you from ending up at the counter in a bar, but they can at least try to make sure you end up on the right side of it. I told Adri that giving you work as a bartender could be like leaving a dog to guard a steak, but she’s not the sort of person you can reason with, that one. And Katia swore you’ve got experience of being behind a bar, from her place in Hed. Is that the place the Reds call the Barn?”
Benji nods. “The Reds” is what Ramona calls people from Hed.
“I’m not welcome there anymore because a degree of conflict about aesthetic matters arose between me and the . . . native population,” he explains.
Ramona doesn’t have to roll up Benji’s sleeve to know that there’s a tattoo of a bear under it. She has a weakness for boys who love this town more than they should have the sense to.
“Can you pour a beer without spilling it?”
“Yes.”
“What do you get if you ask to run a tab?”
“A slap in the face?”
“You’re hired!”
“Thanks.”
She snorts. “Don’t say that. I’m only doing this because I’m frightened of your sisters.”
Benji smiles. “Everyone with any sense is.”
Ramona gestures toward the shelves on the walls. “We have two types of beer, one type of whisky, and the rest is mostly for decoration. You wash the glasses and clean, and if there’s a fight you don’t get involved, you hear me?”
Benji doesn’t disagree, which is a good start. He clears the backyard of a pile of wood and tin that’s been lying there for months; he’s strong as an ox and knows how to keep his mouth shut. Ramona’s two favorite character traits.
When it’s time to turn the lights out and lock up, he helps her up the stairs to her apartment. There are still photographs of Holger, her husband, everywhere. Him and Beartown Ice Hockey, her first and second loves, green flags and pennants on every wall.
“You can ask what you want to ask now,” Ramona says mildly, patting the young man on the cheek.
“I don’t want to ask anything,” Benji lies.
“You’re wondering if your dad used to come to the Bearskin. If he used to sit in the bar down there before he . . . went off into the forest.”
Benji’s hands disappear into the pockets of his jeans, and the years are stripped away from his voice.
“What was he like?” the boy asks.