“What? Now?” Benji asks, immediately more sober.
Teemu holds up his phone and plays the clip that’s gone viral online. “Someone’s burning a Beartown jersey in the square in Hed.”
“Why should I be bothered?” Benji wonders.
Teemu has already started to climb back down when he replies, he’s so confident that Benji will climb down after him, “It’s my bear on the front of the jersey, Ovich. And it’s your name on the back.”
His voice isn’t angry. More playful. If anyone had seen Benji climb down from the roof, they’d have understood why: Teemu understands him, they’re the same sort.
Benji smiles. “What do you have in mind?”
“I was thinking of buying you a beer. I’ve heard they have good beer in Hed.”
27
Hatred and Chaos
Teemu and Benji walk past the town sign, calmly and sensibly, in no hurry. They stop in the main square in Hed. The remains of the burned jersey are lying on the ground. It’s dark, but they don’t need any light to know that there are eyes watching them from all the windows. The two walk up and down the main street in Hed, each clutching a beer bottle. Bare-chested, their bear tattoos shining like beacons in the night. They wait until they’re sure phone calls have been made, bodies roused, metal pipes tossed into the back of cars. Then the two walk calmly out of Hed again, a couple of hundred feet into the forest, until they reach a clearing. There, six men in black jackets are waiting. A quarter of an hour later, twice as many men show up from Hed. That doesn’t matter, because not all twenty from Hed can fight, and Teemu has only men who can. He’s brought Spider and Woody and all his best guys.
* * *
Above all, he’s brought Benji.
* * *
A fight in a dark forest isn’t organized or choreographed. Nothing but hatred and chaos. It’s no place for practiced footwork and elegant moves; just stay on your feet, survive, and make sure that as many of them as possible end up on the ground before you do. Never retreat, keep moving forward, there are no rules and no white flags. You might kill someone without meaning to, you might land one too many kicks or hit them somewhere you shouldn’t. You knew what you were letting yourself in for when you came, and so did they. It’s a terrifying experience for everyone; if you’re not afraid, then you’ve never fought against an equal before. You have to dig deep within yourself and find something there, something terrible, something out of control. Your truest self.
Violence is the easiest and the hardest thing in the world to understand. Some of us are prepared to use it to get power, others only in self-defense, some all the time, others not at all. But then there’s another type, unlike all the others, who seems to fight entirely without purpose. Ask anyone who has looked into a pair of those eyes when they turn dark, and you’ll realize that we belong to different species. No one can really know if those people lack something that other people possess or if it’s the other way around. If something goes out inside them when they clench their fists or if something switches on.
Almost all fights are won or lost long before they start; the brain needs to be working, the heart needs to be pounding before your hands can do the same. And you will be scared—if not just of being hit, then of being vanquished; if not of being injured, then of injuring someone else. That’s why adrenaline appears, the body’s biological defense: claws out, horns lowered, hooves raised, canine teeth bared.
The first blow? That doesn’t decide anything, doesn’t say anything about you. The rest, on the other hand, reveal everything. Anyone can throw one punch out of anger or fear or out of pure instinct. But punching an adult’s jaw as hard as you can is like slamming your fist into a brick wall, and when you hear the crunch of bone giving way beneath your fingers, something happens. When the enemy slumps, stumbles backward, and you see the fear in his eyes. Perhaps he even raises a trembling hand to plead for mercy . . . What do you do then? Do you punch again? In the same place, even harder? That makes you a different sort of person. Because most people can’t do that.
* * *
No one who has seen you throw that second punch will ever fight with you again.
* * *
Teemu and Benji go first, side by side. Bodies crouch low around them. The first man who rushes at Benji seems to have picked him out, but it’s a bad decision; the man is taller and larger and heavier, but none of that matters here. Once Benji has landed his first punch, he holds the man up with his other hand so he can punch him again in exactly the same place even harder.
Benji feels nothing when he lets go and the man’s head hits the ground with a dull thud, like a child dropping a cinnamon bun on a beach. Benji used to really feel it, the adrenaline, the rush, sometimes even a sort of joy. But something’s broken; he’s passed some sort of boundary.
He stops midmovement. He has time to think a thought, and you’re not supposed to do that. Not in the forest, not in the darkness, not when they’re armed. Someone creeps up on him from behind with a metal pipe, swings it at his knees, and Benji realizes too late that the men from Hed might lose a fight tonight, but they’re going to win a hockey game.
* * *
We don’t know people until we know their greatest fears. Benji hears the scream, how loud it is; he hears the scream before he feels the pain. He waits for his body to give way, for his knee to buckle under the impact of the pipe. He has time to wonder if he isn’t only going to lose out on the game against Hed but on an entire career. After spending his whole life on the ice without serious injury, his knee will never be completely whole again, no chance, and he has time to think that the weirdest thing is that he isn’t afraid. He isn’t distraught. He doesn’t care. How many years of training, how many hours? He doesn’t give a damn about the game. He stands still, breathless at the realization of how little it means. But he’s still standing. It takes him several seconds to realize that he’s uninjured. That the pipe missed him.
From the corner of his eye he sees a boy, no more than twelve years old, swinging something wildly and indiscriminately around him in terror. The man who was swinging the pipe at Benji falls to the ground. It was his scream Benji heard, not his own. The boy is holding a thick branch. Tears are running down his cheeks.
Benji recognizes him. Leo Andersson, Maya Andersson’s younger brother. Someone lands a glancing blow on the boy’s eye. He stumbles backward, and Benji finds himself thinking that that isn’t okay. He doesn’t turn around and fight; instead he grabs the boy by the arm and runs. Up the slope, into the forest, away through the trees. He can hear the cries behind him, he knows the men from Hed will spread the story of how Benji Ovich ran from a fight. Coward. He doesn’t care. Leo struggles against him for the first few steps, but soon he, too, is running, out into the darkness.
* * *
Leo gets to know Benji that night. Gets to know his fears. Benji isn’t afraid of fighting, he’s not afraid of getting beaten up, not even afraid of dying. But he’s terrified of this: turning around and seeing a twelve-year-old get hurt and feeling responsible. Anyone who feels responsibility isn’t free.
* * *
They run all the way back to Beartown. Leo, gasping for breath, doesn’t stop until Benji does. The twelve-year-old’s foot is hurting, and he wonders if he’s got a stone in his shoe, then looks down and realizes that his shoe isn’t there. He must have lost it during the fight and has run the whole way without noticing thanks to the adrenaline. His toes are bleeding.
“My name is Leo, and—”
Benji’s breathing is measured, as if he’s just had an afternoon nap beside a sun-drenched window. “You’re Maya Andersson’s brother. I know.”