A younger boy stops at a different locker in the same school. Twelve years old. Covered in bruises. Yesterday he grabbed a branch and threw himself into a fight without hesitation in order to smash the legs of someone who was trying to hurt Benjamin Ovich. That sort of thing doesn’t go unnoticed in this town.
Today there’s something hanging from his locker. At first he thinks it’s a trash bag. He couldn’t be more wrong. It’s a black jacket. No logos or emblems or symbols, just a perfectly ordinary black jacket. It doesn’t mean anything. It means everything. It’s far too big for Leo, because they want him to know that he can’t become one of them until he’s much older. But they’ve hung it on his locker so that everyone in his school will get the message.
* * *
He’s got brothers now. You don’t touch him again.
* * *
It takes a huge amount of trust to fight at someone’s side. That’s why violent people prize loyalty so highly and are so sensitive about the slightest sign of treachery: if you retreat and run, you’re exposing me to danger, making me look weak. So Benji knows he’s let Teemu and the Pack down. And that isn’t tolerated.
Even so, he pulls himself together after a few hours in the forest and walks back into town. He wipes the tears from his cheeks and the blood from his knuckles. He can’t let anyone think there’s anything wrong with him; everything has to carry on as normal. Even when blue polo shirts have torn him apart, even when he knows that the Pack might want to punish him for running from the fight in the forest. Because where would he go if he didn’t have Beartown?
So he goes to work, stands behind the bar in the Bearskin, pours beer. The more crowded the bar gets, the more he avoids eye contact with other people. Several of the guys from the forest are there: Spider, about whose intelligence Ramona usually says, “He’s about as smart as mashed potato, that one.” But he’s loyal; in the forest Benji saw him stick just behind Teemu the whole time, not because he was scared but because he was guarding his leader’s flank. Spider was bullied all through childhood for being so lanky and crazy, but he found a place in the Pack. You can’t buy that sort of devotion.
Beside Spider sits his physical opposite, a short, neckless man, as wide as a brick shithouse with a beard as thick as an otter’s pelt. He’s called Woody because he works as a carpenter, because that’s what his father did. Once someone asked Woody if he’d rather have a more imaginative nickname, but Woody just snorted, “Are you gay or something?” If he’s any smarter than Spider, he keeps it well hidden, but he was in the same class in school as Benji’s sister Gaby and she says, “He’s no genius, but he’s not a bad guy.” Woody’s first love is having fun: beer, hockey, friends, girls. Drinking, dancing, and fighting. If there’s any kind of trouble going on, he’ll be there without a thought for the consequences, and if there’s an offer of a scrap in the forest he never hesitates.
But he and Spider have other friends, too, hardly hardened warriors, who seem almost to consider fighting a shared hobby. Like golf. One of the guys who works with Woody is so sweet that if he sees you on a Tuesday he wishes you a good weekend, just in case he doesn’t see you again before Friday. Another has four cats. How can anyone with four cats be dangerous? But he is.
The men who make up the Pack aren’t extremists; what makes them dangerous is simply the fact that they stick together. Against everything, through everything, for one another. Benji remembers a book he read by some journalist who said on the subject of sport and violence that “every large group you don’t yourself belong to is a threat.”
There are men in Beartown who grew up with Teemu but who now work in offices; they wear white shirts rather than black jackets, but if Teemu calls them they still come. One became a father and started studying at college to give his kid a better life, and he got a monthly grant from the kitty at the Bearskin when his student loan wasn’t enough. Another has a sister in the big city who got beaten up by her boyfriend and the police said they couldn’t do anything. A third has an uncle whose printing business was threatened by a gang running a protection racket. The sister is happily married to a better man now, and the uncle never got any more visits from the gang. If Teemu ever calls in those men, they come. That’s why they prize loyalty and are so sensitive to betrayal.
Neither Spider nor Woody is looking at him now, but Benji is well aware that if they want to hurt him this evening, they’re not going to warn him first.
* * *
Maya and Ana go their separate ways after school. Ana lies and says she has to check on the dogs, even though it’s actually her dad she’s going to check on. She feels ashamed. Maya lies and says she’s going out for a run, even though she’s planning to go home and curl up under the covers. She feels ashamed for different reasons. They’re like sisters, they’ve never had secrets from each other. But Kevin broke something between them, too.
* * *
It’s almost closing time in the Bearskin when the crowd at one end of the bar parts discreetly. The bar gets a little quieter, not enough to have been noticed by strangers but enough for Benji to notice.
“Two beers,” Teemu says, looking him hard in the eye.
Benji nods and pours them. Teemu watches his hands; they’re not shaking. Benji respects the situation he’s in, and he isn’t afraid. Teemu takes one of the beers and leaves the other on the counter. It takes a long time for Benji to realize what that means. So he slowly picks it up, and Teemu leans across the counter and touches his glass to his in a toast. So that everyone sees.
“You’re one of us, Ovich. But we can’t take you out into the forest anymore. I got it wrong yesterday. You could have been hurt, and we need you on the ice.”
“A little kid showed up in the forest . . . Leo . . .”
Teemu grins. “We know. Tough kid. If you hadn’t taken him off, he’d had have kept fighting until he got killed.”
“He’s only a boy,” Benji says.
Teemu stretches his neck, and something inside creaks. “Boys become men. If the cops start asking Leo questions—”
“—he won’t say a thing!” Benji promises.
“We’re counting on that,” Teemu says.
Benji can see that Teemu finds the idea that the general manager’s son dreams of rushing through the forest in a black jacket amusing. That Peter has tried for years to curb the Pack’s influence over the club but now can’t even stop their influence over his own child. He leans over the counter and touches his glass to Benji’s again.
“Have you heard my little brother’s coming home? And your coach is going to let him play! You and my little brother! And that Amat, the one who’s as quick as a weasel after a chili enema. And Bobo, the big meathead! You’re not like the older players, those greedy mercenaries, most of them don’t even want to live in Beartown! They just want to get out of here. But you lot, you’re a Beartown team made up of Beartown guys!”
Before the evening is over, Spider, Woody, and a dozen other black jackets have drunk toasts with Benji. He’s one of them again now. You might think that would make things easier when his secrets are revealed, but the exact opposite is what happens.
29
She Kills Him There
Anxiety is a truly remarkable thing.
* * *
Maya walks home alone, like iron on the outside but a house of cards inside. The slightest little breeze is all takes. Today it was the line in the cafeteria. The crowd. Someone backed into her accidentally; she doesn’t know the boy’s name, and he didn’t even notice. They hardly touched each other. It wasn’t his fault. But Maya was plunged back into hell again in an instant.