Some will offer complex cultural analysis suggesting that the world of sports, and the hockey world in particular, symbolizes such deeply engrained masculine ideals that the shock is greater there. Others will claim that the reactions were nowhere near as strong as “the media” would like to think. That it’s all been exaggerated.
One voice might say, “Obviously, no one has anything against them”; another will add, “You just don’t want the town to . . . be full of them.” A few more will mutter, “Maybe it would be best if he moved, for his own sake, because there isn’t much for him here, is there? Better for him to go to a big city. For his sake, obviously. Not that I’ve got anything against them. Not at all. But . . . you know.”
Some of the jokes online are probably just that, jokes—that will be the excuse. “I always knew, my mom made me a meringue birthday cake when I was at primary school, and Benji only ate the bananas!” Others are more insinuating: “Wonder what he and Kevin got up to in the locker room when the others had all gone home?”
Everything that pours in after that is just more in the same vein. Text messages from pay-as-you-go cell phones and anonymous comments online: “Fag.” “Queer.” “Homo.” “Poof.” “Disgusting!” “Its not natural your sick!” “We always knew!” “No homos in Beartown!” “We’re going to find you and slice off your tattoo! The bear isn’t some gay symbol!” “No rapists or queers in Beartown!” “You’re sick, just like Kevin!” “Hope you get AIDS!” “Hope you die!” “Move away from here if you want to live!” “Next time the knife will end up in you, not the door!”
* * *
Maya is sitting at home in front of her computer. She’s reading everything the bastards are writing about Benji and remembers everything they’ve written about her. Nothing changes, everything just starts again. Maya’s dad used to listen to an old record where a guy sang about everything having cracks in it, because that’s how the light gets in. Maya looks at the pictures of Benji and the teacher over and over again, but it’s not Benji and the teacher she’s looking at. Back in the summer, when she was on the island with Ana, Maya played music on Ana’s phone, something with guitars and sad singing, and Ana yelled, “No junkie music on my island!” and Maya giggled as she held the phone out of reach and yelled, “No bleep-bleep music in the forest, it’s environmental pollution!” Ana tried to snatch her phone back. Maya jumped out of the way but ended up dropping it and it hit a rock. The glass of the camera lens cracked, not much but just enough so that all of Ana’s pictures from then on have a little line up in one corner.
Maya expected Ana to be angry, but she just laughed and said, “Now I’m going to see that crack in every photo I take, so you’re going to be in all my pictures from now on, you idiot!”
Maya loved her best friend for that, but now she sits alone in front of her computer, looking at the pictures of Benji and the teacher over and over again, and all she can see is that little line up in the top corner. The same line in every picture.
* * *
A tiny, almost invisible crack. Where all the darkness gets out.
* * *
Long afterward none of us will be able to prove exactly who said what or where the different photographs that ended up online actually came from. But everyone has the chance to see the pictures of Benji kissing the teacher. A lot of people don’t care, but they’re silent, so only the others are heard. And that will be their excuse: they care, that’s all. About the town, about the hockey team, about Benjamin himself. They care about the school. They care about the children.
A group of parents phone the headmaster, demanding a meeting. Maggan Lyt, William’s mother, is one of them. She’s on the parent-teacher association, she’s just doing her job, it’s “nothing personal.” As she points out at the meeting, “We don’t harbor any ill will to anyone, we’re just concerned parents.” But she demands that obviously the teacher must be dismissed. Not because he’s . . . different, of course not! But we can’t tolerate the fact that he’s had sexual relations with a pupil! Not after everything that’s happened! First the rape, and now this? It doesn’t really make any difference if it’s a boy or a girl, surely everyone should be treated equally?
Things are always connected—when it suits us.
“How will we be able to feel safe with this teacher educating our children now that we are aware of his . . . agenda?” one parent wonders.
When the headmaster asks exactly what the parent means by “agenda,” Maggan Lyt snaps, “You know exactly what we mean!”
“What about this, then?” another parent cries, tossing a sheet of paper onto the headmaster’s desk.
“It was on a noticeboard in the corridor! So that teacher, Jeanette, is going to teach pupils how to fight?” Maggan Lyt adds.
“It’s . . . martial arts . . . she’s offering the pupils training in—” the headmaster says but is predictably interrupted: “Violence! Training in violence! So one teacher has sexual relationships with his pupils, and another wants to fight with them! What sort of school are you running here, exactly?”
Then Maggan Lyt says, “I’m going to call the council!”
* * *
And she does. The first councillor who answers is Richard Theo.
* * *
Maya bangs on the door of Ana’s house so hard that the dogs start barking, as if she wants to tear the building apart. Ana opens the door, pale and lifeless, crushed and full of self-loathing. But Maya is too angry to stop her fury, she just yells, “YOU TOOK THOSE PICTURES! HOW COULD YOU DO THAT?”
Ana is panting hysterically, sobbing and sniffing so hard she can barely get her words out. “I wasn’t . . . I kissed him, Maya! I kissed him! He could have said he was . . . he could have said something, because I just . . . I just thought he had a girlfriend, but he . . . I kissed him! I . . . if he’d only said he was . . .”
Maya doesn’t let her finish; she just shakes her head and spits on the ground between herself and her best friend, and then she isn’t that anymore. “You’re just like everyone else in this town, Ana. As soon as you don’t get what you want, you think you have the right to hurt other people.”
* * *
Ana is crying so hard that she can’t stand up. She collapses in the doorway. Maya doesn’t catch her; she’s already walking away.
* * *
Perhaps what everyone says is true; perhaps it isn’t personal. Perhaps it’s just the last straw for a few people who have long felt that they’re living with their backs against the wall. Jobs are disappearing, the politicians are corrupt, the hospital is going to be closed down, and the factory is changing owners. Reporters show up here only when something negative happens, and all they ever want is to be able to depict the inhabitants as backward and prejudiced. But perhaps some people around here feel that there’s just too much politics all at the same time. Too much change forced upon hardworking people who have already been through enough. Maybe it’s nothing to do with Benji or the teacher or Elisabeth Zackell or anyone else. Perhaps the people posting online are just “isolated malcontents.” Perhaps no one meant any harm. “In the heat of the action people have a tendency to overreact, that’s all.” Perhaps we’ll explain it by saying that there were too many things going on at once, it was a complex issue, and people have to be allowed to respond emotionally.
* * *
It’s always the aggressors’ feelings we have to defend. As if they’re the ones who need our understanding.
* * *