“So what do I do?”
“Let him earn his place in the team on the strength of his hockey alone, just like everyone else. He’s going to be treated differently everywhere else now. Don’t let that happen to him here.”
Peter says nothing for a long time. Then he says, “You’ve always said we should be ‘more than just a hockey club,’ Sune. Isn’t that exactly what we should be now?”
Sune considers this. Eventually he whispers sadly, “Maybe. Like I said, Peter, I’m an old man. I don’t know what the hell I’m saying half the time.”
* * *
Benji isn’t his father. He doesn’t do what Alain Ovich did. He doesn’t leave any gifts, doesn’t give any signs or symbols.
His mom and sisters call him; they’ve read the same things online as everyone else, and they’re worried. So he says everything’s okay. He’s good at that. He goes to Adri’s kennels, because one of the dogs was ill last night; Adri got home late from the vet’s and is still asleep.
Benji closes the door downstairs just hard enough to wake his sister from her slumber, and she falls asleep again straight away. Adri only ever sleeps really deeply if she knows her little brother is home, otherwise it’s just anxious dozing. Benji takes the garbage out, folds his bedsheets, and puts them neatly into a cupboard the way she’s always nagging at him to do. Then he goes out to see the dogs. They’re also asleep when he goes silently upstairs, knowing exactly which floorboards creak and which ones don’t, like a boy taking part in the world’s slowest game of hopscotch.
He very carefully slides his hand under Adri’s pillow and takes the key. He kisses his sister’s forehead for the last time.
* * *
Then he takes the shotgun and goes out into the forest.
* * *
After practice, Zackell stands in the parking lot smoking a cigar. Peter comes outside, stops beside her, and asks, “Do you really want Vidar on the team?”
She lets the smoke out through her nose. Yes.”
Peter groans. “Hold an open tryout, then. Say that anyone who hasn’t got a contract with another club can attend. If Vidar is good enough, he can play. But he only gets his place if his hockey’s good enough, like everyone else!”
Peter opens the door to go back inside, but Zackell asks, “Why are you so angry with Vidar? Is it normal to be that angry if someone shits on your desk?”
Peter suppresses his gag reflex at the thought of Vidar’s visiting card. He ended up with shit between the keys on his computer keyboard, and that’s not the sort of thing you get rid of easily, either from the keyboard or from your memory. But he shakes his head.
“Vidar’s unreliable. A team has to be able to rely on its goalie, but Vidar is completely unpredictable. Egotistical. You can’t build a team made up of egoists.”
“So why have you changed your mind?” Zackell asks.
Peter doesn’t know what to say. So he replies honestly, “I want this to be a club where we make people better. Maybe we can make Vidar a better person. Maybe ourselves, too.”
The snowflakes turn somersaults in the wind, and Peter is horrified that he has realized this too late. Benji might never come back. You can say a lot of things about Benjamin Ovich, but he was never an egoist.
* * *
It will be claimed that this happened to one person. It will be a lie.
We will say, “Things like this are no one’s fault,” but of course they are. Deep down we will know the truth. It’s plenty of people’s fault. Ours.
33
Not Waking Up
Benji is deeper in the forest than ever when he finally stops. The snow is still falling, its flakes tentatively brushing his skin before melting with his body heat and trickling angrily through the hairs on his lower arms. The freezing temperature colors his cheeks, his fingers stiffen around the rifle, the breath from his mouth forms smaller and smaller clouds. In the end he isn’t breathing at all.
* * *
There’s a long period of silence. Then a single shot echoes between the trees.
* * *
In Beartown we bury those we love beneath our most beautiful trees. It’s a child who finds the body, but the child doesn’t walk calmly through Beartown the way Adri did when she found her father, Alain Ovich, all those years ago. This child is running.
* * *
Amat and Bobo are sitting in the locker room. They’ll remember this as their last conversation, their last raucous laughter, before they found out that someone had died. It will feel as if they’ll never really be able to laugh as loud ever again.
“What do girls find sexy?” Bobo asks.
He says it the way he says everything: as if his brain is a coffee machine that someone has forgotten to put a coffeepot under, so his thoughts drip straight onto the hot plate beneath and spray everywhere.
“How should I know?” Amat says helplessly.
It’s not long since Bobo asked if it was true that contact lenses are made out of jellyfish. Another time he wondered, “You know how it’s supposed to be unlucky to leave your keys on the table? Okay, but what if someone borrows my keys and leaves them on a table when I’m not even there, do I still get the bad luck?” Back in the spring he wanted to know: “How do you know if you’ve got a nice-looking dick?” At school the other day he asked Amat, “How long should shorts be?” then almost immediately afterward, “You know, in a vacuum, like in space, if you cry there . . . what happens to your tears?”
“I heard some girls in school say an actor was sexy because he had ‘a defined chin and high cheekbones.’ How do you know if you’ve got those?”
“I’m sure you have,” Amat says.
“You think?” Bobo says hopefully.
His face is as shapeless as an overboiled potato, but Amat still nods kindly.
“I’m sure you’re sexy, Bobo.”
“Thanks,” Bobo says, clearly relieved, as if he can tick that off his list of things to worry about. Then he asks, “Have you ever been anyone’s best friend?”
Amat groans. “Please, Bobo . . . yes . . . of course I’ve had a best friend.”
Bobo shakes his big head. “No, I mean have you been someone’s best friend? I’ve had lots of best friends, but I don’t think I’ve ever been anyone else’s best friend. Do you understand what I mean?”
Amat scratches his ear. “Can I be honest? I hardly ever understand what the hell you’re going on about.”
Bobo starts to laugh. So does Amat. The loudest, most uproarious laughter for a long time.
* * *
“You’re never alone in the forest.” All the children around here learn that. Benji stops dead when he sees the animal appear, thirty feet away. Benji looks it right in the eye. He’s hunted in these forests all his life, but this is the first time he’s seen such a large bear.