Benji has been walking into the wind, it hasn’t caught his scent. The bear is close enough to feel threatened, and Benji has no chance of running. All the children around here learn the same things when they’re small: “Don’t run, don’t scream, if the bear runs toward you, curl up on the ground and play dead, and cover your head with your backpack! Don’t fight until you’re sure you have no other choice!”
The rifle is shaking in Benji’s hands; he shouldn’t fire. The animal’s heart and lungs are shielded by its powerful shoulders; only extremely skilled hunters stand any chance of shooting a bear and staying alive long enough to talk about it afterward. Benji ought to know better. But his heart is pounding, he hears his own voice roar from the depths, and then he fires into the air. Or directly at the bear, he doesn’t remember. And it vanishes. It doesn’t run away, it doesn’t slope off into the forest, it just . . . vanishes. Benji stands in the snow, and the forest eats up the echo of the shot until nothing remains but the wind, and he isn’t at all sure if he’s dreaming. If there really was a bear, or if he imagined it, a genuine threat or an imaginary one. He goes over to where the bear ought to have been standing, but there are no tracks in the snow. Even so, he can still feel its stare, like when you wake up early in the morning and don’t have to open your eyes to know that the person next to you is looking at you.
* * *
Benji is breathing hard. There’s a sense of invincibility about deciding to die and then not going through with it. A sense of power over yourself. He walks home with a feeling that his body doesn’t belong to him, without knowing who’s going to inhabit it now.
* * *
But at least he goes home.
* * *
Amat and Bobo are still laughing. But Bobo stops abruptly, before Amat has time to realize what’s happened. Bobo has always been told that he’s a bit slow on the uptake, he knows all the jokes by heart: “That boy couldn’t pour water out of a boot if it had holes in the toes and the instructions under the heel” and “Bobo’s so stupid he can’t piss his own name in the snow.” But that doesn’t mean his brain isn’t busy; his mom always says that it just works in a different way from other people’s.
So Bobo has been expecting this. Outside he may appear unfocused, but inside he has been preparing for this moment ever since his mom took him out into the forest and told him she was ill.
* * *
The child runs through Beartown, in through the door of the ice rink, gesticulating wildly at the people who ask where she’s going. Some of them recognize her, it’s Bobo’s little sister. One of them may even have realized and whispered, “Oh, no . . .”
When his little sister stands in the doorway of the locker room sobbing, “She’s not waking up, Bobo! Dad’s gone to get a car, and Mom won’t wake up even though I’ve tried shouting at her!” Bobo has already dealt with his own grief. His tears trickle into his little sister’s hair, but mostly for her sake. She was brave enough to run through the whole town, but she’s in pieces now, and there’s no one she trusts as much as her big brother.
Only then does the girl feel safe enough in his arms to dare to shatter into a billion pieces. She will always run to Bobo when she feels sad, all her life, and he stands with his arms around her and knows that he has to be strong enough to bear that responsibility now.
* * *
Amat hugs them both, but Bobo doesn’t feel it. He’s already wondering about how he’s going to find a tree beautiful enough for his mom to sleep under. That’s when he becomes an adult.
* * *
Adri Ovich wakes up from a terrible dream. She fumbles in a daze under her pillow and feels her pulse throb in her temples when her fingers finally close around the key. She’s breathing so hard that it hurts. She goes downstairs and finds her little brother sleeping on the sofa. The rifle is standing in the gun cabinet, as if nothing had ever happened.
* * *
She kisses him on the forehead. Sits on the floor beside him for hours. Can’t quite seem to get beyond just waking up.
34
Violence Against a Horse on Official Service
In many years’ time we may not know what to call this story. We will say it was a story about violence. About hate. About conflict and difference and communities that tore themselves apart. But that won’t be true, at least not entirely.
* * *
It’s also a different sort of story.
* * *
Vidar Rinnius is in his last year as a teenager. His psychologist’s report suggests that he has “a lack of impulse control,” but most people would probably expand that to say “a complete lack.” He’s always gotten into fights; sometimes he and his big brother Teemu tried to defend their mother, and sometimes they defended each other. And if there wasn’t anyone to defend, they would fight with each other. The bit about impulse control is true, Vidar has never been able to stop himself. About the time that other people get an idea into their heads along the lines of “I wonder what would happen if . . .” Vidar would already have done it. When Vidar was a boy, his coach once said that was what made him such a good goalie. “You just don’t know how to not stop those pucks!” Everyone says that Vidar’s problem is that he “doesn’t think,” but the opposite is actually the case. He can’t stop thinking.
He was twelve years old when he realized that he was alone. He went to another town with his brother and his brother’s friends when the Beartown A-team was playing an away game there. After the game, Teemu told Vidar to go to McDonald’s and wait there, because he had a feeling there was going to be trouble. Vidar was sitting there eating when a group of opposing fans burst in through the doors. Teemu and the Pack had been stopped by the police, and Vidar was sitting alone in a corner dressed in the wrong colors, and the opposing fans knew who he was. During the game they had seen the twelve-year-old yelling insults about their club and giving them the finger. “You’re not so tough without your brother, are you?” they cried as they attacked him.
That was when Vidar realized he was on his own. Everyone is. We are born alone, die alone, and fight alone. So Vidar fought. He thought he was going to die, he watched adults leave the fast-food restaurant, he might have been a child but no one tried to help him. The staff ran to the kitchen, he didn’t know how many enemies there were, all he knew was that he didn’t stand a chance. He lashed out anyway. Then Spider appeared out of nowhere, Vidar’s memory has him jumping through a window, but who knows? Spider defended him as if they were family, and after that they were. That was when Vidar realized that you don’t have to be alone. Not all the time. Not if you have a pack.
When Vidar was sixteen, they were at another away game. Spider had been found guilty of a number of minor offenses and was on probation. He and Vidar waited in a park while the rest of the Pack moved on, because Spider also had a head that was never quiet, and just like Vidar he had realized that everything slowed down sometimes if you took the right drugs. The police came around the corner on horseback, saw the two suspected hooligans, and Spider panicked and ran. He had drugs on him, as did Vidar. Vidar could have outrun Spider, but Spider was on probation and Vidar lacked impulse control. He couldn’t help himself from protecting someone he loved.
* * *
So while Spider ran off in one direction, Vidar ran in the other—toward the police. The charges filed against him afterward were numerous and varied, Vidar can’t even remember them all. Possession of narcotics was one, he knows that much. Violently resisting a public official was another, he thinks. Then there was something about his hitting a police horse. Vidar has never really liked horses. Violence against a horse on official service? How long do they lock you up for that?