Amat skates out onto the ice. As he’s done throughout his childhood, he starts skating around, around, around, to warm up. Normally he doesn’t hear anything, he’s gotten good at that, no matter how many people are in the rink. Everything becomes background noise, and he disappears into a zone of concentration that makes whoever is at the other end of the boards irrelevant. But today is different. Something breaks through the noise and yelling: his name. A few people somewhere are chanting it. Louder and louder. Over and over again. Until Amat looks up. Then the cheering gets louder.
In one corner, right at the top, stands a group of idiots jumping on their seats. They’re not there to cheer for either of the teams, they’re there for one single player. Because he’s from the Hollow. They’re singing the simplest, most beautiful, most important thing: “AMAT! ONE OF US! AMAT! ONE OF US! AAAMAT! ONE OF US!”
* * *
Fatima arrives at the rink in Hed on her own, but she’s holding two tickets. She watches the game with an empty seat beside her, Ann-Katrin’s. When Amat comes out onto the ice, she stands up and cheers, and when Bobo comes out, she cheers twice as loudly. She’ll do that at every game Bobo plays and every game his younger siblings play. No matter where their lives take them, there’ll always be a crazy woman in the stands cheering loud enough for two.
* * *
Why does anyone love team sports? Because we want to be part of a group? For some people the answer is simply that a team is a family. For anyone who needs an extra one or never had one in the first place.
* * *
Vidar Rinnius loved playing hockey when he was a child, just like every other kid. But unlike all the other kids, he loved the stands even more. He always promised himself that if he ever had to choose, he’d never pick the ice over the standing area. He said that to Teemu when he was little, and Teemu smiled and said, “It’s our club, remember that. When all the players have switched clubs, when the general managers and coaches have moved on to clubs that pay more, when the sponsors let us down and the politicians have sold out, we’ll still be here. And we’ll be singing even louder. Because it was never their club anyway. It’s always been ours.”
Vidar sat on the team bus today, his gear is in the locker room, but he isn’t there. He puts on a black jacket and goes up to the standing area instead, takes his place beside his brother and yells, “WE ARE THE BEARS! WE ARE THE BEARS! WE ARE THE BEARS! THE BEARS FROM BEARTOWN!”
Teemu looks at him. Perhaps he wants to tell his little brother to go back to the locker room, that a better life awaits him on the ice. But the Pack is their family, and the club belongs to them. So he kisses his brother’s hair. Woody and Spider hug Vidar, their fists clenched behind his back. And they sing, louder, more insistently:
“We are the bears! We are the bears!”
* * *
Love and hate. Joy and sorrow. Anger and forgiveness. Sports carry the promise that we can have everything tonight. Only sports can do that.
* * *
At one end of the rink, the Hed fans’ standing area, the volume rises until nothing can penetrate the wall of noise. Their chanting is laced with schadenfreude. If you ask most people in the stand afterward, several years from now, they’ll just give an embarrassed cough and mumble, “It’s just hockey . . . no harm intended . . . just something you sing in the heat of battle. You know what it’s like! It’s just hockey!” Of course it is. We support our team, you support yours, and we exploit every little weakness we can find. If we get a chance to hit below the belt, we grab it, anything to hurt you, get you off balance. Because we only want the same thing you do: to win. So the fans in Hed’s stands chant the simplest, cruelest, and vilest things they can think of.
Beartown Ice Hockey’s best player used to be Kevin Erdahl. He raped Maya Andersson, the daughter of the club’s general manager. Kevin’s best friend, Benjamin Ovich, is homosexual. What did we expect? That they weren’t going to chant about all that? Those people who hate us?
Their voices don’t number in the thousands, but in a small arena with a low roof, the silence of many can make the chanting of some of them sound as though everyone is shouting the same thing. The red fans turn toward the Beartown section of the stand, toward the Pack, and roar, “Queers! Sluts! Rapists!”
It’s easy to say you should just ignore it. Not let it get to you. It’s only hockey. Only words. Doesn’t mean anything. But chant it enough times, shout it loud enough, repeat, repeat, repeat. Until it eats its way in. One hundred red arms pointing across the ice, directly at the green fans. Their words thundering against the roof and echoing off the walls. Again. Again.
QUEERS!
SLUTS!
RAPISTS!
39
Violence
Over in the seated part of the rink Peter Andersson can’t help hearing the chanting. He does his best to ignore it, but it’s impossible. He leans forward toward the next row, taps Sune on the shoulder, and asks, “Where’s Benji?”
“He hasn’t turned up,” Sune replies.
Peter leans back. The Hed fans’ words hit the roof and bounce back, hitting him like burning oil. He feels like standing up and shouting, too, shouting anything at all. It’s only a damn hockey game, and what’s it worth now? How much has Peter sacrificed for this? How much has he put his family through? His daughter? How many bad decisions must a man have taken when his wife stays at home and his son would rather be with the hooligans than his father? If Beartown Hockey doesn’t win this game after everything Peter’s done, what does that make him worth? He’s sold out his ideals, he’s gambled everything he loves. If the club loses against Hed now, everything is lost. There’s no other way of looking at it.
* * *
“Queers! Sluts! Rapists!”
* * *
Peter looks in silence at the people shrieking in Hed’s standing area and wishes them ill, every last one of them. If Beartown takes the lead tonight, if the team gets the chance to crush those people and destroy every ounce of their desire to get out of bed tomorrow, Peter fervently hopes that his team won’t ease up on them. He wants to see them suffer.
* * *
At some point almost everyone makes a choice. Some of us don’t even notice it happening, most don’t get to plan it in advance, but there’s always a moment when we take one path instead of another that has consequences for the rest of our lives. It determines the people we will become, in other people’s eyes as well as our own. Elisabeth Zackell may have been right when she said that anyone who feels responsibility isn’t free. Because responsibility is a burden. Freedom is a pleasure.
* * *
Benji is sitting on the roof of one of the outhouses at the kennels, watching the snowflakes make their way to the ground. He knows the game is about to start, but he isn’t there. He can’t explain why; he’s never been good at justifying or rationalizing his actions. Sometimes he does stupid things on instinct, sometimes he doesn’t for the same reason. Sometimes he cares too little about things, sometimes too much.
Beside him on the roof sit his three sisters, Adri, Katia, and Gaby. Down on the ground, on a chair next to an unsteady table that’s been pushed down into the snow, sits their mom. She’d do—and has done—almost anything for her children, but climbing a ladder to sit on an icy outhouse roof and ending up with a wet backside is somewhere beyond her limit.
The Ovich family has always loved hockey, even if its members haven’t always loved the same things about it. Adri loved playing and watching games, Katia loved playing but not watching, Gaby never played but watches when Benji plays. Their mom always asks irritably, “Why do there have to be three periods? Wouldn’t two be enough? Doesn’t any of these people eat proper meals?” But if you give her a date and a game ten years ago, she can tell you if her son scored or not. If he fought hard. If she was proud or angry. Often both. The sisters shuffle uncomfortably beside their brother. It’s cold, not only because of the freezing temperature.
“If you don’t want us to go to the game, we won’t go,” Gaby says quietly.