Kira just stares at her. “Don’t want? Of course I . . . darling . . . I’ve never been happier for you!”
They embrace, and Maya says, “I want to do this just for me, Mom. Something just for me. Do you understand?”
* * *
Kira understands. Better than anyone.
* * *
The next day she gets to the office earlier than everyone else. When her colleague arrives at work, she finds Kira sitting in her chair. Her colleague raises her eyebrows, and Kira lowers hers. “Don’t you ever tell me I’ve given up again! All I ever do is not give up!”
* * *
Her colleague grins and whispers, “Shut up and send an invoice!” The two of them hand in their notice that morning. Then in the afternoon they sign a contract for the premises they’ve been dreaming about and set up their own company.
* * *
People in Beartown have never been the sort to demonstrate on the streets. They don’t go on marches, their opinions are conveyed by other means. That can be hard for outsiders to understand, but very little happens by chance in this community. Even if something looks like a coincidence, it usually isn’t.
* * *
Beartown Ice Hockey plays a few home games at the start of the season with the standing area of the rink intact, and Peter can’t help hoping, possibly naively, that his excuse that there’s no one prepared to demolish it has been accepted. But the factory’s new owner eventually sends an unambiguous email: “If the club doesn’t take firm action to get rid of the hooligans known as ‘the Pack,’ we will have no option but to cancel our sponsorship contract.”
So when the crowd arrives for one home game at the start of the winter, there are security guards standing in front of double layers of tape cordoning off the standing area.
* * *
Everyone has to make difficult choices this year. Peter chooses one path, for the survival of the club. So the Pack chooses its response, for its own survival.
* * *
Peter is sitting at the back of the stands, waiting for them to start shouting at him. He’s half expecting someone to rush up and punch him. But no one so much as looks in his direction. The rink is sold out, but there are no banners, no signs. Everyone behaves as if this were just a perfectly normal game.
The things that happen when this town chooses a side are so small that you could miss them even if you were standing right in front of them. The majority of the hockey crowd here are ordinary, decent people who would never condone violence; a lot of them moan about the Pack in the privacy of their own homes, about how “thugs” are giving the club a bad name and scaring off players and investors alike. But choosing sides in a conflict is rarely about who you’re standing alongside and almost always about who you’re standing against. This community may have its own internal arguments, but it always stands united against outsiders.
If a rich company wants to buy the factory and gain power over our jobs, we can’t stop it, but if they think they can buy our club and control our way of life, they’ve picked the wrong town to fight with. The Pack may symbolize violence to a lot of people, but to the neighbors who received help clearing fallen trees in their yards and were then offered a pint in the Bearskin afterward, they symbolize other things, too. To them the Pack is a small group of people who refuse to take any crap, who don’t change to suit the demands of power and money and politics. They have their shortcomings, they make mistakes, but it’s hard for anyone in Beartown not to sympathize with them, especially in times like these.
* * *
It isn’t completely right. But it isn’t completely wrong, either. It just is.
* * *
It takes Peter a long time to notice the black jackets; they’re sitting spread out around the hall, in different parts of the seated area. Obviously he had been expecting that, but there are considerably more of them than ever before. Several hundred. Only when Peter looks at them carefully does he realize why: it isn’t just the Pack. There are pensioners, factory workers, cashiers from the supermarket, employees of the housing association. It’s not a march, it’s not a noisy demonstration, and if Peter had asked, they would have pretended not to understand. “What do you mean? No, no, it’s just a coincidence!” Peter doesn’t have any proof, of course, because the jackets are different makes, different fabrics. But they’re all the same color. And there are very few coincidences in Beartown.
* * *
No one was surprised when he cordoned off the stand today, because someone saw to it that the news reached the right people in advance. He knows who. The only people Peter was obliged to tell in advance were the club’s board members. He needed their approval to bring in extra security. Peter made his choice, and Ramona responded. He gave her a place on the board so she would make decisions she believes to be in the best interests of the club. Now he has to take the consequences.
* * *
In the intermission between the first and second periods, a young man stands up among the seats on the far side. He’s well dressed, neatly turned out, doesn’t look like a violent person. If anyone nearby had been asked, naturally they would have replied, “Him? No, I don’t know him. What did you say his name was? Teemu Rinnius? Never heard of him!”
He walks calmly and collectedly down to the front of the stand, walks along behind the boards, then turns up toward the cordoned-off standing area. There are two security guards there, but they make no attempt to stop him. Teemu climbs through the cordon and walks casually across the stand, even stopping in the middle of it to tie his shoelace. He glances across the ice, seeking out Peter Andersson in the sea of people. Then he crosses the standing area, walks down the other side, and goes off to buy coffee, as if nothing has happened, even though everyone knows: Teemu has just told Peter that this is his stand and he can reclaim it whenever he likes.
A few minutes later the chanting begins, at first only in the seated area on the far side of the rink; then, as if on command, some men a few rows below Peter start to shout as well. Then it comes from the right and left of him, too. No one looks Peter in the eye, but the men in black jackets are chanting just for him: “We’re everywhere! We’re everywhere! We’re everywhere! Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough! Because we’re everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, we’re everywhere!”
They chant it ten times. Then they stand up and switch to, “We’ll stand tall if you stand tall!” Then they stand completely silent, disciplined, and focused to show how quiet the rink is then. And how much everyone would miss the Pack’s support if it disappeared.
Then, as if at an inaudible signal, they start to chant again, and this time the whole rink joins in. Old and young, black jackets, white shirts, green T-shirts: “We are the bears, we are the bears, we are the bears, THE BEARS FROM BEARTOWN!”
Beartown Ice Hockey win the game 7–1. The chanting from the stands is deafening, the crowd forms a green wall on both sides of the ice. There’s a roaring sense of unity in the hall at that moment. Us against everyone. Beartown against the rest.
* * *
Peter has never felt more lonely.
* * *