Ana and Vidar are running through the forest, faster than either of them really has the energy for. If they had lived a whole life together, perhaps they might have enjoyed competing against each other. If they had had children, they would probably never have stopped arguing about which of them was fastest.
They hear the crashes from down on the road and change direction instinctively, running toward the noise. Vidar hears Teemu’s voice, then Spider’s and Woody’s, yelling “Call an ambulance!” and “Watch out!”
Vidar and Ana’s fingertips nudge each other one last time. Theirs is no ordinary love story. They may have loved each other for a shorter time than many of us, but they’ve loved harder than most.
“It’s on fire!” Ana cries as they reach the road.
On the far side they can see that a car has smashed into a tree, its front end crumpled around the trunk. The people inside are unconscious. Smoke is seeping out of the gaps in the hood. Ana shouts again, “IT’S ON FIRE! IT’S ON FIRE!”
Then she runs. Vidar tries to stop her, but she’s already out of his reach. Because she’s been raised by a dad who told her, “We’re not the type who let other people down, you and me.”
So she runs toward the burning white car, straight across the road. The old man driving back from hospital in Hed doesn’t see what he’s heading toward until it’s too late. He passes the Volvo and swerves around the Saab, braking as hard as he can. Ana is in the middle of the road.
* * *
Vidar runs, shouts, but everything happens too quickly. So Vidar throws himself forward and shoves Ana out of the way. Because he’s the sort of person who lacks any impulse control. He can’t help himself saving the life of the person he loves.
Ana rolls into the ditch, gets to her feet in the snow, and lets out a howl, but the person she loves isn’t there to hear it. The old man’s car is skidding too fast, it hits with full force, and the body slams onto the hood. Vidar Rinnius dies the same way he lived. Instantly.
* * *
Theirs was a love we will always remember.
48
“Oh God! Oh God! Oh God! My baby!”
Have you ever seen a town fall? Ours did.
* * *
Have you ever seen a town rise? Ours did that, too.
* * *
Have you seen people who usually can’t agree on a damn thing, be it politics, religion, sports, or anything else, come rushing from all directions to help one another put out a fire in an old pub? Have you seen them save one another’s lives? We did. Perhaps you would have done the same thing. Perhaps you’re not as unlike us as you think.
* * *
We did our very, very best. We gave all we had that night. But we still lost.
* * *
There are many beautiful trees in Beartown. We sometimes say that’s because a new one grows every time we bury someone. That’s why the births are listed alongside the deaths in the local paper, so we never run out of either trees or people.
* * *
It doesn’t matter.
* * *
We don’t want a new tree. Another person. We just want this one back.
* * *
“Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!” Vidar’s mother screams when she collapses into the arms of the men standing in her kitchen, drowned in tears.
The men have no words. They’re tumbling into the same darkness as she is. Vidar’s mother lies on the floor wailing inconsolably “My baby! Where’s my baby? Where’s my baby where’s my baby where’s my baby?”
* * *
Bloody kids.
* * *
How often does a mother think that while her children are growing up? “Bloody kids.” How much does she have to shout at them? How many times does she have to tell a young boy to do even the simplest little thing? Like tying his shoelaces. “Tie your laces!” she says. Does the boy listen? Of course not. “Tie your laces before you trip!” she says. “You’ll end up falling and hurting yourself!” You’ll hurt yourself. Bloody kid.
Leo didn’t tie his laces properly that night. If he had, he would have been a few seconds quicker through the trees, out of the forest, onto the road. He would have been there when the car arrived. Just a few seconds. Just one shoelace and a badly tied knot.
* * *
So Kira falls asleep on Leo’s bed that night, and he doesn’t make her go away, and what an incredible gift that is to a mother from a teenager. They both wake up when Maya creeps in and curls up beside them. Kira holds her children so hard that they can’t breathe.
* * *
Bloody kids.
* * *
Bloody bloody bloody kids.
* * *
When Vidar was little, he didn’t seem to be afraid of anything. All the other children had nightmares and wanted the light left on, but not him. When he and Teemu shared a room and had a bunk bed, Vidar insisted on sleeping on the bottom. It took Teemu several months to realize why. He woke up one night and heard Vidar crying, so he jumped down and forced him to explain why. Eventually the little boy, no more than five or six years old, said he was convinced that there were horrible monsters that came into the house at night. “So why the hell do you want to sleep in the bottom bunk, then?” Teemu asked.
Vidar sniffed. “So the monsters will get me first and you have time to escape!”
* * *
He couldn’t help himself. Ever.
* * *
The path back to normal life is indescribably long once death has swept the feet out from under those of us who are left. Grief is a wild animal that drags us so far out into the darkness that we can’t imagine ever getting home again. Ever laughing again. It hurts in such a way that you can never really figure out if it actually passes or if you just get used to it.
Ana sits on the floor outside Vidar’s hospital room all night. Teemu and his mother sit on either side of her. They hold Ana’s hands, unless she’s holding theirs. Three people loved Vidar Rinnius so much that they wouldn’t have hesitated to change places with him if they could. That’s not a bad achievement for anyone. One day they might be able to think that thought without falling apart.
* * *
A boy has died tonight. An old man, too. A mother and a brother and a girlfriend sit in a hospital, an old woman goes home to a house that will never stop feeling empty. Two men from Hed will go to prison for arson, one of them will probably never walk again after the car crash in the forest, and some of us will never believe that’s anywhere near enough of a punishment.
Some of us will say it was an accident. Some that it was murder. Some will think it was only those men’s fault, others will say that more were responsible. That it was many people’s fault. Ours.
It’s so easy to get people to hate one another. That’s what makes love so impossible to understand. Hate is so simple that it always ought to win. It’s an uneven fight.
* * *
Spider and Woody and the men in black jackets sit in the waiting room at the hospital for almost twenty-four hours. They’re surrounded by men and women, old and young, in white shirts, green T-shirts. They stay long after the doctors emerge with somber faces to shake everyone’s hand and convey their condolences, as if Vidar won’t be properly dead until they leave the hospital.
No one in either town will know what to say. Sometimes it’s easier to do something instead. When the cars leave the hospital in Hed, Teemu and his mother drive at the back of the convoy, so at first they don’t understand why everyone is slowing down. Not until they look at the trees.
Someone has knocked the snow from the bare branches and hung thin strips of fabric all the way back. It’s no big deal, just strips of fabric fluttering in a forest in the wind. But every second one is red, and every second one is green. So that the families in the cars will know that Beartown isn’t grieving alone.
* * *
When Teemu and his mother get home, there’s someone sitting on the steps waiting for them.