“Is that Kira Andersson?” Teemu’s mother wonders.
Teemu gets out of the car without saying anything. Kira doesn’t speak, either. She just stands up and goes inside with them, goes straight to the kitchen, and starts to clean and make food. Teemu takes his mother to the bedroom and sits with her until the pills grant her the respite of sleep.
He goes back out to the kitchen. Kira hands him the brush without a word. He washes, she dries.
49
Everyone Gets a Stick. Two Goals. Two Teams.
Life is a weird thing. We spend all our time trying to manage different aspects of it, yet we are still largely shaped by things that happen beyond our control. We will never forget this year, not the best of it and not the worst. It will never stop influencing us.
Some of us will move to different places, but most of us will stay. This isn’t a uncomplicated place, but when you grow up you realize that nowhere is. God knows, Beartown and Hed have plenty of faults, but they belong to us. This is our corner of the world.
* * *
Ana and Maya are training in the barn up at the kennels. Hour after hour. Things aren’t good, things will never be all right for either of them again, but they will still find a way of getting up each morning. When Ana falls apart and just screams and cries, Maya holds her best friend tight and whispers in her ear, “Survivors, Ana. Survivors. We’re survivors.”
* * *
Early one morning, as soon as the sun has struggled above the horizon, there’s a knock on the door of a mechanic’s workshop. It’s the middle of winter, toward the end of a childhood, and when Bobo opens the door he finds Benji, Amat, and Zacharias standing outside. They go down to the lake with sticks and a puck and play together, one last time. As if it were all just a game and nothing else mattered.
* * *
In ten years’ time, Amat will be a professional player, playing in huge arenas. Zacharias will be a pro as well, but in front of a computer. Bobo will be a father.
* * *
By the time they finish playing down on the lake, it’s almost dark again. Benji gives the others a brief wave and shouts good-bye. As if they’re going to see each other tomorrow.
* * *
Hed Hockey plays Beartown Ice Hockey for the second time this season in a game that means absolutely everything and nothing at all.
* * *
In the kitchen of a house up on the Heights, Maggan Lyt is making pasta salad and potato salad. She places them in big bowls and covers them with plastic wrap. She doesn’t know if she’s a good or a bad person, she knows that most people assume that they’re good, but she never has. She has always seen herself first and foremost as a fighter. For her family, for her children, and for her town. Even when this town wants nothing to do with her. Sometimes good people do bad things out of good intentions, and sometimes the reverse happens.
She takes her salads and drives through the town, past the ice rink, and out along the road. She stops outside the home of the Rinnius family and knocks on the door.
* * *
Say what you like about Maggan Lyt. But she’s someone’s mother as well.
* * *
It’s nearing the time for the puck to drop in the rink, all the players should be in their own locker rooms, but despite this, William Lyt is heading the other way along the corridor. He stops in the doorway and waits until Amat and Bobo catch sight of him.
“Have you got any more of those?” he asks quietly.
Amat and Bobo look confused, but one of the older players understands what William means. He fetches a black armband, the sort all the Beartown players are already wearing, and hands it over. William pulls it on over his sleeve and nods his thanks. “I’m—I’m truly sorry for your loss. Our whole team is.”
The Beartown players nod curtly in response. Tomorrow they’ll hate each other again. Tomorrow.
* * *
Benji stands outside the ice rink for a long time. He’s smoking in the shade of some trees, his feet deep in the snow. He’s played ice hockey his whole life, for so many different reasons, for so many different people’s sake. Some things demand our all, and choosing this sport is like choosing a classical instrument, it’s too difficult just to be a hobby. No one wakes up one morning and just happens to be a world-class violinist or pianist, and the same applies to hockey players: it takes a lifetime of obsession. It’s the sort of thing that can absorb your entire identity. In the end an eighteen-year-old man is left standing outside an ice rink thinking “Who can I be, if I’m not this?”
* * *
Benji doesn’t play this game. He’s already far away when it starts.
* * *
The coach of Hed Hockey seeks out the coach of Beartown Hockey in a corridor. Elisabeth Zackell looks surprised, and David gestures toward a shy seventeen-year-old behind him who’s carrying his bag over his shoulder. David has an entire speech prepared in his head, one that’s supposed to sound grown-up and understanding and just right in light of all the terrible things that have happened. But his lips refuse to let it out. He wants to be sensitive, or at least to sound sensitive, but sometimes it’s easier to do things than to say them. So he nods toward the young man.
“This is our backup goalie. I think he can become a damn fine player with the right coach, and . . . well . . . he doesn’t get much time on the ice with us. So if you . . .”
“What?” Zackell wonders, not taking her eyes off the seventeen-year-old, who’s refusing to look up from the floor.
David clears his throat. “I’ve called the association. Considering the circumstances, they’re prepared to allow a transfer.”
Zackell raises her eyebrows. “You’re giving me a goalie?”
David nods. “Everyone says you’re good with goalies. I think you can turn him into a fantastic player.”
“What’s your name?” Zackell asks, but the goalie merely mutters something in the direction of the floor.
David coughs awkwardly.
“The guys in the team call him ‘Mumble,’ because that’s all he ever does.”
* * *
He’s right. The boy will become a damn fine goalie, and he’ll never utter an unnecessary word. Elisabeth Zackell takes an immediate liking to him. He comes from Hed, but he will play for Beartown for almost twenty years, never for any other club, and one day he will be more of a bear than anyone else in the eyes of the fans. But he will never wear number 1, because that’s Vidar’s number. He will write the number 1 on his helmet instead, and the black jackets will always cheer extra loud for him because of that.
* * *
David shakes his hand, and the seventeen-year-old goes into the locker room. David shuffles his feet awkwardly, then plucks up the courage to ask Zackell, “How’s Benji?”
Zackell’s lower lip quivers almost imperceptibly. Her voice trembles ever so slightly. “Okay. I think he’s going to be . . . okay.”
She too will save a jersey with the number 16 on it, on all her teams, for as long as she’s a coach. She and David look each other in the eye, and Zackell says, “Give us hell out there on the ice this evening.”
David smiles. “You give us hell!”
* * *
It’s one hell of a game. People will talk about it for years.
* * *
Teemu comes to the kennels on his own. He’s carrying an envelope, and he climbs up to join Benji on the roof. Teemu hesitates, then sits down next to him.
“Are you going to the game?” Teemu wonders.
Benji’s reply isn’t contrary. It actually sounds almost happy. “No. Are you?”
Teemu nods. He’ll never stop going to watch hockey. Some people might think the sport would remind him too much of his little brother now, but in actual fact, for long periods of Teemu’s life it will be one of the few places where he can bear to remember Vidar. Where it doesn’t hurt.
“You’re going away, aren’t you?” he asks eventually.