*
Adri and Sune go from house to house, and every time someone opens the door and casts a pointed glance up at the sky, as if to point out that it’s a bit late to be knocking on decent folks’ doors, Sune asks, “Have you got any little girls in the house?” Adri will tell the story as a legend, and say it was like when Pharaoh searched Egypt looking for Moses. Adri’s knowledge of the Bible is pretty shaky, it has to be said, but she’s good at other things.
She gets told, “But there’s a girls’ team in Hed, isn’t there?” at every door, and she replies the same thing each time. Until she rings one doorbell and the handle is pulled down on the other side by someone who can hardly reach it.
The girl is four years old, and is standing in a hall without lights, in a house full of bruises. Her hands are timid, she stands on tiptoe as if she’s always ready to run, and her ears listen out constantly for steps on the stairs. But her eyes are wide open, and stare at Adri without blinking.
Adri’s heart has time to break many times as she crouches down to get a better look at the child. Adri has seen war, she’s seen suffering, but you never get used to it. You never know what to say to a four-year-old who hurts and thinks that’s normal, because life has never shown her anything else.
“Do you know what hockey is?” Adri asks.
The girl nods.
“Can you play?” Adri asks.
The girl shakes her head. Adri’s heart gives up and her voice breaks.
“It’s the best game in the world. The best in the world. Would you like to learn?”
The girl nods.
*
Down to his very marrow, David wishes he could drive back to Hed, take the boy in his arms, and tell him that he knows now. But he can’t bring himself to unmask someone who clearly doesn’t want to talk about it. Big secrets make small men of us, especially when we’re the men others have to keep secrets from.
So David drives home, puts his hand on his girlfriend’s stomach, and pretends he’s crying about the baby. His life will be successful, he will achieve everything he’s ever dreamed of—career and success and titles—he’ll coach unbeatable teams at legendary clubs in several different countries, but he will never let any player in any of them wear number “16.” He will always keep hoping that Benji is going to turn up one day and demand his jersey.
*
There’s a hockey puck on a gravestone in Beartown. The writing is small, so that all the words can fit. Still the bravest bastard I know. Beside the puck lies a watch.
48
Maya and Ana are each sitting on a rock. Far enough into the forest for it to take days to find them.
“Did you see the therapist?” Ana asks.
“She says I shouldn’t bottle it all up inside me,” Maya says.
“Is she good?”
“She’s okay. But she talks more than my parents. Someone should tell her that she could do with bottling a bit more up inside,” Maya replies.
“Has she asked you that ‘Where do you see yourself in ten years’ time?’ question yet? The psychologist I saw after Mom left used to love that one.”
Maya shakes her head. “No.”
“What would you have said? Where do you see yourself in ten years’ time?” Ana asks.
Maya doesn’t answer. Ana says nothing more either. They go back to Ana’s together, lie down in the same bed, and breathe in time with each other for hours until Ana finally falls asleep. Then Maya creeps out, goes down into the cellar, finds a key, and opens a cupboard. She takes the shotgun and heads straight out into the darkness with an even greater darkness inside her.
*
Hockey is both complicated and not complicated at all. It can be hard to understand the rules, challenging to live with the culture, as good as impossible to get all the people who love it not to pull so hard in different directions that it breaks. But, when it comes down to it, at its most basic essence, it’s simple: “I just want to play, Mom,” Filip says with tears in his eyes.
She knows. They’re going to have to decide how he’s going to do that now. If he’s going to stay with Beartown Ice Hockey or move to Hed with Kevin, Lyt, and the others. Filip’s mom knows the difference between right and wrong, between good and evil, but she’s also a mom. And what’s a mom’s job?
*
Tails is sitting at a lunch table, surrounded by his best friends. One of them points at his tie pin with a chuckle.
“Time to take that off, eh, Tails?”
Tails looks down at the pin. It says “Beartown Ice Hockey” on it. He looks around at the other men; they’ve all been very quick to take theirs off and replace them with pins saying “Hed Ice Hockey.” It was that easy for them. As if it were only a club.
*
His mom helps Filip pack his bag, not because he isn’t old enough to do it himself, but because she likes doing it. She holds her hand against his chest and his heart beats like a child’s beneath her palm, even though the sixteen-year-old is now so tall that he has to bend down a long way to kiss his mom on the cheek.
She remembers every inch. Every battle. She thinks of the summer training sessions the year when Filip ran until he threw up so much that he had to be taken to the hospital with acute dehydration. The next day he showed up at training.
“You don’t have to be here,” David said.
“Please?” Filip begged.
David held him by the shoulders and said honestly:
“I need to pick the best team this autumn. You might not even get to play any games.”
“Just let me train. I only want to play. Please, I only want to play,” Filip pleaded.
He got thrashed in every one-on-one situation, lost every drill, but he kept coming back. At the end of the summer David drove over to see Filip’s mom, sat in her kitchen, and told her about a study that showed how many elite players were never among the five best in their youth team, and how it’s often the sixth-to twelfth-best juniors who break through at senior level. They’ve had to fight harder. They don’t buckle when the setbacks come.
“If Filip ever doubts his chances, you don’t have to promise him that he’ll be the best in the team one day. You just have to convince him that he can battle his way to twelfth place,” David said.
There’s no way he can know how much that meant for the family, because they have no words to express it. It only changed everything.
Now the mom rests her forehead against the sixteen-year-old’s chest. He’s going to be one of the best players this town has ever seen. And he just wants to play. Her too.
*
Tails is standing in the parking lot. The men shake hands with each other, and most of them drive off toward Hed. Two of them stay behind with Tails, smoking, and one of them says: “Any journalists?”
The other shrugs his shoulders.