On his way to his best friend’s house he passes through the whole of Beartown: the factory that’s still the largest employer in the town, but which has “effectivized its personnel” three years in a row now—a fancy way of saying people have been laid off. The big supermarket that has closed down its smaller competitors. A street full of stores in varying states of disrepair, and an industrial area that is just getting quieter and quieter. The sports store, which has one section for hunting and fishing and another for hockey, but very little else worth mentioning. A little farther out is the pub, the Bearskin, frequented by the sort of men who make it such an excellent destination for any curious tourist eager to find out what it’s like to get beaten up by the locals.
Toward the forest, off to the west, is a garage and—farther in among the trees—the kennels that Benji’s eldest sister runs. She raises two types of dogs: hunting dogs and guard dogs. No one around here wants dogs for pets anymore.
There’s not much to love about this place apart from hockey. But on the other hand, Benji hasn’t loved very much else in his life. He inhales the smoke. The other guys keep warning him he’ll get kicked off the team if David finds out he smokes weed, but Benji just laughs, secure in the knowledge that would never happen. Not because Benji is too good to be thrown off the team, definitely not, but because Kevin is too good. Kevin is the jewel, Benji the insurance policy.
*
Sune looks up at the roof of the rink one last time. At the flags and jerseys hanging there, memories of men soon no one will be old enough to remember. Alongside them hangs a shabby banner bearing what used to be the club’s motto: “Culture, Values, Community.” Sune helped hang it there, but he’s no longer sure what it means. Sometimes he’s not sure if he knew back then either.
“Culture” is an odd word to use about hockey; everyone says it, but no one can explain what it means. All organizations like to boast that they’re building a culture, but when it comes down to it everyone really only cares about one sort: the culture of winning. Sune is well aware that the same thing applies the world over, but perhaps it’s more noticeable in a small community. We love winners, even though they’re very rarely particularly likeable people. They’re almost always obsessive and selfish and inconsiderate. That doesn’t matter. We forgive them. We like them while they’re winning.
The old man stands up and makes his way toward his office, with his back creaking and heart hardened. The door closes behind him. His personal belongings are already packed in a small box that’s tucked under the desk. He won’t make a scene when he gets fired, won’t speak to the press. He’s just going to disappear. That’s how he was brought up, and that’s how he’s brought others up. The team comes first.
*
No one really knows how the pair of them became best friends, but everyone has long since given up any attempt to separate them. Benji rings the doorbell of the house that’s more than half the size of the entire block where he lives.
Kevin’s mom opens the door with her ever-friendly yet constantly stressed smile, clutching her phone to her ear, while behind her Kevin’s dad walks past talking loudly into his. The walls of the front hall are decorated with family photos, but those framed pictures are the only place Benji has ever seen all three members of the Erdahl family side by side. In real life one of them always seems to be in the kitchen, the other in the study, and Kevin in the garden. Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang. A door closing, an apology directed at a phone. “Yes, sorry, it’s my son. The hockey player, yes, that’s right.”
No one raises their voice in this house and no one ever lowers it either—all communication has had its emotions amputated. Kevin is simultaneously the most and least spoiled kid Benji has ever met: the fridge is full of prepared meals made in exact accordance with the nutrition plan provided by the team, delivered every three days by a catering company. The kitchen in the Erdahl family’s house cost three times more than the whole of Benji’s mom’s row house, but no one ever prepares a meal in it. Kevin’s room has everything a seventeen-year-old could dream of, including the fact that no adult except the cleaner has set foot inside it since he was three. No one in Beartown has ever spent more on their son’s sports career, no one has given more to the team in sponsorship than his dad’s company, yet Benji can count the number of times he’s seen Kevin’s parents in the crowd of spectators on the fingers of one hand, and still have two fingers left. Benji asked his friend about it once. Kevin replied: “My parents aren’t interested in hockey.” When Benji asked what they were interested in, Kevin replied: “Success.” They were ten years old at the time.
When Kevin is top of the class in history tests, which he almost always is, and goes home and says he got forty-nine out of fifty questions right, his dad merely asks in an expressionless voice: “What did you get wrong?” Perfection isn’t a goal in the Erdahl family, it’s the norm.
Their home is white and precise, an advertisement for right angles. When he’s sure no one’s looking, Benji silently nudges the shoe-rack one inch out of line and touches a couple of the photos on the wall so that they’re hanging ever so slightly crooked, and as he walks across the rug in the living room he lets his big toe fleetingly mess up some of the fringe. When he reaches the terrace door he sees Kevin’s mom’s reflection in the glass. She’s going around mechanically putting everything back to how it was, without missing a beat of her telephone conversation.
Benji goes out into the garden, grabs a chair, and goes to sit near Kevin, then closes his eyes and listens to the banging. Kevin pauses, his collar black with sweat.
“Are you nervous?” he asks.
Benji doesn’t open his eyes.
“Do you remember the first time you came out into the forest with me, Kev? You’d never been hunting before and held your rifle like you were scared it was going to bite you.”
Kevin sighs so deeply that half of the air probably escapes from another bodily opening.
“Aren’t you ever going to take anything in life seriously?”
Benji’s broad grin reveals an almost imperceptible difference in the color of his teeth. If you send him into a skirmish, he’ll come out with the puck, even at the cost of one of his own teeth, or someone else’s.
“You almost managed to shoot me in the balls. I take that very seriously.”
“So you’re really not nervous about the game?”
“Kev, you and a gun anywhere close to my testicles make me nervous. Hockey doesn’t make me nervous.”
They’re interrupted by Kevin’s parents calling good-bye. His dad in the same tone he would use to say good-bye to a waiter in a restaurant, his mom with a cautious little “sweetheart” at the end. As if she really is trying but can’t quite manage to make it sound like anything more than a line she’s learned for a play. The front door closes, two cars start up out in the drive. Benji fishes another joint from the inside pocket of his jacket and lights up.
“Are you nervous, Kev?”
“No. No, no . . .”
Benji laughs; his friend has never been able to lie to him.
“Really?”
“Okay, what the fuck, Benji, I’m shitting myself here! Is that what you want to hear?”
Benji looks like he’s fallen asleep.
“How much have you smoked already today?” Kevin chuckles.
“Nowhere near enough,” Benji mumbles, and curls up on the chair as if he were thinking of hibernating for winter.