It takes Sune a few moments to realize that she’s talking about the A-team and not the juniors. He’s so used to the juniors’ relatives only wanting to talk about the junior team that it catches him off guard.
“There’s always a chance. But the puck doesn’t just glide . . . ,” Sune says.
“It bounces as well!” Adri grins.
When Sune looks bemused, Benji explains helpfully:
“Adri used to play. In Hed. She was rough as hell, got more penalties than me.” Sune laughs appreciatively. Adri gestures toward the fence.
“So what can we do for you?”
“I’d like to buy a dog,” Sune says.
Adri holds out her hand and presses his shoulder, with a stern face but a friendly smile.
“I’m afraid I can’t let you buy one, Sune. But I can give you one. For building up this club, and for saving my little brother’s life.”
Benji is breathing through his nose and concentrating on the dogs. Sune’s lips quiver gently. When he’s composed himself he manages to say:
“So . . . which puppy would you recommend for a retired old guy, then?”
“That one,” Benji says, pointing at one without hesitation.
“Why?”
Now it’s the boy’s turn to pat the old man on the shoulder. “Because he’s a challenge.”
*
David is sitting on his own in the stands in the rink. For once he is looking up at the roof, not down at the ice.
He’s got a migraine, is under more pressure than ever, can’t remember the last time he slept right through the night. His girlfriend can’t even be bothered to try communicating with him at home anymore seeing as she never gets any response. He’s living inside his own head, and in there he’s on the ice twenty-four hours a day. In spite of that, or perhaps precisely because of it, he can’t take his eyes off the worn old banner hanging above his head: “Culture, Values, Community.”
He’s due to give an interview to the local paper today; the sponsors have arranged it. David protested but the club’s president just grinned: “You want the media to write less about you? Tell your team to play worse!” He can already imagine all the questions. “What is it that makes Kevin Erdahl so good?” they’ll ask, and David will reply the way he always replies: “Talent and training. Ten thousand little things that he’s repeated ten thousand times.” But that isn’t really true.
He’ll never be able to explain it properly to a journalist, but when it really comes down to it, a coach can never create a player like that. Because what makes Kevin the best is his absolute desire to win. Not that he hates losing, but that he can’t even begin to conceive of trying to accept not winning. He’s merciless. You can’t teach someone that.
How many hours do these guys put into it? How much did David himself sacrifice? Their whole lives up to the age of twenty, twenty-five, are nothing but training, training, training, and what do they get for that if it turns out that they’re not good enough? Nothing. No education, no safety net. A player who’s as good as Kevin is might turn professional. Might earn millions. And the players who are almost as good? They’ll end up in the factory just the other side of the trees from the rink.
David looks at the banner. As long as his team carries on winning, he’ll have a job here, but if they lose? How many steps away from the factory is he? What can he do apart from hockey? Nothing.
He was sitting in this precise spot when he was twenty-two, thinking exactly the same things. Sune was sitting beside him then. David asked about the banner, asked what it meant to Sune, and Sune replied: “Community is the fact that we work toward the same goal, that we accept our respective roles in order to reach it. Values is the fact that we trust each other. That we love each other.” David thought about that for a long while before asking: “What about culture, then?” Sune looked more serious, choosing his words carefully. In the end he said: “For me, culture is as much about what we encourage as what we actually permit.”
David asked what he meant by that, and Sune replied: “That most people don’t do what we tell them to. They do what we let them get away with.”
David closes his eyes. Clears his throat. Then he stands up and walks down toward the ice. Doesn’t look up at the roof again. Banners have no meaning this week. Only results.
*
Peter passes the president’s office. It’s full of people even though it’s still morning. Enthusiastic sponsors and board members are abuzz. One of the board members, a man in his sixties who made his money in three different construction companies, is making wild, thrusting movements with his hips to illustrate what he thinks Beartown did to their opponents in the semifinal, then yelps:
“And the whole third period was one big ORGASM! They came here thinking they were going to fuck US! They won’t be able to put their legs together for WEEKS!”
Some of the men laugh, some don’t. If any of them is thinking anything, they don’t say it. Because it’s only a joke, after all, and the board members are like a team, you take the good with the bad.
Later that day Peter will drive to the big supermarket owned by Tails. He’ll sit in his old friend’s office and talk rubbish about old matches, telling the same jokes they’ve told since they first met in skating class when they were five years old. Tails will want to offer whisky, Peter will decline, but before he leaves he’ll say:
“Have you got any jobs in the warehouse?”
Tails will scratch his stubble hesitantly and wonder:
“Who for?”
“Robbie.”
“I’ve got a waiting list of a hundred people who want warehouse jobs. Which Robbie are you talking about?”
Peter will stand up and cross Tails’s office to an old photograph hanging on the wall, a photograph of a hockey team from a small town in the forest who got to be second-best in the country. First Peter will point at himself in the photograph. Then at Tails. And then, in between the two of them, at Robbie Holts.
“?‘We look after each other,’ isn’t that what you said, Tails? ‘The bears from Beartown.’?”
Tails will look at the photograph and lower his chin in shamefaced agreement. “I’ll check with personnel.”
Two men in their forties will shake hands in front of a picture of themselves in their twenties.
*
The locker room fills with juniors without filling with noise. They put their gear on in silence. Benji doesn’t show up. Everyone notices, no one says anything.