When they lost Isak there were moments when they wished they had an enemy, someone who was guilty, just to have someone to punish. There were people who advised them to talk to God about it, but it’s hard to maintain an ordinary conversational tone with God when you’re a parent, hard to believe in a higher power when your fingertips are tracing the years marked on a gravestone. It’s not the fault of mathematics; the equation for calculating a lifetime is simple: take the four-figure number to the right of the stone, subtract the number to the left, and multiply the result by 365, then add an extra day for each leap year. But however you do it, it doesn’t make sense. You count, count again, count again, but it never comes right. However you do the sums it’s never enough. The days are too few to amount to a whole life.
They hated it when people spoke of “the condition,” because conditions are untouchable. They wanted to have a face, a perpetrator. They needed someone to drown under the weight of all the guilt, because otherwise they themselves would be dragged beneath the surface. They were so selfish, they know that, but when they didn’t have anyone to punish there was only the sky left to scream at, and then their rage was too great for any human being to bear.
They wanted an enemy. Now they’ve got one. And now they don’t know if they ought to sit next to their daughter or hunt down the person who harmed her, if they ought to help her live or see to it that he dies. Unless they’re the same thing. Hate is so much easier than its opposite.
*
Parents don’t heal. Nor do children.
*
Every child in every town in every country has at some point played games that are dangerous to the point of being lethal. Every gang of friends includes someone who always takes things too far, who is the first to jump from the highest rock, the last to jump across the rails when the train comes. That child isn’t the bravest, just the least frightened. And possibly the one who feels he or she doesn’t have as much to lose as the others.
Benji always sought out the strongest physical sensations because they displaced other feelings. Adrenaline and the taste of blood in his mouth and throbbing pain all over his body became a pleasant buzz in his head. He liked scaring himself, because when you’re scared you can’t think of anything else. He’s never cut his own skin, but he understands those who do. Sometimes he has longed so much for a pain he can see and focus on that he’s taken the train to a town several hours away, waited until dark, and then sought out the biggest bastards he could find to start a fight with, and then fought until they had no choice but to give him a serious beating. Because sometimes, when it seriously hurt on the outside, it hurt a little bit less in other places.
The bass player sees him before he gets off the stage. He’s so surprised that he forgets to hide his smile. He’s wearing the same black clothes.
“You came.”
“The entertainment on offer around here is pretty limited.”
The bass player laughs. They drink beer three steps apart, and overweight, drunk men come up from time to time and slap Benji on the back. Praise him on account of his broken foot, curse the fact that the referee was evidently a bastard. Then they mutter, “And that business with Kevin, that’s a fucking disgrace.” The same back-and-forth with seven or eight men of varying ages. They all want to buy number sixteen a beer. The bass player thinks he’s probably imagining it, but for every slap on the back, it feels as if Benji retreats slightly. The bass player has been here before; this isn’t the first boy he’s met who behaves like he’s living under an assumed identity. And perhaps it is different in a place like this, where you don’t want to let anyone down.
When they’re alone at last, the bass player empties his glass and says quietly:
“I’m gonna get going. I can see you’ve got . . . a lot of people who want to talk about hockey.”
Benji grabs hold of his arm and whispers, “No . . . let’s go somewhere,” and he catches fire.
The bass player goes out into the night and takes the path off to the right of the building. Benji waits ten minutes before going outside and heading off to the left, taking a shortcut up through the forest before limping back to meet the boy among the trees, swearing and stumbling.
“Are you sure you know how to play hockey? You look like you’ve been doing something wrong,” the bass player says, smiling at Benji’s crutches.
“Are you sure you know how to play the bass? It sounded like you were tuning up the whole way through the gig,” Benji retorts.
They smoke. The wind gets up in the darkness, whistling across the snow, but at the last moment it seems to decide to leave the boys alone. Only touches them fleetingly, tentatively, like hesitant fingertips touching someone else’s skin for the first time.
“I like your hair,” the bass player says, breathing through it.
Benji shuts his eyes, lets go of his crutches; he wishes he’d had more to drink. Smoked more. He’s misjudged his impulse control, left the little bastard awake when he should have knocked it out properly. He tries to let everything happen, but when he lays his palms on the other boy’s back they clench automatically. The boy jerks in surprise, Benji’s body tenses, and he purposefully puts his weight on his broken foot until the pain fires burning arrows up through his whole skeleton. Gently he pushes the bass player away from him. Picks up his crutches and whispers:
“This was a mistake . . .”
The bass player stands alone in the darkness among the trees with his feet lost in the snow while number sixteen limps back toward the Barn. He says:
“Big secrets turn us into small men.”
Benji doesn’t answer. But he feels small.
*
Monday morning comes to Beartown without ever really granting them daylight, as if it were as reluctant to wake up as the inhabitants.
A mother is sitting in a Volvo, trying to convince her daughter that she doesn’t have to do this. She doesn’t have to go in. Not today.
“Yes, I do,” the daughter says, stroking her mother’s hair.
“You . . . You don’t know what they’ve been saying online,” Kira says quietly.
“I know exactly what they’ve been saying. That’s why I have to go in. If I wasn’t ready for this, I wouldn’t have reported him to the police, Mom. Now, I can’t . . .”
Her voice cracks. Kira’s nails dig tiny pieces of rubber from the steering wheel.
“You can’t let them win. Because you’re your father’s daughter.”
Maya reaches out her hand and brushes two stray strands of hair from Kira’s cheek and tucks them behind her ear.
“My mother’s. Always my mother’s.”
“I want to kill them, darling. I’d like to kill the whole lot of them. I’ve got the whole firm involved in this; there’s not a chance in hell that I’m going to let them wi . . .”
“I’ve got to go, Mom. This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. So I need to get going.”
Kira watches her daughter go. Then she drives as far out into the forest as possible with the stereo turned up as loud as possible. She gets out and screams until her voice gives out.
36
The simplest and truest thing David knows about hockey is that teams win games. It doesn’t matter how good a coach’s tactics are: if they’re to stand any chance of working, first the players need to believe in them. And each one of them needs to have the same words imprinted in his head a million times: Play your part. Focus on your task. Do your job.
David is lying in bed beside his girlfriend, his hand on her stomach.
“Do you think I’m going to be a good dad?” he asks.