“Really?” the caretaker replies.

  Tails watches the goalkeeper down on the ice.

  “Peter used to get beaten at home if he so much as spilled his milk. Benji didn’t dare tell anyone he was gay. Amat is the cleaner’s son in the rich kids’ sport. All the best players have a darkness inside them, that’s why they end up the best, they think the darkness will disappear if they can just win enough times…”

  The caretaker wonders quietly if Tails is talking about the players or himself with that last remark, but says nothing. He wonders if Tails was about to mention Kevin as well, to illustrate the same point, but says nothing about that either. Instead he just pats Tails on the shoulder and says:

  “Chin up, Bambi, you’ll think of a way to deal with the politicians. You always do!”

  Tails sits there alone with the whole town on his shoulders. He’s good at radiating self-confidence but today he’s wobbling. There’s always been a struggle for resources in this forest, the politicians have talked about closing down one of the hockey clubs for decades, but the idea of shutting them both down and starting a new one is harder to defend against. “Isn’t that what you wanted?” one politician asked in surprise earlier today, and Tails almost threw his phone at the wall. “I wanted you to shut Hed down! Not us!” he roared back, only to be told: “What’s the problem? I didn’t think you were sentimental?” It’s a good thing he and Tails weren’t in the same room, because then it would have been the politician hitting the wall rather than the phone. Not sentimental? Tails has lived here all his life, has played for the same club, built up the same town. If you don’t have feelings for one particular place on the planet, you may as well live anywhere. Sentimental? Everything he’s truly proud of achieving in his life is connected one way or another to Beartown Hockey. If they change the name of his club, they erase his whole identity. He can’t permit that, he needs to fight with everything he’s got, and because he doesn’t have time to come up with a brilliant plan, he comes up with a simple one instead.

  When the training session is over he goes down to the boards and waits until Mumble comes out, then, with a smile so big that it opens his whole face up into a great big hole, he offers to give the boy a lift back to Hed.

  “I just want to know you get home safely!” he assures him.

  Mumble says nothing, but he probably already knows that isn’t true.

  43 Brothers

  Johnny and Hannah sit up all night in their kitchen arguing the way only the parents of young children can: really angrily but really quietly.

  Hannah is upset that Tobias got into a fight over in the ice rink, of course, but she’s just as upset that Johnny isn’t as upset with their son as she is. All of his anger is directed toward Beartown instead, he claims Tobias was fighting in self-defense, as if that justified everything. Deep down Hannah is probably most annoyed that she can’t help thinking he might be right.

  Johnny and the other firemen spent two hours in the garage drinking beer and peering at the engine of the van after they came back from Beartown. They didn’t fix anything, of course, but they looked very sternly at the engine as if it could be talked into working properly. Hannah would have laughed at that if she hadn’t heard what they were discussing, because she’s heard that sort of discussion before. People often joke that firefighters in Hed are recruited straight from the ice rink, but it’s only half a joke, most of them used to play together and the fire brigade just became their next locker room. If you argue with one, you argue with all of them. Hannah often teases Johnny about being terrified about any kind of change, and the fact that he wants the same food and the same brand of beer and the same armchair for his whole life, to which he usually mutters that she ought to be seriously fucking happy about that, because people who hate change tend not to change their wives either. That makes her laugh and she can’t resist saying “Shall we go down to the Barn and see who gets the most offers?,” and that shuts him up. In fact she dislikes change as much as he does, because when things don’t need to be changed you know that they work, and she needs to trust her colleagues at the hospital just as much as Johnny needs to trust his. They need to trust their neighbors, because they babysit their children, and they need to trust their childhood friends because that’s who they call when life gets messy. If they defend you, then you have to defend them. Hannah isn’t an idiot, she’s the first to admit that Johnny can sometimes be the stereotype of a backward-looking, conservative, prejudiced old guy, but sometimes he’s right. Sometimes he defends the right things.

  So this is the worst kind of argument. When they understand each other.

  “You need to make sure your friends don’t do anything stupid now…,” Hannah whispers across the kitchen table.

  He snaps back so fast that even she is forced onto the back foot.

  “Us? WE’RE the ones who shouldn’t do anything stupid? You know that one of the dads on Toby’s team called the police when the trouble started today? And you know what they said? That they didn’t have the resources to send anyone unless someone had been hurt! It was grown-ups who started this, Hannah. Grown-ups! If there’s a single unlicensed hunter in the forest the police can send fifty armed officers, but people can attack our CHILDREN without any kind of punishment?”

  She can see that he’s having trouble holding his hands steady around his coffee cup. She’s always said that ninety percent of his childhood friends are complete idiots, and most of them have kids on the hockey teams. And if those idiots don’t trust society to protect their families, they’ll do it themselves, and God help anyone on the other side if that happens.

  “I understand that you’re angry, don’t you think I want to go over there and punch every last Beartown mom in the face? But we need to think of the kids!” she retorts.

  “That’s exactly what I am doing!” he protests.

  “Is it? Tobias doesn’t do what you say, he does what you do! You’re his hero! How are you going to teach him it’s wrong to fight if you do the same thing?”

  Hannah yelled at Tobias so hard when they got home that the windows rattled, Johnny just sat beside her in silence. Then it doesn’t matter how loudly she shouts.

  “For God’s sake, I can’t tell him it’s wrong to defend his sister…”

  “I’m not saying that! But we have to punish him, surely you can see that? We can’t let him think it’s okay to start fights and get into trouble!”

  “We’ve told him off…”

  “No. I was the only one who told him off!”

  “For God’s sake, darling, he’s going to be suspended from the hockey team! There’s nothing we can do that would be worse than that,” Johnny replies, the look on his face getting sadder and sadder, the coffee in his cup getting colder and colder.

  They sit in silence for something like twenty minutes. Then Johnny sullenly picks up his phone and lets her listen as he calls his colleagues and the other dads on the team, advising calm. He says they should all think on it. Not start any unnecessary trouble. He hangs up and throws his arms out toward her, as if to say: “Happy now?,” and she snorts irritably: “I’m so sick of having FIVE children!,” then goes up to bed. He follows half an hour later, she can hear from his footsteps that he’s feeling remorseful. It’s long past midnight when she falls asleep, a long way from him, but when she wakes up early the next morning his big arm is wrapped around her. She hopes she’s managed to teach the kids that, at the very least: we might argue, but we stick together. Tightly, tightly, tightly, we stick together.

  * * *

  Amat never shows up for the A-team’s training session that evening. Zackell isn’t surprised. Bobo is miserable about it, but he still walks home from the rink with easy strides, with his phone in his hand and a text from Tess that he reads one hundred times. Found your number online. It was a shit way to meet today but I’m glad we did. Call me if you want.

  He calls. She sits on her bed and talks quietly so she doesn’t wake her family. He makes her laugh. It’s the best phone call of his life.

  * * *

  It’s late at night and the house is completely quiet when the door to Tobias’s room is gently pushed open. Ted stands there whispering his brother’s name without result, so eventually he pads in and tweaks Tobias’s toes until he jerks awake.

  “What the…?” Tobias wonders, still half-asleep.

  “I just wanted to… you know… say thank you for what you did,” Ted whispers.

  Tobias yawns and sits up against the wall, making space for his younger brother on the bed. Ted’s body is bigger than his thirteen years but his eyes are considerably younger. He’s just a frightened little kid inside. Tobias boxes him gently on the shoulder.

  “No need, Teddy bear. Now, back to bed with you.”

  “You didn’t have to do that,” Ted whispers, looking unhappily at his brother’s black eye.

  “Yes, I did,” Tobias yawns.

  He got a serious telling-off from his mother when he got home, the sort only she can dish out, but it was worth it. Everyone always assumes that Tobias starts fights, because it’s usually true, but not this time. He wasn’t the one who rushed out of the locker room in a blind rage when he heard that Tess was in trouble down in the stands, he actually did what his sister had told him: keep calm and make sure Ture was safe. It was Ted who lost it and ran out into the corridor, straight into two guys from Beartown. Tobias yelled at him to leave it, but Ted, sweet, kind, clumsy Teddy bear, shoved one of the Beartown guys as hard as he could in the chest, out of pure instinct. Naturally, the guy shoved him back even harder, and Ted stumbled backward and accidentally kicked over the candles on the floor beneath that photograph of Ramona. He got to his feet and even though he can’t fight to save his life he still tried to punch the first Beartown guy in the face. The second one tried to join in at once, of course, but found himself lying on the floor before he even got started. Tobias had emerged from the locker room, and unlike his brother, he’s more than happy to fight. He floored the next guy who came running over as well, fully aware even then that he could forget any hope of trying to explain this to his mom. “Get back in the locker room and lock the door and take care of Ture! I’ll get Tess!” he yelled to Ted.

  Ted did as he was told and Tobias began to collect black eyes and cracked knuckles outside. Then everything went the way that it did.

  “You didn’t have to,” Ted says once more beside him on the bed.

  “Yes I did, because you’ll get suspended from the team if they find out you were the one who threw the first punch,” Tobias explains with a yawn.

  “But now YOU’RE suspended from YOUR team instead,” Ted persists unhappily.

  “Never mind. They can manage without me. You’re important, you’re the best player on your whole team, I’m just… I’m like Dad,” Tobias says calmly, moving one of his pillows onto the floor as if the matter was closed.

  “And I’m not?” Ted whispers, hurt, because he thinks Tobias means that he isn’t brave like their dad.

  Tobias looks seriously at his younger brother, reaches out one hand, and takes a firm but affectionate grip of his ear.

  “What the hell, Ted, I’m just saying I’m like Dad. I’ll play hockey for a few more years and then I’ll get a normal job. I’ll get married to someone around here and become the sort of man who does DIY around the house and fiddles with his car and drinks beer and tells tall stories in the Barn on the weekends. That’s enough for me.”

  “So what will I be, then?” Ted wonders.

  Tobias lies down on the floor, letting his younger brother sleep in his bed like he has a thousand times before, and the big brother falls asleep instantly as usual, but just before he drifts off he yawns out the truth:

  “You can be what you want, Teddy bear. Whatever you want.”

  44 Wolves

  Those of us who love sports don’t always love sportsmen and women. Our love for them is conditional on them being on our side, playing on our team, competing in our colors. We can admire an opponent but we never love them, not the way we love the ones who represent us, because when ours win, it feels like we win too. They become symbols of everything we ourselves want to be.

  The only problem is that sportsmen and women never get to choose if they want that.

  * * *

  Mumble would much rather take the bus home to Hed, but Tails is too important a man in this club for the boy to dare to turn down the offer of a lift from him. They cruise through the center of Beartown, insofar as Beartown can be said to have a center.

  “It may look run-down now, but you have to see the potential! I promise you, anyone who invests in property here will be getting a good deal! This is going to be a prime location in a few years!” Tails is explaining brightly, as if Mumble had any money to invest in anything at all.

  The nineteen-year-old nods cautiously and hopes that’s what’s expected of him. Tails interprets that as an indication of great interest and points enthusiastically through the window:

  “Over there, near my supermarket, that’s where we’re going to build Beartown Business Park. Have you heard about that? It’s going to be offices, but we’re going to build housing as well. I can sort out a really nice apartment for you and your mom, what do you say to that? It’s time to move out of Hed, isn’t it? You’re one of us now!”

  Mumble daren’t contradict him, so Tails goes on eagerly:

  “You know, I use you as an example when I’m trying to convince businesses in Hed to take offices in Beartown instead? ‘Everything gets better in Beartown,’ I say, ‘just look at our goalkeeper!’ No one in Hed could see your talent, but with us you’ve become a superstar. Sometimes you just need a chance, don’t you? A bit of self-belief! It’s amazing what you can achieve then. Look at Beartown! A few years ago we were on the brink of bankruptcy, but now we have a freshly renovated rink and will soon have one of the biggest office and housing construction projects in this part of the country! One day we’ll have an airport and an art gallery too, just you see! Big skiing competitions and a really big hockey academy. People don’t believe me, but you know what I say to that? We should have been dead already! We shouldn’t exist at all! But we’re still here, and you know why? Because only towns with ambition survive!”

  Mumble has heard the other players on the team make jokes at their sponsor’s expense, but he’s also noted that most of them have a certain respect for him. Tails talks a lot of shit, but he also gets a lot of shit done, and that’s a quality everyone respects. That he wins.

  So perhaps he’s right with that stuff about ambition, Mumble thinks. That if you just think about your world differently, it becomes different. Mumble wonders if that works with the past as well, if you can erase it through sheer force of will, he’d quite like to ask Tails but nothing comes out. But much more comes out of Tails:

  “Did you hear about the fight in the rink today?”

  Mumble nods warily. Tails smiles so hard that his chins wobble.

  “That’s why I thought it best to drive you home, so we know that our star gets home safe!”

  Mumble can’t help thinking it would be safer for him to take the bus to Hed rather than turn up there in a car with Beartown Hockey stickers in the rear window.

  “Are the players talking about the rumors of the clubs merging?” Tails goes on to ask.

  Mumble gives a quick nod, he can’t see any reason to lie. Tails’s fingers clasp the wheel a bit tighter and he speaks more slowly. Slowly for him, anyway:

  “It might be hard for you players to understand, but we might actually be stronger together. Do you understand?”

  Mumble nods even though he isn’t really sure that he does understand. All he wants is to play hockey. He wishes it wasn’t so complicated. Tails hits the steering wheel with the palms of his hands in sudden delight:

  “They need to be scared of us, you see! The big clubs in the big cities! In my time, back when I played, we loved the fact that they hated us. They said we were rednecks who couldn’t play, so we embraced that. We played uglier and harder than they could even imagine, we used every trick we could think of, when their coaches used to drive along this road through the forest… straight into the darkness… they were terrified. They felt like they were alone on the planet. That’s why we won. And you know what? We’re going to get those days back again! Think how good we could be with our best players combined with Hed’s best, and the full support of the council! We can be a big club again!”

  Mumble nods even though he’s actually terrified, because he doesn’t even know if there’d be room for him on a team like that. He’s already come close to losing hockey once, he knows how small the margins are. He’s always been a late developer, the last in his street to learn how to ride a bike, the last in his class to learn to read. It felt like he was the last kid in Hed who learned how to skate, that’s why he ended up on goal. Two years ago he was too poor even to warrant a place there, so when Zackell gave him a chance here in Beartown instead, he thought she was teasing him. More than anything, he thought everyone would hate him because he was replacing Vidar. He was so nervous in his first few matches that he let in shots that were barely on target. On one occasion Zackell made a gesture that he took to mean he was being replaced, but when he skated toward the bench she snorted in surprise: “Replace you? When you’re playing like this? No, you’re going to have to stay out there and feel ashamed!” Maybe that’s how she’s formed all her best hockey players, Mumble ponders now with the benefit of hindsight, by understanding that in most other clubs people simply don’t feel ashamed enough.

  The next day Amat was the only player who was at the rink earlier than Mumble in the morning and later than him in the evening, and soon they were training just as much and just as obsessed as each other. Mumble never dared ask if Amat wanted to train together, but Amat himself suggested it. He fired thousands of pucks from every possible angle every morning and evening, and Mumble couldn’t have failed to become a good goalkeeper then even if he wanted to. Soon the supporters were chanting his name, first the older ones in the seats, then even the younger crowd in the standing area, where Vidar’s brother stood. Zackell offered Mumble the chance to play with Vidar’s old number and Mumble refused, and that rumor spread to the Pack, they loved him for that as much as the fact that he keeps getting shutouts. When he turned eighteen last year they gave him a hand-painted mask with the bear on one side and Vidar’s initials on the other. Mumble had never received a gift from other men before in his whole life. After that, you couldn’t have scored a goal against him with them in the stands behind him even if you’d been armed to the teeth.