“What are you getting at?”

  “You asked what I’d learned about Hed. I read recently that the big hockey clubs are trying to make the top league in the country a closed shop, the income from the television rights is huge and they can’t risk getting demoted. So they want to stop all the smaller clubs, all the Heds and Beartowns, from getting all the way to the top. The rich want to shut out the poor, same thing everywhere, always. It’s no excuse, but… well, sometimes I can’t help thinking that’s why people are the way they are in these towns. They have to fight the whole time. Maybe even cheat. Otherwise they don’t stand a chance.”

  The pipe smoke curls around her dad.

  “It’s a nice view, but don’t let your conscience get in the way of your intellect, kid. When you publish everything we’ve found out about the training facility in Beartown, someone there will dig up the same sort of crap about Hed. When this is all over you could very well have killed off both clubs. But that’s your job.”

  His daughter doesn’t open her eyes. She asks the question even though she doesn’t want to hear the answer.

  “What makes you think Hed has fiddled with the books as much as Beartown?”

  His reply is more sad than cynical:

  “Everyone fiddles with the books these days, kid. Have you seen the players’ wages now? And the tax rules in this country? If everything was done properly, no one would stand a chance. When a hockey club down south came close to bankruptcy the council bought ‘the inventory’ of the stadium for several million to prop up the accounts. The inventory of a stadium that the council ALREADY owned. If those politicians had nine backsides each, they still wouldn’t have had enough for all the different seats they’re trying to sit on. One of the biggest clubs in the whole country calls the local bus company ‘the bank’ because the club never pays for transport to away games, but the bus company never demands payment because they know that at the end of the year the council will step in and pay for everything so the club doesn’t go bankrupt. There are elite clubs whose finances are so weak that they’re in bankruptcy, so all the wages are paid by the state’s wage guarantee, but they carry on recruiting players by getting a sponsor to pay and sign all the paperwork. And they’re allowed to carry on playing games! How is anyone who follows the rules supposed to compete with that?”

  She slowly breathes in the last of the smoke from his dying pipe.

  “Now it sounds like you’re on their side, Dad…”

  He sighs.

  “Damn right I am. I’m old and sentimental and I don’t drink anywhere near enough anymore so I’m no longer mean. But YOU can’t back down now! We need to tell the truth about Beartown Hockey, even if it crushes everything and everyone out here.”

  His daughter breathes the way you do when you’re getting ready to jump off a cliff:

  “Do you think my conscience is making me a bad journalist?”

  Her dad struggles up from his chair.

  “No. Your conscience is what makes you the best sort of journalist, kid. Okay, let’s go inside, it’s bloody cold out here and that damn banging is driving me mad! Next time you’re going to have to find a hockey club in Hawaii for us to kill off!”

  62 Idiots

  What’s the hardest thing about ice hockey? If you ask a hundred coaches you’ll get a hundred different answers, all just as confident, all just as unwilling even to contemplate that they might be wrong. That’s because they’re all wrong.

  Because the hardest thing about hockey, the very hardest of all, is changing your mind.

  * * *

  Tails’s expensive white shirt is transparent with sweat and his watch, the size of a teacup, clatters against the edge of the table. His shoes are so expensive that it would have been cheaper to buy the whole alligator. Kira knows that because the only recycling Tails understands is recycling jokes. Every time Peter has had a barbeque in the past twenty years and asks how Tails would like his steak, Tails replies “Just frighten it a bit with your headlights and put it on the plate!,” and Peter laughs EVERY time. Could there be a lower threshold for friendship? One of Tails’s alligator shoes has no lace, because it got caught in the bicycle chain on the way here, his fingers are black and cut from when he tried to disentangle it, he’s always been a real dolt. When Kira was little she always laughed when her mother used that word as an insult, but when she grew up and met Tails she realized exactly what it meant: he’s a genuine, pure-blooded dolt.

  But he isn’t stupid. Unfortunately. So when he’s drunk his coffee and Kira asks him to explain why they had to meet in secret, he pulls his laptop from his bag and plays a video. He filmed it himself in the stadium, it shows preschool children being interviewed after their coaching session. Tails’s voice comes from offscreen and Kira is reluctantly impressed by how good he is with the children. Adults always think of him as bullish and pushy, but children often interpret those characteristics as straightforward and honest.

  “What do you like best about hockey?” he asks a gang of boys, and they offer different versions of the same thing: Scoring goals. Being with your friends. Skating really fast. Winning. But then a girl of around six or seven appears on the screen, her body is slighter than all the others but the look in her eyes is bigger, and when Tails asks her the same thing she looks totally uncomprehending. “What do you mean, like best?” she wonders with her training top hanging around her knees. Tails pauses the video and smiles proudly at Kira:

  “That girl’s so good that we let her play with the boys, you know, but we had to stop because the parents got so angry that she was destroying their sons. Destroying them, Kira. She’s a phenomenon. A cherry tree. You know that’s what we usually call the brightest talents around here? Like Peter was at her age!”

  He presses play once more. His voice asks: “Can you say your name for the camera?” The girl on the ice replies as if she were laying siege to an enemy fortress: “Alicia!” Tails’s voice replies: “Okay, Alicia, I’m just wondering what you like best about hockey. It could be anything at all. What do you like best?” The girl stares into the camera for a long, long time before she replies, in a very weak voice and with scorching honesty: “Everything. I like everything best.”

  Kira doesn’t know how the mother of any child could look at that little girl and not want to step through the screen and take her in their arms and promise that everything is going to be okay. Especially when Tails goes on to ask: “So what do you like least about hockey?,” and the girl replies with sudden tears in her eyes: “When you have to go home.”

  Tails switches the video off. Kira is rocking on the kitchen chair beside him, and snaps:

  “I’ve got two teenage children and I’m on my goddamn way into menopause, Tails! Don’t you think I’m emotional enough as it is?”

  Tails mumbles an apology and surprises her by actually sounding completely genuine when he replies:

  “Sorry. I just wanted… before I show you all the club’s problems… to remind us both about what we’re fighting for here. What’s at risk.”

  He’s a dolt. But he’s not stupid.

  * * *

  It’s a small ice rink next to an empty parking lot. Peter has never been there before, but that doesn’t matter, he still feels at home. He recognizes all the sounds, every echo and smell, even the light. But above all he recognizes the feeling of… now. In every part of life, out there in reality, he is conscious at every moment of the past and the future, but ice rinks leave no space for that. In here everything is now, now, now.

  “Are you ready?” Zackell asks.

  “For what?” Peter asks, and soon wishes that he hadn’t.

  Down on the ice he sees Aleksandr. Built as if someone had designed a hockey player in a laboratory. Tall, broad shoulders, clearly incredibly strong, yet still very supple in his movements. Every muscle moves correctly, his skating technique is perfect, even his wavy shoulder-length hair is annoyingly fault-free. Yet there’s still something not quite right. He looks older than twenty, both in his eyes and in the way he moves. He’s skating in a figure eight, and every glide is practiced and perfect, yet lacks the keenness of youth, he’s like a circus horse running in rings, tied by a rope. His dad is standing in the middle of the ice yelling instructions, Aleksandr hardly seems to hear, when Peter approaches the boards the dad yells louder and more intently, but the twenty-year-old doesn’t raise his tempo at all.

  “He got nervous when he saw you, you’re his idol,” Zackell points out.

  “Stop that, Elisabeth, that boy isn’t old enough to know who I am,” Peter smiles modestly.

  Her eyelids flutter as if the fact that he’s so slow-witted physically hurts her.

  “Not him. The father!”

  Only then does Peter understand, because he really isn’t smarter than that. He isn’t here because Zackell needs help persuading Aleksandr to move to Beartown, she needs help persuading the dad. Peter recognizes the man, even if they never met, he’s in every ice rink: didn’t quite make it as a player himself, but every day he convinces himself that was only because he didn’t get the right coaching. So now he’s living vicariously through his son, a spoiled and bored talent who has had everything served up to him on a silver platter, but who can’t even be bothered to reach out and take it. Aleksandr has probably had private tuition since primary school, his dad probably sponsored his junior team and traveled the length and breadth of the country taking him to expensive training camps and prestigious tournaments, but what happened? The boy didn’t have the desire. All teenagers have a window when they have the chance to fulfill their potential, but no one is ever prepared for how quickly that window closes.

  “I’m guessing Beartown wasn’t their first choice. How many clubs have been here before us?” Peter asks quietly.

  “At least ten,” Zackell replies blithely.

  “And none of them wanted to recruit him? Isn’t that a warning sign for you?”

  “Who says they didn’t want to? Maybe that wasn’t what he wanted?”

  “Why wouldn’t he want it?”

  “None of them offered him the chance to play against an NHL pro.”

  “What?”

  Zackell is carrying a bag on her shoulder, and she opens it and pulls out a pair of gloves and skates in Peter’s size.

  “You’re joking?” he says.

  “I’m not very fond of jokes,” Zackell informs him, and walks toward the boards.

  Aleksandr’s dad comes over at once, wide-eyed and enthusiastic, but Aleksandr doesn’t even bother to say hello.

  “Hi! Hello! Big fan, big, big fan!” the dad calls to Peter and Peter nods back, feeling incredibly uncomfortable.

  “Peter wants to join in,” Zackell announces.

  “Wow! What an honor! Did you hear that?” the dad calls back to his son, who could hardly look less honored.

  “So maybe you could take a break for a while?” Zackell suggests.

  At first the dad doesn’t seem to understand, then he looks affronted, then resigned.

  “I’m normally always on the ice, I’m…”

  “But you could make an exception for an old NHL pro,” Zackell declares, without a trace of a question mark.

  The dad glances sheepishly at Peter, still unwilling to give way. He tries to sound annoyed when he’s really just feeling humiliated:

  “Of course, of course… but my son’s PHYSICAL game is his real strength! Have you seen how big and strong he is? He’s fantastic in front of goal, no fear at all! And I’ve taught him to play just like the elite clubs play. I have a whole system for how I set up the cones out here, how will you be able to see that if I’m not there to demonstrate? I think…”

  Like all dads, he isn’t at all prepared for how little Zackell cares about what he thinks.

  “A system? I’m not here to look at a system.”

  The dad opens his mouth to protest, but she’s already turned away. In the end he moves very reluctantly toward the stands. In the meantime Peter is just as reluctantly putting on the skates, so slowly that if Zackell hadn’t disliked touching other people so much, she’d probably have kicked him onto the ice herself.

  “Aleksandr? This is Peter Andersson. He’s played in the NHL and is your dad’s idol! If you can get past him you can have my car!” she calls to the twenty-year-old.

  Peter and the dad just laugh. But Aleksandr turns around for the first time and looks more interested.

  “Are you joking?”

  “I hardly ever joke,” she assures him, and puts the car keys on the top of the boards.

  The twenty-year-old has had a hundred coaches. Very rarely does any of them surprise him.

  “What happens if I fail?” he wonders suspiciously.

  “Why would you fail?” Zackell wonders genuinely.

  Aleksandr smiles warily, as if he’s forgotten how to do it. His dad is sitting slouched in the stands, looking ten years older than he did on the ice. When their eyes meet, there’s no love in the twenty-year-old’s, as if the circus horse has just realized that the rope has been cut. Peter sets out hesitantly onto the ice behind him and can already feel that this is going to end with groin strain and a couple of seriously painful visits to the bathroom tomorrow. Aleksandr fetches an extra stick for him. When he sees the older man take a couple of shaky warm-up circuits, as if that was likely to make any difference, he asks:

  “How long is it since you played in the NHL?”

  It isn’t mocking, just genuine curiousity, but the situation alone rouses something inside Peter. Something he isn’t proud of. So he snaps back:

  “If you get past me, I’ll tell you!”

  The corners of the twenty-year-old’s mouth twitch. Then he turns effortlessly as if he steers his skates by the power of thought alone while Peter hears his own back make a noise like bubble wrap when he leans forward. The old NHL player doesn’t look prepared when the twenty-year-old sets off from the center circle, it should only have ended one way, but when he reaches the blue line Peter suddenly bursts into life so quickly that even he is surprised when he knocks the puck away. He may be old and awkward, but some instincts never leave you. Aleksandr stops abruptly in astonishment, his eyes darken, as do Peter’s. Aleksandr fetches the puck and sets off again, just as arrogant but considerably angrier now. This time he approaches with such speed and force that he’s convinced he’s already got past when Peter’s stick appears out of nowhere and knocks the puck away again. He starts again, but Peter reads his movements and when he gets close he can feel Aleksandr flinch. The twenty-year-old has all the technique, all the training, but he’s afraid of getting hit. When his father’s voice roars from the stands, Peter has heard it a thousand times before, in a thousand other ice rinks:

  “DON’T FLINCH! STAND YOUR GROUND! TAKE THE TACKLE LIKE A MAN, FOR GOD’S SAKE!”

  Aleksandr adjusts his helmet and sets off again, but Peter steps in easily and knocks the puck away. This gets repeated three more times before Zackell calls from the boards:

  “Aleksandr! Do you know that you’re stupid?”

  The twenty-year-old stops abruptly. That gives Peter a chance to catch his breath with his hands on his knees and sweat stinging his eyes, convinced that this is what a heart attack feels like. Aleksandr glides toward Zackell.

  “What the fuck did you say?”

  “Do you know what a mongoose is?” she asks.

  “What the fuck did you call me?”

  Zackell sighs as if she had just shown him a library and he was trying to eat the books.

  “It’s an animal. It hunts cobras. Can you see how stupid that is? The cobra is faster and its venom can kill any animal, but the mongoose still attacks the cobra because it’s a complete idiot. And do you know what happens? The mongoose wins. Do you know why?”

  “Are you a biology teacher or a hockey coach?” Aleksandr snorts.

  “This isn’t biology. It’s physics,” Zackell points out.

  Aleksandr adjusts his helmet, fighting to hold on to his arrogance, but it isn’t going well. He glances up toward his dad, but Zackell goes on:

  “Don’t look at your dad, he isn’t here. This is our world now, yours and mine.”

  The twenty-year-old breathes out, it’s barely noticeable, but the skin around his jaw relaxes slightly.

  “Okay… tell me… why does the mongoo or whatever it’s called win?”

  Zackell taps her temple.

  “The mongoose wins because it adapts. The snake lunges the same way every time, without thinking, without learning anything, but the mongoose bases its attack on all previous attacks. It tests and evaluates, jumps back, entices the snake to attack farther and farther away. Because when the snake is completely stretched out it’s at its slowest and most defenseless. So the mongoose bides its time, feints, then counters the snake’s lunge with a single bite right through the snake’s brain. It looks like luck, every time, but it ISN’T luck. Do you understand?”

  “Well… no…,” Aleksandr begins, scratching his forehead.

  Zackell shapes her fingers and palm into a little snapping mouth in the air.

  “You play like a cobra, you’re predictable, but all your coaches have made you believe that you’re dependable. But no one can depend on you. I wouldn’t let you watch my beer, even if there was none left. So there’s no point putting you in a ‘system’ and talking to you about ‘position,’ because you’re far too stupid for that. That’s why you fall out with all your coaches and get thrown off of every team. But that’s also what makes you brilliant, because you’re so stupid that no one can actually imagine what you’re capable of. If you play like a cobra Peter will take the puck off you every time. So you need to play like a mongoose. Play like a total idiot.”