“You do it the way Ana did it,” Benji notes sulkily.

  “Her way worked, unlike yours.” Big City smiles.

  He doesn’t look at all surprised that Benji is here. That’s what their relationship is like now: they have a sense of what the other is going to do. If they had ever played hockey together they would have been unbeatable. Benji sinks down onto the flimsier of the folding chairs without bothering about a sleeping bag and gives an impressed nod:

  “I didn’t think you’d survive one night on your own out here. But you’re forest folk now.”

  “I’d never really seen a forest in my whole life until a couple of days ago,” Big City says.

  “Whether you’re forest folk or not has nothing to do with the forest,” Benji replies.

  They look up at the evening sky. Benji thinks of something Ramona once said: “Men are scared of telescopes, you can’t look at the stars without shitting your pants because you can’t think about how big the universe is without seeing how small you are in comparison. Nothing scares a man more than the thought that everything he does might lack all meaning.” The lake is freezing, the island that lies a short way out is isolated by the winter that’s on its way, it doesn’t look like much from here, but all Benji’s happiest summers were spent there, when he and Kevin would set off as soon as hockey training finished and live there like castaways for weeks. Out there everything was unspoken but nothing secret. Benji has never experienced that with anyone else.

  Big City looks up at the stars for a long time before saying:

  “You were right. Your stars are better than the ones where I come from. Less air pollution here.”

  Benji nods slowly.

  “But more wind turbines. They’re fucking shit as well. Frighten the game away.”

  Big City laughs and mocks his accent.

  “The ‘game’? Is that hunting talk?”

  Benji smiles that smile of his, as if he can see straight through everything and everyone.

  “I prefer fishing, to be honest.”

  “When do you have a chance to fish here? Quarter of an hour in August?” Big City wonders, nodding out toward the water, which has already turned to ice even though it’s only early autumn in Big City’s world.

  “All year round. In summer you sit in a boat and tell lies for nine hours and get zero fish. In winter you drill a hole in the ice out there and sit on a chair and tell lies for nine hours and get zero fish.”

  “That’s a lot of lying,” Big City notes.

  “You have no idea. Sometimes it gets so painful that we have to tell the truth,” Benji replies.

  He gets some beer from the campervan and offers one to Big City, who shakes his head.

  “Game tomorrow.”

  Benji nods, and if Big City didn’t know better he’d almost say he looks a bit envious.

  “Against Hed, right? You don’t know what that means here. That’s good. Play like it doesn’t mean a thing.”

  Big City runs the back of his hand over his stubble, he normally shaves every morning as part of a rigorous routine of habits and details that have shaped his entire life, but out here he doesn’t care. He turns toward Benji and asks, not in a patronizing way, just curious:

  “I heard that Hed chant ‘Beartown fags’ at games. Does that bother you?”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  Big City clears his throat.

  “I heard one of the guys on the team say something in the locker room.”

  Benji nods slowly.

  “Why would it bother me?”

  Big City searches for words deep inside himself. They come out hoarse and strained.

  “I just wondered what you do to cope with being… different.”

  Benji smokes in silence for so long that Big City is convinced he didn’t hear the question, but then he says:

  “Personally, I usually get high and knock people’s teeth out. But I’m sure there are other ways. Meditation, maybe? I’ve heard a lot of good things about meditation, but it’s fucking hard to smoke at the same time…”

  Big City smiles past the sarcasm.

  “Was it easier or harder to be yourself when you were traveling?”

  Benji sniggers.

  “It’s easier to be anything if no one knows who you are. And it’s easier to be from Beartown the farther away from here you are.”

  Big City leans back in his chair, he’d like to ask more but doesn’t dare, so he slowly lets the subject drop and admits:

  “You’re tricky people. But I have to admit that you can do sunsets. I’ve never seen sunsets like the ones here.”

  “That’s because you’ve never seen a sun that sets right after lunch before.”

  “True. Very true,” Big City laughs.

  Benji suddenly says, quietly but clearly:

  “You’re going to fit in here. Better than you think.”

  That means more to Big City than he lets on. He’s never fit in anywhere.

  “What else am I going to do? Keep going north until I find people even crazier than you lot?”

  “The only person north of us who’s even crazier is Santa.”

  They roar with laughter. Benji drinks his beer and smokes his weed, and Big City closes his eyes and listens to absolutely nothing.

  “How long is it since you played hockey?” he asks after a while.

  “Just over two years,” Benji replies.

  “What have you been doing instead?”

  “Traveling. Smoking. Dancing.”

  “Where?”

  “Asia, mostly.”

  “Why there in particular?”

  “Hardly anyone knows what hockey is there.”

  “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Big City’s voice is gentle but firm:

  “No one travels that far unless they’re looking for something.”

  Benji blows smoke through his nose.

  “If I’d found it I probably wouldn’t have bothered coming home. Have you found what you were looking for?”

  “Where?”

  “Here.”

  The confidence vanishes from Big City’s voice.

  “I don’t know what that would be, to be honest.”

  Benji opens another beer.

  “That’s the whole point of looking, isn’t it?”

  Big City says nothing for a long time. Then he whispers:

  “I… I’d like to pay rent for living in the campervan.”

  “Forget it. That would make me your landlord.”

  “What are you now?”

  Benji turns to look at him.

  “Your friend.”

  He recognizes the look of someone who has never had a friend. Big City has spent such a large part of his life lying that it hurts right now, and he accidentally blurts out the truth:

  “If I liked guys, I could really fucking fall for you. You know that, right?”

  Of course he knows. But Benji still grins, that damn smile that’s as much a bird’s as a bear’s. Then he says:

  “You’re already in love with me. You just haven’t realized it yet.”

  Big City laughs. Benji too. Their laughter sings across the forest, over the lake, all the way to the island.

  93 Scapegoats

  Tails is sitting in his office at the supermarket. He answers the phone before the first ring has died away.

  “I’ve solved your problem,” Richard Theo informs him curtly.

  “What… already? How…,” Tails begins, and when the politician explains he is left both impressed and slightly scared.

  The new sponsor of Hed Hockey is such a simple solution. Liberating for Tails, devastating for the local paper.

  “Those journalists won’t be a problem anymore. But the council still has to be convinced to keep both hockey clubs. So we’re going to need another favor from your friend Kira Andersson,” the politician goes on.

  “Kira? What do you want her to do?” Tails wonders with an ominous lump in his stomach.

  “What I’ve heard she’s best at: persuading people. You just need to persuade her first.”

  “About what?”

  “A torch-lit procession.”

  Tails is about to start asking stupid questions, but the politician has neither the time nor the patience, so for once he simply explains his plan. When he’s finished Tails exclaims:

  “That’s… smart. It could work. But if Kira does that in Beartown, presumably someone else has to do it in Hed?”

  “I’ve got a name and an address for you, write this down…,” the politician replies.

  “Okay, okay, what number house did you say?” Tails mutters as he makes a note on his arm with a pen.

  “And, as you might remember, I had one more condition for doing all this,” Theo points out when he’s finished.

  “What do you want?” Tails says anxiously.

  “A different investigation is going to be published in the paper before long, about a different sort of corruption, and every good story needs a few scapegoats.”

  Tails tries to swallow but his mouth is too dry.

  “Oh?”

  “I want to choose the scapegoats. And you’re going to help me.”

  * * *

  When Kira arrives at her office Tails is already sitting on the bench outside. His tie is loose, the top button of his shirt undone under his coat.

  “The newspaper is dropping the investigation into Peter and Beartown Hockey,” he says without any preamble.

  She just stares at him. His words make her feel dizzy. Can this possibly be true? She doesn’t know if she should jump for joy or throw herself down on the ground and make snow angels, and for a moment she even wants to hug him, but thankfully that passes very quickly.

  “Tails! Oh, Tailcoat, are you serious? We’re… I’m… what on earth did you do?” she gasps.

  “Called in a lot of favors. And offered a lot of favors in return,” Tails confesses, without any pride.

  Relieved, she plonks herself down beside him on the bench.

  “But are you sure that Peter’s… safe? That nothing’s going to happen to him now?”

  Tails nods.

  “Completely sure. But I need to ask you for a favor.”

  “Anything!”

  “Don’t say that until I’ve asked.”

  She squints at him.

  “Is it illegal?”

  He starts to laugh. A rattling, hearty laugh that starts somewhere deep in his stomach and rumbles across the whole parking lot.

  “No, no, no, but I don’t know if you wouldn’t rather it was something illegal when you hear what it is…”

  He tells her what he needs. What Richard Theo has asked from him. She blanches.

  “A torch-lit procession? That’s your grand plan to save both hockey clubs? A torch-lit procession?”

  Tails shakes his head slowly. He holds his index finger and middle finger up toward her.

  “Two. Not one torch-lit procession. Two.”

  Then he passes her a piece of paper.

  “Who’s this?”

  “Someone you have to persuade to be on our side if this is going to work.”

  * * *

  “You’re a hopelessly simple but horribly complicated person,” the psychologist once said to Kira. It was a quote from a book he had read, and was followed by a long explanation about some theory about the functions of the brain that he liked a lot, but Kira never heard any of that. She got stuck on those words: simply complicated. Complicatedly simple. Is there any other sort of person?

  After her meeting with Tails she drives straight home from the office. She sits opposite Peter with the whole kitchen table covered with their fingers reaching for one another. She tells him everything Tails said, and Peter takes the longest breath she has ever heard him take. They don’t realize until that moment how tired they are. How shattered. When they finally relax, their muscles start to ache, and as the stress eases tears well up behind their eyelids.

  Neither of them says anything, but they’re both thinking about Isak. How they learned to cry inwardly when he died. Silently, silently, silently they taught themselves to cry for years so their other children wouldn’t hear. They think about everything they fight so hard not to think about normally, when the very air itself hurts: how they wanted to lie down with their cheeks to the ground and whisper into the grass to him down there. How they wanted to throw themselves into his grave, go with him wherever he was going. He was so small, so very small, how could anyone leave someone so defenseless to journey alone into darkness? He wasn’t even big enough to be left on his own in the kitchen, but suddenly everyone expected them to leave him in the churchyard? Overnight? Who was he going to call out to if he had nightmares? Whose bed would he crawl into? Whose shoulder would he fall asleep lying on? They hated themselves so much, his parents, because they couldn’t die with him. Because they went on living.

  How much of everything they’ve done since then has just been their attempts to do something important, something big, something worth being late for? So that they could whisper “Mommy and Daddy just had to save the world” when they eventually saw him again in Heaven? Almost everything.

  Would he be proud of them now? Have they lived worthy lives? Have they been good enough people?

  They cry inwardly. Silently, silently. Then Peter gets up and washes his hands and turns the oven on and starts to make croissants. Kira kisses her husband and picks up her jacket and goes out to the car and drives to Hed.

  They’re simple, complicated people. “You always find something, somewhere, and then you fight for it to the death,” her colleague said to her. And that’s what Kira does now.

  94 Women

  Hannah is shoveling snow from the drive and clearing the yard. Johnny is at work, the children are at school, and their things are everywhere. It’s usually Johnny who goes around muttering as he tidies up, of course, he’s a natural pedant, but today she’s doing it herself. What you miss most when you have a family is the feeling of being bored. You’re never bored again. Recently Hannah heard some younger nurses at the hospital talking about a colleague who’d had an affair, and all she could think was: Who the hell has time for that? Don’t people ever sleep?

  She picks hockey pucks out of the flower beds and hangs lost gloves up to dry and gathers all the hockey sticks together and leans them up against the house. She sees the car out of the corner of her eye in the distance, it’s a bit more expensive than the ones people on this road drive, the sort you have to really think you’re something to believe you belong behind the wheel of. The woman driving stops and gets out, checks an address on a piece of paper and looks at the houses, then meets Hannah’s gaze across the low fence and suddenly looks uncertain.

  “Sorry… but are you Hannah?”

  Hannah is still holding a Hed Hockey stick in her hand as she approaches the boundary of the property. She knows who Kira Andersson is, but Kira doesn’t know that yet, so Hannah decides to act stupid.

  “Who’s asking?”

  Kira almost smiles. Even the women in Hed speak as if they’re ready to start fighting at any moment.

  “My name’s Kira. I’m married to Peter Andersson. I believe he and your husband crashed into each other at the ice rink yesterday, Peter split his eyebrow…”

  “It was an accident!” Hannah replies so sharply that Kira stops.

  “I know, I know! Sorry, I didn’t phrase that very well. I know it was an accident, That’s not why I’m here. Well, it IS why I’m here, but… it’s a long story. Can I… can I start again?”

  She smiles awkwardly, rubs her sweaty palms together. Hannah leans on her son’s hockey stick with an expression as if Kira were there to persuade her to change her religion.

  “By all means.”

  Kira takes several thoughtful breaths and makes a fresh attempt:

  “Okay. So, my husband and yours ran into each other yesterday… so, first of all I’d like to ask if your husband’s alright?”

  Hannah can’t help smiling.

  “Alright in the head? There was nothing right about his head to start with. How’s yours?”

  Kira returns Hannah’s tentative smile.

  “Peter? When he played hockey his coach used to say it was his thick head that protected his helmet, not the other way around. So I think he’ll be okay.”

  “Good. I’ve got some things to do, so if you’ll excuse me…,” Hannah says, clearing her throat.

  Kira nods understandingly and looks over at Ted’s hockey ramp.

  “Yes, yes, of course. I can see. How many kids have you got?”

  “Four. You’ve already met one of them,” Hannah says, slightly irritably, because she’s starting to think that Kira is making fun of her now.

  “I don’t understand…,” Kira manages to say.

  Hannah tilts her head to one side.

  “Why are you here? What do you want from me?”

  “I… sorry… maybe there’s some sort of misunderstanding. Which one of your children have I… met?”

  “My daughter. I found your business card in her jacket this morning.”

  Hannah regrets saying that, she doesn’t want to sound like the sort of mother who looks through her daughter’s pockets, but Kira doesn’t look like she’s judging her.

  “Tess? Is she your daughter? I didn’t know. I’m so sorry. She was just asking me about my work. I…”