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18

L oneliness is an invisible ailment. Since Holger left her, Ramona has become like the animals in the wildlife documentaries she watches on the nature channels on the nights when the sleeping pills don’t work. The ones who have been held in captivity for so long that you can remove all the barriers without them making any attempt to escape. Any living thing that is kept behind bars for long enough eventually becomes more scared of the unknown than its own captivity. At the start she only stayed indoors because she could still hear his laughter in here, his voice, and the way he used to swear when he stubbed his toe on the low step behind the bar. A whole life together in this building, and he still couldn’t figure out where that damn step was. But isolating yourself happens faster than you might think: the days blur together when you live more on the inside than outside, and the years continued to pass by on the other side of the street while she desperately tried to make everything inside the Bearskin and the apartment above it carry on exactly as it was when he died. She was frightened she would forget him if she went out into the world, that she might go to the supermarket and come home to find that his laughter was no longer there. Then suddenly one morning, eleven years had passed and everyone but her boys thinks she’s lost her mind now. She became a time traveller trapped inside her own machine.

People sometimes say that sorrow is mental but longing is physical. One is a wound, the other an amputated limb, a withered petal compared to a snapped stem. Anything that grows closely enough to what it loves will eventually share the same roots. We can talk about loss, we can treat it and give it time, but biology still forces us to live according to certain rules: plants that are split down the middle don’t heal, they die.

She is standing in the snow just outside the door, smoking. Three in a row. The roof of the rink is visible from here, the roar when the Beartown juniors make it 1–0 sounds like it’s going to blow every building along the main street apart, as if it’s going to pick the whole forest up and dump it in the lake. Ramona tries to take a step toward the street, just one step nearer the pavement. Her whole body is shaking uncontrollably as she fumbles for the wall behind her, sweat drenching her clothes in spite of the sub-zero temperature. She goes back into the warmth, closes the door, switches the lights off, and lies down on the floor in the bar with Holger’s photograph in her hands. Right next to the step.

People say she’s gone mad, because that’s what people who know nothing about loneliness call it.

***

Amat is terrified, even though he hasn’t played for a second. When he followed Kevin and the rest of the team out onto the ice, when the crowd stood up and the roar made his ears pop, he headed straight for the bench absolutely convinced he was about to throw up. One day he’ll look back on that moment and realize that the feeling never disappears. No matter how successful you become.

Kevin scores the first goal in the opening minute of the game. That’s no coincidence; in every game he seems to get a short window before the defense realizes just how good he is, exactly how fluid his wrist action, how swiftly he can skate around them. He does that with laser-like precision. They won’t make that mistake again; for the rest of the game they shut him down by shadowing him so closely they may as well be sharing the same pair of skates. The opposition turns the game around to 2–1. They deserve it, they’re astonishingly good, powerfully and methodically mounting attack after attack until Amat ends up surprised that they’re only leading by one goal every time he looks up at the scoreboard. They’re the strongest and most technically proficient team he’s seen; he’s pretty sure they could have beaten Beartown’s A-team. And everyone can see it. With every line change, the players around Amat slump more heavily on the bench, their sticks pound the boards less often and less aggressively, and even Lars is swearing more quietly. In the second intermission, on his way to the locker room, Amat hears some adults in the stands laugh forlornly: “Well, a semifinal’s nothing to be ashamed of. We’ll just have to hope for a better team next season.” He’s surprised at how angry that makes him. It rouses something inside him. By the time he enters the room he’s ready to smash something. David is the only person who notices.

***

Robbie Holts is standing alone in the street, hating himself. He wouldn’t have gone outside voluntarily today unless he’d run out of drink at home again. He looks at the roof of the rink, estimates in his head where they ought to be in the game now. It’s a peculiar sort of angst, the one he lives with, knowing that you had the greatest moment in your life at the age of seventeen. While he was growing up everyone kept telling him he was going to turn professional, and he believed them so intensely that when he didn’t make it, he took it to mean that everyone else had let him down, as if somehow it wasn’t his own fault. He wakes up in the mornings with the feeling that someone has stolen a better life from him, an unbearable phantom pain between what he should have been and what he actually became. Bitterness can be corrosive; it can rewrite your memories as if it were scrubbing a crime scene clean, until in the end you only remember what suits you of its causes.

Robbie walks down the steps to the Bearskin but stops himself in surprise. The lights are off inside. Ramona is downing one last glass of whisky and yanking on her outside clothes.

“Good that you came,” she whispers.

“Why? Are you going somewhere?” he wonders, confused, because he knows as well as everyone else that the crazy old bag hasn’t been farther than a couple of paces from the pub in over a decade.

“I’m going to a hockey match,” she says.

Robbie starts to laugh, because there’s no other option.

“And you want me to mind the bar for you?”

“I want you to come with me.”

He stops laughing then. She has to promise to wipe out his tab for the last four months to get him to take a single step outside the door.

***

Tails is standing up even though he’s paid for a seat. No one in the row behind can be bothered to complain anymore.

“That fucking William Lyt, Christ, there are people in witness protection programs who are easier to find on the ice than that bastard!” he snarls to the other sponsors.

“I beg your pardon?” Maggan Lyt exclaims from two rows below.

“I said WITNESS PROTECTION PROGRAM, Maggan!” Tails repeats.

And everyone sitting between them wishes they could apply to join it.

***

Bobo is still sitting in complete silence on the bench when the third period begins, and he can count the number of minutes he’s played on one hand. He doesn’t know how you can be part of a team when you’re not part of the game. He’s trying to control himself, but he loves this team, he loves his jersey and his number. So when he sees something he can’t believe everyone else can’t see as well, he grabs hold of William Lyt on the bench and shouts:

“Their backs want you to try to cut inside them, can’t you see that? They want it to be so crowded in the center that Kevin doesn’t have any space. Pretend you’re heading in and then dart outside just once, and I promise you...”

William clamps his glove over Bobo’s mouth.

“Shut up, Bobo! Who do you think you are? You’re in the third defensive pair, you don’t tell the first line what to do. Go and get me my water bottle!”

The look in his eyes is so cold and patronizing that Bobo can hardly hear the mocking laughter from the other players. The most painful fall for anyone is tumbling down through a hierarchy. Bobo has known Lyt all his life, and the way his friend is looking at him now leaves marks, and gives rise to the sort of corrosive bitterness that never leaves some men, that can wake you in the middle of the night and make you think someone has stolen the life you should have had. Bobo goes and gets the water bottle; Lyt takes it without a word. Bobo is the largest player on the team, but when he sits down he is the smallest player on the bench.

***

Ramona stops outside the rink. Stands in the snow shaking, and whispers:

“I’m... sorry, Robert, I can’t... I can’t... No farther than this.”

Robbie is holding her hand. She’s not supposed to be living this way. Holger ought to have been sitting in there, this should have been their moment. He puts his arm around her as only someone else who has been the victim of theft can.

“Let’s go back home, Ramona. It doesn’t matter.”

She shakes her head, fixes her eyes on him.

“The deal is that I wipe your tab if you go to the game, Robert. I want to know what happened immediately afterward. I’ll be standing here waiting.”

Robbie is many things. But brave enough to argue with Ramona isn’t one of them.

***

There’s a distinct moment in a player’s life when they find out exactly how good they are. William Lyt’s comes halfway through the third period. He’s never been quick enough for this level, but now it also becomes clear that he doesn’t have the stamina either. He can’t keep up, he hasn’t got the energy, their opponents can direct him without going anywhere near him. Kevin has two men marking him, four arms across his chest the whole time. Benji is a tornado, flying across the whole of the rink, but Beartown needs more space. Lyt gives all he has. It isn’t enough.

David has built his whole philosophy, this team’s entire unbelievable season, on not trusting to fate. They never just hope for the best. They don’t just dump the puck forward and go for it, they have a plan, a strategy, a purpose with each pattern, each movement. But as Sune, the old bastard, keeps saying, “The puck doesn’t just glide, it bounces as well.” It’s unpredictable.

Lyt is heading for the bench when he gets tripped. He falls to the ice and sees the puck bounce over the blade of one of their opponents and nudges it forward out of reflex. It jumps over another three sticks, Kevin reaches for it but is brought down by a big hit. There’s no way for anyone to get around the falling bodies, but as luck would have it, Benjamin Ovich isn’t a go-around person. He’s a go-through person. When the puck flies into the goal, Benji isn’t far behind it, and the crossbar hits him across the neck. You couldn’t have gotten him to admit that it hurt even if it had been a medieval broadsword.

***

2–2. Maggan Lyt is already down banging on the door to the scorekeeper’s cubicle, to make sure that William is credited with the assist.

***

David nods silently to himself and taps Amat’s helmet. Lars’s pupils widen in pure disbelief when he realizes what’s going on.

“For God’s sake, David, you can’t be serious.”

David is as serious as a stray bullet.

“Lyt is one change away from needing oxygen, and two from needing a priest. We need pace.”

“Lyt just made an assist!”

“He was lucky. We don’t play on luck. AMAT!”

Amat just stares at the coach. David grabs hold of his helmet:

“At the next face-off in our zone I want you to take off. I don’t give a shit if you’ve got the puck or not, I just want them to know how fast you are.”

He points toward their opponents’ bench. Amat nods hesitantly. David doesn’t break eye contact.

“Do you want to be something, Amat? Do you really want to show this whole town that you can be something? Now’s your chance to show them.”

At the next defensive face-off Benji lines up on one side of Kevin, Amat on the other. Maggan Lyt is now standing with both hands against the glass of the team bench, shrieking that NO ONE pulls her son from a semifinal and goes unpunished. Lars looks at David.

“If we lose this game she’s going to castrate you.”

David leans nonchalantly against the boards.

“Winners have a tendency to be forgiven in this town.”

***

Out on the ice, Benji does as he’s been instructed—he gets the puck and fires it out of the zone, and it glides toward the opposing team’s end. Amat does as he’s been instructed: he takes off. He gets hacked by one of the backs as he’s only just starting to skate away, and by the time he pulls free there’s no point chasing the puck. He goes after it anyway. A gasp runs through the spectators who understand hockey. A deep sigh passes through the ones who don’t. The opponent’s goalie calmly skates out and plays the puck to his defense, who move it up the ice, where their forwards fire a shot at Beartown’s goal. When the referee blows for another face-off back in Beartown’s end, Amat is standing alone in the opposing team’s zone two hundred feet away. The other sponsors are muttering, “Does that one need a compass, or what?” But Tails can see what David sees. What Sune saw.

“Quick as a wolverine with mustard up its ass! They won’t catch him!” he smiles.

David leans over the boards and catches Amat by the shoulder when he’s on his way back.

“Again!”

Amat nods. Kevin wins the face-off, but Benji doesn’t even manage to get the puck out of the zone, but Amat sets off at full speed toward the opponents’ goal anyway, and doesn’t stop until he reaches the boards at the far end. He can hear booing and mocking laughter from the stands: “Are you lost? The puck isn’t anywhere near you!” but he just looks at David. The Beartown goalie smothers the puck, another face-off. David makes a brief circular gesture in the air. “Again.”

The third time Amat races across the ice it doesn’t matter where the puck is, because there’s one person in the rink who sees his pace and realizes what’s going on. The coach of the opposing team snatches a sheaf of papers from his assistant and roars:

“Who the hell is that? Who the hell is number eighty-one?”

Amat looks up at the stands. Maya is on the steps just below the cafeteria; she sees him. He’s been longing for that since the first day in primary school, and now she sees him. He loses his concentration so much that he doesn’t hear Bobo yelling his name until he’s right next to the bench.

“AMAT!”

Bobo is hanging over the boards, and grabs him by the collar:

“Fake inside, skate outside!”

For half a second they look each other right in the eye and Bobo doesn’t need to say anything to prove how much he would have liked to be on the ice himself. Amat nods in acknowledgment, and they tap each other’s helmets. Maya is still standing on the stairs. At the next face-off Kevin and Benji circle the zone, stop in front of Amat, and lean toward him.

“Have you got any strength left in those little chicken-legs, then?” Kevin grins.

“Give me the puck and you’ll see,” Amat replies with bloodshot eyes.

Kevin wouldn’t have lost that face-off even if his hands had been tied behind his back and he had a pistol held to his head. Benji shovels the puck along the boards and chases after it. Tomorrow his thighs won’t even let him get out of bed but he feels nothing now, and knocks down two opponents with one hit. Amat feints inside but chips the puck off the boards instead, then blasts past the defenseman on the outside, so quickly that one of the two players covering Kevin has to let go of number nine and chase number eighty-one instead. That’s all Beartown needs. A stick hits Amat’s lower arm so hard that he thinks his wrist is broken, but he manages to pull the puck from the boards and skate around the net. He has one breath in which to look up, wait until the blade of Kevin’s stick hits the ice, then release the puck at the same instant he’s knocked to the ice. Kevin gets the puck two inches off the ice, and that’s twice as much as he needs.

***

When the red light goes on behind the net, adults tumble over each other in the stands. The sponsors send each others’ cups of coffee flying across the rows of seats as they try to do high fives. Two fifteen-year-old girls bounce around a cafeteria in delight, and up at the back of the stand an old A-team coach who never laughs does so today. Fatima and Kira hug each other until they’re lying on the floor and aren’t really sure if they’re celebrating or crying.

Outside the rink, alone in the snow, Ramona stands and feels the sound wave hit her. “I love you,” she whispers to Holger. Then she turns and walks home on her own with a smile in her chest. It is a moment shared between people and hockey, between a town whose inhabitants want to believe and a world that has spent years telling them to give up. There isn’t a single atheist in the whole building.

***

Kevin turns and heads straight for the bench, swatting away every teammate who tries to hug him, climbs over the boards, and throws himself in David’s arms.

“For you!” the boy whispers, and David holds him like he was his own son.

Twenty yards away Amat crawls to his feet from the ice. He might as well be in a different rink altogether seeing as no one is looking at him anyway. A moment after his pass, the defenseman’s stick and elbow hit him in the neck with all his weight behind them, Amat’s head hit the ice as if he’d been knocked into an empty swimming pool, and he didn’t even see the goal. By the time he gets to his knees every Beartown player is following Kevin toward the bench, everyone in the stands is watching number nine. Even Maya.

Number eighty-one—the number he chose because his mother was born that year—stands alone by the boards and looks at the scoreboard. It is simultaneously the best and worst moment he has experienced in this rink. He adjusts his helmet and skates toward the bench in a few lonely strides, but someone swings around behind him and taps him twice on the helmet.

“She’ll notice you when we win the final,” Benji smiles.

He’s already skated off and is standing by the center line before Amat has time to reply. Lyt is on his way over the boards but David stops him and calls to Amat to stay on the ice. As Kevin skates out to take the face-off at center ice, they nod briefly to each other, number nine and number eighty-one. Amat is one of them now. It doesn’t matter how many people up in the stands actually realize that.

***

Peter loses his bearings after the final whistle; one moment he’s bellowing in an embrace, the next he’s tumbling headfirst down an entire section of the stands, and gets to his feet with his ears ringing from all the people shrieking in and around them. Old people, young people, people who love this game, and people who don’t even care. He has no idea how it happened, but all of a sudden he finds himself in the middle of a wild, singing embrace with a stranger, and when he looks up he realizes that the man he’s dancing with on the steps is Robbie Holts. They stop and look at each other, then start laughing and can’t stop. For this one evening they’re seventeen years old again.

***

Hockey is just a silly little game. We devote year after year after year to it without ever really hoping to get anything in return. We burn and bleed and cry, fully aware that the most the sport can give us, in the very best scenario, is incomprehensibly meager and worthless: just a few isolated moments of transcendence. That’s all.

But what the hell else is life made of?