Page 31

31

W hat makes someone a leader?

***

Maya undergoes all the obligatory examinations at the hospital. Answers all the questions. Doesn’t cry, doesn’t complain, doesn’t argue, is helpful, accommodating. Kira, on the other hand, is so beside herself that at times she can’t even be in the same room. Her phone rings nonstop. She has activated her whole legal practice now, and her daughter is lying on a cold bed in a bare room and knows that she’s started a war. Her mother needs to take command, charge the enemy, act—she won’t be able to cope otherwise. So Maya gets her own phone and sends Ana a text message, saying: “War now.” A few seconds later the reply arrives: “You and me against the world!”

***

David has seen hundreds of leaders during the course of his career in hockey. Formal ones and natural ones, those who shout, and those who keep quiet. He didn’t know he could be one himself until Sune sent him out onto the ice with a whistle and a gang of seven-year-olds. “I’m not a good coach,” David said, and Sune ruffled his hair and replied: “People who think they’re good coaches never are.” The old bastard was both right and wrong.

After the police car drove off with Kevin, it took an hour for David to get all the players back on board the bus, and to get all the parents to realize that nothing was going to get better as a result of them standing there shouting. Now they’ve been driving for three hours and the bus is still vibrating with cell phones, rocking as the juniors rush up and down reading each others’ screens. So far no one in Beartown seems to know why Kevin was taken away—the police are refusing to give any information—so the rumor mill rolls on between the seats with greater and greater intensity. Even the adults are involved; Lars is so agitated that he’s salivating.

David, on the other hand, sits alone and silent at the front, staring at the text on his own phone. It’s from Kevin’s dad. He’s just found out what his son is accused of. One of the first things you learn as a leader, whether you choose the position or have it forced upon you, is that leadership is as much about what you don’t say as what you do say.

***

A mother is sitting beside a bed, holding her daughter’s hands tightly in hers, all four of them shaking. The daughter leans her forehead against her mother’s.

“We’re going to survive this, Mom.”

“Darling child, you’re not supposed to be consoling me, I’m the one who ought to be consoling you.”

“You are, Mom. You are.”

Kira’s phone rings again. Maya realizes it’s the law firm. She nods to her mother and strokes her cheek, and her mother kisses her and whispers:

“I’ll be just outside in the hallway. I’m not leaving you.”

All four hands are still shaking.

***

For ten years David has nurtured these players for this precise moment. He has gotten them to sacrifice everything, burn themselves out; he has taught them to stand tall under pressure even when their shoulders and necks are howling with pain. What’s that worth if they don’t win the final now? What is a game if you don’t want to be the best at it?

David’s strongest belief about hockey has always been that the world outside the rink mustn’t encroach upon the world inside it. They need to be separate universes. Outside, real life is complicated and frightening and hard, but inside the rink it is straightforward and comprehensible. If David hadn’t kept the worlds so clearly divided, these guys, with all the shit they’ve had to deal with out in the real world, would have been broken even as little kids. But the rink was their refuge. Their one happy place. No one could take that from them: the fact that they were winners there.

That doesn’t just apply to the boys. David himself has often felt odd and out of place, but never on ice. It’s the last place where the collective functions, where the team takes precedence over the self. So how far are you allowed to go to protect your universe? How much of leadership is what you say, and how much is what you don’t say?

***

The nurse is well aware of who Maya is, but she tries not to let it show. The nurse’s husband, Hog, is one of Peter’s best friends, and played hockey with him half his life. But just now, when she came along the corridor, it was as if Peter and Kira didn’t even recognize her. They spoke to her as if through glass, but she didn’t take offense. She’s seen it before; it’s caused by trauma, and means that they only register her uniform when they talk to her, not her face. The nurse is used to being seen as a function to the point where patients and relatives forget that she’s a person. It doesn’t bother her. In fact, if anything, it actually makes her take greater pride in her work.

When she’s alone in the room with Maya, she leans forward and says:

“I know this is really unpleasant. We’re trying to do everything as quickly as we can.”

The girl looks her in the eye and nods, biting hard on the inside of her lip. The nurse is usually very careful to maintain a professional distance; that’s what she teaches her younger colleagues. “There’ll be people here that you know, but you need to treat them as patients. It’s a question of leadership,” she usually says. But the words catch in her throat now.

“My name is Ann-Katrin. My husband is an old friend of your dad’s.”

“Maya,” Maya whispers.

Ann-Katrin puts her hand tenderly against the child’s cheek.

“I think you’re very brave, Maya.”

***

Peter drives back to Hed from Beartown. He walks into the hospital ready to announce triumphantly to Maya that Kevin has been picked up by the police. That she’s going to get justice. Then he walks into the room and sees her. Nothing in the world is as small as your own child in a hospital bed. There’s no justice to be had. He sits beside his daughter and cries, because he isn’t the sort of person who can kill someone. In the end he asks:

“What can I do, Maya? Tell me what I can do...”

His daughter pats her dad’s stubble.

“Love me.”

“Always.”

“Love me like you love hockey and David Bowie?”

“So much more, Pumpkin, much, much more.”

And she laughs. It’s funny that a ten-year-old nickname, “Pumpkin,” is the thing that does that. When she was nine she made him stop calling her that, but ever since then she’s missed it, the whole time.

“I need two things,” she whispers.

“Let me guess: Ana and your guitar?” he says.

She nods. Kira comes back into the room. The parents’ hands touch fleetingly. When Peter reaches the door, his daughter calls out:

“And you need to talk to Leo, Dad. He’s going to be petrified.”

The mom and dad look at each other. How many years will the stab in their chests feel like a heart attack when they think of this moment? Of all people, the only one who hasn’t forgotten Leo today is his big sister.

***

Ann-Katrin is sitting in the staffroom staring at the wall. Like everyone else, she’s heard that the police have picked Kevin up, but she’s one of the few who knows why Maya is at the hospital, who makes the connection. Maya didn’t recognize Ann-Katrin. Nor, if he’d been there, would Kevin, even though she’s been sitting in the crowd watching almost every match he’s played since little league. Some parents remain faceless to other children.

She sends her son a text: “Good luck today.” Bobo replies almost immediately: “Kev?? Heard anything??” His mother writes back: “No. Nothing. Try to concentrate on hockey now, darling!” It takes a few minutes before he replies: “Going to win for Kev!!” She swallows hard and writes: “I love you.” Bobo replies like teenage boys do: “OK.”

Ann-Katrin leans back in a hard chair, looks up at the ceiling of the staffroom, and thinks about all the children who are in such pain. You see a lot of it at this hospital. That’s why so many of her colleagues are on sick leave. Nurses and doctors have no break for summer training like in hockey, no finals, no time-outs. Their season just goes on, day after day after day, and that can break even the very toughest. Even people from Beartown.

***

And when even the toughest can’t handle it: Who’s going to be the leader then?

***

David starts to get up, clearing his throat to attract the boys’ attention, then stops when he sees that they’ve already begun to sit down. Not because of David, but Benji. The boy is standing in the middle of the bus, and looks each of them straight in the eye in turn, before finishing up in front of Filip, a soft-spoken boy who’s a year younger than most of the team, and who lives three houses away from Kevin in the Heights.

“When we were little, Filip, and you were upset because you were smallest and worst on the team; when you couldn’t even shoot above the yellow strip at the bottom of the boards, what did David say to you then?”

Filip looks down at his lap, embarrassed, but Benji puts his palm under his chin and tips his head back. Filip wasn’t just a year younger, he was also far behind players like Bobo in purely physical terms for so many years that no one even noticed how good he was at everything else. He’s the type of guy who disappears in a locker room, never says anything, never causes problems, just goes along with things. In the past three years he has, in his usual unassuming way, become by far the best back on the team without anyone really noticing it happening.

“Ignore everything else, just concentrate on the things you can change,” Filip replies quietly.

Benji nods and pats him on the head. Then he turns to William Lyt.

“And what did David say to you, Lyt, when all the others learned to skate backward before you, and you didn’t think you’d be allowed to carry on playing?”

Lyt blinks hard and wipes his cheeks angrily.

“Concentrate on the things you can change.”

Benji takes hold of Lyt by the shoulders and looks into his eyes as he quotes their coach again:

“We’re a team. We give each other power. When one man falls, another steps up.”

Lyt rubs his eyes with his sleeve and goes on:

“Team before self. Club before individual.”

When no one else can hear, Benji whispers to him:

“We’re relying on you now, Lyt, you’re our star today. You have to lead us.”

If Benji had asked Lyt to kill someone at that moment, the boy would have done it without hesitation. No social scientist nor any member of a sports team really knows what makes them who they are, the leaders we follow. Only that we don’t hesitate when we see them.

Benji stops in front of Bobo, the giant who was the best back on the team until all the others learned to skate better than him.

“What’s the second-best thing in the world, Bobo?”

It takes a moment before Bobo replies hesitantly:

“Fucking?”

Some of the juniors giggle. Benji lowers his head to Bobo’s big face.

“But first we’re on our way to do the best thing in the world, Bobo. And do you know how many things I want from you right now?”

Bobo stands up. “Just one, eh?”

“Win,” Benji says.

“Win!” Bobo shouts.

“WIN!” the whole bus roars.

***

David sits down in his seat. “WIN! WIN! WIN!” the team is chanting, and David deletes the text from Kevin’s father. When Lars comes over and asks if he’s heard anything about why Kevin was taken away by the police, David shakes his head and replies:

“No. Nothing. Now we’re going to concentrate on the things we can change, Lars.”

***

Benji goes and lies down at the back of the bus. Sleeps the rest of the way.