Teemu spits on the ground. “Your suit cost a month’s wages for a normal person.”
Theo considers this. “You’re not a bad man, Teemu. You take care of your friends, your family, and you want a better life for your brother. Don’t you?”
Teemu doesn’t even blink. “Get to the point.”
“The thing is, I have no illusions about what society is, and neither do you. We belong to different groups, we’re different people, but we look after our interests the same way.”
“You don’t know anything about me,” Teemu says.
The politician ventures a smile at this. “Perhaps not. But I watched a lot of horror films when I was younger, so I know that the monster is always at its worst right before you set eyes on it. Our imaginations are always much more terrifying than we’re actually aware of. I think you’ve constructed this Pack of yours the same way. There probably aren’t as many of you as people think. You let people’s imaginations make you more terrible than you actually are.”
Teemu’s eyebrows sink. The only movement he allows himself. “There is no pack.”
The politician says confidently, “No, of course not. But everyone needs friends, Teemu. Because friends help one another.”
“With what?”
Richard Theo replies softly, “Your standing area in the rink.”
* * *
Leo is walking through Beartown without really knowing where he’s going. The swelling and bruises from the assault in the tunnel are slowing him down, but he needs to move about, needs to get out into the night air and prove to himself that he’s not afraid.
At first he walks toward the Heights, toward William Lyt’s house, like a child who’s burned himself on a stove but can’t help touching it again. But all the houses there are silent and dark, so Leo heads toward the town center instead. There are men standing outside the Bearskin smoking. Two of them are Woody and Spider. Leo stands in the shadows and mimics their body language, lights a cigarette of his own and tries to smoke it the way they do. Perhaps the twelve-year-old hopes that if he can look like them, he can become like them, too: the sort of person no one messes with.
* * *
Richard Theo shows no sign of smugness when he says “standing area.” Even though that gets Teemu’s full attention in an instant.
“What about the standing area?” Teemu asks, as if he didn’t already know.
Richard Theo takes his time replying. “There are rumors that the new sponsors want it demolished.”
Teemu’s mask cracks, and the hatred shines through. “If Peter Andersson so much as touches our stand, he’ll—”
He stops himself abruptly. The politician repeats in a conciliatory tone, “Like I said: I want to be your friend.”
“Why?”
The politician gets straight to the point at last: “Because this spring the membership of Beartown Ice Hockey voted on whether to let Peter Andersson continue as general manager, and you saw to it that he won. I’m a politician. I understand the value of a man who can get other people to vote the way he wants.”
Teemu peers at him skeptically. “So you’re going to persuade Peter not to touch the stand?”
The politician’s lie comes effortlessly. “No. Peter refuses to listen to politicians. He refuses to listen to anyone. He wants to control the club single-handedly. But I can talk to the new sponsors. They’re reasonable people, and they’ll appreciate the value of a . . . group of ardent fans. Isn’t that what you are?”
Teemu chews the inside of his cheek thoughtfully. “What happens to Peter?”
“I don’t know anything about hockey, but general managers get fired from time to time, don’t they? The wind can change direction quickly.”
“You’d better hope the wind never changes direction against my brother,” Teemu snarls.
Richard Theo bows politely. “I can give you what you want. Your stand, your club, and a Beartown team containing guys from Beartown. Can we be friends?”
Teemu nods slowly. The politician gets into his car.
“Then I won’t detain you any longer, Teemu, because I believe you have business in Hed this evening.”
Teemu’s eyelids twitch. Richard Theo enjoys the moment. If you want something from a person, you need to understand what motivates him, and Teemu is a protector. As a child he fought grown men in his kitchen to protect his mother, as a teenager he founded the Pack to protect his younger brother, but that’s not all. It’s easy to believe that he doesn’t even like sports, that it’s just an excuse for the violence and a pretext for criminal behavior. But if you look into his eyes when he talks about Beartown Ice Hockey, you’ll see that this town is his home. That standing area in the arena is the only place where he isn’t worried, isn’t weighed down by a feeling of responsibility for everyone around him. Hockey is his fantasy world, just as it is for the general managers and coaches and players. And people like Teemu will always protect their happiest places with their most dangerous weapons. So he snaps, “What are you talking about? Why would I have business in Hed?”
Richard Theo smiles. “I thought you’d already seen the video clip?”
* * *
At that moment Teemu’s phone vibrates in his pocket as a text message arrives. Then another. Then another.
* * *
Leo is still standing in the shadows on the other side of the street when the men outside the Bearskin get so many text messages in succession that their phones sound like pinball machines. They’re all looking at the same video. Leo can’t see what it is but can hear them talking about it: “Those cocksuckers in Hed deserve to die!” Another one looks at his own phone and replies in a harsh voice, “Teemu’s just texted me. He’s seen the video. He wants us to fetch the guys.” It doesn’t take Leo a minute to find the clip on his own phone; everyone in his school has started to circulate it, and Leo figures out what’s going to happen now. He runs straight into the forest. If he hurries, he might actually get to Hed before the Pack does.
* * *
There’s going to be a fight.
* * *
Teemu Rinnius walks to the kennels in the darkness. Adri sees him through the window; he hasn’t got any bottles with him, and he’s alone.
“Is your brother here?” Teemu asks.
Adri recognizes the look in his eye. “He’s up on the roof,” she says.
Teemu smiles delightedly. “I was thinking of buying him a beer. Do you want to come?”
Adri shakes her head slowly. “If he gets hurt, I’ll kill you.”
Teemu pretends not to understand. “Hurt? From drinking beer?”
Adri raises her hand and reaches for his chin. “You heard me.”
Teemu smiles. Adri goes into the house. She knows what’s going to happen tonight. She wishes Benji wasn’t going to be involved in the fight, but sooner that than him lying on his back in the forest whispering about “mistakes.” She checks that the key to the gun cabinet is under her pillow. Then she goes to bed.
Benji is sitting on the roof of the outhouse smoking beneath the stars. Teemu climbs up the ladder and peers over the edge. “Do you want a beer, Ovich?”
There’s something about the way he says it, a hint of stifled laughter.
“What? Now?” Benji asks, immediately more sober.
Teemu holds up his phone and plays the clip that’s gone viral online. “Someone’s burning a Beartown jersey in the square in Hed.”
“Why should I be bothered?” Benji wonders.
Teemu has already started to climb back down when he replies, he’s so confident that Benji will climb down after him, “It’s my bear on the front of the jersey, Ovich. And it’s your name on the back.”
His voice isn’t angry. More playful. If anyone had seen Benji climb down from the roof, they’d have understood why: Teemu understands him, they’re the same sort.
Benji smiles. “What do you have in mind?”
“I was thinking of buying you a beer. I’ve heard they have go
od beer in Hed.”
27
Hatred and Chaos
Teemu and Benji walk past the town sign, calmly and sensibly, in no hurry. They stop in the main square in Hed. The remains of the burned jersey are lying on the ground. It’s dark, but they don’t need any light to know that there are eyes watching them from all the windows. The two walk up and down the main street in Hed, each clutching a beer bottle. Bare-chested, their bear tattoos shining like beacons in the night. They wait until they’re sure phone calls have been made, bodies roused, metal pipes tossed into the back of cars. Then the two walk calmly out of Hed again, a couple of hundred feet into the forest, until they reach a clearing. There, six men in black jackets are waiting. A quarter of an hour later, twice as many men show up from Hed. That doesn’t matter, because not all twenty from Hed can fight, and Teemu has only men who can. He’s brought Spider and Woody and all his best guys.
* * *
Above all, he’s brought Benji.
* * *
A fight in a dark forest isn’t organized or choreographed. Nothing but hatred and chaos. It’s no place for practiced footwork and elegant moves; just stay on your feet, survive, and make sure that as many of them as possible end up on the ground before you do. Never retreat, keep moving forward, there are no rules and no white flags. You might kill someone without meaning to, you might land one too many kicks or hit them somewhere you shouldn’t. You knew what you were letting yourself in for when you came, and so did they. It’s a terrifying experience for everyone; if you’re not afraid, then you’ve never fought against an equal before. You have to dig deep within yourself and find something there, something terrible, something out of control. Your truest self.
Violence is the easiest and the hardest thing in the world to understand. Some of us are prepared to use it to get power, others only in self-defense, some all the time, others not at all. But then there’s another type, unlike all the others, who seems to fight entirely without purpose. Ask anyone who has looked into a pair of those eyes when they turn dark, and you’ll realize that we belong to different species. No one can really know if those people lack something that other people possess or if it’s the other way around. If something goes out inside them when they clench their fists or if something switches on.
Almost all fights are won or lost long before they start; the brain needs to be working, the heart needs to be pounding before your hands can do the same. And you will be scared—if not just of being hit, then of being vanquished; if not of being injured, then of injuring someone else. That’s why adrenaline appears, the body’s biological defense: claws out, horns lowered, hooves raised, canine teeth bared.
The first blow? That doesn’t decide anything, doesn’t say anything about you. The rest, on the other hand, reveal everything. Anyone can throw one punch out of anger or fear or out of pure instinct. But punching an adult’s jaw as hard as you can is like slamming your fist into a brick wall, and when you hear the crunch of bone giving way beneath your fingers, something happens. When the enemy slumps, stumbles backward, and you see the fear in his eyes. Perhaps he even raises a trembling hand to plead for mercy . . . What do you do then? Do you punch again? In the same place, even harder? That makes you a different sort of person. Because most people can’t do that.
* * *
No one who has seen you throw that second punch will ever fight with you again.
* * *
Teemu and Benji go first, side by side. Bodies crouch low around them. The first man who rushes at Benji seems to have picked him out, but it’s a bad decision; the man is taller and larger and heavier, but none of that matters here. Once Benji has landed his first punch, he holds the man up with his other hand so he can punch him again in exactly the same place even harder.
Benji feels nothing when he lets go and the man’s head hits the ground with a dull thud, like a child dropping a cinnamon bun on a beach. Benji used to really feel it, the adrenaline, the rush, sometimes even a sort of joy. But something’s broken; he’s passed some sort of boundary.
He stops midmovement. He has time to think a thought, and you’re not supposed to do that. Not in the forest, not in the darkness, not when they’re armed. Someone creeps up on him from behind with a metal pipe, swings it at his knees, and Benji realizes too late that the men from Hed might lose a fight tonight, but they’re going to win a hockey game.
* * *
We don’t know people until we know their greatest fears. Benji hears the scream, how loud it is; he hears the scream before he feels the pain. He waits for his body to give way, for his knee to buckle under the impact of the pipe. He has time to wonder if he isn’t only going to lose out on the game against Hed but on an entire career. After spending his whole life on the ice without serious injury, his knee will never be completely whole again, no chance, and he has time to think that the weirdest thing is that he isn’t afraid. He isn’t distraught. He doesn’t care. How many years of training, how many hours? He doesn’t give a damn about the game. He stands still, breathless at the realization of how little it means. But he’s still standing. It takes him several seconds to realize that he’s uninjured. That the pipe missed him.
From the corner of his eye he sees a boy, no more than twelve years old, swinging something wildly and indiscriminately around him in terror. The man who was swinging the pipe at Benji falls to the ground. It was his scream Benji heard, not his own. The boy is holding a thick branch. Tears are running down his cheeks.
Benji recognizes him. Leo Andersson, Maya Andersson’s younger brother. Someone lands a glancing blow on the boy’s eye. He stumbles backward, and Benji finds himself thinking that that isn’t okay. He doesn’t turn around and fight; instead he grabs the boy by the arm and runs. Up the slope, into the forest, away through the trees. He can hear the cries behind him, he knows the men from Hed will spread the story of how Benji Ovich ran from a fight. Coward. He doesn’t care. Leo struggles against him for the first few steps, but soon he, too, is running, out into the darkness.
* * *
Leo gets to know Benji that night. Gets to know his fears. Benji isn’t afraid of fighting, he’s not afraid of getting beaten up, not even afraid of dying. But he’s terrified of this: turning around and seeing a twelve-year-old get hurt and feeling responsible. Anyone who feels responsibility isn’t free.
* * *
They run all the way back to Beartown. Leo, gasping for breath, doesn’t stop until Benji does. The twelve-year-old’s foot is hurting, and he wonders if he’s got a stone in his shoe, then looks down and realizes that his shoe isn’t there. He must have lost it during the fight and has run the whole way without noticing thanks to the adrenaline. His toes are bleeding.
“My name is Leo, and—”
Benji’s breathing is measured, as if he’s just had an afternoon nap beside a sun-drenched window. “You’re Maya Andersson’s brother. I know.”
Leo’s voice changes quickly. “Don’t give me some sermon about how I shouldn’t fight because I—”
Benji holds one of his hands up abruptly. “You’re her brother. Apart from her, there probably isn’t anyone around here with a greater right to want to punch someone in the face.”
Leo’s breathing starts to calm down, and he nods gratefully. “I didn’t think . . . I was hiding in the forest, I just wanted to watch the fight . . . but you didn’t see the guy with the pipe, he was about to—”
Benji smiles. “If he’d been aiming at my head, it wouldn’t have been a problem, there’s not much left up there to damage. But if he was planning to hit my kneecap, I owe you a serious debt of thanks for making sure he couldn’t do it. How’s your eye?”
“Nothing to worry about . . .”
Benji pats him on the shoulder. “You’re a tough kid, Leo. When you get older, you’ll realize that that’s both a good thing and a bad thing.”
Leo spits on the ground and repeats the words he heard the men outside the Bearskin say, and they feel good in his mouth: “T
hose cocksucking motherfuckers! William Lyt and his fucking cocksucker friends and all their fag fans in Hed. I hate them!”
Benji blinks sadly at each word, but not so that the boy notices. “It’s getting late. You should go home.”
“Can you teach me to fight like you?” Leo asks admiringly.
“No,” Benji replies.
“Why not?”
Benji’s chin drops, and a knot in his chest tightens. He can see that Leo is awestruck by his ability to hurt other people. Benji doesn’t know who he hates most for that.
“You haven’t got it in you, Leo,” he says quietly.
The boy snaps. Not just his voice, his whole being. “Kevin raped my sister! What sort of man am I if I don’t—”
Benji hugs the boy and whispers in his ear, “I’ve got sisters, too, and if anyone did to one of them what Kevin did to Maya, I’d be full of hate, too.”
Leo splutters in despair, “If Kevin raped one of your sisters, you’d have killed him!”
Benji knows he’s right. So he tells the truth: “So don’t end up like me, then. Because once you do, it’s too late to change.”
28
“Goddamn homo!”
The next morning Ana and Maya stop a hundred feet from the school. They’ve started to do that every day. It’s become an energy-gathering ritual that armor-plates them. Ana clears her throat and asks, very seriously, “Okay . . . have diarrhea every day for the rest of your life or always have to go to the toilet with the door open?”
Us Against You Page 24
