When William Lyt was younger and Kevin Erdahl was made team captain, William heard the coach say to Kevin, “You can force people to obey you, but you can never force them to follow you. If you want them to play for you, they have to love you.”
Perhaps no one loved Kevin more than William did, and he did all he could to get that love reciprocated. He was unfailingly loyal, even after the rape; he followed Kevin to Hed Hockey when Kevin’s best friend, Benji, stayed with Beartown. William gathered his guys and beat up both Amat, who had snitched on Kevin, and Bobo, who tried to defend Amat.
When Kevin suddenly disappeared, William stayed at Hed, disappointed but still faithful. He has the same coach he had in Beartown, David: it was he who persuaded William and almost all the other old players to switch clubs. Not by defending Kevin but by using the simplest argument that sports can offer: “We’re only interested in hockey. Not politics. What happens off the ice stays off the ice.”
William believed him, and deep down he hoped that now that Kevin and Benji were both off the team, maybe David would finally recognize William’s loyalty. But there was no show of gratitude, not a single word of encouragement. He is still being ignored.
So when William comes into the locker room today and opens his locker and sees what someone has left in the bottom of it, things happen that no statistics can measure. There’s a cigarette lighter lying there. The same sort that filled William’s mailbox back in the summer, the same sort Leo had on the beach.
At the same time, one of his teammates comes through the door and says, “Hey, Lyt, have you heard about Benji? Beartown’s new coach has made him team captain!”
23
“All It Takes for the Only Thing That Matters”
People say that leadership is about making difficult decisions, unpalatable and unpopular decisions. “Do your job,” leaders are constantly being told. The impossible part of the job is, of course, that a leader can carry on leading only as long as someone follows him, and people’s reactions to leadership are always the same: if a decision of yours benefits me, you’re fair, and if the same decision harms me, you’re a tyrant. The truth about most people is as simple as it is unbearable: we rarely want what is best for everyone; we mostly want what’s best for ourselves.
* * *
Peter is weighed down by thoughts as he switches his office computer off, puts his files back on their shelves, and walks down the steps toward the ice. He sits down in the standing area at the end of the rink. Fatima is cleaning some distance away. He waves, but she just nods back to him. She doesn’t like to draw attention to herself; she has to finish cleaning before the A-team training session starts, and she doesn’t want Amat to feel ashamed in front of his teammates. As if that boy has ever felt ashamed of his mother, Peter thinks.
Fatima is in many ways a more typical Beartown inhabitant than Peter: soft spoken, proud, hardworking, and with absolutely zero tolerance for bullshit. At the start of the summer, when the club’s bank accounts were empty, Peter realized that Fatima hadn’t been paid, but when he called her she just said, “Don’t worry, Amat and I will manage.” Peter knew that Amat went around collecting cans at the end of each month so he could collect the deposit, so he said, heavy with embarrassment, “You can’t not get paid, the club has a duty to—” But Fatima interrupted him: “The club? It’s my club, too. My boy’s club. And we’ll manage.” It takes a special person to say that, and a special club.
It’s autumn now, and Fatima has been paid. Peter, too. This morning he tried to pay the bills, and because his computer was playing up he phoned the bank. The man at the other end was confused: “Those bills have already been paid.” Not just one. All of them. Richard Theo wasn’t making empty promises; the sponsor has paid some money in, even though the press conference hasn’t taken place yet. Peter will be able to save his club. So why is he so racked with anxiety?
The A-team’s practice starts. Everyone down on the ice takes it for granted that the lights will go on in the rink every day, that wages will be paid, that fans will flock to games. In hockey, money is always something that is just supposed to be there. We never really grow up in this sport; on the ice we remain the same kids who just want to play: a puck, a few friends, lights on! Let’s play!
But Peter knows the cost. He’s sitting on it. It’s just wood and metal, chewing tobacco trodden into the floor, dented railings. But when the men in the black jackets leap into the air in this part of the stand, it bounces, and when they sing they raise the roof: “We are the bears, we are the bears, we are the bears, the bears from Beartown! WE . . . ARE . . . THE . . . BEARS! WE ARE . . .”
That’s a powerful wall to have behind you when things are going well and a terrible force to have against you when they aren’t. Over the years no one in the club has ever criticized the Pack more than Peter. When they fought, he tried to introduce surveillance cameras in the rink; when highly paid players who were underperforming suddenly wanted to tear up their contracts, he tried to prove that they had been threatened by Teemu’s boys. For years men in suits stood in the boardroom arguing with Peter because he was being “needlessly provocative” when in fact they were frightened, too. They allowed the Pack to use violence to rule this town as long as it benefited the suits’ own purposes. So what now? Now Peter has an opportunity to get rid of the Pack, but he’s hesitating. Why? Because he feels he owes them for voting to keep him on in the club? Because he’s a coward? Or is it about Richard Theo? Is Peter just afraid that he’s exchanging the influence of the hooligans for that of politicians? Who are worse: the guys with tattoos on their necks or the suits and ties?
During his first years as general manager Kira used to remind him that “we’re not a family that runs from a fight.” She’s always had thicker skin than he has; the hot-tempered lawyer had more of an appetite for victory than the diplomatic general manager. But now Peter is the one looking for a fight and Kira the one hesitating. Perhaps Richard Theo is right about Peter being naive. The world is complicated, but he wishes it were simple.
When he was playing in Canada, his coach said, “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing!” But Peter lacked the killer instinct. When his team had a big lead during practices he would ease up, because he didn’t want to humiliate his opponents. The coach’s philosophy was “Never take your foot off the enemy’s throat,” but Peter didn’t have it in him. Winning was enough; you didn’t have to crush anyone. Then came a practice when their opponents managed to turn around a 5–0 deficit. “Sort your head out!” the coach yelled. But Peter never quite managed to.
Perhaps that was why he missed that shot in the final twenty years ago, and perhaps that’s why he’s scared of fulfilling his promise to Richard Theo now. There’s a limit to the number of enemies a man can survive. Peter knows he needs to do his job—he’s just not sure which job that is.
* * *
He sees Elisabeth Zackell on the ice. He wishes he were more like her. She doesn’t take her foot off anyone’s throat.
* * *
Elisabeth Zackell divides the players into two teams and ties the teammates together with the ropes. If one player falls, the whole team falls.
“WHAT SORT OF SHITTY WOMAN’S GAME IS THIS?” one of the older players bellows when he’s brought down by an unsteady teammate and hits the ice hard, but Zackell doesn’t care.
They’re made to work until they learn to cooperate and move together, as a single unit. They’re made to sweat and throw up, not for the last time. Only when Amat sinks to his knees does Zackell let them untie the ropes. Then she fetches her paintball gun. One of the older players mutters, “The bloody woman’s had some sort of stroke . . .”
Perhaps Zackell reads his lips—who knows?—but she says, “I understand that there’s a lot of talk of ‘women.’ I can only assume that you’re worried you might start playing like women if you’re coached by one.”
The players squirm. Some of them are still being sick in the buckets. Zackell
fires a paint pellet at the crossbar of one of the nets, making the metal sing and the hard little ball explode in a splat of yellow. “I coached a girls’ team once. They were no good at dealing with rebounds in front of the net and didn’t want to block shots; they were frightened it was going to hurt. So I got them to strip off and try to skate from the center line to the net and touch the post while I tried to hit them with a paintball gun. Every time they got there, they earned themselves a beer. You know what they said to me?”
No response, so she answers her own question: “They told me to screw myself. But obviously they were women. So what are you?”
The men on the ice stare, but Zackell waits them out. A minute passes. Some of the men giggle nervously, but she stands motionless with the paintball gun.
“You’re . . . you’re kidding, right?” someone eventually asks.
“I don’t think so. I’ve been told I’m no good at humor,” Zackell informs them.
Then another player stands up. He puts his helmet down on the ice, then pulls off his jersey and pads until his top half is naked.
“Will this do, or do I have to get my cock out as well?” Benji asks.
“That’ll have to do,” Zackell replies, and fires a pellet of paint that just misses his neck.
All the other players hunch up, but Benji doesn’t hesitate; he just takes off and skates straight at the net. The first time he touches the bar, Zackell manages to hit him twice; the second and third times, she manages to fire twice as many pellets. According to the man in the shop, the pellets move at a speed of three hundred feet per second, so Zackell is strongly advised to fire only at people wearing protective clothing from at least thirty feet away. Benji’s skin is bare. Zackell manages to land one shot on his back, and he jerks with pain as the paint dribbles down his shoulder blade.
The older players look on, at first as if they can’t quite believe their eyes, then with increasing fascination. In the end someone yells out a number; no one remembers if it was “eight” or “nine,” but after that the whole team counts each time Benji touches the bar. Eventually they are roaring the number of beers he’s won. FOURTEEN. FIFTEEN. SIXTEEN. Zackell reloads the gun, and Benji sets off again. No normal person would behave like that. That’s the point. Zackell doesn’t want a normal team captain.
At one point Zackell hits Benji right on his collarbone and sees in his eyes what he’s capable of. “I can win anything with this one,” she thinks to herself. He doesn’t stop skating, and she doesn’t stop firing until he’s earned a whole crate of beer. She fetches it from the bench. As she gives it to him she says, “Anyone who feels responsibility isn’t free, Benjamin. That’s why you’re scared.”
For someone who’s bad with feelings, the woman’s not so bad with feelings after all. Benji walks to the locker room, bruised, stinging, and spattered with paint. There he shares the beer with all of his teammates. Even Amat drinks; he wouldn’t dare turn it down.
Benji goes and showers on his own. For a long time. When he comes back, the beer is all gone and his shoes are full of shaving cream.
* * *
Peter Andersson stands behind the boards while Zackell picks up her ropes.
“You have very . . . interesting coaching methods. Do they really make the players better?” Peter asks as diplomatically as he can while he tries his very best not to hyperventilate at the sight of the splats of paint all over the ice.
“Better? How should I know?” Zackell replies, unconcerned.
“You must have some reason for using these methods?” Peter says.
He has a migraine. Richard Theo promised him “complete control” over this club, but it really doesn’t feel like it.
“Hockey coaches don’t know as much about what we’re doing as we pretend; most of it’s guesswork. I assumed you knew that,” Zackell replies.
Peter feels the muscles in his back tighten. “You have an . . . unusual view of leadership.”
Zackell shrugs. “If the players think I’m an idiot, they’ve got someone to talk to each other about. Sometimes a team needs an enemy to unite them.”
Peter watches her as she walks off. He could almost swear she was smiling slightly when she made that last remark. Then he goes and fetches cleaning materials and spends several hours scrubbing and wiping the paint off the ice.
Perhaps he should have gone home instead, to drink wine with his wife and fall asleep in their bed. But he and Kira haven’t quite made up yet; they’ve just stopped arguing, and that’s not the same thing. They’re not yelling at each other, but they’re not really talking, either. The whole family is getting quieter and quieter, like a room that’s become such a mess that it feels less bother to brick up the door than get to grips with the problem. Peter realizes he’s trying to make work for himself, so he goes home, getting there after everyone has gone to bed.
* * *
Then he lies awake half the night reading the instruction manual of a coffee machine instead of calling the daughter who gave it to him and confessing that he doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing anymore. Or for whose sake he’s fighting.
* * *
The A-team coach in Hed is named David. His red hair hasn’t been cut in months, and his face is chalk white because even on a fine summer’s day the sun doesn’t reach into the video room inside the rink. He’s giving the job everything he’s got; he has to. His girlfriend is pregnant, and Hed Hockey is his career trampoline to a higher league, if he wins.
He never wanted to coach this A-team, he wanted to coach Beartown’s. He fashioned a group of small boys all the way until they were juniors, when they were lined up to win the national championship and become the core of the A-team: Kevin and Benji on the ice, David on the bench. That almost happened. But only almost.
David didn’t leave Beartown because he wanted to defend rape. At least that’s not how he sees it. He doesn’t even know if Kevin is guilty. The boy was never convicted of any crime, and David is neither a lawyer nor a police officer; he’s a hockey coach. If hockey clubs start to punish players for things that not even a court would punish them for, where would that end? Hockey needs to be allowed to be hockey. Life outside the arena needs to remain separate from life inside.
So David didn’t leave Beartown because of what Kevin was accused of but because Peter saw to it that the boy was arrested on the day of the final. Which meant that the whole team was punished, not just Kevin. David couldn’t accept that. So he switched clubs and took almost all of Beartown’s best players with him.
He doesn’t regret his decision. The only thing he regrets is Benjamin Ovich. That boy symbolized everything David wanted from a team, but when it really mattered, David wasn’t able to get through to him. Benji stayed in Beartown when all the others switched to Hed, and back in the spring David saw him kissing another boy. Benji doesn’t know that David knows, and evidently no one else knows either. If David is honest, he can’t help hoping that no one else ever finds out, either. This isn’t the sort of place where he’d wish a revelation of that sort on any hockey player, not even if he’s coming here as an opponent this autumn.
Is David proud of himself? Definitely not. So why doesn’t he just go see Benji and tell him the truth: that he is ashamed of having been such a poor leader that the boy didn’t feel safe enough to tell the truth about himself. Why doesn’t David just apologize? Probably for the same reason that all of us commit all our stupidest mistakes: it’s hard to admit that we’ve been wrong. And the bigger the mistake, the harder it is.
David never imagines that he’s a good person, but he does believe he does all he can for the good of hockey. He puts the team, the club, the sport first. He’s never going to let it get political. Not even now.
There’s a knock on the door of his office. William Lyt is standing in the doorway. “Have you heard that Benji’s been made team captain of Beartown?” the huge forward roars.
The coach nods. “This is Hed. Not Beartown. Don’t worry about what they�
�re doing.”
William is quivering on the threshold of the room, unable to bring himself to leave even though the look on his coach’s face indicates that that’s the end of the discussion.
“Is anyone in our team going to wear number sixteen this year?” William asks. He doesn’t mean it as an accusation; he’s just asking his coach to love him. And that’s the problem: love is like leadership. Asking for it doesn’t help.
“That’s not your concern,” David says coldly.
Sixteen was Benji’s number in Beartown. David is refusing to give it to anyone in Hed.
“Who’s going to be our captain?” William asks jealously.
David answers the question he really wants to ask: “You’re too young, William.”
It’s a very particular way of breaking someone’s heart, when a hockey player sees in the eyes of his coach that he really wants someone else.
“Would you have said the same thing if I was Benji?”
David is honest. He shakes his head.
* * *
William Lyt goes out onto the ice with a greater need for violent affirmation than ever. David pretends not to understand, but of course he does, all too well. He didn’t become a hockey coach by accident; he knows what his words can accomplish. All while the boys were growing up, he has watched William compete against Benji for everything, without winning a single time. David knows that jealousy is a terrible feeling, but it can also be a motivating force. So he distributes it in small doses, on purpose, because leadership is a matter of manipulating emotions to achieve results. David knows that what he’s doing is dangerous; he knows that William may well hate Benji so much that he’ll hurt him in the game. But all the best hockey teams have someone who plays on the edge and sometimes goes over it. William is at his best when he’s full of hate.
Us Against You Page 20