The Winners, page 29
“What do you say?” Tails says loudly beside him, and Mumble has no idea how he should reply, so he takes a chance on a nod, and that seems to be the right decision.
“Exactly!” Tails declares.
They drive through the forest and he starts talking about which parts are owned by which people around here. But almost all of it belongs to the state, he points out.
“We don’t even own the forest we live in! So who’s going to look after us if we don’t look after ourselves? Eh? A few miles in that direction the politicians are talking about building a wind farm! Two hundred yards tall! Do you know how noisy those monstrosities are? And do you imagine any of the money earned from the sale of that electricity will stay in this region? Hell, we won’t even get the electricity! The government loves green electricity, but do you know where they don’t want to build wind turbines? Where they live! That’s why we have to develop our own infrastructure here, we need to grow, create jobs and capital so we can oppose decisions like that! People say I’m a capitalist but I’m not, I’m just a realist. You know capitalism’s like a wolf?”
Mumble really doesn’t know, but that doesn’t matter. Tails is self-sustaining now.
“Do you know what the worst myth about wolves is? That they only take what they need. If you believe that, you’ve never seen what a wolf does when it gets into an enclosure. It doesn’t take what it needs, it kills everything it can, and it doesn’t stop until someone chases it away. The government doesn’t understand that, because they don’t realize that wolves aren’t our biggest threat—they are! Banning the hunting of predators? Sure, and who takes the hit from that? It sure as hell isn’t the big cities. Building wind farms? Sure, and where do they build them? That’s what I mean about merging the hockey clubs, together we’d stand a chance! We’re a district with bulls on one side and bears on the other, but sure as hell the wolves are everywhere!”
Mumble looks out of the car window, when he used to travel along this road in the bus as a child he used to try to count all the trees. There was something comforting about that, he felt at the time, the fact that there were too many to count. Too many for numbers to deal with. If he’d been better at not keeping his mouth shut, perhaps he would have told Tails what he had really learned from growing up in Hed and playing hockey in Beartown: that for people in Hed, Tails is the wolf. In Hed, Beartown is the big city now.
Tails goes on talking, but he’s mostly just repeating himself now, Mumble still doesn’t know why the man offered him a lift. He doesn’t know that this isn’t really about him, Tails just needed an excuse to drive to Hed.
The trees thin out, the forest opens up toward the end of the road, Tails’s car rolls into Hed and he actually drives the last bit in silence. For several minutes. That must be a personal best. The streets are dark and deserted, Mumble is relieved about that, he hopes that the wrong people around here won’t notice the bear stickers in the car’s rear window. Tails slows down outside Mumble’s mom’s house, but he isn’t in any hurry. Instead he turns to Mumble and repeats his offer of arranging a nice big apartment for them over in Beartown.
“Thanks,” Mumble says, the first word he’s managed to say in the whole conversation.
Tails smiles broadly.
“Now go and get some sleep. Training tomorrow!”
Mumble nods, grabs his bag, and gets out. He can see that several of the neighbors are already peering out at the street from behind their curtains. He hopes that Tails drives off quickly.
* * *
Naturally, Tails doesn’t hurry at all. Instead he takes a quite extraordinary detour, giving himself little errands to all sorts of different parts of Hed. He stops at a kiosk and buys a newspaper, he stops at a pizzeria and uses the bathroom. He even drives to the home of a businessman he knows and drinks a cup of coffee. They’re old friends, have done a lot of business together, and by coincidence the businessman has recently received a very advantageous offer to rent an office over in Beartown, thanks to the help of his good friend. Now Tails needs a favor in return. He parks his car at the end of a dark cul-de-sac a short distance from the businessman’s house, they spend a while drinking coffee in his kitchen until they’re sure the area is empty and quiet, then they sneak out the back way together and grab a suitable-sized rock. The businessman keeps a lookout and Tails throws it. A short while later Tails calls the police to say that his car has been vandalized. Naturally, the police don’t have the time or the resources to drive out, but they file his complaint. It takes an hour for the local paper to find out about it and call him, which is actually forty-five minutes longer than Tails was expecting.
45 Hornets’ nests
The night before Ramona’s funeral is the first really cold one of the autumn. Not the first when the temperature falls below freezing, nor even the first with snow, just the first one that can’t really be described in words, no matter how many years you’ve experienced it: the first one when you’re already accustomed to it, when the cold feels normal rather than the exception. Summer is long dead, but tonight is when we lose our memory of it, the last light slides away and a sack is pulled over the town. Tomorrow suddenly our fingers won’t remember life without gloves, our ears can’t quite remember the sound of birdsong, and the soles of our feet have forgotten all about puddles that don’t crunch when we step on them.
The editor in chief of the local paper has experienced cold in many other places, but somehow it feels more raw here in the forest, it gets under your skin so that you never really thaw out, and if she didn’t hate clichés so much she might have said the same about the people. Her former colleagues far to the south thought she was crazy to take this job, and she can’t really argue with them. A small operation with nonexistent resources located in the middle of nowhere, and surrounded by a populace who seem to bear an inherited hatred for her entire profession. So why did she do it? Well, why does anyone ever do anything? It was a challenge. It was difficult. When your whole identity is wrapped up in being a journalist, perhaps you naturally reach a point in life when only impossible battles feel worth the trouble.
She puts her phone down. The office is dark and empty, the only person still working apart from her is her dad. He’s still sitting where he’s been sitting all day, squeezed in on a stool near the window with his heaps of paper and his marker.
“What was that about?” he wonders curiously.
“The police have had a report of a vandalized car in Hed. Apparently it belongs to Tails,” she replies.
He doesn’t ask how she found out, people talk and rumors spread everywhere, it just happens a bit quicker here.
“The sponsor?”
“Yes.”
His sarcastic whistle contorts his cheeks.
“What a HUGE coincidence that HE of all people should be the victim of something like that, today of all days!”
She tilts her head sarcastically.
“Dad! Are you accusing Tails, an honest, law-abiding, tax-paying citizen, of LYING?”
Her dad snorts.
“I don’t know about lying, if you were to go around to his house I’d guess that his car really has been vandalized. How it happened is a different matter. But you’re not asking me if it’s a lie, kid, you’re asking me if you ought to publish it?”
She smiles with a sigh, a sound she’s mastered better than anyone else he’s ever met.
“It’s news. We’re a newspaper.”
“You sound just like me.”
She isn’t sure if he’s saying that with pride or apologetically.
“No, I sound a bit like you.”
“Now you sound like your mom.”
She smiles and sighs again.
“So you, who taught me that ‘the only duty of journalism is to tell the truth,’ think I should publish something I’m fairly certain isn’t true?”
“Stop being silly and putting words in my mouth! Have you even called this Tails guy?”
“No.”
“So call him. Then you won’t be publishing something that’s happened, you’ll be publishing his version of what happened.”
She leans back in her chair.
“I really don’t know if I should be taking advice on ethics from you, Dad,” she says.
Her dad just laughs, and even if she’s still angry with him for manipulating Maya Andersson into talking to him on the train, she understands his intentions. When she was little she used to hear about how he had uncovered scandals and ruined powerful men’s careers, but also their lives, their families’ and their children’s lives. It was his job to scrutinize those in power, but he was so good at it that the consequences were momentous even for the innocent, and she often wondered how he could sleep at night. The answer was both simple and complicated: his only loyalty was to the story being told. True ruthlessness always demands a belief in some sort of higher purpose. She honestly doesn’t know if she can say the same about herself.
Her mother used to say “You’re like your dad!” whenever she wanted to hurt her daughter when she was small, but it became more and more of a compliment as the years passed. “You’re the sort who always has to start a fight!” she was told by her teachers, and in time she stopped feeling ashamed of that. Once she was thrown off of her soccer team for starting a fight with a girl on her own team who refused to admit that she’d touched the ball with her hand. Afterward her mother just sighed: “You can’t cope with cheating. That’s your problem. You refuse to accept that the world is made up of gray areas.” There’s probably no better description of the girl who one day grew up to become editor in chief of a newspaper.
“Shall I come straight out and ask Tails about the accounts while I’ve got him on the line? What is it you usually say? ‘Give the hornets’ nest a bit of a kick’? We probably won’t get a better opportunity, will we?” she asks her dad.
They’ve discussed the ins and outs of the accounts with each other every moment since he arrived. He’s read every line of every set of annual accounts for Beartown Hockey, and he just keeps repeating: “There’s something missing here, and here, and here…” It isn’t enough to find minor inconsistencies if you’re going to go for a hockey club, you need to be able to prove blatant criminality, so they need to start by working out who is ultimately responsible. The council owns the ice rink, the members own the hockey club, but the sponsors have the money. And the guilt lies somewhere among all of them.
“Do it at the end, let the poor bastard talk all about his vandalized car first!” her dad nods.
She dials Tails’s number. He’s evidently expecting the call, fully aware of what he set in motion when he reported the vandalism to the police, but he’s still surprised to hear her voice.
“The editor herself?”
They’ve had a few dealings with each other before, Tails isn’t exactly the sort of man who holds back from calling the newsroom on a regular basis to “correct” stories he thinks they’ve “got completely wrong.”
“I just wanted to verify the rumor,” she replies.
“What rumor?” Tails says, well versed in the art of playing really stupid, but also with a trace of nervousness in his voice that doesn’t escape her—he’d been hoping that one of the less experienced reporters would call.
“That your car was vandalized by hooligans in Hed.”
Her dad smiles at the leading question, she puts her phone on speaker so he can hear Tails’s humble, magnanimous reply:
“Someone… well, yes… someone threw a stone through the windshield, yes. But I think it would be irresponsible to speculate about who it might have been.”
“But you had a Beartown Hockey sticker in the window, and you’d just given a lift home to a Beartown player who lives in Hed,” she persists.
Tails pretends to think for a while before he replies:
“Yes, that’s right, I was concerned that our player, he’s very young, our goalkeeper, might be attacked on the bus otherwise.”
“What made you think that?”
“Sadly parts of our ice rink were vandalized when youngsters from Hed were there training, two of the boys on our junior team were actually assaulted!”
She takes some notes. Glances at her dad. Then she asks:
“Are you saying that parents in Beartown should be concerned for their children’s safety?”
Tails lowers his voice dramatically:
“I don’t want any parent to have to be concerned for their child’s safety, no matter where they live. And I don’t think any citizen should have to worry that their car might be vandalized because of a sticker in the window. In Beartown we don’t believe in violence and threats, we believe in cooperation and solidarity—that goes for both local businesses and sports. I’d like to think that the inhabitants of Hed want the same thing. You can print that!”
The journalist asks the question she knows he’s been waiting for:
“There are various rumors that the council wants to close down both Hed Hockey and Beartown Hockey and instead set up an entirely new club. Do you think these attacks have anything to do with those rumors?”
Tails pretends to think for a long time.
“The council can’t close down a sporting association. It belongs to the members.”
She pretends to ask a critical question that really just gives him a chance to feel important:
“So you’re saying that Beartown Hockey, which plays in a rink owned by the council, doesn’t need any money from the council? I think a lot of taxpayers will be happy to hear that!”
Tails’s voice drops to a tone of affected sorrow:
“You know as well as I do that ice hockey gives far more back to the council than it costs. Just look at our youth program! And our investment in girls’ hockey! Is it right for those to be harmed by this? No, all I can say is that I hope that those in positions of power within the council don’t let a few violent elements affect their decisions about our sport. There would be more than a hint of the mafia about this if our elected politicians decided to punish Beartown when we’re the victims of vandalism and threats. I don’t think people around here would accept that.”
With that, he thinks they’re done, he thinks he’s got her right where he wants her, but she just takes more notes and glances at her dad again. Her dad nods that it’s time.
“Tails, while I’ve got you on the line, we’re sitting here looking through Beartown Hockey’s annual accounts for the past few years…”
Tails falls so silent that she says, “Hello?” to make sure he hasn’t fallen off his chair.
“Well… that’s… what… why are you doing that, if I might ask?”
“We’re a newspaper. News is our business.”
“Yes… yes… but what do you think you’re going to find there? Everything’s been done correctly, I can assure you of that!”
So she begins to trap him in his own words.
“Really? How do you know that? You’re not on the committee, are you? Sponsors aren’t supposed to have any insight into the finances of a club owned by its members, surely? Especially not you, seeing as you were only recently investigated by the Tax Office?”
Tails loses his composure for a moment, which is unusual.
“Listen! Firstly, I haven’t been found guilty of a SINGLE tax offense, and secondly, I have NOTHING to do with the club’s accounts!”
“So why are you getting so upset?”
“I’m not getting UP… I… okay, look, I can tell that you’re trying to dig up something negative! Why don’t you write something positive for a change? Well? About our investment in girls’ hockey? Integration! Our new statement of fundamental values!”
“We’ve written about all that. Every article we’ve published in recent months has been positive. But now I just want to ask a few questions about the accounts.”
Tails is silent for longer than she’s ever heard him be silent. Then he snarls:
“I don’t know anything about that, I’m just a sponsor, as you pointed out!”
Her voice is mild but uncompromising:
“Perhaps you could find out from the committee who I should be talking to, then? If the rumors about the council wanting to set up an entirely new club based on Beartown’s position in the league are true, I’m fairly certain that external auditors will have to conduct a thorough review of all the club’s finan—”
“Yes, yes! I’ll check!” Tails yells, but she can hear that he regrets it, his outburst has revealed plenty of sore points.
She smiles.
“I appreciate that. Sorry to hear about your car. I’ll write the article myself, it’ll probably be online early tomorrow morning, so if you think of anything else you’d like to add, you can always let me know directly.”
Tails ends the call with an abrupt “Sure!” She hangs up.
“What an asshole!” her dad grunts.
“Oh, he’s not so bad. He has a certain charm. A surprising number of these hockey guys do, actually, I’m almost a tiny bit fond of them.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes. They remind me of you,” she laughs.
That’s only partly a joke. She does actually have a degree of respect for Tails, just as she does for Peter Andersson, they’re fighting for something invisible, passionate about their club and their town. She finds it hard not to feel sympathetic about that. For good and ill, it’s always the other sort of people, the ones who aren’t crazy about anything at all, that she has trouble identifying with.
