Deep River

by Karl Marlantes

Ilmari smiled. He expected no other reaction from his recently widowed friend.

  The two often met on Sunday afternoon to have coffee together. Sunday was the day of rest, but neither took more than a couple of hours. Only God could get His work done in six days.

  Ilmari had borrowed money from Ullakko, who owned a prosperous dairy farm, to build a blacksmith shop that stood just downstream from Ilmahenki, close to the river. Ilmari didn’t like being in debt, but he liked even less cutting his timber, which many did to get much-needed cash. For Ilmari, timber was wealth that grew every day. It could be looked at and smelled. Ilmari didn’t trust banks, and holding wealth in the form of paper seemed foolish.

  Farmers around Tapiola needed blacksmith work and Ilmari’s business had grown with each new logging operation and sawmill. Still, Ilmari was diversifying, ever aware that good fortune would eventually turn to bad. He paid for two Hereford cows and the stud fees to breed them. Loggers loved beef but hated it canned. Beef cattle also meant he wouldn’t be tied to twice-daily milking, other than tending one or two cows for his own milk and butter. Ullakko, too, had prospered, not only selling dairy products to the camps but also turning his hay into a cash crop to feed the enormous appetites of the oxen the logging companies used to drag the logs to the edge of water where they could be floated to a mill. Ilmari, however, had repaired two of the new steam donkeys. He knew that the price of hay would plummet.

  They were in Ullakko’s kitchen, whittling large cooking spoons out of cedar with their puukkos, the male equivalent of knitting. No one was idle, ever. From skilled hands and a sharp puukko came tools and artifacts of all kinds: duck decoys and fishing lures, knobs and handles, kitchen utensils, gate latches. When there wasn’t an immediate need for something useful, Ilmari worked on a nativity crèche and a kantele with more strings than the one he used now. The coffeepot empty, the friends broke up. Ilmari didn’t bother with a kerosene lamp to find his way to Ilmahenki. The sun set around eight, but the long-lingering July days didn’t bring full dark before ten, long after his bedtime. Dawn and the next day of work came around four in the morning.

  He said goodbye to Ullakko and set out for Ilmahenki. He passed the grave of Ullakko’s wife, buried next to a copse of dogwood. Ullakko had asked him to read the burial service. The nearest pastor was in Astoria, and although he came often, he couldn’t always do so.

  Just half a mile from Tapiola, Ilmari passed a huge lightning-struck snag, over twenty feet tall, whitened with age and scarred black from fire. Ilmari thought of God’s wrath, striking down from heaven. Why would God make a man prosperous enough to lend someone money and then take away his wife and baby? Why would He give and then take away Ilmari’s own baby brother and two sisters? Why was there hell? He thought of burning, screaming with pain, forever. How could God be so cruel? But he had sent Jesus to save him, so he wasn’t cruel. He was just. He decided to stop thinking, because no one should question God.

  When he reached Ilmahenki, he saw a figure standing on the far bank, barely observable against the wall of the forest that covered the high hills across Deep River to the north of Ilmahenki. It was Vasutäti, the name given to the old Indian woman by the Finnish immigrants. It meant “Aunty Basket.” Every two or three weeks Vasutäti made the rounds of the farms and logging camps selling her handwoven baskets. She was the last of the Ini’sal Indians, a small tribe of Chinookan-speakers who had lived on Deep River until they were decimated by European diseases.

  Ilmari hesitated, then raised his hand in a tentative greeting. She stood there for a moment and then she, too, slowly raised her hand. It seemed to him that the distance between them, the river itself, shrank to nothing and he was captured by dark solemn eyes. Then the woman turned into the forest and disappeared.

  He continued toward the house in the twilight, puzzling over the incident. In a surge of longing, he imagined a wife coming to the door to greet him.

  He sighed and went in. The house had no curtains at the window, no cupboards to hold Sunday dinner dishes, and no furniture other than the red couch and utilitarian wood chairs. The knitted wool cap that his mother had made him six years earlier hung tattered on the wall. A good wife would have been embarrassed to let him out in public with such a rag on his head. He glanced at the dirt floor, devoid of the ubiquitous rag rugs that Finnish women seemed to turn out in endless profusion, all the while catching up with their neighbors, gossiping, or just quietly weaving them before bed by the embers of the evening cooking fire. If he’d tossed a pebble in the center of that house, its fall would have echoed off the walls and in his heart for hours.

  He didn’t feel like going to sleep. Maybe sighting the yellow-bill meant someone to love was coming, someone who would love him back.

  He took his kantele from the nail where it hung in its soft leather bag and walked to the river, using only the pale light fading in the west. Kerosene was expensive. Idly he started to strum the chords to “Beautiful Savior.” King of creation. Son of God and son of man. He tried to feel what that meant through the music. Son of God and son of man. He softly sang this phrase over and over. Then he went silent, listening only to the chords sung by the vibrating strings of the kantele. He began to pluck a single string, matching his voice to it with a simple, single, open vowel sound. He could hear four overtones from the single humming kantele string and he focused on matching the overtones from his voice to those of the string. Over and over. No thought. Just over and over, he matched his voice to the rich and complex vibrations. Over and over. He felt his way to the sound between the overtones, the sound the ear cannot hear.

  Suddenly, light! Light flooded Ilmari’s mind, its brilliance obliterating everything around him, yet making everything clear. Every tree, every leaf, stood alone yet was part of an all-pervading fluctuating light that condensed to form it and then expanded to condense again into another object. The light swept through him like a storm hitting the coast after passing over three thousand miles of open sea, bending the tops of the Douglas firs and cedars, wrenching hemlocks, alders, and Oregon oaks from the earth.

  Ilmari became aware of the sound of the river and opened his eyes to early dawn. In the east, in a luminous sky, Venus shone next to red Aldebaran, both still outshining the gathering light of the rising sun. He saw them as if for the first time with the clarity of someone newly birthed. He staggered into the house holding the kantele to his chest, weeping. He sat on his bed and stared at the wall. He knew there would be no sleep. The cattle needed tending; the cow needed milking.

  * * *

  He pondered the vision all that day, not knowing what to make of it. Maybe God wanted something from him. When Jesus appeared to Saul on the road to Damascus, Saul became Paul and brought Christianity to the Roman Empire. He, however, was no Paul. He thought about going to see Pastor Hoikka in Astoria but decided against it. Hoikka would probably think he’d been visited by the Devil. The Devil—people thought of Satan as some sort of bad person, just as they thought about Jesus as some sort of good person. What he experienced last night was beyond anything so small as a person. As if this something humans called God could be reduced to something they could grasp, like a father in the sky. Was Jesus really God? Was God really God? He tried to put the thought away. Maybe it came from the Devil. What had happened last night was ungraspable but experienced. What was he to do with this experience? He prayed for an answer, but no answer came.

  Then there was the visit from the eagle and the cuckoo.

  Ten days later, on a rainy fall afternoon, Ilmari looked up from his forge to see the figure of a man silhouetted in the door of the smithy.

  “Yes?” he asked in English, letting the bellows ease.

  The man walked up to him. In the light of the glowing charcoal Ilmari recognized Matti’s face. Matti’s body was totally unfamiliar. So, Matti was the eagle. They shook hands. “So, you’ve come,” Ilmari said.

  “Yoh,” Matti replied.

  That night, he made up a bed for Matti in th
e sauna and went to his own bed pondering how a brief unthinking act like Matti’s could set someone on a previously unknown path, his life forever changed. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye … we shall be changed.” Maybe Paul was referring not only to life after death.

  Before putting the lamp out, Ilmari opened his Bible, as he always did. This entire week he’d been reading Matthew. He liked Luke better for the stories, especially for the Christmas story, but there was something more plain and fundamental about Matthew. It appealed to Ilmari’s practical side, which was always battling the part of him that kept searching for meaning in what is not seen but could be understood at least by him, even if he could never explain it. Like the experience with the kantele. Something similar had happened three times before, ever since he’d seen angels as a kid when his sisters and brother died. As far as he could tell, no one else had experiences like this and they were of no practical use.

  Then it was there, in Matthew, chapter 16, as clear as MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN. “And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Here was a clear practical response that could balance out these occasional, often frightening experiences of his. He decided to build God’s church in Tapiola and then fell asleep.

  2

  That fall, Matti helped Ilmari considerably, adding to the house, improving the blacksmith shop, tending the cattle, but it was clear that by December, the food Ilmari had put ahead was running low. What cash Ilmari got from the blacksmithing could be much better used to improve Ilmahenki than to feed Matti. At Christmas, Ilmari had given Matti a puukko that he’d forged himself, to replace the one Matti had left in Suomi. Then he told Matti to find work.

  “You’ll be sixteen in August. Tell them you’re sixteen now. You can do a man’s work.”

  Matti hefted the puukko. He looked up at Ilmari. “Kiitos. For this, for everything.”

  “Yoh.”

  The only paying jobs for someone who didn’t speak English were logging and fishing. Matti had done neither, but he had a better chance getting on with a logging company.

  “You go up to Reder’s Camp. Ask for Alma Wittala. She’s a Vanhatalo, Mother’s second cousin. You tell her Maíjaliisa’s your mother and I’m your brother.”

  He’d done that, walking to Willapa Bay and then turning south to where John Reder’s rail line led back into the hills where Reder’s Camp stood. Reder Logging was in full operation now that the higherelevation January snow was melted and the days were getting longer. Matti stood beside the steam donkey, where John Reder was up on the skid pointing to a huge block hung on a stump about two hundred meters down in a ravine from the steam donkey. He’d seen big trees by now; Ilmari had lots of old growth right at Ilmahenki. He had never seen anyone move one of those trees. Logs lay on their sides, rising well above a man’s head. Men, tiny against the hillsides, scrambled to the logs, hauling heavy lengths of steel cable. A small boy tugged on a long wire, making some sort of signal on a steam whistle attached to the steam donkey. The man running the donkey signaled back. Men far down below in the ravine seemed to scramble for their lives as power was applied to one of the huge spools on the donkey, drawing the cable tight, lifting the log, then pulling it bouncing up the hill to where Matti was standing. That log must have weighed tons. These little men, like ants in this vast landscape, were moving what to most people would seem immovable. Matti felt excitement rising in his throat. He looked out over the logging show, as it was called, and saw a huge old-growth Douglas fir slowly fall to the ground, visibly shaking the standing trees around it.

  Ilmari had told him all about how dangerous it was. Those logs could roll and crush; those cables could break and fly, taking off arms, legs, and heads. Ilmari, however, hadn’t talked about the excitement. Matti wanted to run down into the ravine. He could think of nothing he’d rather do, right now, than be a logger.

  The man who ran the steam donkey blasted on a steam whistle and John Reder jumped down to the ground. He stopped when he saw Matti. He didn’t look like an owner, at least the kind Matti knew about. He wore the same caulked boots as all the other loggers and the same canvas trousers, cut off at the top of the boots. The only visible difference was that he was older and wider. Not fat. Anyone with an ounce of extra fat was fatter than these loggers.

  Reder growled something in English that Matti didn’t understand, but Alma Wittala had prepared him for this.

  “Matti Koski,” he said, pointing to himself. “Alma Wittala cousin. Ilmari Koski brother. Good verker, me.”

  Reder studied him. “How old?”

  Matti stood as tall as he could. “Seven ten,” he said.

  Reder chuckled. “Not likely.” He held his hands out, palms up.

  Matti showed him his callused hands. “Good verker,” Matti said.

  Reder grunted. It was approval. To Matti Koski, age fifteen, unable to speak the language in a new world, it was the equivalent of the voice of God. Reder shouted something to the man running the donkey and then walked away. Matti Koski knew then that someday, he didn’t know how, he would be like John Reder.

  He was put to work splitting firewood to feed the steam donkey. It wasn’t logging. It was hard, relentless, exhausting, and boring work.

  At the close of the day, a Finn named Toivo Huttula, who called himself a hook tender, explained that Matti was a greenhorn, and none of the men wanted him anywhere near them, because he’d kill them along with himself. If he proved he could work hard splitting wood, then when there was an opening, maybe he would get a job doing something called choker setting. Matti didn’t think twice about the meaning of “an opening.”

  Three weeks after Matti started, Reder came up to him with an envelope. Matti’s English was slowly improving because of help from fellow Finns in the bunkhouse. That, however, had a downside. It was too easy to speak Finnish all the time, making learning English slower. He managed to understand that Reder wanted him to take the envelope to his wife, Margaret, who lived in their house in Knappton. Then Reder smiled and handed him a quarter. Matti’s pay was seventy-five cents a day. “Fun … Knappton … wife … good worker.”

  Matti looked at Reder with his mouth open, the quarter in one hand and the letter in another.

  “Get,” Reder barked. Matti ran for the trailhead.

  It took over an hour to run to Knappton, but it felt good. His shoes were nearly gone, but he didn’t have enough money for caulk boots yet. Besides, he was afraid he’d be laughed at for being pretentious if he bought them before he was really a logger. When he came out of the forest the Columbia River lay before him. He gasped. The river had to be ten kilometers wide. He couldn’t see any possible way to build a bridge across it, unless one could sink pilings where the water was shallow and then span the deeper water with an arched trestle. The little town of Knappton, built out over the river on pilings, seemed to be clinging to the hillsides, like a limpet on a rock.

  Reder had written his wife’s name on the envelope and people directed him to a three-story house, built on solid land but land so steep that the lower-floor basement was exposed only on the front end. He knocked on the door. The maid answered, and he pointed at the envelope. The maid smiled and held out her hand. Matti hesitated. He said, “Wife. Mr. Reder.”

  The maid laughed. She pointed to herself. “Me. Margaret Reder.” She held out her hand showing a wedding ring and a diamond engagement ring. “Wife. John Reder.” She held out her hand for the letter. Margaret Reder motioned him inside where she opened it in front of him. “He remembered,” she said, beaming at the open letter. He tried not to stare. There was a rug made of wool that covered the whole living room. His mother could have clothed the family for years with that much wool.

  Margaret sat down neatly on a couch that was twice the size of the old battered red one at Ilmahenki. Her small feet were tucked slightly into the couch, touching each other. Her dress f
lowed from her trim waist down to her shoes. It reflected light. Her face reflected light. He couldn’t help himself and looked up the stairs with their polished walnut banister to where they disappeared into the next story, to the bedrooms. He’d heard that John Reder had come from Holland and started in Michigan, penniless. He’d made enough money to marry Margaret, whose father owned a lumber retailing business. Now, he had her and all this as well.

  One envies only what one can achieve. Matti Koski envied John Reder. And he, Matti Koski, was now where Reder had started. Here—in America.

  Nearing the end of the letter, Margaret smiled. She folded the letter and said, “My birthday.” She beamed up at him, but Matti, not quite sure he’d heard her correctly, said nothing. “Speak English?” Margaret asked.

  Matti nodded.

  “Birthday,” she said, pointing at herself. “Born. New baby. Me.”

  Matti nodded vigorously. “How old you?” he asked to be polite.

  Margaret made an exaggerated mouth drop then laughed. “We don’t … in America.”

  Matti looked at the floor.

  “Twenty-three,” Margaret said. She cocked her head and got him to look at her. “How old you?” She asked.

  “Seven ten,” he replied.

  She gave him an I-don’t-believe-you look.

  “Five ten, but good verker.”

  She chuckled. “That’s better … Mr. Reder OK, but I … him home … Saturday morning. Wait.”

  She went into the kitchen. When she came back, she handed Matti a quarter. For a moment he thought about showing her the quarter Reder had already given him. Only for a moment. With the fifty cents, he bought himself a lightweight denim jacket—an American denim jacket.

  From that day forward, Matti Koski no longer just split wood. He split wood and soaked up everything possible about logging. At seventy-five cents a day, he had no idea how he would ever get his own company, but he had no doubts that he would.