Deep River

by Karl Marlantes

  3

  Aino’s first impression of America was elbows and noise. People were hawking wares in languages she’d never heard before; everyone was pushing and shouting. Surprisingly, there were no soldiers or police to keep things orderly.

  She boarded the train for Chicago at Pennsylvania Station. Sitting on her wood seat in the railcar as straight as she could, keeping her tattered hair covered with a kerchief, she watched the increasingly flatter countryside, feeling small and vulnerable. She didn’t know enough English to even ask for food. She longed for the gentle landscape and ordered farms of Suomi. She longed for her mother.

  She slept badly, unusually for her, often startled awake by unremembered dreams, her clothes soaked with cold sweat. It had been like this crossing the Atlantic as well. She dismissed the problem as a result of the ship’s motion and now not paying for Pullman accommodations.

  A week after boarding the train in New York, she reached Portland. There, she bought a ticket for Chehalis, Washington, where she bought another ticket on a different railroad to the town of Willapa on Willapa Bay, which opened to the Pacific. It had cost nearly ninety dollars to cross the country. All she had left from her mother’s savings was a dollar and seventy-five cents.

  She saw only one adult woman on the entire train. At first, she thought that this was because it was a Sunday; of course, the women would have been in church and not traveling. After watching a man vomit, however, she realized that over half of the men were suffering with severe hangovers after a Saturday night of drinking and who knew what else. She sat nervously next to two young men who smelled of alcohol, tobacco, and three months of unwashed sweat soaked into long-sleeved and long-legged wool underwear. The concept of a weekly sauna had obviously not penetrated this far.

  On their boots were small spikes, five or six millimeters long. Those spikes on hundreds of similar boots had chewed the heavy planking of the railcar floor into a mass of tiny spongy splinters that became the protective coat stopping the boots from grinding right through to the clicking rails beneath her.

  The other woman sat at the far end of the car, a mother with a boy and two girls under the age of six or seven and barefoot. The woman’s worn but clean black wool skirt went right down to her ankle-high shoes. Above it she wore a loose long-sleeved cotton blouse. She sat primly, reading, a pillar of self-contained calm, oblivious to the chaos of the returning mill workers and loggers, most of whom Aino could sense were trying not to stare at her, even though she was obviously a mother and probably married.

  Aino straightened herself, holding up her part of a woman’s duty to keep society civilized. She fought an urge to push her way into the seat next to the woman with the children and start crying.

  The train stopped every few miles, letting off boisterous loggers and mill workers, some still drunk, at isolated sawmills surrounded by mud and slash, the remains of logs considered too junky to process and limbs and branches thrown in piles higher than a man’s head that lay whitening in the rain. It looked as if a giant had had a temper tantrum, smashing the gigantic trees into slowly bleaching jackstraw piles of splinters, stumps, and snags, and the occasional lengths of abandoned steel cable, some as thick as a man’s wrist, and broken blocks, heavy, grooved wheels called sheaves encased between two steel cheeks through which the cable was threaded. The stumps took her breath away. Her whole family could stand on top of one of them with room for twenty more people, maybe thirty if some of them sat on the edge and dangled their legs over it. The image made her think of her mother. She would be sleeping. Her father? She quickly thought about Ilmari and Matti. Weren’t they going to be surprised. She felt for and found her mother’s letter.

  Sometimes the train stopped at a larger sawmill, surrounded by wooden houses and shacks laid out on muddy grid sections of streets. Sometimes it stopped at a simple covered waiting platform in the middle of nowhere, a trail leading from it into the dark forest with trees she could not believe could grow so large.

  The two young men next to her had been asleep. When they awoke, they spoke to each other in Swedish! It had been unimaginable that, hearing Swedish, she would feel like crying—until now.

  She held on, but her face gave her away. The two young men looked at her, worried and concerned. One of them handed her a handkerchief she was sure had snot in it, but she took it, afraid to refuse. She dabbed her eyes with a daintiness that they probably thought was girlish, but she didn’t want to get an eye infection.

  “Are you all right?” The man spoke heavily accented English.

  She didn’t understand him, but said in Swedish, “Just homesick, I guess.”

  The man beamed and, in a loud voice, said, “Svensk flicka.” At least six heads turned to look at her.

  It felt so good to speak a language from home. She didn’t even mind the men roaring with laughter when she asked if the boots with the spikes were an American method of defense. Informed they were used to secure footing, especially on slippery logs, she turned bright red. She wondered but was too shy to ask how a log could be so big a man would need to walk on it in the first place, but then she recalled the stumps.

  The Swedes left her before the train got to Willapa but gave instructions for finding a boat to take her to the mouth of Deep River.

  Deck space on the boat cost her twenty-five cents. Driven by a huge single-cylinder steam engine, the boat pushed briskly through the choppy water. Far to the west, across the bay, Aino made out a low-lying shore with huge trees silhouetted against a whitewashed sky. She took shelter from the cold slipstream in the stern behind the crude passenger cabin, watching the thin line of smoke from the boat’s boiler fade into the receding distance, acutely aware she was the only woman on board.

  A fight exploded between two young men shouting curses, one in English and the other in a language she did not know. Some playing cards fluttered away in the slipstream. Other men crowded around the two, none making the slightest move to interfere. The English-speaker lunged, but the other man stepped aside, neatly grabbing him and throwing him overboard. The men crowded to the rail, laughing and pointing, as the man floundered in the wake, receding with every second. Someone threw a life ring. The boat turned around and the man was hauled aboard, shivering uncontrollably. He stripped down to his long wool underwear and descended the ladder to stand next to the boiler, oblivious to being exposed in his underwear.

  Her heart still beating, Aino seemed to be the only one who even remembered the fight.

  Reaching the mouth of Deep River in the late afternoon, the boat pulled up to a wharf of rough timbers sitting on tall pilings driven into the mud. The skipper hurried because the tide was going out. She scrambled up a wood ladder and someone handed her satchel to her as the boat pulled away. She watched it continue south, self-consciously holding her hat to conceal her hair. A cool northwest wind blowing in from the sea to the west beyond the low-lying peninsula across the bay pushed her wool skirt tight against her legs, ruffling its hem. She had five quarters in the little purse tied to her camisole strap and tucked under her blouse.

  A man who’d left the boat with her, and who was loading a small pile of goods into a rowboat, tipped his hat politely and said something she could not understand. Although smiling brightly, she could feel her lip trembling. The man sighed, thinking, then pointed to his chest.

  “John Higgins.”

  She nodded vigorously and patted her own chest. “Aino Koski.”

  The man smiled, held up one index finger, touched her nose with the other, and brought the two together. “Koski. Ilmari. Matti.”

  She nodded yes so hard she thought her head would come off.

  * * *

  When Ilmari saw his sister pulling on one of the oars of John Higgins’s rowboat as it rounded the bend below Ilmahenki, he smiled, thinking of Ullakko’s rare attempt at a joke: “So is Christmas.” He ran into the water and grabbed the boat’s gunwale. Standing thigh-deep in the water looking at her, he said, “I thought someone w
as coming.”

  She said, “I have a letter from Mother.”

  They stood, looking at each other, love pouring from their eyes.

  John Higgins helped her from the boat, shaking his head at their very un-Irish impassivity. Ilmari carried her to the shore and put her down where she stood with the bottom of her skirt dripping while he returned for her valise and asked Higgins to tell anyone from Reder’s Camp who happened by the store to tell Matti that his sister had arrived.

  Ilmari set Aino’s valise down in the house. She was fingering the knot on her head scarf. He gave her a quizzical look. She set her jaw and pulled the scarf from her head.

  Ilmari took an involuntary breath, fighting anger and sorrow until he brought both under control. “What happened?” he asked.

  “I was goose-plucked in prison.”

  “Prison,” he repeated.

  “Yoh. For politics.”

  When Matti arrived after dark and saw her, he looked at Ilmari, who looked down at the floor. “Who did this to you?” Matti asked.

  “The Okhrana.”

  “For politics,” Ilmari added.

  “The bastards,” Matti said, quietly.

  “Mother says it’ll grow back,” Aino said.

  She handed Ilmari Maijaliisa’s letter, which he read out loud. The letter said there was still no news of their father and briefly described the raid, its outcome, and why Aino had to leave Finland. No one spoke when Ilmari folded the letter. They never spoke about it again.

  It happened to be Saturday, so Matti didn’t have to walk to Reder’s Camp to start work at dawn as he would have any other night. Aino covered her head, and the three siblings drank coffee and talked and laughed until well after midnight.

  Aino slept in Ilmari’s bedroom, Matti in the sauna. Ilmari, sleeping on the kitchen floor, was awakened several times by Aino’s screams. He went in twice to wake her. She looked at him, fear in her eyes, but wrapped her blankets around her more securely and went back to sleep.

  The next morning, Aino made breakfast for her brothers. After they ate silently for a couple of minutes, Ilmari said, “You had nightmares last night.”

  “Yoh,” Aino answered.

  There was another long silence. Then Aino took her bowl of mush from the table and went outside with it.

  Breaking a domino-size rectangle of sugar into two pieces with a sugar-cube cutter, Ilmari handed one piece to his brother and put the other in his own mouth. Both brothers poured coffee from their cups into their saucers and began sucking the liquid through the sugar cubes.

  When he’d finished his coffee, Ilmari said, “It’s too late to plant.”

  “Yoh,” Matti replied. They both knew Ilmari had planted only enough to get him through the winter and spring.

  “She has no cash-earning skills,” Ilmari said.

  A long silence ensued as they contemplated this.

  “Ullakko’s looking for a wife, since he lost Lena with the baby,” said Ilmari.

  Matti said, “Yoh.” Ilmari nodded gravely. More silence.

  “Ullakko’s the best bet,” Ilmari said. “He’s got five kids to feed and a dairy farm to run. He won’t care if she’s red, blue, or green.”

  “You wouldn’t be thinking about the money you owe Ullakko for equipping the smithy?” Matti asked.

  Ilmari didn’t reply.

  It took Ilmari only thirty-five minutes to walk to Ullakko’s first thing Monday morning. A dirt road, carved from the forest and paralleling the river, ran a mile into Tapiola and then out to the cluster of farms near Ullakko, where it stopped. County commissioners, who sat a full day by boat to the north in Willapa, the county seat, decided where roads would go and then levied a tax to build them. Because cash was scarce, each family paid the tax by providing a man, a horse, and necessary equipment.

  Ullakko had been in America more than fifteen years, building a good-size dairy herd. Famous in the area for bringing in the first Helsinki cream separator, he increased his butter output, getting an exclusive supply contract with Reder Logging. Ilmari found him chopping weeds around the potato plants with his seven-year-old son and nine-year-old daughter, using their three hoes. His five-year-old daughter had a stick she used to loosen the dirt around the weeds, but most of her time was spent taking care of her three-year-old brother and eighteen-month-old sister just getting mobile.

  Ilmari shook hands with Ullakko, gravely telling him good day, and Ullakko answered in kind. The two oldest children straightened up. Then Ullakko started chopping weeds again, and the two went back to work.

  “My sister Aino has come from Finland.”

  Ullakko grunted and attacked the next space between potato plants.

  “She’s seventeen.”

  Ullakko looked up with soft blue eyes that had seen sorrow.

  “She needs work,” Ilmari said. “She could cook and take care of the children.”

  Ullakko thought for a moment. “It would be unseemly for her to live here with no woman in the house.” He returned to his weed chopping. Ilmari understood Ullakko hadn’t recovered from his wife’s and baby’s deaths yet, even though it had been nearly two months ago.

  “If she stays with me at night, she could be at your place to fix breakfast, watch the children, fix lunch and dinner, and then come back.” He watched for a reaction but saw none. “Come over to the house Sunday for coffee.”

  Ullakko stopped chopping but remained bent over, looking at where his hoe met the ground. After some silence, he said, “I need a wife, not a maid.”

  “She’s going to need a husband in the next couple of years. Why not you? She’s a good worker.”

  Ullakko’s oldest daughter turned her head to look at Ilmari and then went back to work. Ilmari and Ullakko looked at each other saying nothing. Then Ilmari said, “You never know.”

  Just then Ullakko’s toddler fell flat on her face and started wailing. They watched her older sister run to pull her up and then try to comfort her, holding her close in her arms. She was not much taller than the toddler.

  Ullakko said, “Sunday. I’d have to leave by five to get back to milk the cows.”

  Ullakko hadn’t had pulla bread since his wife died and the two brothers had not had pulla since they left Finland. Aino had gone into Tapiola to Higgins’s store to buy yeast and cardamom seeds on Saturday and made it that night, using Maíjaliisa’s recipe. It took four hours with the two risings. Since Ullakko was the only Finn other than her brothers Aino had had a chance to talk with, she was having a good time plying him with questions. By the time Ullakko left to milk his cows, he was smitten. He and Ilmari agreed that he would pay Aino two dollars and fifty cents a week plus the same food his family ate.

  Just before Ullakko left for home, Ilmari said, “I’m the oldest brother. I take the place of the father here. I’m not without influence.”

  Ullakko stopped, thrust his hands into his pockets, sighed, somewhat embarrassed, and scuffed a shoe on the dirt road. “Ilmari, I’ll be up against younger men. I’m thirty-five.”

  “Yoh, with an established cream and butter business and a house already built.”

  “You’d support a proposal, you know, if things went along all right?”

  “How would you view the loan?”

  Ullakko recognized the deal. “Gone. We’d be family.”

  The two men shook hands.

  Matti had stayed after the meal to help with chores before hiking back to Reder’s Camp. Ilmari found him wheelbarrowing cow dung to the compost pile and told him the news, quite pleased with himself. When Ilmari went to tell Aino, Matti followed to watch the fireworks.

  With Matti so obviously tagging behind Ilmari, Aino knew something was up. She served her brothers coffee and seated herself. Then Ilmari proudly announced that he’d found her a job working for Ullakko.

  She responded by putting her coffee cup down and staring at him. “I don’t want a job and I especially don’t want a job with him. Aren’t I pulling my weight?”
>
  “No, no, it’s—”

  Matti came to Ilmari’s rescue. “Aino, you’re a good worker. The problem is cash.” He waited to make sure she was listening. “Ilmari has to spend cash money for food until he gets the vegetable garden going and the first rye comes in. He also needs to buy tools, glass windows, pay stud fees or buy a bull, and pay road and property taxes. There’s not enough cash to feed more than him. The only sources of cash here are logging, fishing, or working in a sawmill.”

  She knew she couldn’t manage the chains and cables, much less swing a ten-pound double-bladed ax for the twelve to fourteen hours a day required by logging. The Chinook salmon in the Columbia often weighed more than a hundred pounds. She’d never get one into the boat. The traditional woman’s way of contributing food—tending a large garden and helping with the livestock—was out; it was too late to plant and Ilmari could easily manage the few cattle he had. Where women were invaluable, even treasured, was taking care of the family. There was no family, and if there were, a wife would come with it.

  “I could teach.”

  “There’s no school,” Ilmari said.

  “Then tutor. I’m not going to be someone’s servant.”

  Both brothers sighed. “Aino,” Ilmari said. “No one is going to pay good money to have kids …” He hesitated.

  “Wasting their time,” Matti said.

  Aino blew up with frustration. “Who do you two think you are? Father? What century do you think you’re living in?” She knew Ilmari’s intentions were good. She was ashamed that her arrival had saddled him with a problem and that she had nothing practical to offer to help solve it. She felt dependent and useless. They hadn’t even included her in the discussion of the problem. “I’m not a servant. I’m better educated than both of you.”

  “You wouldn’t have to go there on Sundays,” Ilmari said, looking confused. “And he’ll pay you some cash money, too.” His voice was almost pleading. “You can buy things.”