Deep River

by Karl Marlantes

  “Does lending money make me a capitalist?”

  Aino smiled. “You’re lending meat.”

  Ilmari shook his head, slowly, looking at his brother and sister. “Take the oldest one,” he said.

  Aino and Matti herded the lone beef back to Reder’s Camp where it was slaughtered, providing another week of protein, supplementing the hunting parties that were scouring the unlogged areas for deer and elk.

  Without work, the loggers had time to talk and the talk turned fearful. They came to Aino with questions she couldn’t answer. What would happen if Reder returned with the sheriff? Could you be forced back to work at gunpoint? She reminded them that they weren’t slaves or serfs, that this was America. Could they go to jail for eating Reder’s food? Wouldn’t that be stealing it, when they weren’t working for it? Aino tried to still their fears, but her own grew. Could she go to prison? The thought pushed up her pulse and made her stomach lurch.

  The girls in the henhouse grew quiet, not saying much to her at night. They’d all been excited and on her side when it started. She was learning about the realities of leadership. Leaders must deliver, otherwise they’re abandoned.

  On Friday morning, Matti watched little Kullerikki, who’d gone to see his sisters, come running into the camp, his breath heaving. “Scabs. Ten I think. Reder brought them over from Astoria. And Sheriff Cobb,” he gasped. “Three armed deputies.”

  They could all add. Although when logging was going strong in the summer, Reder employed up to a hundred men, he didn’t need that many to stay alive. With Reder’s side rod donkey punching, four scabs falling and bucking, four rigging, two working the landing, and Reder himself running the locomotive to get the logs to tidewater, he could yard and load enough logs to keep the bill collectors at bay.

  The loggers looked at one another. “Well,” Huttula said. “I guess we’re in it one hundred percent now.” He walked into the bunkhouse and came out with his hunting rifle. Jouka followed with the other loggers who had rifles or pistols. They were all used to hunting and firearms, but to Matti they looked nervous.

  He and Aksel had only their puukkos. Until now, Aksel had stayed away from the heated discussions, even going down to Knappton again to help Cap with the net mending. Aksel looked at Matti and sighed. “Can’t just sit here I guess,” he said. Matti felt a tug of love for him, although he would never use that word.

  The two of them joined the others.

  The loggers quietly gathered behind the rail trucks. Some—more rash or ignorant of what a shootout was like—climbed on top of the locomotive cab and onto the firebox and boiler in front of the cab. Matti and Aksel crouched behind the pilot truck, the small wheels that guided the locomotive on the track, and stared through the running board handrails to where the trail emerged from the stumps and slash.

  Matti felt someone slip in behind him. Aino. “You get out of here,” Matti said. “This is no place for a girl.”

  “Make me.”

  “You damned stubborn …” Words failed him. “You realize there could be shooting.”

  Aino looked at him as if he’d said the most obvious thing possible. “Why do you think I’m here? I started it.” Matti said nothing, taking this in. “I never thought it would come to this,” Aino said, her jaw set, looking at the trailhead. “But it has.” She looked directly into Matti’s eyes. “I’m responsible.”

  Aksel shrugged his shoulders. Matti took Aino by her elbow and dragged her closer to the pilot truck, placing her between him and Aksel. “You stick with us and keep your head down,” he hissed.

  Aino rearranged herself between them. Matti caught Aksel’s eye and touched the puukko in its leather scabbard tucked against the small of his back. Aksel nodded, touching his own puukko, the puukko of his father that should have gone to Gunnar.

  They watched the scabs coming closer. Shorter, darker men, Greeks or Italians. Jouka shouted, “That’s far enough.” He held his rifle high.

  There was a brief huddle among the scabs, then one stepped forward. It was the Greek from the dance, Galanis. He opened his palms and shrugged, shouting, “Galanis has to eat.”

  Jouka lowered the rifle, pointing it in front of him, but not obviously aiming at the group.

  The sheriff and three deputies, who’d stopped as well, looked nervously at John Reder.

  Reder stepped in front of the group, his rifle cradled in the crook of his left arm. “Get the hell off my property,” he shouted. “Get off or I’ll have you evicted and arrested.” He turned to the sheriff. “Carl, you tell ’em the goddamned law.”

  Carl Cobb, who’d been the sheriff of Chinook County for nearly six years, having won two elections on the money and backing of the owners in the county, was clearly uncomfortable. Until now, the worst trouble he’d seen was drunken fights on weekends, the occasional petty theft, running the Indians out of town before dark, and the usual wife beatings.

  “That’s right, boys,” he said. “You’re on private property.”

  Before Matti could stop her, Aino stood up in front of the locomotive, exposing herself to the view of the armed group. “Everything you seeing here is paid for by the sveat of verkers,” she called out. “Ve verkers owning this machines as much same as Yohn Reder.”

  Matti tugged at Aino’s skirt. She slapped his hand away. He stood up next to her. Then Aksel did the same on her other side. Matti could feel her trembling with fear. Trying to control his own fear, he whispered to her in Finnish, “What you just said is preposterous.”

  “It’s a simple statement of the labor theory of value, which you clearly don’t understand,” she whispered back, still looking at the sheriff, her head held high, her back straight, her legs quivering.

  Sheriff Cobb and Reder had a heated exchange they couldn’t hear. Cobb took a couple of steps forward. “You’re a bunch of cowards, hiding behind the skirts of a woman,” he called out.

  Aino immediately knew Cobb had hit the loggers with an insult they couldn’t ignore, risking violence even further, foreclosing any chance of winning. She spread her skirt wide with both hands and looking exaggeratedly behind her, called back, “No one hiding behind this skirt.” That brought a laugh from some of the loggers.

  “That’s enough, Aino,” Matti whispered tensely. “Get down.”

  “You get down,” she whispered back. “No one’s going to open fire on a woman.” She drew herself up. “At least I don’t think so.”

  The two groups watched each other in silence. After three minutes that seemed like half a day, Reder ejected a cartridge to clear the chamber and bent down to pick it up. He said something to Cobb and weapons were cleared and pistols holstered. The group disappeared down the trail.

  Aino grabbed Matti’s arm and buried her face against it. She wouldn’t move until Matti gently turned her back toward the dining hall.

  That night, after a brief argument with the scabs when he refused to pay their fare back across the river, Reder had to deal with yet another woman.

  “The payment for the loan for the new yarder is due next Thursday,” Margaret said quietly. “Next Friday, the grocery bills are due and those merchants expect to get paid, whether we think it’s fair those loggers are eating our food or not.”

  “They’re stealing it.”

  “Have you been in the bunkhouses?”

  “Goddamnit, Margaret, I told you I grew up in bunkhouses like those, greasing skids when I was eleven.”

  “John Reder, I’ll not have swearing in this house.” She sighed. “I know you worked your way up, John, but if you don’t settle, it’ll be settled for us when we go out of business.”

  “I’ve never been beaten.”

  “Maybe our own loggers aren’t the enemy.” She held out the Oregonian to him. “The IWW is trying to organize a region-wide strike in April. Mills are stockpiling lumber in anticipation. Prices are rising.” When Reder finished, Margaret said, “If we can move logs at those prices, we’ll recover what we’ve lost in a week. In sever
al more weeks, the yards will fill and prices come down. Now is the time to settle.” She took the paper from him and folded it neatly. “In a way, the IWW is on our side. We have a common enemy, the big corporations. If they’re not stopped, they’ll eventually own everything from trees to paper plants, controlling the prices, putting the small outfits out of business except for a few of us to log at breakeven when they need more volume. You’ll own Reder Logging, but they’ll own you.”

  Reder walked over to the window and stared into the dark. She touched his shoulder. “John, they’re the best crew we’ve had. For heaven’s sake, it’s straw.”

  19

  Saturday morning, Reder reached the camp before dawn. He fired up the locomotive boiler himself and as soon as he had a little steam up, he laid on the whistle, long steady blasts, then climbed on top of the cab. Loggers stumbled out of their bunkhouses, looking at him in the half light.

  “Goddamnit,” he shouted, his voice small against the hills and surrounding forest, but clearly heard. “I’ll get your straw and give you your bull cook. Now get to work or I’ll fire every one of you.”

  The loggers looked at one another and smiled. They disappeared back into the bunkhouses and came out with their boots on. Aino and the other flunkies were already in the dining hall, preparing a very meager breakfast of pancakes without butter and beans that they’d put on to simmer the night before. In half an hour Reder Logging was back in production.

  The girls slammed through the Saturday evening cleanup in record time. The henhouse hummed with discussions about what ribbon, hat, or bracelet to wear. There were never discussions about choice of clothes; the girls had only one good dress or skirt.

  The dance that night was in Tapiola, upstairs in Higgins’s warehouse. Higgins had rigged a canvas screen for privacy for the women that closed off a space carved out of the goods on the main floor, the front of which served as the general store. Although more than half the people didn’t work for Reder, an air of celebration stirred in the building, marking a small victory for working people.

  Aino basked in the muted glory.

  When the band took a break, Jouka set down his violin and reached into a sack sitting next to the accordion player’s chair. He nodded to the band and they played a brief flourish. The hubbub died. “Aino Koski, please come up here,” he said. Aino felt her heart thump and she hesitated, looking around her.

  Lempi gave her a gentle shove, “Go on,” she said. “You’re going to like it.” Then she added, “I already know what it is.”

  Aino didn’t have time to process exactly what the last remark was intended to convey, but she made her way to where the band had set up.

  When she reached Jouka, he pulled out a little doll made from clean straw that arrived on the train that afternoon. He’d put a little apron on the figure and a tiny head scarf. The loggers cheered and then laughed and kidded Aino when she blushed so deeply it could be seen clear across the room. She wanted to kiss Jouka but simply said, “Kiitos.” Thank you.

  The loggers called out, “Speech, speech!” She looked over the people pushed up behind those forming a small space in the dance floor around Aino and the band. She could see Ilmari and Matti by the stairway, their faces glowing with pride. She saw Ullakko over by the wall, next to his children, two of them asleep on the floor. The older children clapped their hands, proud to know her, but when she saw Ullakko’s look, she quickly turned to those immediately in front of her, aware of Jouka, violin in hand, standing just behind her right shoulder.

  Although unprepared, she spoke. “First, again, thank you for the doll.” She held it above her head and shouted, “Clean straw!” Everyone clapped and some cheered. She continued in Finnish. “But this is just the beginning.” She realized it seemed someone else was talking. “Yes, we have won a small victory for the workingman, but we must not let this divert us from our main goal, our final victory. No more will we stand alone, beaten down to slave wages, alone, slave hours, alone, and slave working conditions, alone.” Applause, though not general, interrupted her. “When Karl Marx said the workingman has nothing to lose but his chains, he was right, because we have been given nothing and we have nothing. But the chains, the chains, fellow workers, are of our own making. It is our dumb acceptance of ‘the way things are.’” She was suddenly swept away with her own rhetoric, launching into an impassioned appeal to throw off the combined chains of private ownership, the fairy tales told by church and government to keep them in their places and in fear. She finished with a rousing, “Two for ten!” meaning two dollars for a ten-hour day.

  She waited for the applause. About a quarter of the crowd clapped, some even cheered, but many, including her brothers, looked embarrassed.

  Jouka moved next to her, his hand on her shoulder, and addressed the crowd. “Now, we celebrate the victory we have won. No more talk about work. We’re here to dance.” He turned to the band. “‘Skaters’ Waltz’ in G.” He played the two-bar intro and the band took it away. People began to waltz, forming a flowing circle under the rafters and split-cedar shakes of the roof. Aino became aware of being alone between the band and the dancers. Suddenly, Aksel appeared, holding his hand out in invitation. She glanced at Jouka who, violin under his chin, nodded just enough, urging her to dance. She took Aksel’s hand and moved into the flowing gyre, aware that everyone she loved wanted her to keep quiet.

  The waltz over, Jouka left the bandstand and joined her and Aksel. He made a polite nod to Aksel and said, “Mind if I have the next one?” She saw Aksel’s eyes flicker slightly in disappointment, but he graciously nodded back and walked away. She stared up at Jouka. He had never looked so handsome. The band started and they were dancing. She knew all the girls would trade months of bad shifts to be dancing with Jouka, but he had chosen her. He had given her the doll in recognition of what she’d done, the most important thing she’d done in her life. She focused on his face, aware that she couldn’t stop smiling. He had chosen her.

  She walked back to Reder’s Camp with Lempi and two other girls from the henhouse. All of them had Sunday shifts in a few hours. Matti and Jouka walked ahead of them and two other loggers behind them in case of a cougar or bear. She felt a letdown. Somehow the speech had turned people from celebrating their victory to focusing on her being a radical. Two women had asked her how many IWW membership cards she’d handed out, and she didn’t get the impression they thought she was doing God’s work.

  A quiet, insidious voice told her she’d pushed a little too fast. The speech was right, but it was made at the wrong time. Another lesson in politics learned the hard way.

  She wrapped her coat around her and moved closer to Lempi and the others. She focused on Jouka’s back, realizing she hadn’t thought about Voitto the entire night. She smiled, listening to Jouka in his cups, entertaining them all by singing songs in three languages, his lone voice echoing through the dark trees shrouded in the mists of madrugada.

  20

  On December 2, 1906, as Aino followed Matti down the trail to have Sunday dinner at Ilmahenki, she pondered on change. Reder had let the loggers off early for Thanksgiving. At first, Aino thought that maybe the strike had stimulated his generosity, but Lempi told her that he did the same every year, as well as serve turkey for the loggers who had no homes to go to. Fresh straw came up on the train every Tuesday and Friday. Reder had assigned an older logger with a drinking problem to start the fires before the loggers came awake and just before they quit work. It seemed as if the loggers had never slept on damp hay crawling with vermin or awakened shivering in the cold or fumbled with numb hands to make fires in the dark upon returning to the bunkhouse.

  Things were different at Ilmahenki. That morning, at church, Ilmari had heard more than an earful about Aino’s rousing thank-you speech.

  “Why should I care what a bunch of ignorant toadies to the state religion say about me?” Aino said.

  “I’ve told you before,” Ilmari said slowly. “It’s not the state religion
here. A state religion is forbidden by the Constitution.”

  “Bunch of toadies,” she mumbled, pushing at her mashed potatoes.

  Matti looked at Ilmari. “Coffee?”

  Aino cleared the table. Matti lit a cigarette. He moved to the door after a scowl from Ilmari. Outside, he took a few deep drags, then threw the butt to the ground, where it sizzled for a moment. He came back inside and said to Aino, “I saw you were dancing close with Jouka last night.”

  She was pouring coffee into the ceramic mugs from Sears Roebuck and didn’t answer.

  “Jouka’s a good logger,” Matti went on. “He’ll maybe someday be a donkey puncher. I’ve watched him around engines. He’s good.” He paused. “Really good.”

  She put the mugs in front of her brothers and sat back down at her place. They were silent, drinking their coffee. She glanced at each one’s face.

  “What?”

  “Dancing close,” Matti said. “If you’re serious, that’s fine, but if you’re not—”

  Aino slapped her hand on the table. “I’m sick and tired of husband, husband, husband. You tried selling me into slavery with old man Ullakko. Can’t I just dance with a good-looking boy without everyone thinking I have to marry him?”

  Ilmari’s eyes flashed. “Trying to find a decent man who could take care of you is not selling you into slavery,” he said very evenly. “You’ll ruin your reputation and you’ll never find a husband.”

  “What? Dancing with someone makes me the Whore of Babylon?”

  “You be careful with language from the Bible,” Ilmari said.

  She looked right at him and said, “Whore.”

  “You think it’s funny, a girl’s reputation?” Ilmari replied. “Who’s going to want to marry a girl with a bad reputation?”

  “Every logger in this valley—and a blacksmith.” Her tone made it clear she was referring to Rauha.

  “Her mother has the reputation, not Rauha.”