Deep River

by Karl Marlantes

  “And she’s the madam setting the whore’s price.”

  The table went silent. Ilmari was trembling, reining in his anger. After a time, Matti said, “Well, that puts a cap on it.”

  Aino put on her coat without speaking, pulled her wool scarf tight against her once again thick hair, tied it under her chin with a single square knot, and walked out.

  * * *

  Aino heard Matti hurrying to catch up with her. She didn’t wait for him. When he joined her, he said, “That was mean to Ilmari and unfair to Rauha.”

  She knew he was right and felt miserable, but she couldn’t bring herself to answer.

  They trudged along in silence until Matti gave up and changed the subject. The topic, however, wasn’t any less delicate. “Since you don’t think Jouka’s right for you, how come you don’t give Aksel the time of day? You know he really likes you. He’s—”

  “Good husband material,” she finished for him.

  “I wasn’t going to say that.”

  “Oh, believe me, it’s implied.”

  After a long pause, Matti tried again. “He’s a good man.”

  “He’s a boy.”

  “He’s smart and he’s fast. He’s—”

  “A good logger.”

  Matti stopped walking. “What is wrong with you? There are six men for every girl here. You could have your pick. But, no, you just want to antagonize everyone.”

  Aino kept walking.

  Matti caught up. “I’m going to partner with Aksel in our own logging company.”

  “He wants to have his own fishing boat.”

  “And logging with me, he’ll get the money to do it. You could do way worse than marry a good fisherman who owns his boat.”

  She stopped and whirled on him. “Get off my back. I do not want to marry anyone.”

  “So, be an old maid.”

  “In ten years, marriage will not exist. It’s just another fairy tale, a prince charming who will make a woman happy forever.” She went silent, trudging forward. “My prince charming died,” she muttered. She stopped again and barely under control whispered, “You have no idea how painfully. You have no idea.”

  Matti remained calm. “I do have some idea. Why do you think I ran?”

  Suddenly the rage spilled out. “You stupid men have no idea.” She stalked off. Matti ran to keep up. “Stay away from me,” she hissed. She threw a rock at him—hard. He warded it off with his forearm and stood still. She turned and ran.

  “It’ll be pitch-black in half an hour,” he shouted after her.

  She ignored him.

  “To hell with you,” he shouted at her as she disappeared into the gloom.

  Matti stomped into Ilmari’s house and slammed the door. “She’s crazy,” he said, to Ilmari’s unspoken inquiry.

  Ilmari had clearly mastered his anger. “She was made crazy,” he said. “We can guess how.”

  Matti poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down heavily on one of the kitchen chairs, not bothering to take off his coat or hat. “Yoh,” he said.

  Ilmari smiled. “She didn’t mean it about the bride price.”

  “Remind me, it’s been months.”

  “Half the capital in a sawmill. I’m saving every penny, but I’m worried she’s not going to wait.”

  “What’s the holdup?”

  “I’ve tried everywhere to borrow the money for the equipment.” He attempted to smile. “You know the old joke, you only can borrow money if you don’t need it.”

  “Let me think on that,” Matti said. He went to the door, opened it, and stared into the darkness.

  “She’ll be all right,” Ilmari said, coming up next to him.

  “She was in a state. She won’t be watching the woods.” He pulled a small matchbox from beneath his coat and struck the match. The sudden glare temporarily blinded him. Shaking the match out, he threw it into the muddy yard in front of the door.

  “You shouldn’t smoke,” Ilmari said.

  “To quote our sister, ‘Get off my back.’”

  He took another drag. “I’m going after her.” He tossed the glowing cigarette to the ground and took off running.

  He ran past the old snag. Such a waste, he thought. Must be fifty thousand board feet in it, mostly vertical grain. Just past Ullakko’s farm, where the Tapiola road became a trail, heading for Knappton and the Reder’s Camp cutoff, he caught a slight movement just at the edge of the trail. He stopped and drew his puukko. With it in his right hand, he held both hands above him and started singing, taking slow steps forward. The bigger the animal, the less likely to be seen as prey.

  “Matti?” Aino’s voice came out of the darkness right where he had seen the movement. He could just make out her dark figure rising from where she must have been sitting or squatting. Matti breathed with relief and put the puukko back in its sheath. “Thought you were a bear or cougar,” he said. He was surprised when she came running toward him, and he found himself with his nose in her wool headscarf. She was trembling. He stroked the back of her scarf and looked off into the darkness as she buried her nose in his chest. He knew now was no time for a joke.

  Three weeks later, Reder let everyone off early on Christmas Eve. Aino and Matti walked through a steady gentle rain to Ilmahenki, getting there just after dark. They found Ilmari with the top of the stove off, cleaning the ashes from the heat vents surrounding the oven; the ashes were so fine that a gray mist hung in the air, drifting slowly into the open stovetop and up the still-warm flue.

  “The stove going to be ready to cook dinner?” Aino asked Ilmari.

  “Yoh.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Caught a steelhead yesterday,” he said. “On the porch. I already cleaned it.”

  Aino went down to the cellar for potatoes and turnips and started peeling them.

  Matti had been thinking about Ilmari’s financial problem for a week. He sat down at the kitchen table and inspected the empty coffeepot that had been moved there by Ilmari. “You’re out of coffee,” he said.

  “Yoh.”

  Silence followed, broken only by the sibilant sounds of the small trowel Ilmari used to clean the oven vent.

  “I have an idea about the bride price,” Matti said.

  Ilmari grunted, went outside, and came back with some alder he’d split two years earlier. He stacked it behind the stove so it would warm and be easier to light on Christmas morning.

  “Yoh?” It meant “Go on.” He picked up his carving.

  “You’re sitting on your sawmill only you don’t see it,” Matti said.

  Ilmari gave Matti a look.

  “You’re good with metal.”

  “Yoh.”

  “I know how to log.”

  “You don’t have half the skill of someone like Jouka, much less John Reder.”

  “Do you know why John Reder is a good logger?” Silence. “Because he can move weight. I already see ways he hasn’t seen to move things.”

  “Thinking’s easy; doing’s hard.”

  Aino said nothing, focusing on the meal preparation and listening.

  “When Reder bought his new double-drum yarder, he left the old single drum behind at the Fortuna show. It broke down so often it wasn’t worth moving.”

  “So?”

  “It’s not worth fixing and moving for someone with a better yarder who wants to spend cash on better things. We’ve got nothing and work for free.”

  Ilmari resumed carving.

  Matti outlined a plan, using Ilmari’s blacksmithing skills, for fixing the abandoned yarder and splicing abandoned lengths of cable to move it with its own power to Willapa Bay and then to Ilmahenki.

  “That yarder still belongs to Reder,” Ilmari said. “It’s stealing.”

  “It’s worthless. Reder will get its full value, so it’s not stealing.”

  “What if Reder claims his yarder?”

  “He’ll never go back to the old site, so he won’t know it’s missing. If you can m
ake a sawmill, you can make that yarder look like something that came from China.”

  Now there was a long silence. Then Ilmari said, “How do we get it here?”

  That was when Matti’s idea really got interesting.

  Aino and Matti both sat through Ilmari’s “It can’t be done” and his “What if?” When he’d finished, Matti proposed the deal. “I want half the money for doing the logging. Your half goes into the lumber mill.”

  “But I’m helping with the logging.”

  “You get a dollar a day out of my half.”

  Ilmari stared at his whittling for some time. “I’ll need to see if this yarder can be fixed.”

  “Yoh,” Matti said.

  The three siblings were silent. This was no small proposal, and brothers sharing a business was a situation fraught with peril.

  When Ilmari said, “The mill needs a name,” they knew he’d accepted the deal.

  The brothers turned to Aino. She nodded her head. “With this you get a wife,” she said to Ilmari.

  “Yoh.”

  “Call it Sampo Lumber. The Sampo was the magic mill forged by Ilmarinen, your namesake.”

  “Sampo Manufacturing. I can do more than saw wood.”

  “I like it,” Matti said. “The magic Sampo ground out all one could want. Sampo Manufacturing is going to grind out money.”

  Ilmari smiled at him and said, “Some say it is the mill of the heavens revolving around the polestar.”

  “I prefer the first version.”

  Two months later, in February, Matti was walking away from Reder’s Camp to Ilmahenki. He and Ilmari had gotten a look at the old yarder in late January after several weeks of delay caused by winter storms, mostly rain but occasionally snow. Ilmari had made two visits to Nordland to see Rauha and assure Louhi that he was making progress on the sawmill. No ultimatum was given, but the message to speed things up was communicated.

  Ilmari and Matti decided on making this third Sunday in February the first day of real work to get the yarder moved. When Matti arrived at Ilmahenki, Ilmari hadn’t yet returned from church, so Matti spent the time collecting kindling and kerosene. This was the day. They were going to fire the boiler.

  When they reached the site, both began to find dry wood and split it to size, When they got sufficient wood, they laid a fire, poured a little kerosene on the wood, threw in a match, and stood back. Black smoke poured from the stack. They added large pieces of split wood, and soon the fire was roaring as the air was sucked through the firebox door. The sides of the boiler began to expand with the heat. Rust flaked off, sometimes in sheets the size of a man’s hand. Then there was a terrific bang as one of the interior vertical steam tubes that filled the upper part of the boiler blew apart. Scalding steam exploded into the water that surrounded the tubes, which, combined with the steam, burst into the air as Ilmari and Matti dived for the ground.

  When the steam died, they poked their heads up and looked at each other. This meant several weeks of delay because Ilmari needed to patch and refit the tube, which required a hot fire from a small kiln, which meant building a kiln next to the boiler. They sat there, looking away from the yarder, saying nothing. Then Ilmari rose. “It will be dark soon,” he said.

  “Yoh.”

  21

  On February 28, Aino received a letter from Joseph Hillström. He expected to be in the Astoria area for several weeks. Maybe they could meet at Knappton?

  Aino and Lempi arrived at Nygaard’s General Store just after dark on Saturday. It was still open, since this was payday. They recognized several loggers from Reder’s and said hello, promising them dances. Aino and Lempi were examining a bolt of cloth when the bell attached to the door rang and Margaret Reder entered.

  “Aino!” Margaret beamed and came right over. She had on a bright cotton dress for shopping, which both Aino and Lempi compared with their own plain wool skirts and cotton blouses. “How great to see you.” She reached for Aino’s hands, but Aino pulled her own hands back. How would it look to the loggers, her being so friendly with the boss’s wife? After a brief halt in the flow, Margaret quickly went on. Turning to Lempi she said, “I’m Margaret Reder.”

  “Lempi Rompinen.”

  Lempi smiled at her, awkward before the boss’s wife. Aino simply chose not to answer. She looked around surreptitiously to see if any of the loggers were watching them. Her deal with Margaret was language exchange. The bargain did not extend past that. Margaret didn’t understand.

  Margaret touched the cloth and started talking in English, which Aino could not yet follow fluently. “Nice pattern … with blue eyes,” she said looking at Lempi, who, to Aino’s mild disdain, blushed. “… I tell … over to Astoria … more choice.”

  Aino and Lempi said nothing. They worked on Saturdays, stores were closed on Sundays, and they didn’t have money for the boat.

  “Of course,” Margaret said, sensing something gone amiss. “You have … the cost of the boat … and back.”

  “We know, Mrs. Reder,” Aino said.

  “Of course, you do,” Margaret said after another awkward pause. Looking around at the store and attempting to remain bright Margaret said, “Well, Aino, can we do a lesson before the dance?”

  Aino nodded yes.

  “Kuusi?” Margaret said six in Finnish, clearly already past.

  “Kahdeksan,” Aino answered. “Eight.”

  “Yksi, kaksi, kolme, neljä, viisi, kuusi, seitsemän, kahdeksan,” Margaret counted to eight. “You see, Lempi? I’m … progress.”

  The two Finnish girls didn’t know whether that required an answer, so they made none. Margaret walked quickly to the other end of the store.

  “For a friend, you weren’t very nice to her,” Lempi said.

  “She’s not my friend. I learn English from her and teach Finnish in return.”

  “When’s her baby due?”

  “How would I know?”

  Lempi gave Aino the look that her snippy answer deserved.

  “May, I’d guess,” Aino said, now a little embarrassed at her shortness.

  “I wouldn’t mind if she were my friend.” Lempi watched Margaret making her way up the wharf, studiously looking everywhere but back at them. “She seems nice. I mean, it seemed she wanted to be nice. You know.”

  “Yes. Nice. I know. Nice. Nice is easy. You look at the palace she lives in and the pigsty bunkhouse my brother lives in and the shacks the married couples live in. Her floors are level and she doesn’t have to wade through pig shit on her way to the huusika.” Aino used a common but crude word for outhouse. “Nice would be housing without wind whistling through the battens. Nice would be sharing the wealth with the people who created it.”

  “I think she was trying to be a friend,” Lempi said tightly. “And you weren’t.”

  Aino trudged up the hill to Margaret’s house, dreading what would probably be awkward. Maybe she should apologize. Maybe Margaret would understand that they couldn’t be friends. Maybe. The maybes ended when she reached the front door. She knocked and heard the rustle of Margaret skirts as she crossed the floor.

  “Hyvää päivää, Aino,” Margaret said. “Se on kahdeksan. Tule sisään. Haluatko kahvia?”

  Aino couldn’t repress a smile. She repeated back in English, “Good day, Margaret. It is eight o’clock. Enter in. Do you want coffee?”

  “Not ‘enter in,’ ‘come in,’” Margaret said, and the lesson began.

  Aino removed her coat and scarf and sat at the kitchen table as Margaret poured them each a cup of coffee. They both drank it black. Almost everyone did. Cream too often went sour.

  Margaret took a sip, set the cup carefully back in its saucer, and said very slowly so Aino would understand, “I thought we were friends, Aino. Why did you snub me like that?”

  “What is ‘snub’?”

  “Snub. Hurt someone by not talking to her.”

  Aino didn’t reply.

  Margaret sat very straight. Talking faster, she said, “Aino,
I like you and … hoped … be friends. I know … boss’s wife … thought we were equals.”

  Aino suddenly felt ashamed of herself, but it was clearly too late—the apology had been owed at the door. “How be equals? You living here. I living up there.” Aino nodded in the direction of Reder’s Camp.

  “John Reder … a good hardworking man … way up … any of his loggers.”

  “John Reder cutting down trees he never planted on land stealed by the railroads.” Before Aino knew it, out came: “And he killing people to do it.”

  Margaret stood. “It’s dangerous work.”

  Aino stood. “Not so dangerous if loggers not tired and you not having hurry-pants for profits.” She used Finglish for hätähousut.

  “Aino, our expenses … same … one log or one hundred. We … out of business in weeks, weeks, if we cut any slower.” Margaret paused for effect. “And all of you would be out of jobs.”

  “If the people own the trees and own the machines, never be worry about going out of business.”

  “That’s impossible.” Margaret leaned forward. “Aino … intelligent young woman but—” She sputtered to a stop. “That’s communism!”

  Aino, sensing that she had the upper hand because of Margaret’s failure to articulate an argument, raised her chin slightly. “Yes. A specter is haunting America, the specter of communism.”

  “I could have you fired.”

  “Like a good friend?” Aino went to the coat tree by the door and began putting on her coat and scarf. She wrapped her scarf around her neck, tugging at it. She smiled at Margaret, hard. “Maybe you read Karl Marx not Mark Twain, you know history on our side.”

  “I think … more to say today … Aino?” Margaret began picking up the cups and saucers. “Maybe … not do any more lessons for a while.”

  “Not maybe. I qvit.”

  As she walked down the hill, Aino could feel Margaret watching her. Then she heard the front door shut. Suddenly she felt empty. She wanted to say she was sorry. Tell Margaret how difficult organizing was, explain why it was so important. But she did not turn back—and now she would not. This was war and there were casualties.

  She took off her shoes and put them in her bag along with her stockings, then continued down the hill, wondering if Hillström would be at the dance. He would understand.