Deep River

by Karl Marlantes

  Ilmahenki seemed vast and empty. She walked into the house and lit and trimmed the kerosene lamp. She heard the wind whistle through the cracks in the door and rattle the thin glass window. She decided to make bread, so the others could have it fresh when they returned. She’d borrowed The Jungle by Upton Sinclair from the Suomi Hall library and now read it, consulting the dictionary frequently, occasionally punching down the rising dough, fragrant with yeast and rye and graham flour. She thought about Sinclair’s book. Logging was way more dangerous than packing meat, but as bad as loggers’ working conditions were, they were nothing like the horrors of the slums described by Sinclair. People out here had farms and game—salmon, elk, deer. And they had plants—blackberries, licorice root, salmonberries, thimbleberries, camas root, even skunk cabbage if you boiled it twice. No cash, but food. And food kept the loggers happy. And then, most of the loggers were young and single, needing only enough money to get through the next weekend. Maybe she should go to IWW headquarters in Chicago. Things were heating up there. People were crowded into slums and worked in factories. She could make a difference.

  She crawled into the bed, the sheets she’d fashioned from old flour sacks feeling damp and cold. She turned down the wick and the kerosene flame snuffed out.

  29

  After Aino turned him down, Aksel had avoided Ilmahenki, other than for an occasional visit to the sauna or for a meal. He didn’t want to look as though he was sulking. Aksel decided to put into action the idea he’d had while on the spar tree on the Saaranpa show, and he boarded the General Washington for Astoria.

  He walked into the smoky warm interior of the Lucky Logger to set his plan going. The pianist was playing what the Americans called a rag—a syncopated mesmerizing beat underlying a catchy melody line that seemed to never end, just constantly move. It moved just like the country: forward.

  Karen, his favorite, was also the best dancer in the house. That night, she taught him the latest dance that had come north with some sailors from San Francisco, the Grizzly Bear.

  Aksel returned from Astoria on Sunday with more than a hangover. In the bunkhouse, he handed Jouka a piece of sheet music. “It’s called ‘Frog Legs Rag.’”

  Jouka looked at it. “I don’t read music, but this looks hard.”

  “What about your piano player?”

  “He can read music, but this will look hard to him, too.”

  “Give it to him and see what he says.”

  The next Saturday, March 27, the dance was at Tapiola. As Aksel hoped, Aino came along with Ilmari and Rauha, who even at five months pregnant had all the men’s attention. The unwritten code allowed married women to dance with others. Aksel now understood one primary assumption that underlay the code. Other than waltzing, where the partners held each other apart in a stiff frame, the old-country dances involved only hand-holding. The Grizzly Bear was intimate.

  When the band struck up “Frog Legs Rag,” people stood momentarily puzzled on the dance floor, then slowly moved toward the walls. Aksel took a deep breath and walked up to Aino. She was standing next to Lempi.

  “May I have this dance?” he asked Aino.

  Aino looked at Lempi, then back at Aksel. “What do you dance to this … this … music?”

  “It’s called the Grizzly Bear. I’ll teach you.”

  She gave him her hand. Lempi’s face was as cold as a Finnish winter.

  Aksel began the side-to-side lumbering motion of the dance, moving his feet in a sideways hop, combining a rise on his toe and a thumping heel drop to mark the beat. Aino awkwardly tried to copy him. He showed her again. She copied him again, this time smoothly. He took her out on the floor. Doing the crazy lurching imitation of a bear, he held her tight to his chest. Aino bent her head back and laughed.

  Jouka kept playing the fiddle, staring at them, a hard, cold stare.

  “Jouka doesn’t like you dancing with me,” Aksel said.

  “Jouka doesn’t like me dancing like this with anyone.” She wrinkled her nose and laughed.

  A couple of women started hissing and shouting: “For shame. For shame.”

  Aksel could see them turning to their husbands, making out “Stop them” and “Do something” with their lips. The husbands hesitated. Then a woman stamped her foot and said something quite heated to her husband. Pointing at Aino, she shouted, “Whore.”

  Jouka stopped playing. The other musicians stopped. The room went silent. Aksel saw Aino’s eyes tear up and felt her trembling. “You take that back,” he said to the woman. She looked to her husband.

  “She will not,” he said.

  Aksel guided Aino gently toward the wall, his eyes on the man, sizing him up, trying to think how he was going to take him. Before he took a step, Jouka barreled into the man whose wife had slandered Aino. The man’s friends joined to defend him. Aksel charged in, Matti and Ilmari right behind him.

  The women backed up against the walls, some aghast, some enjoying themselves. They’d all seen fights before. The rules were clear but unspoken: no kicking a man when he was down, no choke holds, and certainly no knives or other weapons.

  Lempi was holding her fists to her mouth. Aino was standing straight with her shoulders back.

  The fighters were getting tired. Two or three minutes were exhausting, even for these aerobic machines, and some of the older, married men took the opportunity to start moving between fighters. Another unwritten rule: when the fight was over, it was over and no hard feelings.

  Jouka was standing over the man whose wife had called Aino a whore. The man’s face was as bloody as Jouka’s, but his nose was broken and Jouka’s wasn’t. Someone gently moved Jouka back and offered the man on the floor a hand, watching Jouka carefully. Still breathing hard, Jouka looked over to where Aino and Lempi stood. One eye would soon be black and swollen and his knuckles were raw. Aksel was bent over, breathing hard as well, clearly trying to recover from a punch or kick to his abdomen. He, too, looked over at Aino and Lempi, then painfully straightened.

  Jouka strode over to Aksel and just as Aksel drew himself upright, slugged him with a right cross to his head, sending him back to the floor. Aksel managed to get to his knees, trying to shake his head clear. Jouka headed outside.

  Lempi started toward Aksel, but Aino caught her arm. “Let him get up on his own.”

  Lempi shook her arm free, clearly furious with Aino, but she stopped. She watched Aksel struggle to his feet, then she rushed to him.

  The band started up again without Jouka. Aksel had disappeared.

  Aino and Lempi went to the ladies’ room, a canvas screen that shielded the only mirror in the building. Aino started to put her hair back in order.

  Lempi let Aino have it. “For Christ’s sake, what the hell’s wrong with you?” Serving food to loggers didn’t do much for language refinement. “Jouka’s good-looking, a great dancer, a good earner, and clearly head over heels for you.”

  “I know. He proposed.” Aino said, primping in the mirror, pleased with the effect this would have on Lempi. Of course, she knew Lempi pushed her toward Jouka because Lempi liked Aksel. Aino patted something invisible into place and turned to her. “I said no. I don’t believe in marriage.”

  “Right, free love,” Lempi said sarcastically.

  “Why not?”

  “That makes you a hussy.”

  “And giving it away for a house, food, and security in marriage makes you a whore.”

  “Don’t bait me. I won’t rise to that nonsense.”

  When Aino returned to the dance floor, Jouka was waiting for her. Aksel was still nowhere to be seen. The band moved into the accordion player’s two standard waltzes: “Skål Skål Skål” followed by “Livet i Finnskogarna” with its lively triplets and wavelike melody.

  She knew she had a gift for dancing, as did Jouka. When they danced together, they were like one beautiful body, man and woman in perfect harmony. Waltzing highlighted this. She became the sun in the center of the solar system, supported and conta
ined by the gravity of Jouka’s strength and rhythm, the other dancers turning into circling planets. If he ever asked her to marry him when they were dancing, she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to say no. She could dance with Jouka every night. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. Voitto was dead. She tried to make that sound final in her mind. Dead. Jouka was a good earner. If all she had to do was keep house for Jouka, there would be no farmwork, no need to midwife. She would have time for organizing. But what if she had a child? She pushed the unromantic thoughts from her mind.

  The dancing wound down about one in the morning and Aino found herself on the muddy street in front of the store and warehouse in the dim light of a kerosene lantern. With just a mile on the wagon road to Ilmahenki, she had no chance of getting lost. She’d long ago mastered walking at night, trusting some instinct that guided her by dim light above the trees. Tonight, however, with the drizzle and thick clouds, there would be no guidance. The mile to Ilmahenki felt like twenty in the cold darkness.

  Jouka came down the steps. “Want me to walk home with you?” he asked.

  At first, she refused. He insisted. She was glad he did.

  He tucked his violin under his coat, the strap from its deerskin cover around his neck, and offered her his arm. They soon saw the light from the lantern Ilmari or Rauha had left on the porch.

  Aino turned, intending to break the link between them. He reached out, taking her upper arms in his hands, and asked her to marry him—again.

  Her romantic musings about marrying Jouka had become a real choice. She wasn’t ready for this. It was so much easier to keep playing with possibilities. She felt as if Lempi was in her head telling her to say yes. Did she love Jouka? It would be wrong to marry for just practical reasons. It didn’t feel like what she had felt with Voitto. Was that love or something else? She fell back on ideals to guide her, not on her heart. “Why can’t we just be friends? All this … this societal pressure about marriage. It’s just the police saying that it’s OK to do what’s OK anyway.”

  Jouka recoiled and stepped back. A cloud of anger crossed his face. Then he smiled. He raised his palms to the air. “So, it’s nothing. Let’s you and I go into the bushes.”

  She took a step back. Fear. Surely, he was joking.

  “Come on. Let’s do it. Right now.” He bowed with a sweeping gesture toward the bushes.

  Helsinki. Voitto. She brought up her sisu. “Jouka! You stop talking like that. I won’t put up with it.”

  He covered her mouth and nose with one large hand while grabbing the back of her head with the other. He pulled her close to him, his lips right up against her ear, his breath on the back of her neck. She panicked, struggling, futilely trying to slap his hands away, feeling no stronger than a child. “Big talk,” Jouka whispered. “I know you don’t believe it.” He let her go. “Don’t worry. I would never hurt you.”

  She scratched his face and stepped back, breathing hard, her heart pounding.

  He touched his face and looked at the blood on his hand. “You keep up this political nonsense about marriage,” he said, “the only way you’ll ever make love is being treated like a whore.”

  She ran to the light. Whirling around, nearly spitting, she shouted, “A free whore, goddamn you!” She ran into her big brother’s house, where she never had to make any hard decisions, like marriage. She threw herself onto the bed, burying sobs in her pillow.

  30

  Having no hard decisions to make had a considerable downside. Rauha treated her like a little sister, and the bigger Rauha grew with the baby, the worse it got. Aino wanted to find fault with her, but Rauha was a good wife. She worked hard. Given the pregnancy, she filled that part of the bargain as well. What was worse, she was stunning. Aino couldn’t wait for her to go into labor to bring her back down.

  The baby came in August. The birth went without a hitch and took about six hours. Rauha, hard as a walnut shell, as cool as the wind off a glacier, and not particularly interested in babies, popped her child like a healthy bitch on her second litter. Aino, standing by for any emergency, felt she was there only to clean up.

  But she had a niece named Mielikki after her and Ilmari’s departed sister.

  She puttered around the house, cleaning while Rauha slept. After a couple of hours, she peeked into the bedroom. Rauha was nursing the girl steadily, stolidly, a job neither distasteful nor enjoyable. Mielikki was drooling colostrum. It was all so unfair. Margaret Reder, wanting more than anything else to be a good mother, nearly died and then had a difficult time breastfeeding.

  “Everything OK?” Aino asked.

  Rauha smiled at her. At least helping her with the birth removed a bit of the tension from missing her wedding.

  “Aino, come and hold Mielikki.” Rauha matter-of-factly removed her nipple from Mielikki’s mouth and held the baby out to Aino. The little hand waved awkwardly, touching nothing but air, the little eyes squinted nearly shut, the head searching around for the vanished nipple.

  Taking Mielikki in her arms, Aino held her against her breasts, rocking her slightly, cooing unconsciously to her. She was suddenly hit with a strange yearning, a warmth, a lovely feeling of holding this tiny creature, half her brother Ilmari.

  She pictured what it would take to have this: a man, a marriage, a baby. The thought of sexual intercourse gave her an involuntary start. Why was she thinking about marriage, anyway? Her midwifery business was doing well. Although difficult because of the uncertainty of timing, it gave her money and time to organize and cash to chip in at Ilmahenki, something even more important now that Rauha was handling the household finances.

  Recently, she spent four dollars taking the boat to Portland and back to attend two meetings at the new IWW hall where she picked up several boxes of flyers and pamphlets. It cost her another dollar to go to Astoria for the Saturday night meeting of Astorian Suomalainen Sosialisti Klubi. The more she went there, however, the more she felt the members were just debating theory, getting nowhere. Maybe it wasn’t worth the boat fare. But the ASSK meetings offered more than politics: the coffee, the coffee cake, the sound of Finn, the socialists’ passion for their part in the final days of capitalism. These nice people, the ASSK socialists, were committed to a cause, too, no less than the IWW, but she felt a tinge of guilt, knowing she was spending time there only because of sentiment, missing Suomi. Mielikki was squirming. She shifted the baby more to her shoulder. She was surer than ever the IWWs had it right. They weren’t nice, but they got things done. Direct action. They scared the hell out of ownership. She needed to stop being nice with the nice people and commit entirely to the IWW.

  But the revolution had failed in 1905, so say ten years for the next one. That made it 1915. Could she do six years of organizing with a baby? If she said yes to Jouka, it would be the kind of hard choice it took to get things done. She gently bobbed with Mielikki. Revolutionaries made hard choices, sometimes for other people. Jouka could sacrifice for the revolution as well as anyone else, as well as her. She’d marry him, free herself from midwifing, free herself from the chores at Ilmahenki. But that meant no baby—and dealing with Jouka about that. She pulled Mielikki back and looked into her face, the face of the future. “We’re going to make it right,” she whispered to her, bouncing her gently.

  She handed Mielikki back to Rauha. It felt wrong, like handing over her fate, that Mielikki was being taken from her. She knew she wanted a baby. Well, there was nothing but convention stopping her from having a baby and organizing at the same time.

  She shrugged into her coat and tied her wool bandanna under her chin. Walking out of the house, she felt a cool refreshing release from the heat, tension, and intensity of a successful birth. But also intense joy. Then the inexorable arithmetic came back. The refreshing feeling from moist air and dripping trees gave way to anxiety. She was now twenty, the ideal age, her mother used to say, for having and nursing babies but too young for raising them. She said every year after twenty it got physically harder, so waiting for
the right man had its costs. Say twenty-four was as far as she dared put it off. She realized she was thinking in circles. If she didn’t want to get married, then she could just have a kid. But did she really want to have a baby without being married? How many men out there were like Voitto, willing to have children without being married? She laughed at herself. Lots of them. Maybe she should just tell Jouka she’d gotten scared, say yes. Why had she panicked so?

  Then the arithmetic again. If she went to Jouka now, he’d marry her right away. But maybe she needed six months to really think this through. But what if after six months she decided Jouka was the wrong man after all? Six months to find another one. Six months to find out that this one wasn’t right, either. Six months to find the next one. Six months to see if he was the right one. Two years right there.

  There was another time pressure. How much longer before Rauha wanted her out of Ilmahenki?

  31

  The next Saturday, Rauha sent Aino into Tapiola to buy sugar cubes and baking soda, carefully doling out coins as if to a child. Rauha had delivered a baby. She was now a woman.

  Walking into Tapiola carrying an empty canvas tote bag, Aino entered a patch of late afternoon sunlight. Shutting her eyes and holding her arms out wide, she stood there feeling the sun on her face. There was a rustling high above her. She watched the tops of the feathery hemlocks move with the wind, meeting, pulling away, returning, like girls in a dance line holding their skirts.

  Just before she reached Tapiola, she tucked her glasses into the tote. She shook out her skirt, making sure that the petticoat beneath it didn’t show; pinched her cheeks; and made sure two tendrils came down from her hair piled under her wool bandanna. One never knew.

  Just as she reached Higgins’s store she heard loud cursing in the new saloon, followed by two fighting loggers hurtling out the door. Several others followed, watching them until one went down, briefly unconscious, and the fight stopped. As the loggers filed their way back into the saloon, Aino realized Jouka had come outside with them and was now standing on the splintered planks of the sidewalk. He raised a glass of beer to her. She started walking toward him, admiring his blue eyes and his chest muscles pushing at his suspenders. Then he turned his head and looked up the street and her gaze followed.