Deep River

by Karl Marlantes

  Ilmari showed up before dawn with an ax and a crosscut. He was soon followed by Aino, carrying a pack made from a burlap sack. It was stuffed with clothes, blankets, a few kitchen utensils, and bars of good soap. Jouka couldn’t leave work. Rauha had stayed at Ilmahenki with the children to supervise the sawmill, her chore workload doubling so her husband could help his brother.

  Aksel didn’t know which was the more beautiful sight, Aino and Kyllikki moving confidently in the makeshift outdoor kitchen, or Ilmari methodically tearing into one of the trees that would go into the dam. His contemplation of beauty was quickly interrupted by Matti shouting orders, rearranging work, and generally being a pain in the neck. Then Matti left to hire more crew with Aksel’s money.

  Aksel heard his name called and turned to see Aino holding one bucket of water and another of warm coffee. On her back was a packboard with a flour sack tied on it. She set it down; asked him if he wanted coffee, water, or both; and pulled out from the sack a corned beef sandwich thick with butter and laced with black pepper and salt.

  “Packing it out to you will save almost two hours of daylight working time,” she said. Then she laughed. “The eight-hour day doesn’t apply to the Koskis.”

  Aksel wondered what it would be like to have her making sandwiches for him all the time.

  The work, ordinarily hard until the dam building began, became even more intense. Matti had both hired more crew and promised a bonus when the logs were delivered. The loggers stumbled to their beds in the dark. The dam, constructed of stacked logs, grew daily. Matti spent hours at night doing maintenance on the yarder and other equipment. Aino reverted back to the rhythm of the henhouse, catching only a few hours of sleep, cooking pancakes in the dark, serving them cold at breakfast. No one minded, because she also turned out hot bacon and eggs at first light. Four or five times in the day, Aksel would hear her voice, turn, and see her standing there with coffee and water, glasses on, her hair piled above her sweating forehead.

  On Saturday evenings Jouka showed up. The last weeks of September, the moon was waxing toward full and directly overhead around midnight, so he worked nearly the whole night and all day Sunday.

  Rauha showed up with the children, and production in the kitchen went into high gear. The men were like boilers, the women stuffing them with food and water. The work never slackened. Aksel felt they had an intense joyous madness in the way they pushed themselves to see if it could be done. No one thought about wages.

  The last tree was felled nine days before the deadline and hauled down to the reservoir, now a mile long and in places two hundred yards across. It was packed with floating logs. Aksel and Matti walked the creek between the dam and the bay, blasting potential obstacles with dynamite.

  On October 25, everyone stood on the small hillside above the splash dam. Aksel and Matti had rigged dynamite in the dam’s center. Matti offered Aksel the plunger, but Aksel offered it back. Matti looked at the crowd. “Kyllikki,” he shouted.

  “No,” she shouted back. “I’ve got Suvi.”

  “Come on,” he pleaded.

  The loggers started chanting Kyllikki’s name. Her face flushed, she turned and held out her hand to Aino. “It’ll be like launching a ship.”

  Aino laughed. “No champagne from Matti.”

  They both made their way to the detonator. Suvi on her hip, Kyllikki knelt next to Aino. She put her right hand on the plunger and Aino joined her with her left.

  “Be sure to duck,” Aksel said quietly.

  Aino whispered, “One, two, three,” and they both shoved down on the plunger.

  There was a brief muffled sound, and the dam seemed to bulge outward and upward for just a split second. Then logs and pieces of logs rose into the air with a shattering roar. Water from the reservoir pushed through the center of the dam, spilling down its face. Then, the whole dam gave way. The man-made flash flood hurtled down the nearly dry streambed and with it came tons and tons of logs. The ground trembled. The water and logs together scoured the sides of the creek to bedrock. Small trees were ripped from the banks. The ground vibrated. Some of the crew had already been stationed alongside the streambed and now all those watching the blowing of the dam ran to help, carrying pike poles and peaveys. Logs jammed. Men jumped, balanced, lost their balance, were pulled to safety, but kept breaking up developing jams. The first logs reached Grays Bay, their momentum taking them majestically away from shore, to be gathered later into booms for towing.

  On October 30, the last log was manhandled down the now slick flume that had once been the original creek and was added to the huge boom linked to a waiting tug.

  Matti and Aksel rode the boom all the way to the mill, smoking and laughing. They wanted to be there when the logs were graded and scaled and to argue against any decision to cull one. Mill owners were notoriously hard on loggers when it came to grading and scaling.

  Matti sent the tallies by mail to Drummond, along with the code for what had been taken from Reder. Two weeks later, a letter came back saying Drummond didn’t have the money, but he was good for it—trust him.

  10

  Kyllikki was watching Matti pack his good shoes and clothes. “You promised me you’d leave the puukko at home.”

  “Except for work,” he replied. “This is work.”

  “No,” she said in English—emphatically.

  Matti walked over to the kitchen sink, looked out the small window, then whirled around and savagely kicked the kindling pile next to the stove, scattering it against the wall.

  “The goddamn son of a bitch.” He grabbed the flatiron sitting on the stove top and hurled it, putting a deep dent in the bead-board wall.

  That made her mad. He was acting like a child. Then she caught herself; he was acting like a man whose family was endangered and who was powerless to do anything about it.

  Matti had gone back to staring out of the window.

  “Take Aksel. He’s more levelheaded and his English is better than yours. The puukko stays here.”

  “Aino is right,” Matti muttered. He looked over his shoulder at her. “In this country, you steal five dollars and you go to jail. You steal a railroad and you go to Congress.”

  “She didn’t make that up.”

  Suvi started crying. Kyllikki picked her up, shushing her gently, and walked over to Matti. “Daddy wants to hold you,” she said, handing her to Matti. “Don’t you, Daddy?” He took Suvi in that awkward way men have, as though they’ve been handed something beyond price and made of matchsticks. She watched his mood disappear, as she knew it would. Snuggling up to him, Suvi between them, she said, “We’ll get through it.”

  He looked at her. “Yoh,” he said softly.

  Matti and Aksel were ushered into Drummond’s office by his secretary. He greeted them like old friends he hadn’t seen for years. “Can I offer you a drink?”

  “Ei,” Matti said. It came out like the warning growl of an aroused German shepherd.

  “He means, ‘No thank you,’” Aksel said quietly in English.

  “Ah, yes. Well, coffee then?” He didn’t wait for an answer but walked to the door. Leaning out, he called to the woman who escorted them in. “Hey, Kate, how about some of that coffee Bill Brewer dropped off?” He turned back to Matti and Aksel. “Cream? Sugar?”

  “Black,” Aksel said.

  Drummond leaned out the door again and called out: “Black.”

  He sat behind his desk again. “So, I’m guessing you boys are here about the money.”

  “Our money,” Aksel said.

  “Sure, sure. Of course, it is.” Kate came through the door with the coffee. She gave a slight nod of her head to Drummond as she served them. “Thank you, Kate,” Drummond said, not looking at her. Aksel gave Matti a be-careful look. “But, surely, you boys understand businesses often experience cash problems,” Drummond was going on. “Of course, it’s your money. We just have to be a little patient is all.”

  Matti looked at Aksel. He understood the English
perfectly well but wanted the time to think and cool down while Aksel translated, adding in Finnish: “Keep your temper.”

  He turned to Drummond. “We want our money, now. We’re having cash problems of our own.”

  “Of course,” Drummond said. “That’s why we have banks. I tell you what, we could open a line of credit, tide you over until we get this little situation solved.”

  “If you have money for the loan, why not for the logs?” Aksel asked.

  “You know the bank’s money isn’t my money. It belongs to our depositors.” He paused, looking for some reaction. There was none. The two faces were masks, devoid of any signals. It unnerved him slightly. “You just put up a little collateral. I don’t know. Maybe equipment. And the money is yours.”

  “Why you not borrowing money from depositors and paying us money you owing us?” Matti broke in, unable to constrain himself any longer.

  “Well, come now, Mr. Koski. That’s a bit unseemly.” Drummond gave a chuckle. “I mean, the president of his own bank borrowing for one of his businesses. There are rules of ethics about things like that.”

  Matti stood and pounded his fist on Drummond’s desk, making his coffee cup jump along with pencils and framed photographs. Aksel rose with him, putting his hand on Matti’s wrist. Matti tossed Aksel’s hand aside.

  “I want my money now.”

  “Or?” Drummond said coolly. “We’ll go to court? It’d be here in Nordland. It’s what’s called legal venue.” He smiled. “Or maybe word would get out that some Finnish gyppo logged nearly a mile-long strip of John Reder’s timber.”

  Aksel visibly jerked.

  “And you go to jail with me,” Matti said.

  “Oh,” Drummond said, his face mocking. “How was I to know the logs were stolen timber?”

  Just then the door opened and Drummond’s secretary poked her head in. “Chief Brewer to see you, sir.”

  Brewer and another police officer walked through the door. “Mr. Drummond,” Brewer said. He looked at Matti and Aksel. “They’re not giving you any trouble, are they?”

  “No, no. Of course, not.” Drummond leaned back in his chair. “It wouldn’t cross their minds.”

  At dinner the next Sunday, Aino let Matti have it. “You see now, big businessman? You see where laws and government get you in a capitalist system?”

  “Aino,” Kyllikki said.

  “Oh, sure. The big money from Astoria speaks.”

  “Aino,” Matti growled.

  “You’re all damned fools. All you want to do is get into the pig trough with the other pigs.”

  “Aino!” Ilmari slapped the table. She stopped. “It’s not about capitalism or socialism,” Ilmari went on evenly. “Mr. Drummond is a bad man. Both systems have bad men.”

  “No, they don’t.” She jabbed her finger at Ilmari. “The capitalists are in it for themselves. Socialists are in it for other people. They can’t be bad.”

  “Oh, Aino,” Matti said.

  “Oh Aino, what?” she shot back.

  “Don’t be a fool.”

  “Like the fool that bit off more than he can swallow, worked us all for nothing, owes the bank and his wife’s father years of wages and his partner’s fishing boat money?”

  “You’re all fools,” Rauha said quietly. They all looked at her. “Contracts. The law. Socialism. The good of the people. Good men. Bad men.” She harrumphed. “It’s all foolish talk to make you believe you are more powerful than you really are. The people with the real power give us all this socialist, capitalist, legal, moral nonsense while they do what they want.”

  “But I have a contract,” Matti said.

  “I have a contract,” she mimicked him. She shook her head. “A contract in the hands of someone who can’t afford a lawyer is toilet paper.”

  Matti shoved his chair back and went outside, slamming the door.

  “You’re being a little hard on him,” Kyllikki said.

  “Reality is hard on everyone,” Rauha answered.

  That night Rauha wrote a letter to her mother explaining what 200-Foot Logging owed Sampo Manufacturing for her and Ilmari’s direct labor at the show, for all the blacksmithing done without payment; what Drummond owed 200-Foot Logging; and what all that meant in total dollars for the major shareholder of Sampo Manufacturing.

  Two weeks later, a letter arrived at Higgins’s store. Higgins had secured the position of postmaster for Tapiola, eliminating the need to go to Knappton for the mail. The envelope contained a check for the full amount from some company none of them had ever heard of, but it was signed by Al Drummond. Matti took the check to Astoria where he deposited it into the account with First National Bank of Oregon. Ten days later, the check cleared. Christmas of 1912 was a good one for the Koskis.

  11

  Times were also good for the IWW. The efforts of hundreds of organizers like Aino were paying off. Membership was growing, as were the union’s influence and its geographic reach. In January 1913, Hillström was in Mexico to help organize the revolution and IWW halls were springing up there. The IWW was organizing textile workers in the East, mostly women and immigrants. In January alone, the IWW organized sixteen strikes, ranging from cannery workers in California to lumbermen in Louisiana to hotel waiters in New York City. Aino was sent to the Willamette Valley to help the families of strikers in ten logging camps. They wanted shorter hours without lowering wages, an end to mandatory overtime, and Sundays off. Owners, helped by the railroads, retaliated by shipping in scabs by the carload. The strikes failed, but a groundswell of support for the IWW continued to grow.

  In February, 25,000 textile workers in New Jersey struck, demanding an eight-hour day, an end to working multiple looms, and age restrictions on child labor; 1,850 strikers were arrested and jailed. That same month 400 rail workers struck against the Pennsylvania Railroad, asking for a raise from a dollar seventy-five to two dollars and ten cents per day for a ten-hour day.

  In April, sawmill workers struck in Pilchuck, Washington, asking for the right to organize, sanitary bunkhouses, decent food, and fire escapes. Aino spent three days there, organizing the food and using the strike to gain membership.

  In May, sawmills in Marshfield, Oregon, went on strike. When loggers sympathetic to the IWW were fired, IWW Local 435 in Coos Bay went on strike in sympathy. When the IWW in Portland asked for her help, Aino refused. She’d stretched Jouka to his limit.

  In June, however, because of her experience with loggers and lumbermen, union leaders in Portland implored her to help with recruiting in Centralia, Washington, a mill town in the middle of timber country. The IWW was building a new hall there, three blocks from the train station.

  She dreaded bringing the trip up with Jouka. She knew she would be gone at least three or four weeks. When she finally got up her nerve to tell him, his reaction frightened her. He didn’t seem to care.

  When Aino got off the train in Centralia, however, all feelings of guilt vanished. That night was to be the grand opening of the new hall, and an itinerant logger told her that Hillström was going to be there.

  Upon reaching the hall, she set down her valise, shook the hem of her dress to get the dirt off, carefully put her glasses in a case, and tucked the case into a side pocket of the valise. Just outside the new hall, she greeted several comrades from the Nordland free-speech fight. Her people. She felt good—at home. She walked inside, adjusting her eyes to the dark. A general murmur in the hall died down. Women in the logging and mining camps were rare and women Wobblies even rarer. She hated it when everyone looked at her, but she also didn’t like it when no one noticed her.

  A man who’d been talking to a small group came toward her. She smiled, remembering not to squint, wondering if she knew him.

  “The Elizabeth Gurley Flynn of Chinook County,” the man announced. It was Hillström. He kissed her hand ironically. “Our own Finnish rebel girl.” Two years earlier, in 1911, Hillström had written a popular song about Flynn called “The Rebel Girl.” />
  She felt more than saw the twinkle of humor in his eyes. “If I could speak like her,” she said, “I’d be in Chicago not Camp Three.”

  “Have you ever heard her speak?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you know you can’t speak like her?”

  She knew it was flattery, but she still felt as if she’d just been asked to dance—and she felt like dancing.

  “Come on,” he said, taking her hand. “Let me introduce you around.”

  She grabbed the valise and followed his lead. She didn’t like how Hillström didn’t even ask if she wanted to be introduced. But when he began introducing her in English, she liked it.

  The opening ceremonies went reasonably well. After five or six speeches, Hillström got them singing and laughing at his clever parodies. Nervous policemen stood silently at the back of the crowd.

  After the last song, Hillström gave an impassioned and, at the same time, humorous speech about how important it was for all working people to join the One Big Union and finally gain the power to end the constant pitting of immigrants against immigrants, craftsmen against laborers, man against man that the capitalists employed to keep them in poverty and under control. Aino could see he connected with the crowd by the nods and occasional murmurs of agreement. It excited her to know Hillström. She wanted everyone to know he was her friend.

  “And I want to introduce you all to Aino Kaukonen, our own little Finnish Elizabeth Gurley Flynn from Chinook County who led our strike against Reder Logging. She’s been organizing loggers and mill workers from the Willamette Valley to Nordland. And I must add,” he said, letting them in on a secret, “an absolutely delightful person to share a cell with.”

  The crowd laughed. Heads turned to look at her. She felt herself flushing. She wished he’d stopped short of the crack about sharing a cell.

  Wives had set up coffee and a potluck dinner. Many of the women introduced themselves to Aino, seemingly making polite small talk. They’d ask questions, however, some that went all the way back to the failed strikes of 1907, over five years earlier, and the free-speech fights in Nordland. Almost all made vague references to Joseph Hillström. She realized they were trying to ascertain her relationship to him. Many Wobblies said that relationships should be free and the business only of those involved, but she knew most—especially the women—didn’t believe it. She understood. There was theory, and then there was practice—the talking of the mind and the feeling of the heart.