Deep River

by Karl Marlantes

  And the mighty storm hit the little church and he was standing in the aisle, the congregation around him, fearful in the night, as the windows shuddered and the walls rocked. Flames in the lamps flickered as the pressure inside the church seesawed between windblasts.

  And the women were weeping, and the men were looking down in sorrow, and a coffin was being borne up to the altar, its lid closed, because Pastor Hoikka had not wanted anyone to see the mutilated body that everyone knew was someone’s son but not whose, and they each wept for all.

  And Ilmari wept for the sorrows of life and was glad for life’s brevity.

  And he looked down and the offering plate was in his hands and he looked up and Matti and Aino stood opposite each other across the aisle, looking furtively at the offering plate as he held it up to the altar.

  And there was a rending and tearing of tortured wood as a huge tree came crashing through the roof above the altar, throwing Hoikka into the pallbearers, and the shrieking of the wind mingled with the screams of the women. The lights were blown out and there was darkness.

  Half-awake, Ilmari understood that there would be war. Fully awake, he forgot the details of the dream, but knew there would be great demand for floor joists for army barracks. That meant maximizing the output of fourteen-foot two-by-tens.

  1

  After Lempi’s death, Aino focused relentlessly on organizing. In mid-June, she boarded the train for Portland, still feeling the loss but also having a sense of urgency. She’d learned from the last failed strike that striking when prices were down was a bad idea. But now, because of the war in Europe, prices were climbing and owners were pulling in money. More important, there was full employment—no hungry, out-of-work loggers and mill workers needing to feed their families and therefore willing to scab. The IWW’s time was now.

  Thirty miles north of Seattle, in Everett, shingle workers were striking at that moment, demanding a return to the 1914 wage scale they had conceded when prices were low. Forming a cartel called the Commercial Club and allying with local politicians and police, the mill owners were refusing to budge.

  Aino arrived at the Portland IWW hall to be greeted by compatriots, friends she’d made in Nordland and Centralia. When she joined the small group of women folding pamphlets and getting a lunch buffet ready, one said sarcastically, “Well, if it isn’t our own Elizabeth Gurley Flynn from downriver.”

  The women were cool. She was sure they all knew about her and Hillström, but because of his martyrdom they kept a lid on their stuffy morals. Aino joined a group of men talking and smoking outside on Burnside Street.

  At the meeting, the IWWs decided to get involved with the strike in Everett, particularly since it seemed that the AF of L was getting all the publicity—and if the strike was a success, would also get the credit.

  They decided to send Jim Rowland, one of their best, to Everett. Aino returned to Camp Three to focus on organizing the lower Columbia counties.

  Throughout the summer and early fall, Rowland and other IWW organizers held meetings and rallies, but after several months there was still no progress. In late October, Rowland asked for volunteers to add some weight.

  They were met by Sheriff McRae and several hundred armed, deputized citizens, who took the arriving Wobblies into the woods and nearly beat them to death. That enraged Wobblies from all over the West and on November 5, 250 Wobblies boarded a ferry in Seattle and sailed for Everett, just twenty miles north on Puget Sound. When they arrived, somebody fired a weapon.

  The news of the Everett massacre hit Aino the next day like a sledgehammer to the abdomen. Five Wobblies, including two she knew, were killed, and one deputy. Twenty-seven Wobblies and twenty-four deputies were wounded. Seventy-four Wobblies were arrested for murder.

  She grabbed the hatchet used to split kindling. Striding to one of the large stumps next to their shack, using both hands, she hammered it with the hatchet’s blunt end until exhaustion finally brought her back to her senses. She then screamed and buried the blade, leaving the hatchet for Jouka to work free.

  She lost no time using her and the men’s outrage to start organizing the next strike for late spring.

  While Aino was traveling daily, organizing from Nordland to Neawanna, loggers were traveling from as far away as Louisiana and North Carolina to find employment in the booming Northwest timber industry. They all needed to be fed. Rauha’s beef business boomed.

  She’d started with five heifers in 1907, just after marrying Ilmari. She’d planted clover and alfalfa among the stumps left from logging. She fenced meadows with brush and when money was available from Sampo Manufacturing, she put up barbed wire, often by herself. The herd had grown to sixty head and even Rauha couldn’t keep up. She hired help. None stayed long. Rauha was a tough taskmaster. She asked no more of her helper than herself. The difference was that Rauha cut corners, often to the helper’s detriment. After a few weeks, the helper would demand better pay, be refused, and move on.

  After Sunday dinner on a particularly cold and wet February day, Rauha’s issue came up in the sauna with the brothers. “She’s just too hard on the hired help,” Ilmari said.

  Matti muttered a barely discernible, “Yoh.” With that one word, he managed to convey “I agree,” “I’m not surprised,” and “I told you so.”

  Ilmari and Matti were lightly switching their own backs with branches, Ilmari on the bottom bench, Matti on the top one, from old habit. When Matti was little he had to prove he could take the heat better than his older brother.

  “She doesn’t like Americans,” Ilmari said, “because they’re spoiled and don’t work like Finns. She doesn’t like Italians or Greeks or Bulgarians because they’re dirty. She certainly would never consider hiring an Indian or a Chinaman.”

  “So, find her a good Finnish boy,” Matti said.

  “Easier said than done,” Ilmari said. “If they can stand on two feet and breathe, they’ll be logging for better pay.”

  Silence followed. Ilmari ladled water onto the glowing rocks in the fire pit. The sudden steam, hot and piercing right to the soul, made it momentarily impossible to talk.

  Finally, Matti said, “I know someone. And he’s a Finn, but he was born here.”

  “Who?” Ilmari asked.

  “Heikki Ranta. We used to call him Kullerikki at Reder’s Camp, because trouble seemed to follow him everywhere. He was a whistle punk when I worked for Reder. He must be around nineteen or twenty now. People still call him Kullervo.”

  “So why isn’t he working for you?”

  “His mother used to box his ears,” Matti said. “Some nights he would return to Reder’s Camp and curl up on his bed with his hands on his ears, trying not to cry.”

  The two brothers thought on this. Life was hard. Some people had it harder than others.

  “He can’t hear in one ear,” Matti went on. “He’d be dead in a month if he went logging. Or someone else would be.”

  “How would he be for helping Rauha?” Ilmari asked.

  “He’s scrawny, but he’s scrappy and tough. Even when he was a kid, he’d fight grown men. He nearly killed a man at a dance when he was fifteen, some insult about his sisters growing up to be whores like their mother.”

  “That’s sufficient cause,” Ilmari said. “The man he nearly killed?”

  Matti smiled and shook his head. “A logger. Outweighed him by fifty pounds.”

  “Humans outweigh cougars by fifty pounds. I’d bet on the cougar.”

  “Yoh,” Matti said.

  They pondered this for some time.

  “Sounds like a hothead,” Ilmari said.

  “Well, you’d have a temper if your father and mother both beat you,” Matti said.

  Ilmari picked up a small branch and was lightly switching it on his back. The sweat glistened on his face glowing red from the coals. “A child has only two choices,” Ilmari mused aloud. “He can knuckle under, convince himself that being hit is love, or get angry and fight back. The first will
make you crazy and the second will get you in jail.”

  A week later, Rauha hired Kullervo for three bits a day plus room and board. Room was the sauna. It was the board that wasn’t nailed down. Kullervo expected logger-size meals; Rauha resented every potato.

  2

  Mielikki had turned eight in January and, at her own insistence from an early age, Ilmari had started taking her to visit Vasutäti, who was more like a grandmother to her than Louhi was. One Sunday afternoon in March, he and Mielikki trudged through the sodden forest, Mielikki barefoot, Ilmari with water squishing from his shoes, to Vasutäti’s little camp. Up until recently, Vasutäti had let Mielikki play at helping with basket weaving. On their last visit, however, she’d put Mielikki to work, bending the cedar-bark strips to crack and then peeling off the outer layers, leaving moist flexible wands. Vasutäti then let her work the fresh wands into a basic twill pattern, over two, under two, over one, forming the base of a basket she was making to sell. Mielikki felt proud of being able to contribute to Vasutäti’s income.

  On this day, Vasutäti met them as they emerged from the forest. She was carrying a hatchet. “Today,” she said to Mielikki, “you learn how to accept the gift of the tree of life.” She looked at Ilmari, smiling. “You call it western red cedar and I need your help. Too old to accept gift by myself.” She handed Ilmari the hatchet.

  After ten minutes, she stopped in front of a young cedar. “You cut here,” she said. “Not more than two women’s hand wide. Then you grab and pull cedar bark as high up as you can. I will sing a song thanking the tree.” She snorted. “Too old to do anything else.”

  Ilmari pulled off a strip of wide bark about twenty feet long. They hauled it back to the campsite, where they converted it to basket wands and sorted them by width and color. Then Vasutäti went into her shelter and returned with an old, beautifully crafted but very simple basket.

  “This was my mother’s,” she said to Mielikki. “You put wands under it, make twill pattern base, and bend up. You copy this exactly.” She emphasized the “exactly.”

  Mielikki’s first basket would be molded on a basket made by Vasutäti’s mother. Even at eight, she knew she was entering sacred and adult ground.

  That spring, on April 6, 1917, Aino heard the constant tooting of Jouka’s Shay long before she could see it. She stepped outside into the rain and looked down the tracks. Other women had done the same, some with shawls over their shoulders and bandannas on their heads against the driving rain, others, like Aino, just accepting getting wet. Aino knew Jouka had passed by their shack with a load just two hours ago and nothing was wrong then; if something had gone wrong, it most likely would be down at the log dump and booms at Margaret Cove. The whistle kept tooting. This was different.

  The train came around the first dump-side bend, moving slowly uphill. Jouka was still laying on the whistle. By now, the cook crew, the flunkies, and even John Reder had come outside. Reder happened to be in his office instead of supervising operations as he usually was. Reder had plenty to supervise. The crew had grown to over a hundred and he had two rail lines that split off just north of Camp Three going to two different shows, each with two yarders.

  Jouka jumped from the back of the cab onto the coal deck where he could be seen and heard. “We’re at war with Germany!” he shouted. Aino’s heart sank. The murmuring of the crowd died. It looked to Aino as if Jouka were elated. Not only were the European workers killing each other; now American workers would be fighting German workers alongside Finland’s enemy, Russia.

  Crossing the tracks and running up to the train, Aino asked, “Will we be fighting Finnish boys?”

  “I hope not. The Finnish volunteers are mostly on the eastern front, fighting the Russians.”

  “But, Jouka, this is crazy. We could be killing Finnish boys who volunteered to fight Russia with the Germans.”

  Reder ran up to the engine. “Was anything said about the army’s response?” he asked. “Expansion at Fort Lewis? A draft?”

  “I just know what the Knappton Packing’s telegraph operator knows. No details.”

  Reder was silent, thinking. “It’s time to punch a line into that stand up by where your brother-in-law was logging.” He looked up at Jouka, excitement showing in his eyes. “OK. Better get going. We’re going to be moving a hell of a lot of logs.”

  The train chugged off, leaving Aino staring at the empty cars as they clacked by her, just five feet from her face. When the last car went by she crossed the tracks to their little shack, working out what going to war meant for workers and the IWW. Prices were sure to go even higher, meaning extra shifts. Boys would sign up to fight, just like the fools in Europe. Both factors would make labor scarce. The bosses would be far more likely to settle rather than stop the money flowing in. The army would be desperate for war materials. Now was the perfect time to strike. But if they did strike, they would surely be accused of sabotaging the war effort, being unpatriotic—or worse. Up until now, labor’s war had been against the bosses. Now, it might be against the United States government. She straightened her shoulders. So be it.

  3

  Four days after America declared war, Kyllikki Koski was feeding Matti a good last supper before he would leave at three thirty in the morning. Word had quietly been passed that there was to be a secret meeting of owners, large and small, in Nordland to discuss “the timber industry’s contribution to the war effort.” Matti knew that this was the political way of saying how to stop Aino’s IWW without violating the Sherman Antitrust Act.

  “Aino said that the Wobbly river workers’ strike in Montana is spreading to the sawmills on the east side of the mountains,” Kyllikki said, pouring Suvi and Aarni their buttermilk. She’d just finished breastfeeding Pilvi, who was asleep. “Even to some logging camps.”

  Matti’s body tensed. “Is that all Aino said?”

  “Aarni, both hands.” She turned back to Matti. “She said the owners will want to get in bed with the federal government.”

  Matti carved off a slice of rieska. He buttered it lavishly. He took a bite, chewing slowly. She could almost feel the gears turning.

  “She’s right.”

  “It’s sour. I don’t want it,” Suvi, nearly five, said, in unaccented English.

  “It’s called buttermilk,” Kyllikki said, also in English. “It’s good for you. Now drink it.”

  “No.”

  Kyllikki looked over at Matti. He looked back, annoyed that she was sending the problem to him. “You drink it,” he ordered Suvi in Finnish.

  “No.” This “no” wasn’t quite as forceful.

  Matti rose from his chair and reached across the table, taking Suvi’s buttermilk. He started drinking it.

  “That’s mine,” Suvi said.

  Matti looked at her around the glass as he emptied it. He put the glass down on the table with an exaggerated satisfied sigh. Matti quietly resumed eating. Suvi stared at the empty glass.

  “That was my buttermilk,” Suvi said.

  Matti looked at her, saying nothing. Aarni quickly started drinking his own buttermilk.

  “It’s not fair!” Suvi shouted.

  “You want a spanking?” Kyllikki asked her. Out of the corner of her eye she watched Matti deep in thought. For some reason, she felt a shiver of foreboding.

  “No,” Suvi said quietly.

  “If you don’t drink your buttermilk,” Kyllikki said, “someone else will.”

  “It’s not fair,” Suvi whispered.

  Aarni held his now quarter-full glass out to Suvi.

  “I don’t want any,” she said to him fiercely.

  He looked up at his mother and father, his feelings hurt by the rejection.

  “The Bible calls it casting your pearls before swine,” Kyllikki said, barely containing her amusement.

  “His stupid buttermilk isn’t a pearl,” Suvi said.

  “And you’re not a swine, just pigheaded,” Kyllikki said quietly. “Get ready for bed or I’ll tan your backsid
e.”

  “Aarni has to come, too, or it’s not fair.”

  “He will, when he finishes his buttermilk.”

  Suvi stomped off and Kyllikki gave Matti a quick look. “She’s clearly your daughter,” she said to him in Finnish.

  When Kyllikki returned from settling the children, she asked Matti, “Why are you going? Even John Reder isn’t in the same league.”

  “I’m an immigrant. I have a Wobbly sister. Aino’s crowd will strike. It’ll bring in the government. If Two-Hundred-Foot isn’t clearly with the government and the big boys, we’ll never sell another log.”

  “None of our loggers are Wobblies. I don’t see how Aino’s politics—”

  Matti cut her off. “The army will be putting a lot of contracts out for bids. Every competitor will tar us with being friendly to the Wobblies. I need to be at that meeting.”

  While Kyllikki was finishing the dishes, she could hear Matti packing. She walked into their bedroom just in time to see the puukko and its sheath go into the valise.

  “No, Matti. We agreed.”

  “It’s work. We agreed. And it’s Nordland.”

  Kyllikki couldn’t argue with the latter point. Nordland was notoriously dangerous.

  “Take your Sunday shoes,” Kyllikki said. “You can at least look like an owner. Are they shined?”

  “They’ll do.”

  She gave him the look that brooked no comeback.

  “OK, I’ll shine them,” Matti said.

  “No. I’ll shine them. I don’t want some Nordland whore thinking you’re not married.”

  Two days later, John Reder was making small talk with a group of mostly middle-aged and well-dressed men in the Tyee Room of the Gray Hotel in Nordland. They were all waiting for the arrival of George Long, Weyerhaeuser’s general manager, the unofficial industry leader. Reder, however, was waiting for the arrival of Matti Koski, and he was seething.