Deep River

by Karl Marlantes

  She worked her way through the standing people and touched her hand to his shoulder. He turned toward her, his eyes bleary and slightly bloodshot. “So,” he said. “You gave up organizing for your brother.”

  But not for him, she filled in silently.

  Jouka pushed a glass toward her on the bar. “Sit down. Welcome to Astoria. Have a drink.”

  “You know I don’t drink,” she said.

  “Oh, yeah. How could I forget?” He picked up the glass he had offered, gulped the liquor down, then held it in front of her face. “Only half an hour of work on the docks, when I get work.” He signaled with his hands to the barkeeper for two more shot glasses. “You want a beer? Lime phosphate?”

  “I want you to come home with me.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Well, where are you living now?”

  “I’m living in a poikataloja on Fourteenth Street. Three to a room. My roommates will be delighted.”

  “Jouka, look at me, please.” He did. “I want to try again. I want to make everything right.”

  His face, lit by bare, low-wattage bulbs in ceiling fixtures, was stoic and sad.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  His face contorted, holding back tears. She touched his knee. “I’m so sorry,” she repeated putting her forehead on his thigh.

  “Oh, Aino,” he moaned. He came to his feet, pulling her up with him and holding her close. “Oh, Aino. Why does it have to be so hard?”

  They talked for over an hour. The poikataloja was out as a place to live for several reasons: it had only a three-holer in the back, no running water, no place to cook, and was occupied entirely by single men. She didn’t want to bring Jouka to Kyllikki’s house, because he smelled. It was awkward enough to impose on your sister-in-law’s parents without that. Jouka had put aside seven dollars in the time they’d been separated. Aino had fourteen dollars left from Jouka’s wages and an additional ten from her midwifery business.

  Earning a living as a midwife was no longer an option in Astoria. There was a hospital, and local doctors were increasingly putting pressure on women to avoid midwives, claiming they were untrained, unhygienic, and unsafe. However, with the lumber strike settled, longshoring was picking up. They could get by as long as Jouka’s number got called often enough. To ensure this meant supplying the right people with bootleg whiskey and other gifts, all expensive. They agreed that Jouka would stay at the poikataloja and Aino at Kyllikki’s until they could find a place to rent.

  When they left the Desdemona Club it was full dark. The night was clear and cold. The polestar could be seen hanging at the end of the Little Bear’s tail just above the dark hills on the Washington side of the river, but the city’s new electric street lamps made the Little Bear increasingly difficult to see. The Milky Way was undiscernible, lost in a foggy yellow glow.

  Jouka walked Aino to the Saaris’. She’d just shut the door when Kyllikki came down the stairs after putting the children to bed.

  Kyllikki’s nose wrinkled. “So, you found him.”

  Aino nodded.

  “At the Desdemona Club,” Kyllikki said.

  Aino nodded again, pushed herself off the door, and began taking off her scarf and shawl.

  “Come into the kitchen and sit down,” Kyllikki said. “We’ll have coffee. Everyone’s asleep. It’s just us. Like old times, when we first moved in with you and Jouka.”

  Aino knew Kyllikki was trying to assuage her pride, reminding her that she and Jouka had put Kyllikki and Matti up.

  “So?” Kyllikki said. “Tell me all.”

  “Not much to tell.”

  “He walked you home.”

  “Yes. I feel like a schoolgirl talking to her mother. Stop it.”

  Kyllikki laughed. “I will, if you talk.”

  So, Aino did. It felt good talking with Kyllikki, so different from the earnest discussions with fellow Wobblies—even the women Wobblies—about ideas, tactics, strike funds, and the myriad of injustices.

  “I told him I was sorry,” Aino said. “Twice. What more can I do?”

  “We’re going to need more coffee for this one,” Kyllikki said. She poured Aino and herself another cup. Aino noticed that the coffee contained no roasted barley.

  “He doesn’t want an apology. Men will say they want an apology, but what they really want is for you to love them.”

  Aino sat silent.

  “Do you love Jouka?” Kyllikki asked.

  Aino didn’t answer for some time.

  “In the way you’re talking about, the being-in-love whirlwind … I used to.”

  “You might find it surprising you’re not alone.”

  That lightened Aino up a little.

  “Do you respect him?” Kyllikki asked.

  “Other than his drinking. He’s a good man, a hard worker. More than once I’ve seen him wade in to help the underdog. And when he dances …” Her eyes brightened with the memory of dances at Knappton when she was a girl. “It’s like being no longer of the earth; you never want to come down, and you’re perfectly safe.” She paused. “He puts up with a lot from me.”

  “That he does,” Kyllikki said.

  The two were silent.

  “I can’t love him if I don’t,” Aino said.

  “Then act as if you love him. Love is expressed by actions. The feelings behind the actions are yours.”

  “I want to live my life not act it.”

  Kyllikki studied Aino. “Do you want to save your marriage?”

  Aino looked down at her coffee, chagrined. “Sure, I do.” She looked up at Kyllikki, her eyes moist. Kyllikki touched Aino’s hand and Aino almost wailed, “I do.”

  Kyllikki waited for Aino to get back under control. “So, what does he want?”

  “He wants a good job and a family and a normal wife who wants to be married to him.”

  “Of course, but you know there’s more.” Aino didn’t answer. “Aino,” Kyllikki prompted. “I know you know.”

  “He wants to hold his head up again,” Aino finally said. Aino looked at her coffee. She wiped a tear away.

  “Aino, what do you want?”

  Cradling her coffee cup, Aino said, in a barely discernible voice, “I want a baby.”

  8

  The next day, when Jouka finished work, he saw Aino waiting where the wharf joined Marine Drive. She stood alone against a stream of chattering women coming from work in the salmon-canning plants. She wore the black wool skirt that brought out her waist and hips and a soft purple blouse he’d not seen before. Her glasses were off, so he knew she couldn’t recognize him from a distance. He stopped. Her hair was up, but she’d framed her face with curled tendrils. She’d done it for him. She looked like a schoolgirl wanting to be called on but afraid she might have the wrong answer. Her vulnerability made his heart ache.

  With gratitude for her effort and feeling protective, he approached her. She looked up at him and said, “I found a place.”

  The apartment was in the basement of a three-story Victorian sitting on the hillside about halfway between the city center and Alderbrook, the little fishing village to the east of town. The clatter and ringing bell of the new electric trolley line two blocks down the hill symbolized city life—a new life far from Camp Three, from logging, from the IWW.

  With the increased shipping for the war, longshoring work was plentiful. Jouka soon learned how to bribe the foreman to get a high card number. The small bribes, combined with his charismatic good looks and charm, which worked on men almost as well as on women, ensured that Jouka worked almost every day.

  City life was way easier than life in Camp Three. The electric lights didn’t need kerosene, the walls didn’t have a coat of soot, the floors didn’t have mud in the cracks, the wind didn’t come in through the walls, and the heat came from a radiator without their having to build a fire. Aino didn’t have to kill the chickens, butcher the meat, collect the eggs, or grow the vegetables. Someone else did all that for her—as long a
s Jouka brought home the money. Aino and Jouka were more dependent on others, but these were others neither of them knew or even saw. They lived in the illusion of independence.

  Aino had the shopping done and the apartment cleaned by midmorning. The mending, washing, and ironing were finished by lunchtime. She spent her much-expanded free time looking for work at the salmon-packing companies lining the river. Within a couple of weeks, however, she knew she had been blacklisted. With time on her hands, she began to frequent the office of the Astoria Finnish socialists, the ASSK. Unlike with the IWW, at first, she was barely tolerated, because she was a woman. However, discussing news, arguing socialist theory, speculating about how to move forward, she soon worked her way into being accepted. She avoided the local Wobblies, even walking on the other side of the street from the meeting hall. Too much was at stake.

  The socialists, however, were very different from the Wobblies. To her, they seemed to live more on hope than action. Someday they would become a viable labor party. They didn’t see that once their politicians got into the system, they would become tools of the system like any other politicians. All they seemed to do was talk. However, that was also what Aino liked about the socialists; they talked. The Finnish was flying with an intensity of feeling that reminded her of Voitto, his face shining as he talked socialism back in Kokkola. She could argue without having to guess at meanings or sounding hesitant because the English eluded her. It felt good.

  She was always home before Jouka to have dinner ready.

  When Aino missed her October period, she was sure the night of conception was Sunday, October 7. When she missed her November period, she told Jouka. He was elated. Aino’s change of heart about their marriage filled him with purpose. Although he knew longshoring was nothing compared with running the locomotive, he left each morning whistling. He started playing his fiddle in the evenings. Aino spent a lot of time with Kyllikki, helping her with the children, knitting with her in the rare quiet moments, talking, getting sick.

  One evening at a formal business meeting of the ASSK, her frustration at the organization’s lack of action boiled over when a member said something about violent Wobblies. “The Wobblies are being clubbed, jailed, and even deported, while you just talk, talk, talk.”

  “The chair recognizes Aino Kaukonen,” Alvar Kari, the president, said drily.

  “It’s not funny, Alvar. What are we accomplishing here having coffee and coffee cake?”

  “We’re working to elect socialist candidates to the legislature.”

  “Don’t you see it? We can’t beat the system. We have to change it.”

  “How do you propose to change the system, Mrs. Kaukonen, really?” Kari asked.

  “By blowing people up with dynamite,” someone shouted from the rear.

  That brought Aino to her feet. “No Wobbly has ever, ever been found guilty of dynamiting or any other act of terror.” She was sick of the constant and false hammering. She turned to better face the membership. “That’s the work of anarchists and lunatics. Look what we did last summer.”

  “Lost a strike,” the same voice from the back yelled.

  She turned in the direction of the voice. “We didn’t lose. We turned down the best offer that has been made in the history of the industry. Did you or your socialist candidates get that? No. Did the toadies for the AF of L get that? No. We got it, the IWW, through direct action.”

  The same voice came from the darkness in the back. “You got it because the army’s back is against the wall to get spruce to fight the Germans. The kaiser’s done more direct action than any of you rabble-rousers.”

  “OK, OK.” Kari was banging his gavel amid the laughter. “Order. Order.”

  She sat down, angry at these socialists who clung to the myth that they lived in a democracy ruled by the people for the people.

  * * *

  After the meeting, Kari brought her a cup of coffee and a small plate with some pulla on it. He was an older man, well into his fifties. He ran the head rig for Astoria Lumber and Plywood and had logged, fished, worked green chain, and raised five children. He’d been an active socialist in Helsinki. “Come and sit, Aino.” He lit a pipe while she settled with the coffee and pulla. Then he said, very calmly, “Aino, the government is going to crush the Wobblies. The people hate them.”

  “Over half the loggers west of the Cascades hold the red card.”

  “And when the army lowers the boom, there will be torn-up red cards all over the woods.”

  She remembered the torn-up cards in the mud in Centralia and said nothing. The feeling of a heavy iron door closing hit her again. She rallied. “Then there will be revolution, like in Russia.”

  “Where workers have no alternatives and no hope. Here, they have both.”

  “Pie in the sky.”

  “Stop being flippant.” Kari took a puff on his pipe. “It’s a very real pressure-relief valve.”

  “But it’s false. ‘Everyone is equal’ is as good a myth as Christianity and heaven. It’s economic Calvinism. If you’re one of the elect, the right parents, the right schools, the right connections, you get into capitalist heaven. The rest are damned at birth.”

  Kari smiled at the image, then became serious. “I know you can organize. Suppose, instead of overthrowing capitalism, we workers become capitalists ourselves? We all chip in and build a sawmill, our own company.”

  “Cooperatives are nothing new.”

  “But they’re new here. And it’s something we can do. If God grants us just one or two small victories, we’ll be way ahead of the game. We can throw our lives away trying for the big victories.”

  That night, she couldn’t sleep. All would chip in equally. They would buy or lease land and sawmill equipment, manufacture and sell lumber, and equally share the income. The co-op members would vote on what decisions required a vote of everyone and what decisions could be delegated to the board or managers, also elected by the members. Instead of involving a whole industry, all the organizing would be local. She could still have a family.

  That morning at breakfast, Jouka listened to Aino with a sinking heart. When he asked her why she couldn’t wait until the baby was well along, he saw the flash of anger quickly masked, followed by assurances that all the organizing was local and wouldn’t interfere with the baby. He felt powerless in the face of her excitement. It made her happy and he wanted her to be happy. How could he ask her not to get involved? He kissed her goodbye at the bottom of the stairs that led to the street level. As he walked to the docks, no tune came into his head and he did not whistle.

  Aino rushed through the dishes and making the bed, put on her new blouse and best wool skirt, and set off for Manion’s Realty. The sawmill would need land and she took it upon herself to find some before the next meeting. She knew the Seattle, Portland, and Spokane rail line had been extended sixteen miles south to the little coastal town of Neawanna. The tracks ran alongside Youngs River for several miles and land was still plentiful there. She took the trolley to the end of the line and walked down the rail tracks, humming to herself, filled with energy.

  She managed to get home in time for Jouka’s dinner, totally worn-out. She tried to listen to stories about near accidents, one that really happened, what ships were in from where, but she was thinking about how to present her ideas that night to Alvar Kari. She forced herself to clean up after dinner and put up her hair. She left Jouka where he’d fallen asleep in their single armchair, still in his working clothes, and where she would probably find him when she returned. Struggling to drag herself up the stairs, she reached the street and threw up her dinner. She looked at the river below her and asked it for strength. She waited, feeling its dark water rolling toward the sea in the ebb. Then she wiped her chin and lips and set off for Suomi Hall and the first board meeting of what they would name that night the Workingman’s Lumber Manufacturing Cooperative, with Alvar Kari as president and Aino Kaukonen as secretary.

  Two men who worked with Alvar at A
storia Lumber and Plywood were there. Sitting in the social room, the four of them calculated the cost of the minimal equipment to get started. Aino had located two potential parcels earlier that day that could probably be leased and perhaps someday owned by the co-op. With fifty workingmen, all contributing a hundred dollars, they could start. Convincing fifty workingmen, and—more important—their wives, to leave good jobs when prices were climbing because of the war wouldn’t be easy. On the other hand, it was a good time to start, for the same reason.

  The three men’s jobs would primarily be acquiring and setting into operation all the equipment once they’d selected a site, after which, if duly elected, they would manage operations. Aino’s primary job would be recruiting. She was also to create a legal entity to buy and sell lumber, pay bills and wages, and have a bank account, all without having to pay a lawyer. Once the co-op was in operation, if duly elected, she would manage the office. Finns in the Midwest had formed co-ops. She could write to any of them for advice. It didn’t seem too daunting. The daunting part would be talking Jouka into putting up a hundred dollars.

  She served him his breakfast and sat across from him, smiling, pouring them both coffee. She first talked about the excitement of the idea of worker cooperatives, how all workers could be owners, no longer exploited. He understood that. It was a good cause. He just wasn’t quite as excited about it as she was. Then she talked about the opportunities of being an owner/worker in a sawmill. He pointed out that he really didn’t much like the idea of working in a sawmill no matter who owned it. She felt this was selfish on his part and pointed it out to him. He responded by pointing out that risking her and the unborn baby’s health by running around organizing, trying to be a big shot, was selfish. She had her priorities backward. What about a family? What about him? She came back with it being no different from any other local job. She could easily take care of him and the baby. She knew it was a sacrifice for him to get the money at the docks, but think of it as a real investment in their future—as a family.