Deep River

by Karl Marlantes

  He couldn’t help looking across the fields to the mill—clattering and screaming—electric light from a small generator making it possible to run the night shift. It was all part of Ilmahenki.

  “I don’t want to sell it.”

  “I figured. I’ll put a third of my shares into a trust for the kids. It would’ve been that way if Rauha had lived. The cattle are yours.”

  “I suppose that’s fair.”

  “Fair,” she harrumphed. “That’s why you’re not a businessman. Ilmari, it’s generous. You can hire someone to help with the kids or get remarried.”

  “I’m not. I—”

  “Mielikki needs to go to school.”

  Ilmari went out on the porch. Some stranger would take part of Ilmahenki. Worse, a legal document called a corporation, without even the decency to be a stranger. He looked at the mill for about ten minutes, then he walked back inside.

  “You’re the majority owner.”

  “Yoh.”

  The Dodge returned early the next morning and Louhi left.

  13

  Some sounds are always there and go mostly unheard: the wind moving the treetops two hundred feet above, Deep River’s quiet rippling and small slaps against the bank, its rushes over stones in the shallows, the chirping and chattering of squirrels and chipmunks, birds raucously warding off intruders but going quiet when feeding their chicks. Up until now, the sound of Sampo Manufacturing had been part of it: the boiler hissing, saws screaming as they bit into wood, the slapping of lumber and timbers being pulled from the green chain and stacked in the yard. Now there was just the quiet of nature as Ilmari watched Mielikki make sure Helmi was scrubbed and her dress spotless before sending her off barefoot to the new one-room schoolhouse. It seemed, for now at least, Mielikki had put aside the sadness of having to quit school. Now was her time for sisu.

  A half-finished basket was on the kitchen table. Mielikki had been working on a new pattern that Vasutäti had shown her. She worked on her baskets at night, after Jorma and Helmi went to bed. It was the best time for basket weaving or carving or working leather, snug in the kitchen, the rain pelting on the roof, the sound of the coyotes signaling each other, warning about territory violations, the hooting of owls doing the same thing or seeking mates in late winter.

  Ilmari followed Helmi out the door, picking up his ax where it was struck into the chopping block. There was alder to cut for firewood. He watched Helmi disappear down the road and his mind went back to the happier times, when he and Rauha had helped with building the little school the previous summer on a small hill at the edge of Tapiola on land donated by Higgins. The men arrived after church—whether they’d gone or not—and within minutes they would be formed into teams, hammering, sawing, hauling, climbing: all working furiously, competing to see who could get his wall up first or get his quarter of the roof shingled first. The women didn’t work in teams, competing, but split up the work to be done, talking and laughing as they prepared food or made coffee, which they walked over to the men.

  The men would work until darkness made them quit. Then all would eat what the women had made, telling jokes, laughing at stories they had heard at least three times before.

  The mill had been sold to Western Washington Lumber Products, a growing company with three—now four—mills in Washington and one in Oregon. It had an eye on the vast amount of timber in the Willapa Hills that until now had been too expensive to get to market. With rail lines, however, all that timber could be harvested and Sampo was on the south edge of it.

  So was Vasutäti.

  Ilmari didn’t want her to leave, but he felt it was his duty to warn her of what was coming. The forest would be logged. The government was consolidating the small coastal tribes into one larger tribe inland by Chehalis. Vasutäti’s time was ending.

  One warm Saturday in May, Ilmari took the children with him to visit Vasutäti to see if he could convince her to move while she was still spry.

  He realized he should have known better.

  “Everything changes,” she said, almost as if comforting him, talking to him in their own language of Chinook jargon, English, and Finnish.

  Ilmari looked at her fondly. “I hope you don’t live to see the day,” he said. “You can always live with us.”

  She looked away. After a moment she said gruffly, “You take the children home. Leave me with Mielikki. She’s ready for the next design.”

  14

  The first car in Tapiola was a used 1913 Ford Model T that Higgins converted to a small truck. The truck still took nearly an hour to get to Willapa Bay from Tapiola, but it could do so no matter what the tide or weather.

  Ilmari’s Packard was the second, arriving in Tapiola on April 24, 1918. He’d left Ilmahenki with Mielikki to go fetch it in Willapa where it had arrived by train. The children heard the horn honking well before the huge roadster came roaring up with Ilmari grinning at the wheel. They rushed the car, the girls shrieking, everyone fighting to sit in Ilmari’s lap behind the steering wheel.

  When Aino came to visit the next Sunday, he took her for a ride. When they got back, he patted its large hood. “Twin sixes. That’s twelve cylinders.”

  Aino only said, “How much?”

  “Two thousand six hundred dollars.”

  Aino gasped. It had to be close to everything he got from selling Sampo.

  This peeved Ilmari. “I can’t have some fun like everyone else? I’m a dirty capitalist now?”

  “You’re a materialistic consumer,” Aino said.

  “Welcome to America.”

  Aino didn’t answer for a moment. Then she asked, “What about the kids? I mean, the money.”

  “I’ll still be blacksmithing.”

  Aino touched the heavy black paint, wanting to see if it gave at all. It didn’t.

  “Guaranteed not to rust,” Ilmari said proudly.

  “In Detroit,” Aino replied.

  “Horseradish. You’re just jealous.”

  “Ei.” Aino muttered under her breath. She watched Ilmari bump and jolt the Packard through the field toward the mill, which was once more screaming and clattering, smoke rising from the new wigwam burner merging with the overcast. Sampo Manufacturing was now Western Washington Lumber Products Number Four.

  A week after Aino left, Ilmari missed dinner. At first Mielikki didn’t think too much of it; work had to be done when it had to be done. But after she’d put her little brother and sister to bed, Ilmari still hadn’t shown up. By ten that night, she was very worried. She had no idea what to do. All she could think of was to walk to Higgins’s store to find help, but that would mean leaving Jorma and Helmi. If she woke them to come with her, it would scare them. She tried to read the Bible by the lantern. She felt a hole filled with anxiety growing larger by the hour.

  Finally, there was the sound of a motorcar. She rushed outside with the lantern and saw the headlights of the Packard. Two men were hauling her father out of it. She ran to them, crying aloud.

  “He’s OK,” Matti Haapakangas said. She saw that the other man was Antti Salmi. Both were founding congregation members. “A logger from Camp Three was in town late,” Mr. Haapakangas said. “He spotted the Packard parked in front of the church and got me.”

  “But what—” Mielikki started.

  Mr. Salmi put his hand up, silencing her. “Too much to drink,” he said.

  The two men hauled the unconscious Ilmari into the house and put him on the bed, and Mielikki, who’d kept coffee hot hoping for her father’s return, served them instead.

  The next morning, Ilmari didn’t get out of bed until nearly noon. He smelled and so did the Packard. He went to the sauna, and when he returned he tackled the vomit in the car. He said nothing to Mielikki, who said nothing to him.

  The next day, he stayed in his bedroom all day, coming out only to go to the outhouse.

  Mielikki dutifully made him his meals, but he didn’t eat.

  On the third day, Mielikki tried to get him out o
f his bed, but he just rolled over and put the pillow over his head. Now frightened, she got Helmi off to school, telling her to take Jorma with her and tell the teacher there was an emergency and to watch Jorma. When they disappeared, Mielikki ran to find Vasutäti.

  Vasutäti handed Mielikki some dried plants. “Make tea,” she said. She walked into Ilmari’s bedroom.

  It stank. He hadn’t shaved in several weeks. The sheets hadn’t been changed.

  “Get out of bed,” she said.

  Ilmari groaned.

  Vasutäti pulled the covers back. Ilmari was fully clothed and still smelled slightly of vomit and whiskey. Ilmari snatched feebly at the blankets and Vasutäti took them entirely off the bed.

  “You sit, now,” she said.

  Ilmari managed to sit on the side of the bed, his head down, looking at his shoes, also still on his feet. Vasutäti watched him silently. Mielikki came in with a cup of the tea. On Vasutäti’s nod, she gave it to her father.

  “You drink,” Vasutäti said. She nodded her head toward the door and Mielikki left.

  When Ilmari finished, she waited again. Ilmari rolled back down on the bed and Vasutäti walked over and grabbed his shirt and pulled him up, surprisingly strongly for such a small woman.

  “Now you sit, and you look at yourself through my eyes.”

  Ilmari looked at her blankly. “Breathe, like I taught you.” Then, as if a whip had cracked, she said, “Now.”

  Ilmari put the empty cup down on the mattress. “Look at yourself through my eyes,” Vasutäti said again.

  Ilmari did. She watched the subtle changes in his body. “Mielikki is nine,” she said. He was moving through despair to shame. He squirmed and she pulled him back. “Through my eyes.”

  Then, she saw that he was looking at her through his eyes but was now present, there with her.

  “You are sad,” she said.

  Ilmari nodded.

  “You have a shiny new car outside. You think everyone thinks you bought that car to replace Rauha.” Ilmari nodded. “I know your heart. You bought that car because you’re mad at God.”

  Ilmari looked away in shame. Then he said, “Maybe there is no God.”

  “No God the way you want.”

  Ilmari snorted. “How do I want God?”

  “You want a God that is good.” Her merry laugh rang out clean and clear. “That is what they taught us at the mission school. All wrong.” She laughed again. “In this world”—she looked at her open left hand—“good is good.” Then she looked at her open right hand. “And bad is bad. In the other world, where God lives”—she clasped her hands together—“there is …” She searched for some words, then putting her clasped hands directly in Ilmari’s face, said, “There is one thing, goodbad-badgood, not two.”

  Ilmari looked at her, puzzled. She laughed again. “It solves the stupid problem.” She went into a whiny tone of voice, “Why did God let Rauha die? Why did God let little children suffer?”

  Looking at the ground, Ilmari had to smile at her antics.

  “Christians only want Christmas not Good Friday.” She went into the whiny voice again. ““God is bad, boo-hoo.” She looked him in the eye. “God is the center of the world, not you. You grow up.”

  She let that sink in. Then she went on. “You are God. I am God. Everything is God. Everything means everything: good and bad, too.”

  “But, how can you say we’re God? We’re nothing like God.”

  She thought on this. “So, a baby in its mommy’s womb is part of the mommy, right?”

  “Yoh.”

  “But a baby in its mommy’s womb is also different from the mommy.”

  “Yoh.”

  “So why is this so hard? You have no trouble with a baby being part of mommy and not being part of mommy at the same time.” She laughed. “We are all babies in God’s womb.”

  After Vasutäti’s visit, Ilmari was up every morning. Mielikki gave her father Vasutäti’s tea, one cup a day. She also wrote a letter to her Aino-täti.

  Aino read the letter three days later. That evening she was knocking at Kyllikki’s door. “This just came from Mielikki,” she said, handing her the letter. Kyllikki looked at the childish handwriting asking for help. “We need to get Ilmari married,” Kyllikki said.

  “Yoh.”

  “You have anyone in mind?”

  “What about Alma Wittala? It’s been nearly two years since her husband died on that logjam on Grays River. She doesn’t have any kids and she’s a good worker.”

  Kyllikki considered it. “You want to go see her on Sunday?”

  “Yoh.”

  Kyllikki met Aino for the first Sunday sailing of the General Washington, having left her children in the care of her mother. The two women walked the six miles directly to Alma Wittala’s farm, set on the north bank of Deep River, west of Tapiola. When they arrived, they looked at each other and nodded silently. Brush and small trees had sprung up in once neat fields. The vegetable garden had weeds. The paint on the house was peeling and moss and several inches of fir and cedar needles covered the roof.

  They scattered chickens as they walked to Alma’s front door and knocked. She opened it slowly, then broke into a huge smile and threw it open wide.

  As Kyllikki and Aino crossed through a tiny parlor to a larger kitchen located on the back side of the house, they again exchanged silent glances. The interior of the house was spotless.

  Alma made fresh coffee while the three of them caught up, also sharing a few stories about the old days at Reder’s Camp. When the first cup was drained, Kyllikki got right to business.

  “You know Ilmari’s Rauha has been gone nearly four months.”

  Alma nodded her head.

  “Now, I know,” Kyllikki went on. “Ilmari went sort of haywire. That big Packard. The money from selling Sampo burning a hole right through his pockets. But he isn’t really that sort of spendthrift. Is he, Aino?”

  “Just the opposite,” Aino said.

  Alma said nothing.

  “You know he’s always been a good worker,” Kyllikki broke in.

  “Still is,” Aino added.

  “Some sort of screw went loose when Rauha died,” Kyllikki said. “But he’s blacksmithing again.”

  “He’s making good money,” Aino said.

  Alma simply nodded her head, taking it in.

  “He’s a good man,” Kyllikki said. “Kind.”

  “And he doesn’t drink,” Aino said.

  Alma nodded.

  “Mielikki is nine,” Kyllikki said. “She’s had to leave school.”

  Alma shifted in her chair. “She’s very pretty,” she said. “Like Rauha.”

  Kyllikki saw her opening. “The three children need a mother.”

  She watched Alma struggle for control. She achieved it. “How old are the others?” she asked.

  “Helmi will be eight in October and Jorma will be six in August.”

  Alma’s eyes moved to the window. “Anneli would be twenty and Aapu would be eighteen,” she said quietly, still looking out the window. She took a deep breath, then picked up her coffee cup.

  It was clear to Kyllikki that Alma wasn’t going to make any precipitate moves, but the rest of the negotiation was going to be about details.

  “He owns his farm free and clear,” Aino said.

  “I own my farm, too,” Alma said.

  “Free and clear?” Kyllikki asked.

  Alma’s cheek muscles made just a flicker, indicating to the two envoys that her farm was on the edge.

  Kyllikki touched Alma’s hand. Alma pulled it back. “Every month you miss the payments, you own less of it,” Kyllikki said softly. “You don’t have to struggle like this.”

  Alma just nodded her head, waiting for more.

  “You could sell the farm and come into the marriage with the equity,” Aino said.

  “An insurance policy,” Kyllikki said. “In case Ilmari goes haywire again.”

  Alma took it all in. “Does he s
auna regularly?” she asked.

  “Every weekend. Without fail,” Aino said.

  “And you know he goes to church,” Kyllikki added. “Well, he used to—regularly.”

  “Does he snore?”

  With that, Kyllikki knew they had her.

  That afternoon at Ilmahenki, Aino and Kyllikki laid the deal out on the table before Ilmari.

  “You know she can cook,” Aino said. “She’s fed a whole logging camp.”

  “Does she like children?” Ilmari asked.

  “She lost two babies and after that she and her husband tried through three miscarriages,” Aino said. “And she mothered the entire henhouse when I was a girl.”

  After taking a slow sip of coffee, Ilmari set the cup down. “I haven’t seen her lately,” he said. “How does she look?”

  “Ilmari,” Kyllikki said firmly. “You’re nearly forty. You can hold out for someone younger and prettier and die a lonely miserable old man.”

  “She’s a good worker,” Aino said.

  “She will love your children,” Kyllikki added.

  “I need to think about it,” Ilmari said.

  The two emissaries looked at each other. Then, they simply sat there, waiting, saying nothing.

  “I said I need to think about it,” Ilmari said.

  “So, think,” Aino said. She poured them all another cup of coffee and sat down again across from Ilmari. She and Kyllikki sipped their coffee, while Ilmari stared at his.

  “Yoh,” Ilmari said.

  “We’ll stop by Alma’s,” Aino said, loving her brother with all her heart.

  15

  Ilmari and Alma were married on May 26, 1918. Aino and Kyllikki and the children all returned to Astoria that night under a full moon that painted an arrow of white gold across the river. The next day, Aino was back recruiting for the co-op.

  She was eight months pregnant, and the effort exhausted her, but they were still short of their recruiting goal, which meant short of money to buy the equipment. She was on her feet twelve hours a day. She came home wearied, often throwing herself onto the bed without taking off her clothes.