Deep River

by Karl Marlantes

  She passed the empty IWW hall with its broken windows. Someone had written TRAITORS in white across the front.

  Aino reached Matti and Kyllikki’s new house, a modest place two blocks up the hill in Uniontown, which Matti and Kyllikki bought using Matti’s army savings for a down payment. She was happy she didn’t have to visit at the Saaris’ anymore. Emil and Hilda Saari were polite, but she never felt welcome—particularly since the Red Terror in Finland last summer had killed one of Hilda’s brothers. As if it were somehow Aino’s fault. Well, Hilda needn’t have worried. The whites, mostly farmers, churchgoers, and members of the middle class loyal to the Finnish senate, were now getting even with the reds, mostly industrial and agrarian workers loyal to the radical faction of the Social Democratic Party. The Red Terror had become the White Terror.

  When Aino knocked on the door, Suvi opened it, squealing with delight, “Aino-täti, Auntie Aino.” She still wore her church clothes. Kyllikki came to get Eleanor while Aino struggled out of her wet coat and scarf.

  “Guess who’s here,” Kyllikki said, smiling with delight.

  “How would I know?”

  “Aksel.”

  She didn’t move, then remembered Eleanor and took her back. She followed Kyllikki into the living room with its single window looking on the river. Matti and Aksel both stood up from where they’d been sitting in the two armchairs.

  She was first struck by Aksel’s being older—older than herself, older than anyone else in the room. She smiled brightly. He smiled a bit awkwardly and his eyes went to the floor. Some things didn’t change. Then his eyes rose to meet hers. They moved constantly, disconcertingly, so she looked away herself this time.

  “When did you get back? It’s so good to see you.” It did feel good to see him.

  “Last week. Left the army in New York, and they paid for my train fare to Tapiola. Too bad the train doesn’t get that far.” He laughed.

  “Never will,” Matti said, sitting down and thereby inviting everyone else to sit. Unfortunately, there was only one other armchair.

  “Why not?” Aksel asked, remaining standing.

  “Trucks and automobiles. Cheaper to build a road and let people put up their own capital for the cars. Except for heavy freight, railroads won’t compete.”

  Kyllikki disappeared into the kitchen, returned with two straight-back chairs, and disappeared again. Aksel took one, offering the vacant armchair to Aino. As she moved toward it, Eleanor reached a tiny hand toward Aksel. He smiled and reached for her. Aino hesitated. Aksel quickly withdrew his hands and sat in the straight-back chair. “What’s her name?” he asked.

  “Eleanor.”

  Aksel was always so open. Holding Eleanor by her armpits, Aino grinned at her saying, “It’s long-lost Aksel-setä. He’s been in the army.”

  Eleanor leaned back away from Aino’s chest to take a closer look at Aksel and again reached out one hand to him. Making a sudden decision, Aino handed her to a surprised Aksel. At first, he held her away from him, his arms stiff, but then he put her on one knee and started quietly bouncing her up and down saying, “El-a-nor, El-a-nor,” raising his knee with each syllable. Eleanor giggled with delight.

  Kyllikki arrived with the coffeepot, followed by Suvi with four cups. A wind gust rattled the house, vibrating the floor. Aksel walked over to the window, holding Eleanor so she could look out at the river. It was so wide one never sensed that it was moving, but Aino knew that its dark power carried the weight of mountains.

  Smiling, Aksel said to Eleanor in English, “When it’s better weather, you can come fishing with me.” Aino realized Aksel had been gone over two years, probably never speaking Swedish or Finnish. He pulled Eleanor back to his chest and stood there, looking quietly at the great river like a man looking at his sleeping beloved.

  Matti spoke in Finnish. “Do you want to come logging with me? A share of the profits. We get big you can quit and go fishing.”

  Aksel said nothing, staring out at the river so shrouded in rain that the north shore was hidden. Then he turned, still slightly bouncing Eleanor. “That’s a very generous offer, Matti. But I don’t know what I want to do. I’m not even sure why I came back. Wages are good back east.”

  “Wages?” Matti asked. “But, there’s no good logging back east anymore and the fishing’s all Wops and Portuguese.”

  Aksel laughed. “Not all Wops and Portuguese,” he said. “From Boston up it’s mostly Americans.” He paused. “But I’m not thinking about fishing or logging. After I got hit,” he said with only a slight hesitation, “I was transferred to an engineering outfit. Turns out I made a pretty good carpenter.”

  “Carpenter!” Matti said it as if carpentry were illegal.

  Aksel chuckled. “How do you suppose all that lumber gets used?” Then from out of nowhere he asked, “Where’s Jouka?” Everyone looked at everyone else.

  “I guess you don’t know,” Aino said. “We got divorced. Well, everything except the paperwork.”

  Aksel just blinked a couple of times, taking it in. “OK”—again the American expression. “Still, where is he?”

  After an embarrassed silence, Matti said, “We don’t know. We think he’s drinking. Every once in a while, people say they saw him at the Desdemona Club.”

  More silence.

  Aksel’s eyes, constantly scanning the room anyway, looked for amplification from someone. None came. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said, looking straight at Aino. She felt all the condemnation.

  “Did Jens Lerback make it back?” Aksel asked, trying to change the subject.

  “Yoh,” Matti said.

  Aksel waited. “Yoh? That’s all?”

  Kyllikki broke in. “His mother says he’s kind of restless.”

  “Restless,” Aksel repeated, then chuckled sardonically.

  “He shows up at home occasionally, but she doesn’t know where he goes. Won’t go to work for Reder, for anyone.”

  “I saw him over there a couple of times,” Aksel said quietly as if he were talking to the window, lost in the memory.

  “We know,” Aino said.

  “You know?”

  “His mother told us.”

  Aksel gave a brief laugh, saying, “It figures.”

  “You could have written, you know,” Aino said.

  “Who would I have written to?”

  “Me,” Aino said. Everyone looked at her. “Lempi was my best friend, you know,” she added lamely.

  Aksel left Matti and Kyllikki’s in midafternoon, taking the venerable General Washington as far as Rosburg, the next landing after Knappton. It was dark and raining when he came ashore. Still in his uniform, the only clothes he had, he headed along the road on the south side of the river, not knowing or even caring where he was headed. When he reached a covered bridge that crossed the river, he wrapped his woolen army greatcoat around him and slept. It was drier than the trenches and no one was shelling him.

  He awoke at dawn and continued north, vaguely seeking the upper reaches of Deep River. There, he found a well-sheltered site on a tributary creek that rushed between hills rising over a thousand feet on both sides. He made several trips to Rosburg and Tapiola, spending his army savings on camping essentials, fishing gear, and a rifle. He built a canvas shelter covered with cedar bark that was snug against both wind and rain. He built a smokehouse and it was soon filled with fillets of Chinook salmon.

  One day, in early April, on the North Fork of Deep River, his solitude came to an end. A man was fishing at one of Aksel’s favorite spots.

  Aksel’s first reaction was to chamber a round in his rifle. The man whirled to face him. Aksel raised his rifle above his head and the man raised his empty right hand. Aksel was about fifty feet from the man when they recognized each other. It was Kullervo.

  Kullervo threw his pole to the ground and stomped through the rocky shallows, grinning with delight. They shook hands, looking into each other’s eyes. After a little talk about the fishing, Aksel
asked Kullervo, “Were you overseas?”

  “Yoh,” Kullervo answered. “Infantry.”

  “Me, too,” Aksel said.

  “Get hit?” Kullervo asked.

  “Yoh,” said Aksel.

  “Me, too.”

  That was all they ever said about it.

  Kullervo had been knocking around the river towns doing odd jobs before deciding he’d rather live off the land. He’d ended up in roughly the same place as had Aksel, for the same reasons: good fishing, good hunting, steep hillsides, big trees for protection against the wind, and no one to bother him. Aksel’s campsite soon had a second bark-covered shelter and they had more salmon smoking than they could possibly eat in a year.

  They both had pocket watches but didn’t wind them. They only kept a calendar, so they’d know when it was Saturday night. Then, they’d shave, wash their armpits, put on their Saturday shirts, and head for Tapiola or Knappton to seek what all young men seek.

  On the last Saturday in April, Aksel and Kullervo struck out for Tapiola. They stopped by Ilmahenki to drop off smoked salmon. Alma fed them hot coffee and warm biscuitti, the Finglish word many were now using for pulla. They walked on the new plank road to Knappton.

  Mill workers, loggers, fishermen, and a few men of uncertain occupation were roaring in the old net shed. A small band played some of the old familiar schottisches and polkas, but it also played what was called by a new word: Dixieland jazz. As usual, the men outnumbered the women considerably, but the crowd was noticeably more balanced than it had been in the old Reder’s Camp days. Aksel and Kullervo had no trouble finding dance partners.

  It was well past midnight when the pair ended up in a new saloon that had been built on pilings just south of the hotel. They would never spend their money on a hotel room, preferring to find a place to hole up on the way back to their campsite, but they would spend money on illegal whiskey.

  The saloon was crowded and lively. The few women were there to work not play. Aksel and Kullervo got a shot of whiskey at the bar and made their way to a corner that had a window looking out to the river. There, at a table, were three men still in uniform. This usually meant more than the obvious—that they were veterans. It also meant they’d come home not in their right minds, or they didn’t have any other clothes, or probably both. One of the men was Jens Lerback from Camp Three. He and Aksel shook hands, grinning.

  Jens introduced Aksel and Kullervo to his two friends, Heppu Reinikka, who’d been raised on a farm downstream from Tapiola; and Yrjö Rautio, a former mill worker from Willapa. With a few words, it was established that all five had been in combat, although Jens received a bit of ribbing from the others because he’d been in a new kind of unit called armored and avoided the trenches. Jens had already established himself as a good mechanic before going into the army, so Aksel wasn’t surprised that armored was where he’d ended his war. Heppu Reinikka, a solid man with thick forearms that he rested on the table in front of him, had done his time in the trenches as had Aksel and Kullervo. Yrjö Rautio, on the other hand, said he wished he’d done his time in the trenches. He’d joined the Marine Corps. In an organization famous for expert riflemen, he had been singled out because of his skill with the M1903 Springfield. He’d spent his war as a sniper, outside the trenches.

  All five had gone through their fifth round of whiskey. It being Kullervo’s turn to buy again, he made his way to the still-crowded bar. Waiting for his order in a pleasant alcoholic haze, he began to listen to several loggers drinking at the bar next to him. They’d been in the Spruce Division and were comparing experiences, mixed in with the usual mild boasting. Then one of them said that it was too bad the war ended. He’d never made so much money.

  Kullervo didn’t even think. He hit the man with a right cross that made his knees buckle. The logger tried to stay upright by clinging to the bar, but Kullervo grabbed a shot glass and pounded his fingers, screaming curses at him. The man crumpled to the floor. Kullervo kicked him, calling him one more name.

  The man’s friends stared at Kullervo, momentarily stupefied. Then, with a scream, two of them came at Kullervo, swinging. Aksel, seeing that Kullervo was under attack from two men, ran to the bar. He took on the closer one with a furious combination of lefts and rights, unleashing the pent-up rage of war.

  Jens looked at Yrjö and Heppu. Heppu shrugged his broad shoulders and stood, nodding his chin toward where Aksel and Kullervo were now fighting several men each. Without debate or reflection, the three veterans chose sides and joined the fight.

  Outnumbered nearly two to one, they were saved by the bartender, who fired his shotgun out of an open window toward the river. He didn’t want to mess up the inside of the bar. The five veterans backed out of the door, warily watching for someone to jump them. When they reached the street, they turned and ran.

  Panting from the steep uphill run from town, lying on the wet ground next to the plank road, looking up in the dark, the unseen rain hitting their faces and soothing their cuts and bruises, they began to talk about how it was for them coming back home. Jens told the old joke that he wouldn’t trade the experience of war for a million dollars, but he wouldn’t pay a nickel to do it again. Heppu said he was tired of farming. Yrjö said he didn’t feel that he counted anymore. Lumber got made whether he showed up for work or not. In the war, people died if he didn’t show up.

  Then Aksel told them about the little camp on the upper reaches of Deep River. “We can live off the land. We work for no one. We watch out for each other.”

  No one said anything.

  They all fell into a drunken sleep. Upon waking, the rain still falling on them, they rolled over, struggled to their feet, held their heads, threw up, and followed Aksel to his campsite. There was no vote, no discussion. They formed a squad and Aksel was the unquestioned leader. It was the hunting group—and it was the first time since any of them had returned home that things felt right again.

  No one heard from Aksel for a couple of months, but in early summer he started showing up occasionally at Ilmahenki, sometimes with a nice steelhead, Chinook, or blueback. He smiled enigmatically when asked where he caught it. As far as anyone knew, he didn’t have a job—but rumors were flying. He and his squad of veterans often showed up drunk at dances and always left together. The local girls started to call them the Bachelor Boys. No one knew where they lived or what they were doing for money, although one obvious possibility was bootlegging.

  They weren’t bootlegging, but they weren’t about to tell anyone what they were really doing.

  It had all started when Kullervo found a thousand or more elk skeletons, scattered over several square miles. Why, how, or when so many skeletons ended up in roughly the same area, they weren’t sure, but elk herds, before the Europeans came, could get quite large and elk, like all ungulates, were particularly susceptible to disease because they lived in herds. Kullervo’s find was only mildly interesting.

  It became far more interesting when Jens Lerback came back from a visit to the Desdemona Club in Astoria.

  “This guy was showing off this big elk whistler on his watch fob because he’s a member of the Elks Lodge,” Jens said.

  “What’s that?” Heppu asked.

  “The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. They have clubs in every town in America. They sort of look out for each other. And they’re growing. Lots of veterans joining since the war.”

  “They drink trouble-free,” Yrjö said. “No cop will bother them.”

  “So, did he say how much he paid for this tooth?” Aksel asked.

  “Eight dollars.”

  Several of them whistled.

  “It probably included the setting and chain,” Jens added. “And it looked like a tooth from a cow.”

  “Still,” Aksel said. “A bull whistler could be worth twice as much.”

  On his next visit to Astoria, Aksel went to the Desdemona Club after visiting Matti and Kyllikki. The girls there stacked up favorably with girls in similar clubs in
France, with the added feature that they spoke better English. Upon finishing his business, he sat at the bar for a last drink before catching the boat. Sitting at the end of the bar was the man with the elk-tooth watch chain.

  “Nice-looking watch fob,” Aksel said. He pointed to the tooth. “What’s that?”

  “It’s an elk whistler. Some people call ’em buglers. I’m a member of the Elks Lodge.” The man held the tooth up for Aksel’s closer inspection. “Pure ivory. The only ivory in North America except for walrus.”

  All elk had two vestigial tusks in about the place where a cat’s incisors would be. Why people called them buglers or whistlers, Aksel had no idea. They had nothing to do with how elk bugled.

  “Really?” Aksel said, pretending that this was all news to him as he examined the beautiful piece of ivory.

  “All other elk teeth are just enamel.”

  “No kidding. Where’d you get it?”

  “Mail order.”

  “Who from?”

  The man told him the name of the company.

  Aksel wrote a letter. The company was indeed interested in a supply of elk whistlers. It would pay anywhere from a dollar and a half to four dollars for whistlers or buglers, depending on size, age, and general condition.

  That averaged around two days of a logger’s pay per tooth. All they needed were hammers and pieces of wood to knock out the whistlers without damaging them. The Bachelor Boys were in business.

  19

  That summer of 1919, lumber prices hit bottom. The co-op teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. Aino struggled with the unremitting workload and constant cash crises. Eleanor was down to one or two breastfeedings a day and toddling. Aino relied increasingly on Kyllikki to watch her but felt guilty.

  One Sunday in July at Ilmahenki, Aino was helping Alma do the dishes. She surprised Alma by asking her if Eleanor could stay with her for the next week. Alma didn’t answer. “To get to know her cousins better,” Aino added.