Deep River

by Karl Marlantes

  “What?” Then it dawned on Aksel. “You think we’re bootleggers?” He laughed.

  “Very funny, wise guy.” The man turned to his friends, a slight but vicious smile on his face. He whirled his whole body around, driving a fist into Aksel’s stomach. Aksel doubled over in pain, only to be hit with an uppercut to his chin. He went down. The man kicked him in the head and Aksel saw stars. He tried to get to his feet but got only as far as his knees when he was kicked in the kidneys from both sides by two other men. He blacked out from the pain. He came to consciousness with the leader squatting down, holding him up by his shirt. “You have a week.” He drove his fist into Aksel’s face. “To get out”—he hit him again—“of our turf.” He hit him twice more and let go. Standing up he said, “You’re still here next week, you and your pals are dead.” He stomped on Aksel’s face and then kicked him in the groin. As the four men walked away, the one man who hadn’t gotten in any licks kicked Aksel in the ribs. Aksel blacked out again.

  Two other smokers found Aksel and one went to get the Bachelor Boys. A small crowd gathered behind the building, some muttering: “Rival bootleggers. Serves him right.”

  They managed to get Aksel back to their camp.

  “If the girls know where we live, those boys know, too,” Heppu said. “We should move camp.”

  “Let’s kill the bastards,” Kullervo said.

  “We’ll have the sheriff on us,” Jens said. “You have to assume he’s on the take. They’ve been selling alcohol for a long time.”

  They were all silent, agreeing.

  Aksel painfully shifted his body, the effort causing him to breathe harder, which caused him more pain. “Everyone thinks we’re bootlegging. Might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb,” he said. He winced. “Why not tell them to get out of our turf?”

  “You’d have to be willing to kill them,” Jens said. “Otherwise it’s an idle threat.”

  Aksel didn’t answer Jens. The thug had kicked him in the groin when he was defenseless.

  He coldly outlined an attack plan. “The situation is that if we stay, we’ll be attacked, probably killed. They have the protection of the law and the law will assume we’re rival bootleggers so won’t care anyway.” He looked around him, pointedly. “Unless we act first, we’ll be on constant alert and vulnerable to surprise attack. Our current position is indefensible. We’re surrounded by higher ground and the sound of the river will mask their approach.”

  He waited for comment. None came.

  “Our mission is to kill those bastards or drive them away. If we succeed, we remain vulnerable to a repeat of this same situation, whether from them or other bootleggers.” He paused to let that sink in.

  “Unless we run, we are in the bootlegging business whether we like it or not.” He felt himself starting to tremble. “I am not going to run and I’m going to kill the son of a bitch that kicked me.”

  They determined what was needed for support and how the five of them would communicate before and during the coming fight. Aksel was selected to do reconnaissance by talking with Louhi. With her saloon and whorehouse intelligence network, she would know who they were up against and whether these bootleggers were connected to a larger mob or operating independently.

  He set out immediately, walking with great pain. They had only a week’s time—if the bootleggers kept their word.

  Aksel reached Nordland late the next day having slept just one hour. He was ushered into Louhi’s office with no delay.

  “You look like hell,” Louhi said, speaking English. She studied him while a woman poured coffee for them. When the woman left, she said, “I heard you’re bootlegging.”

  He outlined the situation for Louhi, including the elk whistler business, which made her laugh out loud. When he’d finished, she was quiet. “What do you want?” she asked him.

  “Intelligence. Who are they? Are they connected? What do you know that we don’t even know enough to ask about?”

  “I buy my booze through the Seattle mob. They buy it from dealers in Vancouver, where it’s legal. It’s shipped down from Canada any which way. Sometimes it comes to a beach in Puget Sound and gets here by truck. Mostly it comes direct on a boat just outside the twelve-mile limit where it’s transferred to a barge, totally legal. The barge is covered with gravel, sawdust, or whatever, to cover the hatches. The barge comes here or into Willapa Bay, depending on orders. Whatever is on top is delivered. There’s a false bill of sale for a full load. That covers the local cops who can claim to be bamboozled.” Aksel shook his head, smiling.

  “Those toughs that beat the hell out of you are customers of Seattle, just like me,” Louhi continued. “They live in Willapa. If you hit them, it’s unlikely you’ll be retaliated against by the Seattle boys. However”—she paused and looked at him—“it is likely you’ll go to jail unless you step in and keep the payments up.”

  Aksel took it in. “If we stay,” he said, “we’re in the bootlegging business. We’re all veterans. We’ve got good,” Aksel paused, “operational skills.” Louhi chuckled at this. “But we don’t know anything about the business.”

  Louhi walked over to the window and looked out silently for a long time. She turned to Aksel. “You’ll need a truck, weapons, storage facilities, and protection from the law. I can provide all of that. You’ll pay me back double in four months for the loan to buy the equipment. I’ll get five percent of everything you sell for my contacts and protection. You’ll buy directly from me and I’ll buy from Seattle.” She smiled at him. “Otherwise, how do I know how much five percent is.”

  “Does that mean we work for you?”

  “Can I fire you?”

  Aksel laughed. “No.”

  “Can I mess you up?”

  Aksel looked at her sardonically. “Oh, yes.”

  “Keep that in mind.”

  Aksel returned to Tapiola in a 1920 Chevrolet 490 half-ton truck, carrying five war-surplus Springfield rifles, one fitted with a sniper scope for Yrjö, five war-surplus Colt .45-caliber automatic pistols, a Thompson .45-caliber submachine gun with four hundred-round drum magazines, plenty of ammunition, and several cases of dynamite, along with electric blasting caps and thirty-two 1.5-volt D batteries. He also came back with half a ton of scotch and Canadian rye.

  It was relatively easy to get word to the Willapa gangsters that they would leave but wanted to discuss terms.

  They met behind a speakeasy in Willapa. The man who’d beaten Aksel so savagely was all buddy-buddy. “No hard feelings, Swede, huh? Strictly business.” He offered his hand.

  Aksel didn’t take it.

  “We’ll agree to leave,” Aksel said. “But you have to buy our inventory at cost.”

  “Or?”

  “Or we fight you.”

  The man almost sneered. “You and what army?”

  “There are four of us and five of you. Someone is guaranteed to get hurt or killed.”

  “We hear there are five of you.”

  “Yrjö got scared and ran.”

  This was met by derisive chuckles.

  The man scuffed his shoes, pretending he was trying to decide. “How much have you got?”

  “Forty-one cases of bourbon, twelve cases of gin.”

  “Huh,” the man snuffed. “American stuff. No wonder we never run into you.”

  Aksel waited. “Well?” he finally asked.

  “No hard feelings,” the man said. “We don’t want a fight.” He paused. “We’ll give you six hundred dollars.”

  Aksel feigned outrage. “That’s not even a dollar a bottle.”

  “My next offer will be fifty cents,” the man replied. “I’m only giving you that because I’m a nice guy.”

  “And don’t want a fight,” Jens said.

  The man looked at him. “OK, a thousand bucks, that’s two fifty for each of you.” He looked at his friends again. “That’ll get you to wherever you go.” He turned, his face suddenly hard. “Final offer, Swede.”

 
Aksel nodded for Jens to huddle with him away from the group. “These dumb fucks,” he whispered. After a suitable time, he returned. “OK. We agree.” He still wouldn’t shake hands.

  The transfer of inventory would take place at dawn, Sunday, May 21, 1922, in an open field on the dirt road that now went down the east side of Willapa Bay, linking Willapa with Tapiola.

  The five Bachelor Boys got there just after dark and carefully began placing the dynamite in strategic spots, hiding the detonation wire, linking it to the batteries, and rigging triggers that were concealed just beneath the ground and could be set off by foot. Four of them would detonate two charges of dynamite each. Yrjö hid where he could survey the entire field.

  The Bachelor Boys waited by their truck in the middle of the field as the bootleggers from Willapa drove up the unpaved road. The Boys had stacked fifty-three cases of the whiskey where they could be seen but so that the labels didn’t show. The truck from Willapa slowly drove onto the field and came to a stop in front of the Bachelor Boys—right where they wanted it. With a swagger, two men got out of the cab and three more got out of the back of the truck. They had their pistols out.

  “Sorry, Swede,” the leader said. “I think we’ll just take the inventory off your hands. Hate to slow down your departure.”

  The man’s head exploded blood before anyone heard the crack of Yrjö’s rifle. Then, the Bachelor Boys detonated the dynamite. The bootleggers threw themselves to the ground in terror. The Bachelor Boys were all accustomed to artillery fire and knew that they might suffer mild concussion but that there would be no shrapnel. The dynamite had been set just far enough away from the trucks to allow them to remain standing. Pistols out, they quickly disarmed the stunned bootleggers.

  “We have four more men in the woods,” Aksel said, shouting so they and he could hear above the roaring in their ears. “There are eight of us. We know where you live. You will be out of Chinook County by tomorrow or we will hunt you down and kill you, just like we did this dumb son of a bitch.” He toed the man’s bloody head so they could see the exit hole.

  Kullervo had gone back to the Chevy 490 and returned with two shovels. “Bury the bastard,” he told the bootleggers.

  On their first day of business, the Bachelor Boys increased their assets by five revolvers and a 1921 Ford Model T delivery truck.

  Aksel and Jens drove the two trucks and the whiskey inventory to Higgins’s large two-story house, which was just northwest of Tapiola, within walking distance of his store. The old Irishman’s eyes sparkled when he saw what they were asking him to store. “It’s good I’ll be doing for the community,” Higgins said. “But I’ll not be doing it for free.” He looked at the Bachelor Boys.

  Aksel and Jens looked at each other and shrugged. “What’s the going price?”

  “Well then. At the end of each month I’ll count the bottles. You’ll pay me ten cents a bottle on the average of that and the previous month’s count.”

  After some debate, they approached Ullakko, asking if he had room in his barn for one of the trucks. He did, for fifteen dollars a month.

  First Louhi’s cut, then Higgins’s, then Ullakko’s. The Bachelor Boys were learning about the cost of doing business.

  They decided to drive the Chevy to the closest point to the North Fork camp. As they passed the big snag, Aksel noticed that salal bushes had grown around it with the passing of time and almost all the bark was now sloughed off. They hid the Chevy and started walking. When they got about a quarter of a mile from the campsite, Heppu swore he smelled apple pie. A hundred yards from camp, they all smelled it.

  They chambered rounds. With hand signals, Aksel placed Kullervo on point, since he was the youngest and had the fastest reaction times. He motioned Heppu to walk in the water on their left flank and put Yrjö on their right flank, paralleling the trail. Since Yrjö had the toughest going, they slowed their pace to match his.

  Kullervo went to the ground and crawled forward just before the camp clearing. He stood and turned to them, smiling. “You won’t believe this,” he said.

  The Bachelor Boys moved into the open. Standing by their cooking fire were the three high school girls in their Sunday dresses. A Dutch oven containing an apple cobbler was nestled in the glowing coals.

  The girls could easily see the evidence of the recent fight. Aksel told them the whole history, from the beginning of the elk bugler business to the misunderstanding with the Willapa bootleggers. He swore them to secrecy, threatening to ruin their reputations by telling everyone they had visited the Boys unchaperoned.

  Kullervo disappeared into the hut he shared with Yrjö and returned with three beautiful ivory elk whistlers attached to thin leather strips. They nodded their heads, thinking he was showing them proof. He surprised them by placing one over each girl’s head.

  “You have to swear on the elk whistler over your heart that you’ll tell no one. Our lives depend on it.”

  The girls put their hands on the whistlers and on their hearts and swore.

  “You can’t come here again,” Aksel said. Again, the three girls nodded silently. Heppu and Aksel took the girls home, dropping them off away from their houses.

  On the next Sunday, Sylvie showed up by herself.

  “We told you never come here again,” Aksel said.

  “You is a difficult word,” she replied, carefully unpacking eggs from a cloth satchel. “It can mean, you, several persons; or you, one person.” She picked up the coffeepot and looked him right in the eye. “We interpreted it as you several.” She continued, emphasizing the word “you,” “Someone needs to look after you, whether you like it or not.” She smiled. “And we know you like it, no matter what you say.”

  She got no objections.

  “If any of you so much as whisper a word about what the three of us are up to, so help us, we’ll ruin your reputations.”

  From that day, on most Sundays, one of the girls would come with pulla or korpu or fruit in season, and the Bachelor Boys attended coffee at camp as regularly as the rest of the valley attended church.

  3

  As Ilmari somehow knew, Aino was in Chicago. She’d found a job in a bakery in an Irish neighborhood under the name Ina Virtanen. The baker was kind as were most of the neighbors. All, however, were strongly Catholic, anticommunist, and anti-Wobbly. She sold bread, smiled a lot, and kept her IWW life quiet.

  When she’d arrived in December, the IWW was staggering from the severe blows of the Palmer Raids. The nation, fearing a spreading Bolshevik revolution, was already primed for action against the IWW when on June 6, 1919, Galleanist anarchists exploded eight bombs, one of them in the home of the attorney general of the United States, Alexander Mitchell Palmer. Palmer seized the moment by blaming the bombing on the IWW. He then appointed a skillful, enthusiastic, and some would say fanatical man to head up FBI intelligence to help him destroy the union. The man’s name was J. Edgar Hoover.

  By May, under Hoover’s onslaught, over three thousand Wobblies had been arrested and held without warrants, including over two hundred IWW leaders and organizers in Chicago alone.

  Working all her evenings and Sundays, Aino joined the effort to free the two hundred imprisoned Chicago Wobblies. She soon found use for her recruiting skills, focusing on unskilled laborers, mostly immigrants who lived in grinding poverty and were ignored by the AF of L. Recognizing her ability, the Chicago leadership increased her funds to focus on recruiting women when Tennessee ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, women’s right to vote, on August 18, 1920.

  Over the next two years, never knowing if the FBI was about to knock on her door, she helped recruit thousands of women working primarily in the clothing industry. All the while, she ached for Eleanor’s little warm body next to hers. Often she’d wondered if Jouka ever saw Eleanor. She knew she’d hurt Jouka badly but consoled herself by thinking she’d used him for a good cause. Deep down, however, she knew that she was engaging in sophistry. She often thought about the last time she’d s
een Aksel walking away from her at the Castle Rock train station and wondered what he was doing.

  Aino had been working at the bakery since four thirty on the morning of December 9, 1922, when her attention was drawn to a newsboy shouting something about Astoria. She walked to the front door. The newsboy walked by bawling in his high-pitched child’s voice, “Astoria, Oregon, is a fire ruin! Coast city wiped out! Read about it here. Thousands homeless!”

  The paper said nothing about deaths. She was anxious all night, but the next day it seemed only one person had died. But what about Matti and Kyllikki’s house and Kyllikki’s parents’ house? She had no way of knowing.

  Within days, Astoria was no longer in the news.

  By the spring of 1923, the Cleveland Shirt and Dress Company had expanded from Cleveland to Chicago, St. Louis, and Denver on the backs of the women who did the sewing and cutting and the men who did the pressing. By the time a woman reached forty, her hands were arthritic and her sight was damaged. They worked ten-hour days six days a week and made roughly fifteen cents an hour—roughly because they were paid by the finished garment, not by the hour. When Aino walked to work she saw barefoot children going through garbage for food. Their mothers weren’t home. They were working, but their work couldn’t adequately feed, clothe, and shelter the children. Those who had working husbands could scrape by. Those who did not were desperate.

  Fueled by the plight of these desperate people, Aino committed herself to organizing the Cleveland Shirt and Dress Company workers into an IWW local. Many of the company workers were immigrants who didn’t want to be perceived as disloyal to the United States. Many couldn’t speak English. All the workers feared retaliation. Their fear was not unfounded. The day after the local was formed, one of the men who handled the massive presses was severely beaten after work for having joined the union. The next day, another presser who’d joined was beaten. On the third day, a third. Each day more men joined—and more men went to work, each not knowing if this was the day he’d be beaten nearly to death. Yet on each day when more joined, they all went to work, and one of them took the beating. Aino visited the men’s homes, using her midwife skills to treat open wounds, concussions, and severely bruised bodies. She managed to engage the help of a sympathetic doctor to set a broken arm. She helped the men’s wives care for their husbands and children and brought food to compensate for the days each man lost in work and wages. The retaliation against the women who joined the union was less physical. Instead, large numbers of the garments made by the women who joined were rejected by management for trumped-up quality issues, effectively cutting their pay in half or worse.