Deep River

by Karl Marlantes

  “Aksel Långström,” he said. He rose and extended his hand. “What a pleasure. I hear you boys are doing pretty well for yourselves,” he added, pointing a conspiratorial finger at him and grinning. “Coffee?” He pantomimed someone looking conspiratorial. “Drink?”

  “No,” Aksel said. “My money.”

  “Your money?” Drummond asked. “Is there something wrong?”

  “The teller says he can’t give it to me without identification papers.”

  “Well, he’s right.” Drummond looked at him innocently.

  “You know I put it there under a false name.”

  “That was certainly your business.”

  “You tell him it’s mine.”

  Drummond sighed and sat back in his swivel chair. “Aksel,” he said, as if explaining something to a child. “How can I do that? We have rules in place to protect the depositors. People like yourself. What kind of a bank would I be running if any old anybody could just walk up to a teller and tell him to hand over a large amount of the depositor’s money to someone the teller doesn’t even know.”

  “You son of a bitch.”

  “Careful, Långström. You threaten me, and I’ll call for Chief Brewer.”

  “We pay him.”

  “No, Louhi pays him. So do I.”

  “That’s my money.”

  “That’s money made illegally.” Drummond tsk-tsked, shaking his head. “Of course, since it’s under a false name, the law would have a very hard time prosecuting.” He paused. “Unless someone like myself and my teller told the court that you asked for the money under the false name, but we both knew you under another name. It wouldn’t be hard to find people to testify that you sold them illegal alcohol.” He smiled. “After all, Bill Brewer is very keen on keeping our community safe from drunkenness and the ravages of alcoholism.”

  “You’ll pay for this.”

  “Ah, a threat. Funny, I’ve been threatened by petty criminals before. So many of them disappear or do jail time.” He pushed a button on his desk. “I think this meeting is over.”

  A secretary came to the door. “Mr. Drummond?”

  “Show this gentleman out, please.”

  “Certainly.” She motioned to Aksel. “Sir?” Over her shoulder Aksel could see two hefty uniformed bank guards coming down the hall.

  When he returned to the camp, he told the Boys what happened and said, “I’m back in the business.” They found him the next morning with his legs in the river, passed out by a nearly empty bottle of scotch.

  They hauled him into his hut. Jens called a meeting. Within an hour they were driving the big burgundy Oldsmobile north to Nordland.

  One of the unsolved mysteries of the Nordland business community was the disappearance of Al Drummond. There were rumors. He did have enemies. Was known to be involved in shady stuff. Someone claimed to have seen a shanghai gang hauling a well-dressed body, which was very unusual for that trade, aboard the Olivier out of San Francisco. It was bound for Yokohama with high-grade mountain hemlock. That rumor was met with wry jokes. If it was Drummond, in his shape, he wouldn’t last past the first storm. The shanghaiers probably had to pay the first mate of the Olivier to take him.

  That was true.

  5

  Aino took the train from Portland to Astoria on July 2, 1923. She didn’t know what to expect. Some passengers said the fire was worse than reported in the papers; some said it wasn’t as bad. As the train moved along the ever-widening river toward Astoria, she felt its strong current pulling her home, filling her with hope, while at the same time she grew increasingly anxious, fearing there would be no home left.

  When she walked around the west side of the train depot, she was shocked. She could see nothing but burned hulls of buildings and entire streets that had been made of creosoted planks and pilings that were burned through, showing the water and mudflats beneath. Great gaps appeared in the lines of buildings where frantic citizens had used dynamite to stop the fire. She hurried, picking her way through and around piles of burned buildings, moving up the hill toward Duane Street, which was on solid land and not pilings. The fire had been in December. The eight to ten inches of rain that fell every month had battered the charred remains of Astoria into low, stinking piles of ash.

  Everywhere she saw groups of men rebuilding. Instead of a city defeated and in mourning, there was a bustle. There was self-respect. There was sisu.

  The country was booming, and Astoria was determined to catch up. Many of the canneries and sawmills had burned out, but the guts of these businesses, the metal machinery and the workers, had been put back to work immediately. Through gaps in hastily thrown-up walls she saw women canning fish at tables rigged on burned planks. She saw fishing boats tied to burned-out pilings being readied to head out for more fish. She could hear the whining saws of the mills. She saw a charred, burned-out city sucking in logs and fish, converting them to lumber and money, and bootstrapping itself back to wholeness. She felt proud to be one of these indomitable Scandinavians.

  When she reached Matti and Kyllikki’s house, she found the roof gone and the house empty, smelling of wet, burned mattresses and carpet. Most of the windows had been shattered by the heat.

  Matti’s equipment would have been spared, so he must be working, but where was the family? She nearly ran to the Saaris’ house, only to find nothing but the chimney sticking up. It looked like those photos of the French and Belgian villages destroyed in the war.

  Her only remaining hope was that she’d find them safe at Deep River, in that little valley behind the hills on the north side of the great protecting river. No fire could cross it.

  She reached Knappton by five, having spent nearly all her money on the ticket for the new ferry, a sixty-foot diesel-driven boat that could hold fifteen cars, most of them belonging to people bound for the Long Beach peninsula for summer vacations. She walked from the ferry landing at Megler to Knappton, then started for Tapiola along a much-improved plank road. A salesman returning from a call on one of the Knappton mills stopped for her in his new black Model T Coupe. There wasn’t room inside because of his samples, but she could throw her bag on top of them and ride on the running board, talking to him through the window. He told her all about his four-cylinder twenty-horsepower engine, his business, his trips to Seattle, shouting over the noise, while she clung tightly to the wood frame around the window as the floor rattled and bounced across the thick wood planks. It was all noise, something she thought she had left behind in Chicago, but here it was, Chicago coming to the old trail she had taken to dances, feeling its cool earth and soft fir needles under her bare feet. Progress, she thought.

  The car passed what looked like the trail that led to Camp Two, but she couldn’t be sure because the alders, salal, young hemlocks, and firs hid everything she could remember. The salesman left her off at Higgins’s and she started the mile-long walk to Ilmahenki with her valise on top of her head and hope in her heart.

  * * *

  She arrived around nine o’clock that evening. The sun had set, but everything she remembered was still visible, illuminated by soft glowing light from beyond the horizon. She emerged from around the bend in the road, now widened and graveled, to see Ilmahenki and Suvantola before her with Deep River just beyond. Electric lights from the Western Washington Lumber Products sawmill blazed in the gathering darkness; the roar of an electric generator and saws echoed around her.

  Her heart started to pound with anxiety. Eleanor would surely be asleep long ago. How would she react? Should she wake her up? Would Alma be angry with her? She lifted the valise off her thick bun, took out her hat, and adjusted it on her hair so she would look nice when she reached the house.

  To her great relief a lantern was lit in the kitchen and she heard Ilmari’s voice and his kantele. As he always put it, a little music for the soul just before sleep. She fought back tears, now uncertain whether to knock like a stranger or walk in like family. She did both, opening the door and knocking
at the same time.

  “Aino,” Alma gasped. She bolted to her feet. “Ilmari, it’s Aino!” she shouted. Ilmari came to the kitchen door, kantele in his hand. He stood there, motionless.

  Somebody should say something, Aino thought, but she didn’t know what to say. She just stood there with tears running down her face.

  “Have some coffee.” Alma said. She began putting kindling into the firebox.

  “We got your letter,” Ilmari said. “You’re here to stay.” It wasn’t a question.

  Then Alma said, “Eleanor sleeps with Mielikki and Helmi.” She smiled. “Jorma’s going to be eleven next month and has a room of his own.”

  Ilmari nodded toward the stairs. Aino set down her valise. Ilmari handed her a candle and she went up the stairs.

  The size of the three children stunned her. Mielikki, asleep in the top bunk, looked so much like Rauha, as beautiful and nearly as tall. It took away her breath. Sleeping beneath Mielikki on the bottom bunk was Eleanor, one arm sprawled over her cousin Helmi. She’d last seen Eleanor when she was sixteen months old. Now she was a healthy girl of five, a heartbreakingly beautiful amalgam of Ilmari’s iron and Matti’s mercury, with Jouka’s copper shining through in her hair. And herself? Was she there? Would Eleanor recognize her when she woke up? Of course not.

  Her throat aching from the lump in it, she knelt beside Eleanor and put her nose on her back. She could feel the heat. The memory of Eleanor held to her breasts took hold of her. Once again, she could smell the sweet warm odor of breast milk. She stayed on her knees for minutes, nuzzling her nose into Eleanor’s hair, ribs, and back, whispering over and over, “I’ll never leave you again. I’ll never leave you again.”

  Finally, she rose to see Ilmari standing by the doorway. She didn’t know how long he’d been there, silently watching her. She felt wax from the candle on her hand. Reluctantly, she moved past him, and he followed her down the stairs.

  Alma had coffee ready—and pound cake. They sat down, silently drinking their coffee, Ilmari still taking it through a cube of sugar from the saucer. After he’d had his cup, he told her that Kyllikki and the kids and Hilda Saari were at Suvantola, their old house by the river, until they could move back to Astoria. The people who were renting Suvantola had found another place.

  “Renters,” Alma huffed. “We spent a week cleaning up after them.”

  Ilmari smiled and shrugged his shoulders, communicating It’s money. “Mr. Saari stayed in Astoria to get the business back on its feet. Matti is logging on the Oregon side.”

  “How are they?”

  “No one was hurt.”

  “Matti should come over for the Fourth,” Alma said. “For the picnic in Tapiola.”

  They again lapsed into silence. Aino basked in it.

  “Are the skirts really that short in Chicago?” Alma asked, nodding toward Aino’s skirt.

  “Well,” Aino said, tugging at the hem, which was at her knees. “They’re actually back to the ankles this year. I just can’t afford the latest style.”

  “Stand up; let me see.”

  Aino stood. Alma fingered the hem, tugging at it gently. “My, oh my,” she said. “Are you really going to wear that to the picnic?”

  “It’s what I have.”

  “But how do you? I mean, men can see up your legs.”

  “You just keep your knees together,” she said with a little laugh.

  Alma frowned, looking doubtful. “Seems awkward,” she said.

  Ilmari watched his wife and sister with joy.

  Alma laid three rag rugs on the living room floor as a pallet, then she and Ilmari disappeared with the lamp into their bedroom, leaving Aino alone in darkness. The second shift at the mill had just ended. The air was still. Aino could hear the river, a calf’s low soft bawl. From way off in the distance, on the north side of Deep River, came the sound of a coyote, yearning for the moon.

  She awoke to the noise of children in the kitchen, pots rattling on the woodstove. She dressed and walked into the kitchen. There was a sudden hush. Mielikki was dishing mush to the other girls. Jorma was absent, probably out helping Ilmari with the cattle. Eleanor looked up at Aino over a steaming bowl. Aino’s throat caught. Eleanor’s large eyes were intense hazel, neither Jouka’s blue nor her own nearly black brown.

  Alma bent over behind Eleanor, her hands on the girl’s little shoulders, and spoke into her ear with a happy chirpy voice. “Eleanor, this is your äiti.”

  Eleanor’s lips parted, her head went down, and she stared at her mush.

  “Eleanor,” Mielikki said, setting another bowl in front of Helmi. “Say hello to your äiti.”

  The little intensely red lips pushed out in a pout, she muttered, “Päivää.”

  “Hyvää päivää, for a grown-up,” Mielikki corrected her.

  “She’s not my äiti,” Eleanor said sharply. She looked down again at her bowl.

  Aino felt as though she’d taken an arrow through her heart.

  The children started with their chores. Aino walked to look at Deep River, now in the middle of summer showing rocks and expanses of open beach that were usually underwater most of the year. She stood quietly for a long time, wanting the river to take her sorrow to the sea.

  She walked upstream to Matti and Kyllikki’s little house. Aarni, now nine, was outside splitting wood. He looked at her, a little puzzled, then he ran into the house. Kyllikki emerged, a dish towel in her hands, Aarni beside her, pointing at Aino; a young girl, who must be Suvi, now eleven, looking from behind Kyllikki.

  Kyllikki shouted, “Aino!” and started running. Aino was forcing a smile, afraid of all the negative possibilities. Her forced smile was shattered by joy when Kyllikki ran to her, hugging her close, tears gushing from her eyes. Aino stiffened just slightly and Kyllikki quickly stepped back, a little embarrassed. “I am American,” Kyllikki said, smiling.

  Aino laughed and they both hugged again. Then they stepped back to really look at each other as only sisters can.

  Kyllikki shouted at Suvi to put on the pulla and coffee and they walked side by side, shoulders touching occasionally, into the kitchen. There, Kyllikki’s mother stood next to the stove, little Toivo stacking mill ends from the sawmill at her feet. Kyllikki had been pregnant with Toivo when Aino last saw her. Toivo was now three and a half. He stood, as he’d been taught, and said, “Hyvää päivää.” Then he sat back down and resumed stacking the mill ends, clearly not understanding who Aino was.

  “He’s fascinated by the sawmill,” Kyllikki said. “He’s gone missing twice. Both times we found him at the mill.” She paused and gave a mock frown. “After around an hour of panic.” She looked at Toivo warmly. “The louder the noise, that’s where he goes.”

  “Sounds a little like my brother,” Aino said.

  Kyllikki gave her a mock dark look. “One in the family is enough,” she said.

  6

  Matti arrived at midmorning on the Fourth. Operating once again as 200-Foot Logging, he was running a show south of Svensen on the upper reaches of the Klaskanine River, doing difficult logging for Western Cooperage. Cooperage could not punch a rail line into the stand cost-effectively, so the company put the logging up for a bid, assuming some fool might take it on. If the fool went bust trying, Cooperage would still own the trees and they’d still be there for the next fool. Matti won the bid at a price Cooperage management thought foolishly low. Matti knew where there were hundreds of trucks left mothballed by the Spruce Division, trucks he bought for close to nothing and used instead of punching in a rail line. In the dry summer months, it took only a bulldozer and some rock to build a road that would last long enough to haul the logs out on trucks. Matti was making a killing.

  Kyllikki and Alma marshaled their children to help them make the Fourth of July picnic, which would include chicken fried in fat drippings collected in a coffee can over the past month and a new gelatin dessert Higgins brought in called Jell-O.

  Aino was grateful for the chance to stop
feeling helpless and took over the making of the potato salad. She looked up to see Eleanor looking at her from the doorway. She smiled at her, but Eleanor looked away. Eleanor followed the other children without looking back.

  Alma saw the stricken look on Aino’s face and said, “Give her time.”

  Aino knew the advice was sound, but it was hard to follow. She felt the need to make up so much time. Eleanor’s childhood was already almost a third gone. She wanted to run outside and hug Eleanor, but it was like stalking a very shy bird—one clumsy move and the bird would fly away.

  As Aino took up the potato salad preparations, she had to ask where everything was.

  The food was loaded into several large baskets Mielikki had woven into artistic and intricate designs, all learned from Vasutäti. They piled the food into Ilmari’s wagon and set off for Tapiola, the girls larking around it in freshly pressed dresses, Jorma and his uncle Matti walking behind. Matti was showing Jorma how a spring worked. Toivo, fresh from a face scrubbing by Kyllikki, ran to catch his brother, Aarni, and his cousin Jorma.

  The children all walked like their mothers and fathers, shoulders relaxed; head, neck, and spine aligned; their young muscles lean and toned from constant hard work; their posture proud from constant reminders. The girls were like aspens and alders to their brothers’ young firs and oaks.

  Aino trailed behind them with Kyllikki, feeling an immense pride in all of them, and a little left out—or maybe it was left behind.

  They spread blankets in the large field behind Higgins’s store. Higgins had personally scythed and raked the field with three friends to get it ready for the Fourth. The blankets evened out the tufts and soft July stubble, the grass cut young and green before it went to hay. The band from the Deep River Legion Post 112, which combined Knappton, Tapiola, and the logging camps all around, warmed up. The musicians marched and practiced every Sunday afternoon, rain or shine, mostly the former.