Deep River

by Karl Marlantes

  A large touring car, its canvas top pulled back, spattered with new mud up to the running boards, came bouncing over the unpaved wagon road from the direction of Skomakawa. Aino felt her breath stop just for an instant when she recognized Aksel at the wheel and the Bachelor Boys on the dark, nearly black leather seats. The car bounced over the field, roared up to them, and stopped. Aksel grinned from beneath a workingman’s leather hat that showed just a bit of his blond hair, trimmed short above his ears, the brim mostly hidden by the flat overlapping crown. She saw Jens, Yrjö, Heppu, and Kullervo climb from the car, looking around as if now that they’d arrived the festivities could begin.

  Aksel was walking toward them. His brilliant-blue eyes seemed to laugh with the obvious joy of seeing Aino and the family. She felt a sudden lightness, as if he were about to ask her to dance.

  He’d filled out and filled out well, she thought, from the too-lean and restless man who’d carried her away from Centralia. He looked like a man who’d gotten used to being in charge. He and the others still carried the aura of danger. She was sure they were bootlegging. That car looked expensive.

  Eleanor screamed with delight, “Akseli-setä,” Uncle Aksel, and ran straight for him. He caught her with ready hands and threw her squealing high above his head. Aino saw that it was a well-practiced move, which made her both happy and jealous.

  She turned to Kyllikki and Alma, who were drinking coffee from one of those new thermos bottles Ilmari bought in Portland. All the married loggers were getting them for Christmas and birthdays.

  “Aksel come around fairly often then?” Aino asked.

  Alma nodded. Aksel now had Eleanor by the arms and was swinging her around, her legs and skirt horizontal to the ground. Pilvi ran up, jumping up and down for her turn.

  “Jouka?” Aino asked.

  “Not so often,” Alma said. She looked quickly at Kyllikki, who nodded go ahead. “It’s … the drinking.”

  “He loves Eleanor. He really does,” Kyllikki broke in. “But … there’s been some trouble.”

  “Several times in jail,” Alma said. “Caught with booze on the street.” She sighed sadly. “He was a good logger.”

  “And dancer,” Kyllikki added.

  Aino wondered if they blamed her. Jouka had been drinking long before she even met him, but she said nothing.

  “What in the world is Aksel doing to get such a fancy car?” Aino asked. Matti had joined them and was squatting, reaching for a piece of chocolate cake.

  “That’s an Oldsmobile with a 233-cubic-inch V-8 engine. It’ll outrun any cop car on a paved road. It costs more than a logger’s annual salary. What do you think he’s doing?”

  Aino didn’t answer.

  “War changed him,” Matti said.

  Aksel put Pilvi down and came walking up to them. What hadn’t changed were his radiant blue eyes.

  “Päivää,” he said. He shook Matti’s hand and then made a slight head nod to the women, repeating, “Päivää” to each of them. “When did you get back?” he asked Aino in Finnish.

  “Two days ago.”

  “The heat’s off then.” It wasn’t a question.

  She nodded yes.

  “We missed you.”

  “Come for dinner,” she blurted out. She quickly looked at Alma, who smiled approval. Aksel gave a look toward the Bachelor Boys, who had dispersed among the picnickers. “They can come, too.” Aino said. “I owe all of you.”

  Matti had already left to look at the Oldsmobile. Aksel smiled at Alma and Kyllikki. “We’ll tell the story over dinner.”

  The younger children had to go to bed after supper, but Mielikki, Helmi, and Suvi got to stay up. All of the Bachelor Boys came, except Kullervo. He assured everyone he really liked Ilmari and Alma, but he always had some reason to stay behind. Ilmari had made a violin just three years earlier and was already a fair player, but it turned out Jens Lerback was a master, so Ilmari just did chords on the kantele and everyone danced with everyone. The three girls were trying hard to be grown-up and the Bachelor Boys were being gallant with dance partners whose faces touched just above their belly buttons.

  Aino saw Aksel whisper to Jens, who laughed and said in English, “Name me a Scandinavian fiddle player who doesn’t.”

  Aksel walked over to Aino, and Jens began playing “Lördagsvalsen.” Aksel held out his hand. Aino took it and she was filled with memories—of Midsummer’s Eve, of Knappton and Lempi, of Jouka, and of Aksel. The memories were like bright beads on a somber necklace. Her heart filled with longing for those moments and the people she shared them with. She could only conjure at the edges of memory the time between the beads, time not specifically remembered, but felt now, in this room, in her brother’s house, with Aksel reaching out his hand, here, now, sharing this moment. She knew she’d come home.

  The Bachelor Boys left in the Oldsmobile as the sun was coming up. The adults had coffee.

  “Good dancer, isn’t he?” Kyllikki said to Aino.

  “Who?”

  Kyllikki rolled her eyes.

  The room was silent as everyone drank coffee. The cows would need milking, the younger children would need feeding, the soot would need to be dusted from the walls, firewood would need to be cut. The life of the farm was relentless and sweet.

  Ilmari cleared his throat, a sign something serious was coming. “Aino,” he said. “We’ve been talking.”

  “I hope you’re not sending me to Ullakko,” she quipped. Everyone but Ilmari chuckled.

  “No, but it’s the same problem. You could stay and help Alma with the house, but—”

  “We would drive each other crazy,” Aino said.

  “Yoh,” Alma agreed.

  There was a pause.

  “So,” Kyllikki said brightly, “almost all the poikatalojas in Astoria were burned out. The lumber and logging business has been good. We own the land, so instead of rebuilding our house, we’re buying the neighbor’s lot to build our own poikataloja.”

  “We’re going to wire it for electricity,” Matti said.

  “Where will you live?”

  “We’re going to build a new house on my mother and father’s land,” Kyllikki said. “They’ll live with us.”

  Aino waited.

  “So, Matti’s logging. I’ll have my hands full with the kids and my parents. We want you to manage the poikataloja.”

  “I don’t know anything about running a poikataloja.”

  “You worked in the mess hall at Reder’s Camp. You can cook. You can handle single men. You ran the business end of the co-op. You’d be perfect.”

  “It will have an electric stove and electric lights,” Matti said. “Way less cleaning.”

  “No fear of fires,” Kyllikki added.

  “But … I’d just be a … a maid for fifty bachelors. I, I’ll midwife instead.”

  “The doctors have shut the midwives down,” Matti said.

  “I need to think about it.”

  “Aino,” Ilmari said quietly. “Now is not a time to be proud.”

  Aino accepted. While the poikataloja was being built, she helped Alma at Ilmahenki and Kyllikki at Suvantola. She fished for crawdads with Eleanor. She took her into Tapiola for candy at Higgins’s. She told stories from The Kalevala. Gradually Eleanor started warming to her. But when the poikataloja was finished and the day to move to Astoria arrived, it was clear she hadn’t warmed enough. Eleanor ran away.

  After five hours of frantic searching and calling out her name, Jorma and Aarni found Eleanor at Vasutäti’s old campsite, which had become a secret hideout for the children, huddled against the back wall of the little bark hut. They told Eleanor that her mother said she could stay, and it was OK to come home.

  She was furious when she found she’d been tricked and bolted for the door, but Jorma and Aarni stopped her. Aino reached out to take her arm, but she twisted away and ran to Alma, burying her face in Alma’s skirt. Alma looked awkwardly at Aino. She knelt, both knees on one of the many rag rugs, a
nd hugged Eleanor. Then she pushed her back so she could talk to her.

  “Eleanor, your äiti loves you. She wants very much for you to go with her to Astoria.”

  “I don’t want to go to Astoria.”

  Aino went to her knees beside Eleanor and Alma. She knew she was begging this tiny person who held her happiness in her power. “Please, Eleanor. I want you to come with me. I know it will be hard to leave Alma-täti.” She again reached out to her, but Eleanor pulled away saying, “I hate you.”

  “Eleanor,” Alma said, kneeling down to her level.

  “What,” came a little voice.

  “When we face hard or scary things, what do we do?”

  Eleanor said nothing.

  “What do we do?” Alma insisted.

  “Remember our sisu,” she said without looking at her.

  Alma waited for Eleanor to do what needed to be done.

  Alma had woven a beautiful little wicker suitcase with two colors and a little latch she had ordered by mail. She helped Eleanor pack, Aino anxiously looking on, and walked with her to the front porch. “You’ll see Matti-setä and Kyllikki-täti every day. Astoria has stores even bigger that Mr. Higgins’s and a school with lots of rooms where everyone in a room is the same age, and lots of girls to make friends with.” She bent down and hugged Eleanor into her skirt, letting her bury her face in it. “I’ll always be your täti,” she said, holding her close against her legs. Then, bending down and nuzzling her nose into Eleanor’s thick auburn hair, she said, “I will miss you and I will always love you.” She stood and tried to smile but turned and walked back into the house.

  The children lined up. The boys shook both Aino’s and Eleanor’s hands and the girls gave Eleanor a flower crown to wear to Astoria. Then Ilmari pulled up in the wagon and they got in. Eleanor dived to the floor, burying her face against the rough wood of the wagon, saying nothing. Even with Ilmari’s coaxing, she wouldn’t wave goodbye.

  7

  The poikataloja was full within two weeks of opening. The economy was still good; work was plentiful and places to live were scarce.

  Kyllikki helped Aino with the little basement apartment they’d designed for her, making curtains, lining shelves with paper, and making two new rag rugs. Eleanor had her own bed for the first time in her life.

  It didn’t make Eleanor happy.

  Nor did school. Aino decided to send Eleanor to first grade, even though she was five. It was better for her, Aino figured, since she herself was busy all the time running the poikataloja. There was a further problem. Eleanor didn’t speak English.

  On the first day of school Eleanor came home at lunchtime crying. Aino spanked her, because she felt it was required for good mothering. She marched her back to school, telling her stories of brave Finnish girls who helped beat the Russians.

  Eleanor sat tight-lipped and angry in the front row where Mrs. Hawkins placed her to keep an eye on her. She hadn’t gone to the toilet all day, because she couldn’t see any outhouse and didn’t know how to ask where one was. Desperate, she finally wriggled into bushes at the side of the playground. Her mother had put her into panties, like all the American girls, and she didn’t quite know how to manage. She spent the rest of the day ashamed and scared that someone would smell them. When she came home she quickly pulled them off and hid them. When Aino found them and confronted her with them, Eleanor grabbed them and threw them at her. She got spanked for that as well.

  She finally made friends with a Finnish girl named Jenny Pavola. When Jenny asked Eleanor to come to her house to play, she couldn’t, because Jenny’s parents were whites and those kinds of people did terrible things to true Finns. When Eleanor reluctantly told Jenny why she couldn’t come to play, Jenny said it was all right, because her mother said they didn’t want any girl from a red family in their house. The reds had killed some of her aunts, uncles, and cousins in Finland and didn’t believe in God. The girls still played at school, but the budding friendship struggled.

  By Thanksgiving, Eleanor could make herself understood in English and could understand most of what Mrs. Hawkins said. By Christmas, she spoke better English than Aino. She also learned that you spoke “old-country language” only to parents.

  She eventually worked out the complicated social issues.

  She could be friends with Finns and other Scandinavians, talk with Greeks and Italians at school, and smile and be polite to the Chinese but stay clear of them. Their tongs were vicious secret societies that would sell a little blond Scandinavian girl into a brothel, whatever that was.

  She could play with friends at school, but she could never play at their houses and they could never come to her house, whether they were red or white, because she was from a broken home—as if anyone would want to come to a hole in the ground underneath a bunch of smelly bachelors. Even worse than being a child from a broken home, she was a child from a broken home whose mother had done something bad. Jenny told Eleanor that her mother said that Eleanor’s mother had gone to jail. Eleanor said that her mother went to jail because she helped working people, and mean bosses paid the police to put her there. Jenny believed her. She and Jenny would meet downtown and window-shop and stare at sailors, but they couldn’t play with Jenny’s dolls.

  She hated it.

  At Christmas, they went to Ilmahenki where everyone was red—or at least no one was white except Matti-setä, but he didn’t exploit people, so he was an OK white. When Aksel-setä came for Christmas glögg, she asked him if he was a red or a white. He said that he was an earthling, which she knew was a joke but didn’t understand.

  On Christmas Eve, they went to Ilmari-setä’s church and even her mother came. They put out all the kerosene lamps and everyone lit a candle. They sang her favorite carol, “Hiljainen Yö,” which meant “Silent Night” in English. Helmi said it was a German song, but we Americans had beaten them in the war and even Martin Luther was a German and not a Finn, and it was OK to do mixed-up things like that in America. When she walked sleepily into Alma-täti’s house, Ilmari-setä lit the candles on the Christmas tree and everyone got an orange from California that Matti-setä bought in Astoria. Everyone said that Matti-setä was making good money, so he could afford to do this.

  She slept with Helmi and it felt warm and snuggly. She helped Alma-täti make rieska and pulla and even helped Mielikki make a basket for next Easter. She thought Mielikki—who now had breasts—was beautiful and she and Pilvi went into her room and found a brassiere, which was a risqué new kind of underwear. They both tried it on, giggling, until Mielikki came in and snatched it away from them.

  Even though Jorma teased her about being a city girl, he let her help with the milking. He and Aarni let her fish for steelhead with them. They even told everyone she landed one all by herself, although it was a lie. Jorma had stood behind her guiding every move, helping with the reel, but it was a good lie.

  She knew her mother was trying, but she still felt Alma-täti was her real mother, her cousins were her brothers and sisters, and Astoria was unfriendly, lonely, and far away from everything she loved.

  She ran away when it came time to go back.

  This time they didn’t find her. It was dark and cold by four o’clock, so she came in on her own. Alma-täti hugged her and said she’d scared everyone and they’d been frantic with worry, although Eleanor saw no reason why. Her mother hugged her, too, and then said, “I’m trying so hard.” She felt bad her mother felt bad, but then Alma-täti never had to try hard.

  So, because she didn’t want her mother to feel sad, she went back with her to the poikataloja and the smelly bachelors.

  February was miserable in Astoria, gloomy at noon and dark sixteen hours a day. The rain slashed down with one southwest storm after another. Even Captain Elving’s ferry, the sixty-foot Tourist, stayed tied up at the dock several days, bucking at the heavy ropes as swells moved upriver, breaking over its decks. Because no one’s parents would let her play at their houses, Eleanor had only her littl
e doll, Kiki. Ilmari-setä had carved her head and Alma-täti made her body and her clothes. She tried to cheer Kiki up, serving her coffee, talking about summer at Ilmahenki with Mielikki, Helmi, and Jorma.

  One day at school, Ilona Salminen said her mother told her that Jouka Kaukonen was Eleanor’s father. Eleanor said, “So what?” Ilona said that her mother said that Jouka Kaukonen was a drunk. She shoved the stupid girl and when Ilona hit her back, she grabbed Ilona’s arm and bit her as hard as she could. Ilona ran crying to Mrs. Hawkins, who took Eleanor to see the principal who asked why she bit Ilona. When she told him, he had looked out his office window at the river for the longest time. Then he turned and said two wrongs don’t make a right and wrote a note for her to take home to her mother.

  When her mother opened the principal’s note, Eleanor thought she was going to be spanked, but her mother just sat down and put her head in her hands. So Eleanor spanked Kiki instead and then felt bad because Kiki didn’t bite Ilona. She made it up to Kiki by having a tea party. Eleanor pretended that her father, Alma-täti, Ilmari-setä, and Aksel-setä had all come. Kiki got mad at Eleanor’s father and it ruined the tea party. When her mother returned from making the bachelors’ dinner, the tea party was all over the floor and her mother shouted at her and sent her to bed without supper.

  That Saturday morning, she pretended to be asleep when her mother went to the kitchen to make breakfast for the bachelors. She knew that after breakfast was cleaned up her mother would go shopping for dinner and Sunday breakfast. So, with her and Kiki’s clothes in the little two-colored wicker suitcase Alma-täti had made for her, Kiki safe and warm under her coat, she went to the coffee can her mother thought was secret, took four quarters from it, and walked to the General Washington.

  When she gave the man the quarters for her ticket, he asked her where she was going. She said in English, “To Knappton. My uncle Ilmari is meeting me there.” It was another good lie.

  When the General Washington tied up at Knappton, one of the crew helped Eleanor up the ladder because it was low tide. She sat on her suitcase, cradled Kiki in her lap, watched the river, and waited.