Deep River

by Karl Marlantes

  After a silence, tears still running down her face, Aino said in a small voice, “But he’s a white and a capitalist.”

  “Aino, he’s a fisherman.”

  Aino started to laugh through her tears.

  19

  Aino boarded the train for Portland the next morning after stops at Woolworths and Grimson’s Ladies Apparel. She hadn’t seen Aksel in nearly three months. Kyllikki moved into Aino’s apartment to cook for the bachelors, leaving Suvi to watch the younger children under her grandmother’s eye.

  When Aino arrived at the dam site, she could only gape. The dam towered over everything. The workshops, machinery, sounds of hammering and sawing, screeching of engines and cables, men shouting, took her back to the early days at Reder’s Camp. For a moment she reveled in the sight and sounds of big work being done by big machines. She also had to admit that in spite of being in love with Aksel, she’d forgotten how good it felt to be one of a few women among so many men, who were all trying not to stare at her.

  Everyone knew Aksel and simply pointed toward the face of the dam when she asked where to find him. She reached the downstream side and squinted skyward to the dam’s horizon. She thought she recognized Aksel high on a scaffold, moving nimbly and seemingly without fear, doing his work. She watched him for some time, wrapping her coat around her in the cold air, her shoes wet from the snow and mud of the construction site. On the way up to the site, she’d caught glimpses of the high granite mountains of the North Cascades, different from the volcanic mountains she could occasionally see from the Columbia River or from the top of a logged-off hill. Now she felt their presence, wild in a roadless wilderness, stretching north, east, and south of her, unseen because they were obscured by low clouds and the steep walls of the deep canyon that would soon be a deep lake.

  She began to shiver with the cold and shouted up at him. She might as well have been shouting into a typhoon. She found a huge wooden cable spool, climbed up on it with her suitcase, and sat there, dangling her legs, watching the action, looking up constantly to see if Aksel saw her. At one point, she saw a makeshift elevator move up the face of the dam. It was designed for carrying materials, so it had no handrails. A man sat nonchalantly on the deck, his legs dangling into space, smoking a cigarette. The man got off and walked over to Aksel. The man pointed down at her. Aksel turned and saw her. She felt her heart leap and jumped to her feet, waving her arms, wishing they were wings. He waved back broadly and joyfully. She kept waving, making little jumps up and down on the cable spool. They finally stopped waving and Aksel went back to work. She knew he could not see her until after quitting time.

  She settled in again on the big wooden cable spool. Men would stop by, offer her coffee from their thermoses, ask her who the lucky man was. All of them knew Aksel and it made her proud to be Aksel’s—what? Girlfriend? Hopeful fiancée? Wet snow fell occasionally, just on the edge of being rain. It didn’t stick but merged with the mud. She tried pulling the burgundy felt cloche hat lower around her ears. She’d been assured it was the latest style by the saleslady at Grimson’s and that it went perfectly with her dark hair and eyes. Right now, however, she wished she’d worn her old wool scarf that not only covered her head but also kept her neck and face warm. She occasionally stood on the huge spool, stamping her feet. She was cold, but she didn’t mind. She couldn’t imagine waiting someplace where they couldn’t see each other.

  It was dark by 4:30. The men worked with gas lanterns and under lights powered by the small temporary dam downstream. At 6:00, she saw Aksel on the open platform of the makeshift elevator. He rode it down hanging on to one of the cables, watching her watching him. When the platform reached bottom she was there to meet him.

  Aksel hugged her, whirling her around so her legs swung out behind. Her burgundy flannel velour dress had cost her nearly a week’s wages. The latest fashion, its skirt only just covered her knees when she was standing and for a moment she feared it would fly up and expose her thighs above the welts of her stockings or even her new champagne-colored silk teddies. Then, she didn’t care. She had her arms around his neck and she never would let go again, never, ever. He stopped whirling, her legs dropped to the ground, and they were waltzing, Aksel singing “Lördagsvalsen” in Swedish, while his fellow workers grinned, lit cigarettes, and watched with amusement—and some envy.

  “Kom fölg mig nu Aino lägg armen om min hals!

  De ska’g å undan uti slygande fläng I denna vals.”

  Aino, follow me now; put your arm around my neck. This waltz insists that we whirl together.

  They found a cheap hotel in Newhalem, a town of nearly a thousand people that had sprung up downriver.

  That night, Aksel pulled a small box from his pocket, took out a thin gold ring with a small single diamond set in it, went to one knee in the traditional manner, and asked if she’d marry him. She said yes with no hesitation in her heart. Her yes felt right, as if there were no other choice, just this acceptance. How right everything was.

  Aksel slipped the ring onto her finger, whispering, “This was in my pocket that night.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t pawn it,” Aino said.

  They both laughed and held each other as if they could stop time.

  They agreed on a June wedding date and then they agreed it was moral and right to sleep together. Kyllikki had lent Aino a soft cotton nightgown, low cut and trimmed with lace that flowed to her ankles and made her feel beautiful. She let Aksel take off her new teddies.

  They talked and made love then made plans and made love again. Aksel was sure that this time, when the dam was finished, he’d have enough money for his boat. They’d live for a while at the poikataloja and then, when the money from the fish came in, they’d buy a house, maybe in Alderbrook where land was cheaper and where Aksel could moor his boat and walk to it from the house. After a long discussion, they decided Aksel shouldn’t wait for the project to finish but instead stay and work just long enough to buy the boat. In the dark early morning hours, she stood with him, bundled against the chill among men stamping their feet in the cold and the glow of cigarettes and she said goodbye. She had been away from the poikataloja three days and it was time to return. It was like a small death, an emptiness that could be endured only because of the promise of reuniting.

  Aino was filled with ideas about how to make the basement of the poikataloja more of a home, with thoughts of getting Eleanor to stay with her, them, and with dreams of the fishing boat and maybe, someday, a house of their own—and perhaps children, their children. She would turn thirty-nine in March, she mused, but why not?

  Aksel would also find himself daydreaming about life with Aino. He’d been promoted to crew supervisor and was making good wages, almost all of which he was saving for that future life. He was in such a lulling state when he hopped onto the platform of the elevator that would take him to his current place of work, high up on the dam. The elevator had a load of iron rebar, a maximum load, to minimize the up and down trips. As the platform climbed the face of the dam, Aksel heard a thin tink as one of the strands of the cable he was grasping broke. Apprehension filled him. There was another tink. He began shouting for the operator to stop. He couldn’t be heard. The platform with its heavy iron load continued up the face and the tinks became a whirring noise of breaking strands of wire. The cable snapped. The platform lurched to hang from the three other cables, dropping Aksel, holding a stub end of the cable in his hand, down the face of the dam, the rebar flowing after him as there was no retaining wall or handrail.

  Aksel had been writing several letters a week and Aino had answered every one of them. Then, his letters stopped.

  She wrote to him every day but no answers came. She grew increasingly uneasy.

  On Friday, April 8, a letter came in a Seattle City Light envelope, addressed by typewriter. She put it on the table, not wanting to open it. After half an hour of agony, she read the letter, informing her Aksel had fallen, jamming his right tibia up past his kn
ee and into his groin area. They amputated just below the knee. The letter was signed by a company nurse. At the bottom scrawled in a shaky hand, Aksel wrote, “God gave me two legs for a reason. I can still work.”

  But he couldn’t work at the dam site. They let him go without any compensation.

  20

  Aksel returned to Astoria without enough money for a fishing boat—and even if he’d had the money, he wasn’t sure he could fish with just one leg. He was even more uncertain whether Aino would want to live with him. When he reached the station in Astoria, she was there waiting with Kyllikki. Matti would, of course, be working. She rushed to him and nearly knocked him from his crutches. He barely recovered his balance, then found himself being hugged close, her face buried in his chest. He dropped the crutches and clung to her, leaning on her for support, holding her tight.

  Kyllikki picked up the crutches and waited until Aksel and Aino came up for air to hand them back to Aksel. She told Aksel that he could stay at the poikataloja for free until he could get on his feet and was immediately embarrassed by the poor choice of words. Aksel laughed, easing the sudden tension by saying, “At least I can’t put my foot in my mouth.”

  Matti, Kyllikki, and the Bachelor Boys all chipped in to get Einar Karlsson, a master boatbuilder, to make him a wooden leg. Meanwhile, Aksel gamely clumped around on crutches, trying to keep everyone else’s spirits up, especially Aino’s. As for his own spirits, he sank into deep despair at night yet awoke every morning renewing his vow to find work. It was simply unthinkable to him that Aino—or any woman—would marry a man who couldn’t provide for her and her children, despite Aino’s assurances that it didn’t matter. Maybe it didn’t matter to her. It mattered to him.

  But what could he do? Aksel’s skills were all highly physical—and extreme physicality was demanded by all the jobs he knew. Even punching the yarder, with its heavy iron levers, gears, and roaring cable drums, was beyond him.

  Within a month of returning, he had his new leg, a simple long peg attached with a lined leather cup and straps to his stump. He walked on it for an hour before the stump started bleeding. He laid off it for a couple of days and picked up a little money helping mend nets, sitting on a box he could move along the net racks. Aino came by his room every night after she’d finished feeding and cleaning up after the boarders with Aksel doing what he could to pitch in. They would lie on his bed and just talk about making things work out. Neither would speak about their fears.

  Coming back to the poikataloja one evening in June, with a few quarters in his pocket from mending nets, Aksel felt particularly down because he realized the fishermen asked him to help with the net mending because they wanted to help him, not because they wanted him to help them. He went back to return their money, but they’d all gone home and he was left standing on his stump on the splintered planks of the net rack pier, the river lapping up against the pilings beneath him, the gill net boats moving up and down with the gentle swell, their mooring pulleys squeaking plaintively. He looked at the last of the sunset beyond the mouth of the river. The air moving in from the Pacific, sweet and cool, was pregnant with the promise of teeming salmon and their eternal cycle of living and dying.

  The brightest stars and planets already shone down. He looked up the river, searching low in the eastern sky, and found Arcturus, which connected him back to Finland and his parents, still living when he got their last letter; and his sisters, all married, with children. He thought of Gunnar. He looked at the emerging lights of the houses on the hillsides above him and he thought about Aino being home, cleaning up now after the evening meal, and his heart ached. He thought he was failing her.

  He limped slowly toward his room smelling the smoke of late cooking fires. Then it hit him. His first job in America was chopping wood on the journey north from San Francisco. He’d started logging by chopping wood for the steam donkey. By God, he would restart life, as a one-legged, used-to-be fisherman and logger, chopping wood.

  The little money he’d saved for the fishing boat bought a cart, a lame horse, an ax, two wedges, a splitting maul, a large one-man crosscut saw, and some low-grade logs the sawmills didn’t mind selling. It took his entire savings. On the side of the wagon he carefully painted: ASTORIA FUEL COMPANY, AKSEL LåNGSTRöM, OWNER. ALL YOUR HEATING AND COOKING FUEL NEEDS SUPPLIED.

  He stepped into Aino’s kitchen still carrying the paint bucket and brush and called out to her, holding them up for her to see, “Now I’m a capitalist!”

  She put down her towel and walked over to him. He couldn’t hug her because his hands were full. She reached up to hold both cheeks in her hands and pulled his head down toward her for a kiss, whispering, “You’re not a capitalist. You’re a petit bourgeois. And I love you.”

  The fuel business grew. Aino waited. She knew Aksel wouldn’t set the wedding date until he was sure he could support the family—including Eleanor, who they both hoped would now move back home. Aino knew Aksel’s dream of a boat had been thwarted once again and she worried he may have given up on his dream altogether, for her. It made her feel grateful, loved, and sad. She’d made his dream her dream, whether he had given it up or not.

  One dreary evening in late August, he came into their flat changing the entire feeling of the room when he crossed the threshold.

  “What’s the matter?” She asked, putting his dinner in front of him.

  “Nothing.”

  He was just like her brothers. Pride and custom forbade men to complain or brag. Since they all believed that life consisted of 95 percent things to complain about and maybe 4 percent things to brag about, this left them with little that was fair game.

  She remembered Kyllikki explaining it to her. Ilmari and Matti had accidentally killed a cow that wandered too close to a stump they’d dynamited. A wood splinter had gone through the cow’s eye.

  “Sure, they should have seen the cow,” Kyllikki said. “But they didn’t. Both feel ashamed for not being competent. So now we play hide-and-seek.”

  “Hide-and-seek?” Aino asked

  Kyllikki laughed. “That’s what I call it. The men hide their feelings and the women seek to find them.”

  They both laughed.

  “Why do you let them play the game?” Aino asked.

  “Aino, if they felt their fear or lack of confidence or sadness at failure, they couldn’t function out there.”

  Then it hit her—out there, where it was dangerous and they were alive. She sat down across from Aksel and looked into his eyes. “The August Chinook are running.”

  “Yoh,” Aksel answered. They always spoke Finnish when they were alone.

  She ladled salmon stew into a bowl for him. He had slumped into the chair, his peg leg straight out to the side of the table.

  “You wish you were fishing,” she said.

  “No. Not anymore,” he answered. “We’re OK with the fuel business.”

  She poured two cups of coffee. He ate silently.

  “You’ll be back out there someday,” she said.

  Aksel stared at his stew, his fork held upright in his hand next to the bowl. He looked up at her. “I said I’d never fish for the big canneries. I did for Lempi. I’d do it for you, but they won’t hire a one-legged man.”

  “I know you’d do it for me,” she said. “I know what you’re doing now is for me.”

  He took a couple of deep breaths, then it came out. “I was a high rigger! I did what few men would dare. The most dangerous and highest-paid job in the woods. I can find fish anywhere! I could bring in enough fish to buy two houses. Now I’m watching the shit running out of a lame horse’s asshole and selling bits of wood for pennies like some goddamned lame, useless cripple.” In a sudden fierce move, he turned the fork upside down and started jabbing into his lame leg.

  Aino rushed around the table and knelt next to him, hugging his leg, forcing him to stop. Looking up at him, his pain and his shame bringing tears to her eyes, she said, “I love you. I love this.” She was kissi
ng the blood that had oozed up to mix with the wool of Aksel’s trouser leg. He leaned over and smothered his face in her hair and the pain and disappointment poured out as he said her name over and over.

  The next day Aksel loaded the wagon with wood and heaved himself up onto the seat. The horse shit. For a moment, he stared at the greenish brown feces plopping quite contentedly to the ground, then he started to laugh. He rubbed his trouser leg and felt the bandage that Aino had put on the wound the night before. Still laughing, he clucked the horse forward.

  That night, he asked Aino if four weeks from Sunday would work for the wedding, and on September 18, 1927, Aksel and Aino were married in the little church that Ilmari built. Kyllikki and Matti were witnesses. Eleanor, now nine, helped her mother get ready.

  At the reception at Ilmahenki, put on by Alma and the girls, they had cranked up the new gramophone Alma and Ilmari had bought as their wedding present to themselves and everyone danced, Aksel doing an amazing job on his peg leg and everyone at ease with it. Eleanor undertook teaching Aksel how to Charleston. “Everyone is doing it,” she’d said solemnly.

  The newly married couple took the train to Neawanna where they stayed two nights at the Neawanna Hotel and walked on the beach at low tide. They found a little restaurant on the corner of Broadway and South Franklin Street called the Little Gem, owned by a Greek family by the name of Mavromichalis. They were served by the Mavromichalises’ young son, Elias, who seemed to be about Eleanor’s age. Contrary to Aino’s suspicions, the restaurant was clean, tidy, and the food good. On the second evening they ate across the street at the Clam House, owned by another Greek family, named Galanis. Demetrius Galanis was the man Jouka defended so many years ago at the dance at Knappton, and he recognized Aino and remembered Jouka fondly. He challenged Aksel to try his famous chili. Aksel did and, like a true Scandinavian, he never tried it again.