Deep River

by Karl Marlantes

  “That is not true,” Aino said, loud and clear. “The market price for salmon is not set by Columbia River canneries alone. It is too big a market for one more cannery to affect price.”

  “You tell the son of a bitch, Aino,” someone shouted.

  Alatalo again gaveled for quiet. “Hear Mr. Gleason out,” he said.

  “I will be blunt,” Gleason said. “We are prepared to do anything it takes to stop you from building another canning factory on the lower Columbia.” He paused. “Anything it takes.”

  There was silence as they took in the implied threat.

  “The packers are prepared to offer an additional twenty percent per pound, if you come back to work and drop this co-op idea in the garbage where it belongs.”

  “That’s half a cent per pound,” someone shouted. That was followed by howls of derision. When Alatalo had gaveled the fishermen into submission, Aino said to Gleason, “I think you have your answer.”

  Gleason picked up his hat from where he’d put it on his chair. He looked at it, as if studying it. Then he said, “I want you to remember that we tried to be reasonable.” He walked out.

  It was easy to agree on joining a co-op. When the co-op asked for money, it wasn’t so easy. People had to be convinced in person.

  Aino focused on the wives. She knew from hard experience that without their support the idea would fail. She also began recruiting the women to work in the proposed canning factory—not too difficult since all the salmon packers had been laid off, owing to the strike, and because of the depression there was no other work. Tolverson focused on locating canning equipment while Alatalo focused on finding a place for the factory and designing the processing. Alatalo would also focus on politics with one overarching goal: prevent the governor from calling in the National Guard to break the strike as the Oregon governor did in the fishermen’s strike of the 1890s or the Washington governor did in Centralia. If the strike were broken, prospective members would fall off and the co-op, if it could get started at all, would, as Aksel pointed out, be competing with rival canneries operating with cheap labor. Timing was critical. Start before the strike ended. Start before the Chinook hit.

  This made Aino and many prospective members uncomfortable. Was it wrong to hope the strike would last? Wouldn’t they be abandoning their fellow fishermen? But then there was an even bigger issue. Tolverson had been up and down the river looking for canning machinery that was being sold under distress, but with the funds they hoped to raise, they could afford only equipment that would process a small amount of salmon, limiting the size of their membership more than they’d anticipated.

  “We’ve become a country club before we’ve even started,” Aino said at an early November committee meeting.

  Alatalo, ever the practical man, said, “Right now, we don’t have a problem. Why worry about it?”

  “Why not turn it to our advantage,” Tolverson said. “If the word gets out that membership will be closed because of processing capacity, won’t that make people want to join before that happens?”

  There was a murmur of agreement. Aino couldn’t argue against the logic. All she could do was express her feelings. “I don’t want to be part of an exclusive club.”

  Alatalo smiled, a little wistfully. “None of us do, Aino, but we’re already exclusive. We only take members who haven’t lost all their savings and can cough up two hundred bucks. That excludes half of the river.”

  When she went home that night and vented in front of Aksel, he took her in his arms. “We’re doing our part for them by not breaking their strike.” Then he whispered in her ear: “You can’t save everyone.” He stepped back and touched her nose. “Let’s save a few. What’s wrong with a small victory?”

  She had to laugh.

  The next morning, she was back at the membership drive.

  This was difficult organizing for Aino, because not only did she have to overcome the usual objections of risking hard-earned savings or having to borrow the seed money from relatives, but she also had to overcome ignorance about how a co-op would work. Each wife wanted to know what would happen if her husband wanted out or brought in more fish than the other husbands or if her husband drowned. All the women knew that one or two men drowned every season.

  * * *

  Christmas of 1931 was bleak for almost everyone. Workers, even supervisors and managers, were being laid off at an increasing pace. Those who kept their jobs found wages being cut. For the families of the striking fishermen, it was the darkest Christmas in the darkest December. But no one starved.

  Aino organized a collection point for food at Suomi Hall and formed a miniature food co-op. The strikers all contributed ten dollars and with that money the food committee bought sacks of staples to distribute according to family size and need: beans, flour, salt, sugar, lard—and coffee. There was no question about whether coffee was a staple.

  And it was over coffee that Aino did the bulk of her work. She would often be unable to sleep at night because she was so full of caffeine. Over coffee she handed out midwife knowledge about pregnancies and a variety of women’s health issues. Aino found herself drawing up family budgets, answering the question of how a family could afford a co-op membership fee. On occasion, she found herself babysitting while an essential errand had to be run by a mother.

  The work was exhausting.

  Every day, however, the co-op’s bank account grew—sometimes by one membership fee, sometimes by four or five.

  As membership grew, so did the pressure from the canneries.

  27

  On January 4, a train arrived with forty fishermen from San Francisco, mostly Italians. They’d been promised free use of boats and two and a half cents a pound. January fishing was mostly silverside, steelhead salmon, and white sturgeon. The canneries would take any kind of marketable fish to keep the lights on. None of them had any problem putting steelhead or silverside salmon into cans labeled Chinook.

  Angry strikers quickly converged on the cannery where the Italians had been escorted by the local police. The strikers were armed. So were the police. Many knew each other.

  Throughout the night, the fishermen hurled rocks at the cannery where the Italians had been lodged, breaking the occasional window. The chief of police arrived and urged calm. The sound of rounds being chambered was taken by everyone as a warning, but the point was made. The police set up lines around the cannery and pushed the fishermen back beyond rock-throwing range.

  In a cold drizzle the next morning, the Italian fishermen set out nervously from the cannery with an armed police escort. They were unsure of the river and its dangers, unused to handling gill net boats, and had no clear idea of where to set their nets. These were tough, skilled, and desperate men with families to feed and no work to be found anywhere near them. They were also men ignorant of what they’d face at the mouth of the Columbia. The striking gillnetters sullenly watched them depart.

  Two of the unfortunate Italians drowned in the first week. Being an experienced fisherman was only part of staying alive. Knowing the bottom and the currents where you were fishing was the other. The Italians were the former, but they did not know the latter. They were swept into the roiling water of the Columbia River bar, their bodies later found washed up on the long beach south of the jetty. They were buried there in the sand by local residents.

  The fishermen took their own boats out to harass the Italians. There weren’t enough police to guard every boat. One of the Italians’ boats was rammed by an angry striker. It sank. The two scabs were left struggling in the water, but were picked up later by their friends.

  The Italians continued to fish. The police continued to escort the Italians to their boats amid angry heckling and an occasional missile.

  On January 13, John Nurmi’s baby boy of four weeks died. Nurmi said it was because his wife wasn’t eating well enough to feed him. Three days later, the house belonging to the owner of Northwest Seafood was torched. No one was hurt, because the family ha
d been out. Those with a motive to burn the house, especially John Nurmi, had witnesses saying they were dancing at Suomi Hall the entire time.

  The mayor and city council, now thoroughly frightened, called on the governor to send the Oregon National Guard to protect the Italian fishermen and guard the houses of owners and supervisors.

  The governor was initially sympathetic to the mayor, but the co-op had prepared well. Alatalo presented the governor with the names and signatures of hundreds of members of the American Legion and VFW who supported the strike. Aksel contacted acquaintances from the old days. He learned a lot about the governor, in particular one rather sordid bit of the governor’s personal history.

  Alatalo met the governor and agreed to stay quiet in exchange for the governor’s promise to explain to the mayor and cannery owners that it was political suicide to call out the Guard.

  On January 28, Alatalo secured an old warehouse on a wharf at the end of Eighteenth Street. The owner openly defied Gleason’s request that he not lease to any communist radicals from the co-op. Just two days later, Tolverson shook hands on purchasing the equipment of a canning factory that had gone out of business in St. Helens, Oregon, owing to the combined blows of the depression and the strike.

  That night, co-op members celebrated. The owners, under Gleason’s leadership, had failed to stop them.

  Elated, Aino paid for long-distance and called Ilmari and Alma on their new telephone. When Alma finished shooing everyone off the party line, Aino told them the good news.

  “Well,” Ilmari said. “This calls for a celebration.”

  He showed up in Astoria, along with Alma and two of Alma’s kermakakku—sour cream cakes—and several jars of homemade blackberry jam. It was February and the farmwork was curtailed by both weather and too little daylight, so they decided to stay a couple of days with Matti and Kyllikki to take in the big city. Eleanor, thirteen, stayed at Ilmahenki because of school. Jorma, now twenty-two, was in Tacoma at Pacific Lutheran College; and Helmi, twenty-four, was working as an office manager in Portland.

  Tolverson rented an old wooden barge to transport the canning machinery from Scappoose to Astoria. With the help of twenty co-op fishermen, the barge was loaded and ready to be towed by Wednesday night, February 3. The tug, out of Longview, Washington, was scheduled for the next morning and the fishermen, in five cars, drove back to Astoria.

  Later that same Wednesday night the owner of the Desdemona Club received a call from his sole liquor supplier. He was asked if he could do the supplier a favor. The favor was to pass on some information to Aksel Långström, a friend of the supplier from the old days and well known to the owner of the Desdemona. Someone was using an intermediary to hire men who would be willing to sink a barge.

  The owner of the Desdemona Club was always pleased to do a favor for a gangster.

  At eleven thirty that night, Aino was awoken by someone hammering on the door. She grabbed Aksel by the arm. Aksel grunted, fumbled for his crutch, and made his way to the door. Whoever it was only whispered. She heard Aksel say thank you. The light in the kitchen went on and Aksel was making coffee at the same time he was getting into his wool long johns and strapping on his leg.

  “What’s going on?” She asked, taking over the coffee-making job. Aksel was packing warm clothing in a haversack.

  “Nothing,” he said. It was that tone. There would be no more information. She started to feel uneasy but helped him put on his leg. He touched her hair and she looked up. His eyes were darting back and forth, the way they had often been ever since the war. Not a muscle on his face betrayed what he was feeling, but his eyes did. He was frightened. That she’d never seen. It sent her into near panic. She hugged his knee. “Don’t go,” she whispered.

  He rose, saying nothing, and she had to rise with him. He shrugged into the coat he always wore when fishing. Then he took her with one arm around her waist and pulled her up to him, tight. He kissed her, long and hard. “I have to go,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “Out.”

  By “out,” he meant to find the Bachelor Boys.

  Kyllikki was awoken twenty-five minutes later and she cautiously followed behind Matti to see who was at the door. She was followed by Ilmari and Alma. It was Aksel. Aksel motioned Matti and Ilmari outside and the three whispered. Matti came in, got into his warm logging clothes, and disappeared down the stairs to the basement. Ilmari went to his bedroom and came out wearing his warm clothes. When Matti came back upstairs, he had three Springfield rifles, one fitted with a scope, and two .45-caliber automatic pistols. He went back down and returned with ammunition and his own .30-caliber Winchester hunting rifle.

  “What are you doing?” she asked. She turned to Aksel. “What’s going on?”

  She saw Aksel give Matti and Ilmari that look: keep the women out of this.

  “What’s going on?” she said with that voice: you’d better goddamn tell me.

  “Aksel’s just a little worried about the canning machinery for the co-op,” Matti said. “He and Aino, and everyone else, have got their life savings tied up in it and, well, just to be cautious, maybe we’ll ride along on the barge.”

  “Matti Koski, be cautious about what?”

  “Nothing to worry about.”

  She looked at her husband and her brothers-in-law. “You’re not going without coffee and pulla.” She always had coffee ready for Matti to go to work in the morning, so all it required was heating.

  Matti, Ilmari, and Aksel were standing in front of Matti’s house when the big 1923 burgundy Oldsmobile touring car pulled up with the Bachelor Boys. Nine years old, showing considerable wear and tear on the interior leather, the car was kept in prime running condition by Jens. Heppu was driving. “Sorry we’re a little late,” he said. “Had to break into Seppa’s Standard station for gas. We’ll make it good with him later.”

  Matti and Aksel loaded the weapons and ammunition into the car’s trunk and squeezed into the back seat with Jens and Kullervo, who, being the smallest, sprawled out across their laps, his head propped against one side. Yrjö was riding shotgun, with Ilmari in the front middle seat. Yrjö immediately started checking out the actions on the rifles, applying gun oil where he thought necessary.

  Their first stop was the Aino to pick up Aksel’s Thompson. Their next stop was St. Helens.

  After Kyllikki got the kids off to school, she walked over to the poikataloja. Aino was cleaning up after breakfast when she walked through the door. Aino looked at her, holding a dish towel. “Where did they go? Heppu, Kullervo, Jens, and Yrjö are all gone.”

  “Matti said, and I quote, just to be cautious, they were going to ride along on the barge.”

  “Did they have guns?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought it was trouble.” Aino sat down. She didn’t trust herself to stand.

  “Maybe not,” Kyllikki said, following suit.

  Aino looked at Kyllikki, marveling at either her optimism or her naïveté. Men didn’t leave in the middle of the night fully armed if there wasn’t trouble. “The cannery owners did everything they could, short of violence, to stop us,” she said, “They failed.”

  “OK,” Kyllikki said. “It’s trouble.”

  Aino got up; poured coffee, her hands shaking; and joined Kyllikki with two cups. The two women didn’t say a word. They just held on to their warm cups seeking comfort. Being married to a logger and a fisherman, they both had long ago dealt with the possibility of being widows. When it was imminent—a storm, a fire—they were scared, as they were now. No use stating the obvious. But storms and fires were indifferent, neutral. Men were intentional and far more lethal.

  “We need to tell the co-op members,” Aino said.

  “You don’t think they know?”

  “Not likely,” Aino said. “The man who came to the door last night was the manager of the Desdemona Club. He passed on a message. I’m guessing it was from one of Aksel’s contacts from the old days.”

&nbs
p; “Yoh,” Kyllikki said.

  The two women left together, coffee untouched. Aino went to find Alatalo and Tolverson; Kyllikki went to the docks to spread the news.

  They later met on the wharf off Sixteenth Street. They said very little but found themselves standing side by side, their arms around each other’s waists, looking up the river. With those you love, you accept that there are only two ways you will not get hurt when you lose them. You stop loving them or you die first.

  Aino gripped Kyllikki’s hand and Kyllikki squeezed it back, sisters, both silent.

  28

  Aksel was smoking a cigarette, his Thompson across his lap, watching the shoreline pass by. He was near the bow on the Oregon side. Matti sat near the stern with his Winchester, his back up against the left rear tire of the Oldsmobile. Yrjö was on top of the canning equipment with the scoped rifle. Kullervo was spotting for him. Heppu, Ilmari, and Jens had the Washington side with their Springfields. The tug, on a short towrope, was moving at a steady six knots. The wood of the old barge creaked with each change of speed or direction. They’d left St. Helens around seven and passed Longview and Rainier. So far, no sign of trouble. Now, however, Aksel was growing uneasy. It was after one in the afternoon and they were moving into the narrowing channel between Puget Island and the Oregon side. They passed Westport and its huge sawmill. The distance between Puget Island and the Oregon side narrowed to around five hundred yards.

  There was a slight change in the sound of the water running alongside the barge, and the bow of the barge moved up, maybe a foot, and then started back down. The tugboat’s engine roared and Aksel saw the water churning from its stern as it pulled away from the barge, the towrope cast off.

  “We’re about to get hit!” Aksel shouted, his eyes trying to see both shorelines at the same time. “Everyone watch your sectors.”