Deep River Page 19

  When coffee was over, Louhi stood up and said, “Let’s go for a walk.”

  Walking beside Louhi, his eyes on the gray green of a distant hill shorn of trees, Ilmari said nothing.

  “We both like you,” Louhi said.

  “Yoh,” he replied.

  Louhi hesitated. “You must know my business by now.”

  “A boardinghouse.”

  Louhi laughed.

  Ilmari looked at her quizzically.

  “I finance whorehouses and saloons.”

  He blinked.

  Louhi could have been reading his mind. “Rauha has nothing to be ashamed of. I own the whorehouse. If you have trouble with it, now is the time to know.”

  “I’m a strong Evangelical Lutheran.”

  “So are most of my customers.”

  Ten minutes later, Ilmari was sitting on the couch with his mouth slightly open as Rauha paced back and forth, explaining the deal. With the earthquake in San Francisco that spring, lumber prices were going sky-high and there were plenty more houses waiting to be built all over the West. The money was in lumber not in blacksmithing. Louhi would invest half of the capital for a sawmill, Ilmari the other half. His blacksmithing skills would give him an advantage, and a mill on Deep River could control all the timber in the watershed.

  “We can get married when the mill’s built.”

  “But that could be several years and what do I know about sawmills?”

  “Yes, but we think it would only take a year or so. And yes, you don’t know much about sawmills, now. But you can make and repair things. Mother’s asked around. You’re a good worker. You think she let you through the front door just because she knows the grandson of your mother’s aunt?”

  Ilmari said nothing, looking at her.

  “Louhi knows every mill and logging company owner from Port Angeles to Astoria. We’ll know things sometimes months before others.”

  “Through the whorehouse,” he said tightly.

  Rauha crossed over to Ilmari and knelt on the floor in front of him. Taking his large hands in her small ones, she looked up at his broad, high-cheeked face with her brilliant blue eyes. “Yes. And saloons. It’s what my mother does. We’ve told you about it openly. If you’d asked openly, we’d have never hidden it. But I want out from under that … that stigma. She wants me out. We can build a life together.” She moved over his knees, arching her back to raise her mouth to his. She kissed him. “I know you can do it,” she whispered.

  That was the last time Ilmari cared about what Rauha’s mother did for a living.

  Back at Ilmahenki, Ilmari relit the stump fires from the faint embers he found deep inside them, bringing the fires to life with the leather bellows he’d made. By evening, nearly two dozen smoke plumes rose to merge with the gray clouds. He walked to Higgins’s store to send a note to Reder’s Camp telling Aino and Matti that he was engaged. He then walked on to Ullakko’s in the dark and asked him to watch Ilmahenki for three more days. If he was to build a sawmill, it might be useful to know how much timber lay on the other side of the river—and what it might be worth.

  The next morning, he packed his rucksack, strapped an ax on top, and took down his Winchester .30-caliber, in case he ran into a bear or cougar.

  Ilmari found the raft he’d made a couple of years earlier, two flat sides of a split-cedar log joined by six-foot planks. He untangled it from the salmonberry vines and sedge and dragged it into the river, the water seeping into his wool socks. Wobbling the raft until he felt it balance, he poled to the far bank about a quarter of a mile downstream and tied it to a small alder.

  Walking in the cool gloom of the massive trees on the north side of the river, feeling the spongy carpet of years of falling needles beneath him, he pushed uphill, determined to reach the distant ridgeline. However, even after an hour of climbing over nurse logs and circumventing close-growing trees struggling against each other for light and soil, the image of Rauha, her blue eyes, her thighs outlined under her dress, strode with him along with a feeling of frustration and longing. He felt that he would never meet Louhi’s conditions.

  Sliding down a steep hillside, he came to rest at a small creek about a yard wide, rippling quietly over rounded rocks. The branches of the Douglas firs interlinked above the creek, so it had the aspect of a tunnel more than a creek bed. He waded slowly upstream. He hadn’t eaten since morning, but he didn’t care. After half an hour of floundering on slick stones, he found a flat piece of ground. There he cleared enough space to rig his canvas sheet, securing it to nearby branches with a small rope through its grommets. He pulled two wool blankets from his rucksack, untied the ax, and walked about ten yards upstream where he found a young fir with branches to make a good bed.

  He pulled a bough back and down, exposing it where it joined the trunk, putting tension on it. With his left leg forward to counter the weight of the ax he brought the ax down swiftly on the branch. The branch snapped, barely impeding the fall of the ax, which drove deep into the side of his calf. He went dizzy with the shock of it and fell to the ground without making a sound. The ax fell out of the wound and blood flowed out. He forced the wound shut. It wasn’t an artery, but it was bad. Fear grabbed at his insides. He looked up at the trees, as if for help. There was no help. If he couldn’t stop the bleeding, he would be dead within a couple of hours. If he did stop the bleeding, then what? No one would look for him for another two days. He would have to crawl to Deep River.

  Holding his calf with both hands, he inched back to his camp on his buttocks. There he fumbled with one hand to unbutton one of his leather suspender straps from his trousers. One hand wasn’t sufficient to close the wound and the blood flowed faster as he fumbled. Finally, the suspender was free. He pulled his puukko and slashed a strip of wool blanket, which he put on the wound and then wrapped with the suspender, making a tourniquet. He passed out from shock with his head downhill.

  When he regained consciousness, he stuffed the blankets into the rucksack, slung the rifle on his back, and set out on his backside for the river. He lost consciousness twice again before dark. He spent the night huddled in the blankets. With the rising sun for his bearing, the bleeding apparently stopped now, he crawled south.

  By late afternoon he could crawl no more. He rolled over on his back and lay there looking up at a tall Douglas fir. He had at times wondered how he would die. Never would he have imagined it would be in a strange country all alone in a forest. He wondered if the angels would come again, as they had when he was a child.

  He became aware of his breathing. Looking up, just making out the crown of the big tree, almost idly he began to wonder how tall it would be if he put one just like it right on top of this one. Then, suppose he took those two trees and then put them on top of themselves as before, doubling again. Then do it again. And then again. And again. Doubling, again doubling, doubling, doubling … faster, faster, doubling faster. The sky split open into a vast nothingness, a nothingness as the sky is nothingness, real but not seen. He cried out. He tried to crawl away from the tree, crawl with his fingers clawing in the moist needles being turned to soil, crawling from this nothingness he was lost in, crawl and bury his face in the moist forest floor, to feel its coolness on his feverish forehead, to recall the smell and feel of existence, anything to escape this dread, this dreadful nothing that was everything. He passed out.

  When he came to, he was on his back, wrapped in an old Hudson’s Bay Company wool blanket, its creamy white wool darkened almost to tan, its four stripes of black, yellow, red, and green now faded to pale pastels. His bloody trousers were neatly folded on an exposed root. The old Indian woman, Vasutäti, was sitting cross-legged next to him. She made a satisfied grunt, reached out to feel his forehead, and then took his pulse. “Young. Strong,” she said in English. “Lucky.”

  “Yoh,” he said. He couldn’t help smiling as he fell asleep.

  When he awoke, Vasutäti was gone. He panicked, trying to rise to his feet. He then realized tha
t a mass of spiderwebs had been spread over the wound, bound in place with strips of cedar bark. A small fire glowed just outside the drip line of the tree he lay under, assuring him that Vasutäti would return. He fell asleep.

  He awoke to the feel of the old woman’s hand on the back of his head, holding it up to a ceramic mug steaming with God only knew what. He wasn’t about to argue and swallowed everything in the cup. Again, Vasutäti grunted in satisfaction.

  He tried to prop himself upright on his elbows, but she gently pushed him back down. “No sisu now,” she said and then laughed.

  He had to chuckle, more at the music of her laugh than at her joke about his culture. How had she learned that word? “Do you speak Finnish?” he asked in Finnish.

  She laughed again. It was like a creek in summer sunlight. She answered in English, “Some. English better.”

  She went to tend the fire. A battered saucepan lay on the coals at the fire’s edge. She smelled its contents and reached for some sort of shredded plant stock and added it. She walked from sight and returned with the ax. “How this is made?” she asked, weighing the blade in her hand.

  He hesitated. “You heat the steel and it gets soft and you—”

  She interrupted him. “No, no. Not how make look this way. How make this steel?” She tapped the ax-head. “This bite you. You walk when I know how steel made and sing right song.”

  He felt he knew what she wanted. He told her how iron is extracted from hematite and how by the addition of charcoal in just the right amounts the iron became steel, watching her eyes to be sure she was following him.

  She was. She looked at the ax-head in her hand and hefted it. Then she traced the bloodstain on it. “Steel not friend with blood. Not like life. Kill trees. Kill you.”

  Ilmari snorted. “I kill myself. Steel not alive.”

  “Everything alive.” She looked at him, her eyes searching somewhere behind his eyes to see if he understood her. She nodded her head. “Now I know where steel is born, I sing to steel. Send pain back to Pain Hill. You not talk.”

  He took a deep breath, feeling the earth beneath his back, and looked up at the tree. When it started to double, then double again, he cried out in fear. She grasped his left hand with her left hand. “You stay here. Not leave before learn how come back.” He squeezed her hand hard, looking at her face as if looking at a life ring. She squeezed back and smiled; then she began to sing.

  Vasutäti sang in her own language, a dialect of Chinookan. Her clear high notes trembled with controlled vibrato and the low notes were rich in overtones, amplified by jaw and tongue movements. The words faintly echoed the old songs he’d heard from the master singers of Suomi who, with their arms linked, faced each other in a warm kitchen, while outside the thwarted darkness and bitter cold seemed to moan in frustration. If Ilmari shut his eyes, he could have sworn that the voice was that of a young woman.

  On the morning of the fourth day, Vasutäti urged Ilmari to his feet. He leaned on her shoulder, and they slowly made their way through the forest, occasionally stopping when Vasutäti would see some herb or root, grunt to herself, and collect it in a deerskin bag that she carried on her shoulder. They hit a small stream edged by a well-trodden narrow path and came to a tidy, rounded hut made from bent maple saplings covered with overlapping cedar bark. A fire pit, rocks carefully laid to hold several battered cooking pots, sat between the stream and a lean-to shelter holding basket makings and baskets in various stages of completion. Completed baskets were stacked neatly in the shelter’s back corner, away from the weather.

  Vasutäti motioned with her head to a place by the fire and Ilmari gratefully sat down, light-headed from the exertion. He hadn’t realized how much blood he’d lost. Vasutäti went over to a tree and lowered a sack that had been suspended from a branch to protect it from bears. She took out some pemmican, smoked salmon mashed together with dried blackberries; hauled the sack up again; and offered it to Ilmari, who tried not to gobble it down. Vasutäti blew the fire to life and boiled water, which she poured over dried leaves and chopped roots in a ceramic mug.

  “Now, you drink,” she said, smiling. Ilmari held the cup in both hands, savoring its warmth, and took a careful sip. She laughed. “Not hurt you. Good for making blood.” Then, she looked at him coyly, her eyes twinkling. “Also, cure lovesickness.”

  Ilmari put the cup down in astonishment.

  She laughed her merry laugh. “Not so magic me. You talk in sleep. ‘Rauha. Rauha,’” she moaned rolling her eyes. Then she got serious. “You tell me story.”

  She gazed at him until he started talking. He told her the whole story, how he’d longed for a wife, his joy in hearing of a Finnish girl in Nordland, his wonder at Rauha’s beauty, his passion for her, his frustration at her mother’s bride price. When he finished, she said nothing. She sat with her eyes open but obviously wasn’t seeing anything Ilmari could see. Something shifted in her eyes and she was back with him, her face grave.

  She’d seen something she didn’t want to tell him. He nodded his head, indicating he understood but was wise enough not to ask.

  From death and angels when he was a child to long nights with the kantele to sad farewells to Suomi to Deep River to a foolish and near-fatal self-wounding, the path led here.

  Ullakko raised the alarm when Ilmari failed to return. Aino got the girls to cover for her and rushed down to Ilmahenki. The search party of men from the church was still assembling when Vasutäti emerged from the forest across Deep River. She held both arms high over her head. Although Aino had heard stories about Vasutäti, this was the first time she’d seen the old woman. She knew at once that Vasutäti had found Ilmari and he was safe.

  She helped push Higgins’s rowboat into the water, Ullakko scrambling to jump in with her. The entire search party followed, nearly overloading the two other rowboats beached in the sedge at the riverbank. They followed Vasutäti to her campsite. Ilmari was waiting for them, sitting with his back to a tree, smiling a little sheepishly at all the fuss he’d caused.

  Vasutäti took the opportunity to sell almost all her basket inventory, accepting scribbled IOUs from those who had no cash.

  Although unable to walk, Ilmari seemed surprisingly healthy, even oddly content with the world. Two of the men made a stretcher out of cedar limbs and shirts and they packed him back to the river and put him to bed in his own house.

  Aino barely slept, working to keep Ilmahenki afloat and at the same time working for Reder. She couldn’t have done it without the help of the women from the church who showed up daily with meals and helped with chores when she couldn’t be there.

  Vasutäti came every day, the hem of her deerskin dress wet from crossing the river. She would tend to Ilmari’s wounds. On her third visit, she walked over to where Ilmari had his kantele hanging on the wall. She strummed it quietly. Then she handed it to him.

  “Time you played,” she said.

  “What do you want me to play?” Ilmari asked.

  “Not song. Time you played notes between the notes.”

  Ilmari nodded solemnly. Aino rolled her eyes.

  Vasutäti, seeing this, smiled gently at her. “You, young woman. Raw soul.” She nodded at Ilmari. “Brother raw, too. But not so raw.” She looked for a moment at Aino, who could not take her eyes away, feeling at the same time challenged and cared for by this strange old woman. Vasutäti gently nodded her head, as if agreeing with something. She broke the gaze and turned to Ilmari.

  “You play, now. Every day.” She laughed a clear laugh. It made Aino think of the rapids on Deep River above the farm. “I come back for music lessons.” She turned to Aino again. “You not mind I take on music student?”

  Aino didn’t know what the old woman was talking about, but she knew it wasn’t about music.

  Ilmari spent most of his time making spoons and ladles, sharpening tools, splicing rope, mending shoes, any work he could do without standing. He also spent a lot of time with his kantele. Aino noticed that he had
learned some new songs that he could sing only if he changed the tuning on the kantele. The words were in English, but they made little sense to her, something about iron and pain. At times, she would sigh inwardly and marvel at his foolishness, as he sang just one word, one syllable even, for long periods of time, his leg splayed out on the floor in front of him, his back to a wall, moving his jaw in different positions to change the overtones. But then, that had always been Ilmari.

  When Ilmari had healed, every two or three days after the chores he’d make his way to Vasutäti’s camp, carrying his kantele. He would stay there until the next morning. Aino gave up asking him what he did there after three tries that elicited only gentle smiles. But then, that had always been Ilmari.

  18

  The weather grew steadily colder. At Reder’s Camp the better of the shorter days were spent logging in light drizzle, the worse in driving rain. The loggers walked to work after breakfast in the dark and did the same coming home. Straw turned damper. Clothes were harder to dry. It was more difficult to get the bunkhouse fires started in the dark. Aino urged the loggers to defy Reder by sending someone back during daylight. They wouldn’t do it, afraid Reder would fire the man. “Not if you tell him that if he fires one of you, he fires all of you,” Aino said. The loggers wouldn’t move.

  She went to Huttula directly. “He respects you. You’re his best hook tender. Just tell him the men are ready to strike if he doesn’t act.”

  “That would be lying,” Huttula answered. “They’re not ready to strike and you know it.”

  “Why?” Aino asked.

  “Because they’re not crybabies.”

  She decided on direct action herself and spread the word that there would be a meeting outside the bunkhouses on Sunday afternoon, October 28, to discuss living conditions. She’d pleaded with Matti, Aksel, and Jouka to make sure Huttula came.