Deep River Read online

  The swearword, coming from a woman, took him aback. Masking his discomposure, he turned to Kyllikki. “Do you want to have coffee after work?”

  She looked at him, suppressing a smile, then looked right at her mother, and back to Matti. “I would love to,” she said. “I’m off at six thirty.”

  “Kyllikki Saari!” her mother said.

  “Yes?” She answered coolly.

  “We forbid it.” Mrs. Saari turned to Matti. “I have nothing against you, but if you don’t end this, her father will.”

  Matti’s heart was pounding, but he looked at her steadily. “I hope it doesn’t turn out that way.” He turned to Kyllikki. “At six thirty then?”

  “At six thirty,” she said. “At Moberg’s.”

  Mrs. Saari flounced to the back room.

  “You may have pushed too far.” Kyllikki said.

  “Yoh.”

  Over coffee at Moberg’s Café on Sixth Street, Matti proposed a picnic on Sunday afternoon and she accepted.

  On Wednesday, Aksel arrived at the poikataloja, saying he would need to dip into his boat savings if they didn’t get another show.

  “Give me two more weeks.”

  “OK,” Aksel said. “But in two weeks I go looking for work.”

  “For slave wages.”

  “For feed-my-mouth wages.”

  Sunday at noon Matti knocked on the Saaris’ front door, picnic hamper in hand. Mr. Saari answered, told him Kyllikki wasn’t home, and that Matti needed to leave or he’d call the police.

  Matti walked across the street to a neighbor’s lawn where he carefully laid out the picnic and began eating. He saw Kyllikki in the living room window. She was replaced by her scowling mother, who pulled the venetian blinds shut. He took two hours to eat the picnic, waving to Mrs. Saari whenever he saw her peeking out the window. Once he caught a slight movement of curtains in a second-story window. Kyllikki was looking at him thoughtfully. He stood up, took off his hat, and made a sweeping bow. The curtains shut, but not before he saw her suppress a smile.

  That night he counted his money. He didn’t want to lose Aksel or dip into his double-drum-donkey fund. Courtship, love, marriage, the one: they were all very romantic, but in the real world he had limited time and required money. He needed to act.

  He bought a small cart and a very old horse and began making firewood. When Aksel returned after the two weeks, the two of them just carried on the partnership, Matti sending flowers to the Saaris’ house, Aksel going to the Lucky Logger.

  Emil Saari sent the police to tell them that if they didn’t go back to the Washington side, at the slightest wrong move they’d be thrown into jail. The two of them pretended they didn’t understand English.

  The next day, Matti gave a boy a dime to deliver a note to Kyllikki, asking her to meet him at eight o’clock on the General Washington‘s wharf, a public place that would not stain her honor. When the passengers from the last run were climbing up the gangway, he saw her emerge from the fog wearing a hat and a long coat with a fur collar that was cut to hint it covered lifelong enchantment.

  He wasn’t sure he should kiss her.

  When she reached him, she quickly looked around to see if they were alone. Then she looked up at him, her lips slightly parted, and he was suddenly sure. He kissed her and held on to her as the fog swirled across the wharf in the light from the single new electric street lamp.

  They sat on a bench and she snuggled her coat around them. The talk was delightful and happy, ranging from their hopes and fears to their likes and dislikes, intertwined with occasional kisses. They were in a bubble of light. Around them whispered the wind and fog and the quiet ebb of the river. He was aware of their touching thighs.

  The bubble burst with a loud exclamation from the land end of the wharf. “I knew that son of a bitch was with her.” It was Mr. Saari and two Astoria policemen barreling down on them. Saari grabbed Kyllikki by the arm, jerking her away from Matti. “I’ll have you jailed for this.”

  “I do nothing wrong,” Matti said gravely. His sisu was up and the mask on his face in place.

  Mr. Saari turned to the policemen. “Arrest this man. He’s, he’s …” He was searching for a law being broken. “He’s defaming a young woman.” Matti noticed that the two policemen gave each other a look. “He’s corrupting youth.”

  “I’ll be nineteen next month,” Kyllikki said to the police.

  One of them turned to Mr. Saari. “Now that we found her, she looks perfectly safe.” He paused, then said, “And unabducted.” He nodded to his partner and they both walked back toward the lights of the town. One of them laughed, which infuriated Mr. Saari.

  Breathing hard, he said to Matti in Finnish, “I have other ways to stop you from harassing my daughter and I’m not afraid to use them.”

  “Father, calm down. I came here of my own free will.”

  “You’ll get back to the house. Your free-will days are over.”

  Kyllikki pulled gently on her father’s arm. “Father, let’s talk about this at home.” She gave Matti a have-patience look. Then she turned to walk toward the town, leaving Mr. Saari no choice but to follow her.

  Alone on the wharf, Matti was in awe of the way Kyllikki defused the situation and handled her father. Unlike Aino, who was like the roaring rapids of their name, Koski, Kyllikki, whose name meant “a woman,” was like a flood tide.

  Two days later, three hard-looking men approached the wood yard, but when Matti and Aksel split apart, pulling their puukkos—just the opposite of what amateurs would do—the three walked away.

  The small boy who’d delivered Matti’s first note brought a note that read: “Back door of Roth’s Drugstore at three.”

  Matti was there at two thirty. When the back door opened, he felt his breath shorten. She had done her hair differently. He knew it was for him.

  “You’ve got to leave,” she said after a brief kiss. “Father’s contracted—”

  “I know. We met them this morning.”

  “I can’t see you anymore. I don’t want you hurt.”

  “Marry me.”

  “I hardly know you. Are you crazy?”

  “Marry me.”

  She looked around as if for help. “I can’t. You know that.”

  “Marry me.”

  “We can wait a year. Until your business grows.”

  Matti just looked at her intensely.

  “It’s crazy, Matti. Please. You’ll get hurt.”

  “More than this?” He turned abruptly, leaving her at the back door of the drugstore.

  Two nights later, just outside the poikataloja, the three men struck with baseball bats. Matti was alone, his puukko under his coat. Before he could get it, he went to the ground, bleeding from the face and spitting out a tooth. Then, berserker fury took him. The only way to fight people armed with clubs was to get inside their swing. Matti rolled toward the men, screaming, his puukko out, aiming for legs. One thug hit him on the back of his head, but the bat couldn’t get any speed. Still, Matti saw stars. Enraged, he slashed down on the man’s arm, then waded directly into all three, the puukko flying, occasionally cutting through a thick coat to reach flesh. One of the men shouted, “He’s crazy” and began to back away. Matti immediately turned to the next man, who’d hesitated between attacking or falling back. Matti’s puukko stabbed instead of slashed and went deep into his belly. The man screamed, dropping his bat, clutching at the wound, stumbling backward. Matti kept following, knowing he couldn’t give them room to swing their bats. The door of the poikataloja opened and several residents came running toward them. The three assailants ran, two of them helping the third. Matti kept screaming and running after them, his puukko pumping before him as he ran, until one of the men from the poikataloja tackled him.

  “The jig’s up,” Aksel said in English, using a newfound expression, as he stitched the cut on Matti’s head. “If they go to the cops, we’re going to jail.”

  Matti said nothing, nauseated from conc
ussion. Aksel doused the stitches with rubbing alcohol. He stood back.

  “They won’t.”

  Matti sat there, brooding. Then he came to a resolution. “Go back to Ilmahenki,” he said. “Fire up the yarder to the highest pressure you can. Have Ilmari fix any leaks or weak points.” He smiled. “Tell him I’ll pay him.”

  Aksel nodded.

  “The jig’s up,” Matti said in English and they both laughed.

  In the morning Aksel caught the first boat for Knappton. Matti went to the shoe store. He shut the door and put the CLOSED sign in the door window.

  Kyllikki winced when he turned his face to her. “My God.”

  “I’m going to marry you no matter what,” he said. “But if I wait any longer, I’ll lose my partner and best friend. And probably my business.”

  Kyllikki nodded.

  Matti held up two tickets. “The boat for Knappton leaves in twenty minutes. You can stay with my brother in Deep River or with my sister at Reder’s Camp.”

  He felt as though Kyllikki was boring into his brain with her eyes. He knew that they both knew there would be no going back, whichever way she chose.

  “I know my father hired those thugs,” Kyllikki said. “And one of them is in St. Mary with a knife wound in his stomach. You’re lucky he’s not talking to the police.”

  “They came at me with baseball bats.”

  “You nearly killed him.”

  “What? Three against one and I’m bad for defending myself?”

  “Of course, you had to defend yourself. But the word around town is you went crazy. They had to tackle you to stop you.”

  He avoided looking at her eyes.

  She touched his cheek to make him look at her. “I have no intention of raising a dead man’s children. You’ve got a temper. There’s even a story about you back in Finland.”

  Matti held his hands open. “They were Russians. In our home.”

  Kyllikki said, “If I marry you, I will marry you for life. I asked you to leave so I could marry you for life. You risked it all by staying.”

  “I couldn’t risk losing you.”

  “So, you risked me losing you!”

  “I didn’t think of that.”

  “When you get married, you stop thinking about yourself. You think about your partner.”

  Matti was silent. Then he said, “Marry me.”

  She smiled, shifting her body, opening herself to him. “On one condition.” Matti waited. “The puukko stays home when you’re not working. You must give up fighting and behave like a husband and father. Go to the police if there’s trouble.”

  This time the silence was long. Kyllikki was asking him not just for a change in behavior but for a change in identity.

  Matti loosened his belt, slid off the puukko sheath, and rebuckled it. He held the puukko in front of him, but he held it in his fist with his fingers closed around it. “I have one condition as well.”

  She waited.

  “You’ll dance with no one without my OK.”

  “I will never dance without you there,” she said quietly.

  He held the puukko out in front of him, his hand open. She took it.

  “I’ll marry you,” she said.

  They looked into each other’s eyes. When she was satisfied that he understood her completely, she handed the puukko back to him. “Quit standing there like a lunkhead and kiss me,” she said. “We only have ten minutes to catch the ferry.”

  Holding hands on the stern of the General Washington, they watched Astoria recede. A strong swell from the mouth was tilting the boat to starboard and port as the swell hit from the west side and then passed beneath it. They said nothing, watching the tops of the ridges to Astoria’s south appear one by one as the boat moved away. Soon, Saddle Mountain appeared, formed from the remains of massive lava flows that had poured down the old Columbia River valley. At over three thousand feet high, it dominated the surrounding land. It was a rare clear day with a strong west-by-northwest wind. Far upriver, to the east, Mount Saint Helens rose above the land, brilliant white and perfectly symmetrical.

  Kyllikki turned her eyes from Astoria to it.

  “The Indians call it Loowit, a beautiful maiden,” Kyllikki said.

  “With a temper,” Matti said.

  Kyllikki looked at him and smiled. “Not a temper. Heat.”

  * * *

  Aino was cutting potatoes to add to the steelhead stew when she heard Matti’s voice. She looked out the window to see him and a girl in an expensive coat with a fur ruff, her city shoes soaked, the hem of her dress brown with mud. Lempi had told Aino that Matti had gone to Astoria for a wife, but she’d discounted it. She took off her apron and put her glasses on the top of the dresser. Checking her hair in a small mirror by the sink, she went to greet them.

  The girl was bedraggled—and beautiful.

  Matti was grinning like a ten-year-old who’d just won the blue ribbon. “Aino,” he said. “This is Kyllikki Saari. We’re going to be married.”

  “I heard that you went hunting for a wife.” Aino turned her eyes on Kyllikki.

  “And I bagged him,” Kyllikki said with a smile.

  Well, Aino thought, maybe there was some spirit inside the pretty package. The girl was radiant and so fair next to her dark brother, with a perfect oval face, deep-green eyes, and small, perfectly formed ears. At the sight of Matti beaming beside the girl, a brief pang of jealousy hit her. Aino felt dark and unattractive.

  Suddenly, memories of Mielikki and Lokka, her sisters, overpowered her. She felt the empty ache they had left in her heart all these years.

  “Looks as if you left in a hurry,” Aino said. Matti smiled and said nothing. The girl looked down at the skirt of her dress and smoothed it. She looked up and took Matti’s hand. “We’re eloping. My parents had someone different in mind.” She looked up at Matti.

  “I don’t have a good situation,” Matti said.

  “And he’s hotheaded.”

  “They’re right on both.” She smiled at her brother affectionately, then turned back to the girl. “The men will be coming off work. I’ll throw in some more potatoes and carrots.” She looked at Matti. “Jouka caught a nice steelhead on Sunday.”

  The girl sat on the bed with Matti, watching Aino augmenting the stew. She offered to help, but Aino made it clear that she didn’t want any help.

  The clear and musical sound of someone whistling came from outside the plank door. “That’ll be Jouka,” Matti said.

  “He’s a musician,” the girl said with authority.

  “Yes, he is,” Aino said. She opened the door and the cool evening air came in, mixing with the air heated by the woodstove. Aino called, “Jouka, we have company.”

  Jouka stopped and looked at her, puzzled. “Matti and his new wife, well, soon-to-be wife.” She turned back into the single room of the shack and Jouka followed her up to the doorsill. He stopped there and broke into a grin as Matti arose and came over to shake his hand. The girl rose and stood next to Matti.

  “Jouka,” Matti said. “This is Kyllikki Saari.”

  “Welcome,” Jouka said. Aino could see Jouka’s practiced eye take in the girl from head to toe and she knew that Jouka was smitten. How could any man not be? “If you don’t get married and soon,” he said to Matti, “they’ll have you for kidnapping.”

  “I’m almost nineteen,” Kyllikki said.

  Jouka looked at her. “Oh, a full-grown woman.”

  “Woman enough for Matti.”

  After supper, Matti and Jouka set off in the dark for Knappton to get word to Pastor Hoikka.

  Aino borrowed a blanket from the henhouse and, laying it on the floor with all of their jackets, made a bed.

  “Until you two get married, you can sleep with me,” Aino said. “Jouka can sleep on the floor and Matti’s still got friends in the bunkhouse.”

  “I thought you were a red. Free love and all that.”

  “Oh God, that one.” She looked up at the ceiling. �
�They all wish.” Then she got serious. “If you want to get along with the women around here, Matti will sleep in the bunkhouse.”

  Kyllikki laughed. “Just like Astoria,” she said.

  Aino went outside to the community pump, came back with a kettle of water that she set on the hot spot on the stove, and threw in some kindling.

  Kyllikki took Jouka’s and Matti’s socks and started to wash them in the warm rinse water remaining in the dishpan. “You have anything else?” she asked.

  “Yes, but you don’t need to.”

  “I want to chip in.”

  Aino took a wicker basket sitting at the end of the bed and dumped its contents on the sink counter, looking at Kyllikki. “You’re not afraid to work. I was worried when I saw your coat.”

  “It’s a nice coat,” she said. “I like it.” She wrung out the four socks and hung them on the line over the woodstove.

  “Matti can’t afford coats like that.”

  “Not yet.” The girl dumped some long underwear and a pair of Aino’s stockings and a petticoat into the dishpan and began scrubbing the clothes together. “You have a washboard?”

  “Outside. I take the stuff to the creek when I have to.”

  “No soap?”

  “There’s a bar by the washboard.”

  “It’s bad on the hands. My mother uses Ivory Flakes.”

  “How interesting,” Aino said.

  Kyllikki turned to her slowly, her eyes flashing with anger. “I’m trying to be a friend here. It’s called small talk. It doesn’t convey information. It shows intent. Don’t you have any girlfriends?”

  Aino colored. “I’m sorry. I have a wicked tongue.”

  “I’ve been told.”

  The two were silent for a while.

  Kyllikki hung the rest of the wash without saying anything.

  The water started boiling. Aino threw a mixture of a few ground coffee beans and roasted barley into the bottom of a large enameled coffeepot. She smashed an egg, shell and all, into the grounds until she had a black sticky glob. She poured the boiling water over it and stirred hard. With her back to Kyllikki, she asked, “Do you love him?”

  “With all my heart.”