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  Now she really laughed, surprising him. “Yes. Intimately,” she said, her previously careful and measured eyes twinkling. “He’s a son of a bitch. Watch out.”

  “Son of a bitch, how?”

  “Well, first you’d better make sure he’s actually got the title. People have logged for Al Drummond before and found themselves sued over cutting someone else’s timber.”

  “Oh.”

  “Just check the title on your way back through Willapa. He probably got it from someone like Weyerhaeuser.”

  “Where did they get it?”

  “Probably from the Northern Pacific, which bribed members of Congress to give it to them for free. The goddamned government gave the railroads a slice of land forty miles wide clear across America and all they did was slip some money into a few politicians’ pockets.”

  “He doesn’t seem like much of a friend. You call him a son of a bitch.”

  She laughed. “Hell, Matti, I like sons of bitches”

  Louhi wrote an introduction note to Drummond and two less intimate friends in the timber business. Matti wasted no time meeting them and by late afternoon he’d learned the structure of the mill ownership in western Washington, the state of the market, and that Reder had been in town two days earlier, bidding on the same Drummond acreage.

  When Matti was ushered into Drummond’s office, Drummond offered him a cigar. Pulling on his own cigar until it was glowing, Drummond shook the match out and threw it to the floor. This shocked Matti as much as anything he’d seen in Nordland.

  “Bank gets cleaned every night. Avoids having to empty ashtrays,” Drummond said. Then before Matti could speak, he said, “Your brother married Louhi’s daughter.”

  “Yes.”

  “God help him.”

  “Rauha’s OK,” Matti replied carefully.

  “Don’t mean to bad-mouth your sister-in-law, but she can be a mean little bitch.”

  “I came here to bid on a logging contract.”

  “Strictly business. OK.” He leaned back and blew smoke toward the ceiling. “What’s your offer?”

  Matti gave him a price. Drummond rejected it. Matti gave him a lower price. Drummond rejected that, too.

  “If you want this job, Koski, you’re going to have to beat John Reder.”

  “I can beat any price Reder gave.”

  “Can? Without knowing the price? Without laying track?”

  “I can beat Reder.”

  Drummond wrote a number on a piece of paper and handed it to Matti. “Beat this by a nickel a thousand board feet and you got the job, but with two provisos.”

  Matti knew it was unethical to undercut Reder without giving Reder a chance to amend his bid. He took the paper. It was possible that Drummond was lying about Reder’s bid, but then, knowing Reder Logging Matti didn’t find the bid unreasonable.

  “You said two provisos.”

  “Lumber prices are going through the roof on nothing but war speculation. Everyone’s going to get rich on the misery. I think so, but not for a couple of years and certainly not by the end of August. This bubble will burst, like all of them. I want my timber delivered to a mill of my choice by September thirty-first, or I don’t pay you.”

  “What about paying me for the logs I do deliver?”

  Drummond drew in on the cigar and let the smoke out. He watched Matti through it, smiling. “Well, Mr. Koski, I can make a deal like that with John Reder. And for just a nickel more a thousand board feet, I take considerably less risk. Reder’s proved himself many times and he can do railroad logging. You, on the other hand, have proved you can log your brother’s land and do a two-bit, one-crew job on the Klawachuck for the owner of a general store.”

  “The creeks will still be low at the end of September. I won’t be able to float the logs to tidewater. You’ll have all your logs by the fifteenth of November.”

  “Not good enough.”

  Matti hesitated only a moment. “OK, October thirty-first.” Seeing Drummond’s smug face was enough alone to make Matti promise anything.

  “Agreed.”

  “The second proviso?” Matti asked.

  “Given you and I just cheated on John Reder’s bid, I’m assuming you’re one of us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, businessmen.”

  The way Drummond said “business” put Matti on alert. He smelled money. He’d also lost his temper and made a bid he wasn’t sure he could deliver on. “I’m listening.”

  “My property and Reder’s adjoin for about a mile. A mile will border twenty-six one-acre plots. We both know there’s around a hundred and ten to a hundred and twenty thousand board feet per acre up there.” Matti nodded. “At today’s prices a mile’s worth of acres will yield around twenty-eight thousand dollars.” Matti did the math. That was around a year’s salary for fifty loggers. “If you happen to stray over the line, say by fifty feet, move a few surveyor’s marks, a little judicious cutting won’t even be noticed. That would yield seven thousand dollars. I’ll split that fifty-fifty.” That would pay off 70 percent of the loan.

  “Why wouldn’t I just do that myself?”

  “Because I know about it.”

  * * *

  “Saatana,” Aksel whispered, upon hearing the deal. Matti said nothing. They were standing on top of the ridge running north and south on the west side of Grays Bay. Between them and the bay were several hundred acres of old-growth Douglas fir that had thrived in open ground cleared by a large forest fire several centuries back. There were some western red cedar with a sprinkling of Sitka spruce in the bottoms and some annoying hemlock, most of which they’d have to log around because it was worthless. A strip of stumps and slash about a quarter of a mile wide hugged the shoreline. “I see why they stopped,” Aksel went on.

  Matti, of course, had seen the timber before he had bid the contract. Twenty years earlier an outfit had stopped logging because it became too expensive to move the logs to water. Back then, it was done with oxen, corduroy roads, sweat, and ingenuity. Timber too far from water was one reason Reder had so much money tied up in railroads. Railroad logging was way out of 200-Foot Logging’s league.

  The new double-drum steam yarder floated on a raft about a mile away and five hundred feet below them. The elation of winning the contract had been replaced by cold reality—and apprehension. He would never tell Aksel, or even Kyllikki, that he might have underbid the job. No, had underbid the job. Failure would be the end of 200-Foot Logging. He would be back to working for wages. He had his ace up his sleeve, however, the agreement with Drummond to fudge over the line. If that ever came out, he’d never be able to look Kyllikki in the face.

  Silently, they calculated how best to get the yarder up to where it could go to work.

  “Saatana,” Aksel said again, speaking Finnish. “It’s going to be a son of a bitch.”

  “Yoh,” Matti answered.

  “You must have had something in mind before you made the bid,” Aksel said. “Sky hooks?”

  Matti laughed at the old joke played on rookies, but this show would be no joke.

  “You didn’t mention time,” Aksel said. Matti made no reply. “On the Klawachuck show we didn’t have a deadline,” Aksel went on. “What have we got on this one? Six months?”

  “Six and a half.”

  “Oh. I breathe easier.”

  Kullervo, now a skinny teenager, nearly fifteen, arrived with the new crew of ten. Because Kullervo couldn’t hear on one side, the result of one too many corrections by his mother, Matti set him building a lean-to that would serve as the kitchen and mess hall. Reder had fired two of the ragtag crew for getting drunk in Nordland and coming back four days late. Another had a serious limp and couldn’t move fast enough for most logging but could fell and buck the small trees for fuel and could also be used to manhandle the logs down the creek. Three others Matti found down to their last dollar in saloons in Astoria. The remaining four—two Finns, a Swede, and a Norwegian—had nev
er logged and couldn’t speak English. If they lived through the first two weeks, Matti figured he could make loggers out of them.

  A woodstove was disassembled and barged to the beach, then reassembled in the lean-to, along with a week’s supply of eggs, bacon, beans, flour, potatoes, beets, carrots, canned beef and salmon, and the other ingredients needed to keep everyone fueled for the six-day workweek. It lacked only the cook, who soon arrived: Kyllikki, a knapsack on her back, filled with what she called essentials, and Suvi in a sling.

  That night, Matti left them sleeping. Silently he made his way west, past where he’d already set four of the crew felling, until he reached the surveyor’s mark that had been driven into the ground. It took several hours to move it fifty feet farther west, along with a second stake and the ribbons that had been tied onto tree branches. He was back before sunrise.

  9

  The crew soon settled in: fed by Kyllikki, coached by Aksel, and motivated by Matti, not only by example. Kyllikki was breastfeeding Suvi, who by August was robust and healthy, living in plain air, and adored by thirteen men. On August 1, 1912, Rauha provided Suvi with a boy cousin, Jorma. Aino was there to help along with Kyllikki who took on Mielikki, three and a half, and Helmi, now nearly two.

  Jorma’s christening was on August 11. After the service, everyone was invited to Ilmahenki for coffee.

  Rauha’s curtains hung straight in open windows with an occasional gentle movement from a lazy air current. Deep River flowed sparkling and well contained, rocks unseen in the spring now showing along its edges.

  When the nonfamily guests left, there was an afternoon miracle. All the children went down for their naps simultaneously. Aino found herself at the kitchen table with Rauha and Kyllikki, who’d come in from the show with Matti and Suvi. The men were sitting on the riverbank, smoking and talking, suspenders off their shoulders.

  “So, Aino, when’s it going to be?” Rauha asked.

  “When’s what going to be?” Aino answered. She knew full well but had learned that playing dumb about questions she didn’t want to answer gave her time to think of answers she usually didn’t want to give. She glanced at Kyllikki, suddenly feeling alone, the dark one next to these two fair women. At the christening, she had noted with some pleasure that Rauha’s brilliant yellow hair had turned darker.

  “A baby,” Rauha answered. She wasn’t one to be circumspect. Then, neither was Aino.

  “When we want to.”

  Everyone silently sipped coffee. Then Kyllikki, trying to be kind, said, “You know you can’t put it off much longer.”

  “If there isn’t some other problem,” Rauha said.

  “What do you mean by that?” Aino shot back.

  “You know he’s been seen carousing around when you’re away.”

  “So, he drinks a little with his friends after dances. Jouka likes to have fun.”

  Another awkward silence.

  “Maybe, you know …” Kyllikki offered. “If you were home more often.”

  “Then, what?” Aino retorted. “We would make love more often and that’s what’s stopping the baby?”

  The sharp answer peeved Kyllikki, who was only trying to help. “You have to spend time together,” she said tightly.

  “We spend plenty of time together.”

  “So then, maybe it’s something else,” Rauha said, glancing at Kyllikki. “Maybe he can’t, you know.”

  Kyllikki quickly shot back: “That’s private business.”

  “Sure, but people are talking.”

  “What about?” Aino asked.

  “Well,” Rauha said, primly setting her cup in its saucer with both hands. “You are gone a lot. They wonder if maybe there’s trouble.”

  “There’s no trouble,” Aino said.

  Rauha gave her a come-on-I’m-no-fool look.

  Aino was tired of always defending herself. It was none of anyone’s damned business whether she would have a baby, whether she and Jouka were getting along, or what her absences and his late-night drinking meant. She was most tired of always being the one at fault.

  “Well,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about it. But with my sisters …” She managed to get tears in her eyes. “I just don’t know what to do. He comes home drunk and I try to be there ready. And, well, I hate to say this. Don’t you dare say anything. But Jouka does have trouble.”

  Rauha looked as though she had just been fed steak. Kyllikki gave Aino a what-are-you-doing look.

  “I’ve tried. I’ve really tried.” She was getting into the role. “He starts off OK, but … Don’t you dare say this to anyone, even my brothers. Promise me.”

  A murmur of “We promise” followed, with a nodding of heads in sympathy.

  “I’ve heard that oysters are good,” Kyllikki said.

  “I think it’s something in his head,” Aino said. “You know that he used to go to Astoria and Nordland before we were married.”

  “What man didn’t,” Rauha said.

  The men came back into the house, smelling of cigarette smoke and sweat. Shirts and Sunday coats went back on, babies were picked up by the women, and formal goodbyes were said.

  As Aino and Jouka walked back to Camp Three in the evening stillness, the strip of sky above them dark blue against the nearly black green of the shadowed treetops, Jouka asked, “What were you women talking about?”

  “Oh, you know, girl talk. It drives me nuts,” Aino said, suddenly feeling deeply ashamed of herself, ruining her walk home in the summer twilight.

  That summer had been one of the best in memory. The North Pacific High had settled into its dry season position off the coast and the line of multiple breakers shone brilliant white in the clear sky and steady northwest wind. Inland, sheltered by the coastal hills, the air lay warm and cozy in the river valleys. All along the trails and new roads around Tapiola, blackberries had changed from their hard green of June to softer and plumper red by the end of July. They now hung juicy and black, vines drooping with their weight. Women and children filled buckets and old coffee cans to the brim with them for pies or to be eaten at breakfast with cream. A few late red huckleberries winked out from the undergrowth and blue huckleberries grew in profusion in the sunlit logged-off areas. Little boys with blue-smeared faces went from farm to farm selling them for five cents a pound or hounded Higgins to stock his grocery store with them.

  Until this night, Aksel had enjoyed the weather like everyone else. However, walking back to the show by himself, he felt uneasy. He wasn’t hearing the usual rush of the creeks. He knew there had been less rain than usual. He didn’t know why. It was because when Matti had made his deal with Al Drummond in April, El Niño had already arrived.

  Keeping his counsel, Aksel said nothing until one morning in late August. He was up before dawn, the morning air cool but lacking humidity. Dew didn’t even form on the steel cables or the saws. He fired the donkey’s boiler. Then he waited for Matti, sitting on one of the skids, smoking, while the steam pressure rose.

  When Matti arrived, Aksel threw the butt of his cigarette into the firebox. “We need to talk.”

  “After work,” Matti said.

  “Now.”

  Matti jumped up on the donkey and pulled on the whistle. He was ready to work. Where was everyone else? “What?” he asked.

  “We’ve got a lot of logs to move and the creeks are going dry,” Aksel said.

  Matti’s face darkened. Aksel knew he was forcing Matti to face what Matti already knew. “It’ll rain,” Matti said.

  Aksel looked pointedly at the clear sky, then gestured at the large number of logs yarded in various spots. “I talked with Old Cap Carlson at Knappton. He’s fished the river for years. He says that after a first summer that’s drier than normal, the fall will be drier than normal, too.”

  “Cap says that, huh?” Matti said.

  “Cap says that.”

  Aksel lit another cigarette, took a draw, and handed it to Matti. “If we don’t get rain we won’t make t
he deadline. You need more help.”

  Matti took a deep drag and handed the cigarette back to Aksel. “I’m out of money.”

  “And time.”

  “I’ll get it logged.”

  “Will you get it moved?”

  Matti was quiet, thinking. “I’ll offer the crew a bonus, a big one, when we sell the logs.”

  “We’re already working summer hours. Push these loggers any harder and they’ll start making mistakes. Remember what happened when Reder started highballing?”

  Matti grunted.

  Aksel pressed on. “You need more loggers.”

  Matti sat quietly, his lips moving just slightly in and out, a sign he was thinking hard. Aksel waited. No sense in prompting a Finn.

  Matti climbed to the ground. “Come with me,” he said.

  Matti took him downstream. “We’ll build it right here,” he said.

  Aksel looked around. Two hills came close to the stream at this point. They had small trees on their slopes, not worth logging.

  “It’ll have to be plenty high to back the water all the way up to where we’re logging now,” Aksel said, knowing exactly what Matti had in mind.

  “No higher than we can build it.”

  “We,” Aksel said, pointedly. “We are on the absolute edge.”

  “I only need a week and enough money for five loggers.” Matti looked hard and steadily at Aksel.

  “No!” Aksel said. “Goddamnit, Matti. Not my savings.”

  “I’ll give you double back.”

  Aksel walked over to another viewpoint. Matti joined him. Aksel was feeling the old excitement he first felt in the redwoods. Like what a poker player must feel before a high-stakes game, he thought. Double his poke and he would have his boat within a year. He also knew an additional source of labor that Matti’s pride wouldn’t allow him to hire.

  “Double and a half,” Aksel said.

  “Deal.” They shook hands.

  That evening Aksel walked the nine miles to Ilmahenki in the twilight and then walked to Camp Three in the dark.