Deep River Page 40

  “Me too.” Kyllikki said. She followed Aino outside. As she suspected, Aino went nowhere near the outhouse but instead stood watching the river in the late afternoon gloom, her hands thrust into her coat pockets. She’d shaken her beautiful dark hair loose and it hung down against the back of the coat except for a thick strand she’d started to braid but now just silently stroked as it lay on her chest.

  Kyllikki joined her regarding the river. She’d caught a glimmer of tears in Aino’s eyes. Aino quickly blinked them away and resumed braiding her hair, her face stoic, her eyes searching beyond the river.

  How to begin? She looked across the river as well, joining Aino.

  “Are you OK?” she asked, not looking at her.

  “Ei.” Aino tugged on the half-plaited strand and said, “Workers are dying in Europe, they’re dying here because they are worked to exhaustion, and all anyone talks about are lumber prices and money. My own brothers.”

  Kyllikki waited to see if Aino had any more to say. She didn’t. Then Kyllikki said, without looking at her, “You slept with him, didn’t you?”

  Aino had taken another one of her braids down from atop her head and it now hung nearly to her waist. As she was still braiding, her jaw started to tremble. She flung herself against Kyllikki, letting out a long, anguished cry as she shook with sobs. “I’m such a fool. I’m so ashamed.”

  Kyllikki held her close, stroking her hair and the back of her neck. “Yes, Aino, you are.” she said. “A fool with a big heart that’s just the right size for breaking.”

  14

  The days continued to grow shorter. Unlike summer fishing, with gentle swells and short nights with temperatures in the midfifties, winter fishing meant large, fast-running swells and rainy nights with temperatures just above freezing. If Aksel brought in a hundred pounds, mostly silversides and steelheads, he had a good day. Risking the net for so few fish made sense only because every month he owed rent money for the Lempi, the net, and the shack. He felt compelled to go out in all sorts of weather to “maintain headway.” Lempi’s swelling belly also encouraged him each time they said goodbye and each time they said hello again.

  Aksel never worried about the danger. He could barely settle himself to eat and often would scald his tongue drinking his coffee too fast so he could get to the Lempi. There were fish to catch and the runs didn’t last forever. He knew well the aphorism that time and tide wait for no man.

  Nearly seven months along, in early March, Lempi couldn’t help smiling as she watched Aksel at supper, squirming in his seat from barely suppressed excitement. He wolfed down the fresh rieska she’d baked at midday while he slept, one of the rare times he wasn’t sleeping in the boat. He always put the entire flat, round rieska loaf in the crook of his arm, pulling his puukko toward him to cut large slices. It looked unsafe—she always sliced the bread on a breadboard—but Aksel never once cut himself.

  “Where tonight?” she asked. Aksel had been trying different places nearly every night. The spring Chinook were due any moment. He’d already brought in a few early ones, so she knew his blood was up. When the big run hit, he wanted to be there from the very beginning and in the right place.

  “McGowan, then the north side of Desdemona Sands if McGowan isn’t working.” He pulled the thick wool sweater she had knitted him over his wool shirt and wool underwear. Wool kept in body heat when wet better than any other material. She looked out the window into the gloom of the dying day. A light rain was falling.

  “What you think?” she asked. Aksel was putting on his boots.

  “Don’t worry. Should be all right.”

  He stood and kissed her on both eyes. She loved the feeling of his lips, warm against the lids. It made her wish she wasn’t pregnant, so she could get pregnant again. She laughed aloud at the thought.

  “What?” he asked. They usually spoke Finnish, as Lempi’s Swedish was only fair, but they often spoke English. They didn’t think about it; it just came out the way it did.

  She stood on her tiptoes, kissing him gently on the lips. “I’m thinking about when you come home.”

  Aksel smiled and looked pointedly at her swollen belly.

  She smiled, looking into his eyes, and touched her forefinger to his nose. “We can work that out,” she said in English. She could still make him blush.

  He turned to wave when he reached the bend in the road; as always, she was there. He felt close to crying as he walked to the Lempi, as if warm water were overflowing from his heart. As he was untying the Lempi, a gust of wind hit his face, coming from the southwest. The rain changed angles with it. He looked out on the river and saw whitecaps.

  He’d been skunked on his first drift off McGowan and could no longer see the shore in the dark, so he tacked south against the rising wind to just north of Desdemona Sands, where he knew there were no rocks. On his second drift there, a sudden gust of wind heeled the boat over, vibrating the furled sail on its mast. Aksel ignored the danger to himself of being blown up against unseen rocks in the dark on a lee shore or swamped by swells that turned suddenly into breakers or not seeing one of the many half-submerged logs. His fear was for the net and the boat.

  He heard several solid thumps as an early Chinook hit the net, so he knew he at least had something to show for the night. He had a lantern, but lanterns always seemed to flicker and die just before they were needed. He worked his way forward against the chopping motion of the deck to untie the cork line and put it over the roller fixed on the starboard fore gunwale. A sudden breaking swell twisted the deck from beneath him, leaving him momentarily airborne. He slammed to the deck hard, landing on his left flank as the boat rose up. The suddenly howling wind pushed the Lempi faster than the net, which hung heavy in the water out of the wind, forcing him to furiously pull in the water-soaked net so the boat wouldn’t overrun it. Then the gale hit with its full force. The breaking swells would raise the Lempi, nearly pulling his arms from their sockets as he hung on to the cork line while the swell passed under her, pulling her away from the net like a frightened horse pulling back on its halter rope. Aksel hung on fiercely so he wouldn’t let any of the cork line pay out and lose ground getting in the net. Then the boat slammed down, threatening to throw him over the gunwale into the dark water, jarring his spine and teeth. Then the next swell.

  When he finally pulled in the net, salmon were still fouled in it, kicking fiercely in the tangle. He was so exhausted he could hardly put his oars in their locks. Each oar was easily double his height. He got the oars into the water and, sitting on athwart amidships, holding the thick round ends, heaved with everything he had to keep the Lempi’s double-ender stern slightly into the wind. Pulling on one oar, then another, fighting to keep himself from being thrown from the boat, he was pushed by the wind through the darkness to he knew not where, except it would be the north shore of the river. Aksel had been tested to his physical limit, but he was big, was rock hard from both logging and fishing, and had just turned twenty-four.

  Cap Carlson was fifty-one and his boat puller was weakened by alcohol addiction.

  * * *

  Aksel and the other Knappton fishermen waited six hours after the storm abated, but there was no sign of Cap and his boat puller. Looking for them was pointless. There was too much river and there were too few fishermen. Gleason would also fire anyone who missed the next tide. Knappton Packing owned the boats.

  So, they fished, vaguely hoping Cap and his boat puller had made it ashore, hoping they might find a body, but knowing neither was likely.

  Two days later, a Chinook Indian said he’d seen a boat on the beach just upriver from the Chinook village and had been told there was a body on the beach down toward Baker Bay. Gleason and another manager took the company’s single-cylinder, steam-driven launch, returning two hours later with Cap’s boat. Aksel and several others waited at the dock as the two men tied the boat and came up the ladder.

  “Where’s Cap?” Aksel asked Gleason.

  “We own the boat
, not him,” Gleason replied and walked toward the office.

  Aksel pretended he was setting out for a drift but went looking for Cap instead. He found him that afternoon. He and a kind old Chinook Indian buried Cap on the beach next to the river he loved. They never found the boat puller.

  15

  During Lempi’s last trimester, Aino visited her weekly, taking the log train down to Margaret Cove and catching a ride with a fishing boat or tug to Knappton. Several days before the new moon on May 13, Aino moved in with her. Maíjaliisa always said a new moon was nearly as good a stimulator of birth as a full. Aksel slept under a tarp in the boat so Aino could sleep in the bed with Lempi.

  Lempi was nervous. Aino suspected the nerves were related to what happened with her first pregnancy as much as the coming birth, but Lempi never spoke of it.

  The first contractions came at around six in the evening on May 15, 1916. The tide was flooding, so Aksel was downstream of Knappton on the north side of the river where the salmon would try to catch the tide going upriver. The water was shallow there, so they couldn’t pass easily under the gill net. The setting sun glowed on the sails of the returning boats lined up to have their fish boxes lifted and weighed.

  Lempi was doing fine, so Aino went to look for Aksel. She recognized him immediately, focused on bringing his boat into the dock in a light wind. He dropped the sail and rowed the boat up to the standing lines coming from the wharf. He heaved on the stern line, pulling up close to the ladder, and then hopped lightly up the ladder using only one hand. The other held one of the wool sweaters Lempi knitted for him and his lunch pail. He had seen Aino waiting on the wharf and came running.

  “Is she OK? Is it happening?”

  “She’s OK. It’s happening.”

  He ran to the shack. Aino smiled at his receding back. A small pang of envy went through her. Maybe it was her fault she and Jouka didn’t have what Aksel and Lempi had. Jouka loved her and she didn’t love him—not the way Lempi loved Aksel—and that was that. She walked to the shack. Unlike Aksel, she knew there was plenty of time before the baby came. Another long night. She thought of her mother. Maíjaliisa would have known what could go wrong with an abortion and how it might affect a later birth. She, herself, knew nothing about what happened past the cervix. She paused, watching the long shadows of the hills darken the water. Far off to the east, Mount Saint Helens glowed orange. Behind it, even farther east, she saw the last alpenglow off Mount Adams, tiny in the distance, a nub against the gathering dark from the east. It was a rare day, to see all the way to Adams. She hoped it was a good omen.

  By midnight, Lempi was in trouble. She was dilating, but the baby simply wasn’t moving down. Something was in the way. Lempi started bleeding.

  Aino kept Aksel busy, washing out bloody cloths, boiling them, drying them over the woodstove, sometimes frying them right on the hot metal. The little cabin became overheated. She opened both small windows and the door. Cool air off the water kept the temperature down, but it made the lamp flicker, which made it even harder for her to see. She apologized to Lempi and put her hand in as far she could, trying to feel for the blockage. Lempi clamped down on one of the freshly washed cloths. A wave of contractions hit her and nothing moved. She screamed. The pain passed. She was sweating profusely even with the door and windows open.

  The last scream brought Mrs. Leppälä from the hut next door. She carried her nine-month-old, and her three-year-old daughter clung to her skirt. Her husband had gone over to the Hammond side of the river for the night, hoping to catch the next flood just outside the shipping channel.

  “What can I do?”

  “Hold her head. For comfort. There’s not much else.”

  “What’s wrong?” she mouthed to Aino from behind Lempi’s head.

  Aino shook her head and nodded toward the door.

  “Are you OK, Lempi?” Aino asked. “I need a little air.”

  Lempi shook her head no but gasped, “Sure. OK.”

  Outside, Aino gave Mrs. Leppälä the best explanation she could.

  “She needs a doctor,” Mrs. Leppälä said.

  “You have one in mind? You know what the wives of the mill workers call that shoe clerk the sawmill hired.”

  “The Handyman,” Mrs. Leppälä answered, as if she were spitting. “She needs a real doctor.”

  “If she could afford a real doctor, she’d be in Astoria right now. Besides, she doesn’t have anyone to stay with; they’d have to pay that bill, too.”

  When Lempi started screaming again, Mrs. Leppälä took the children away. Her daughter was crying with fear at the screaming and her nine-month-old son was crying because his sister was crying.

  At around 2:00 a.m., the blood flow overwhelmed the bandages and soaked the bed. Aksel was holding Lempi’s left hand with both of his hands and pressing it to his face, kissing her fingers. Aino stuffed bandages, still not dry, up as far as she could, but the bleeding was deep inside where no pressure could be applied.

  This was far worse than Margaret Reder’s delivery. Margaret wasn’t bleeding like this. She wanted desperately to tell Aksel that she didn’t know what to do. She’d only heard her mother talk about such things. She wanted to tell him it was beyond her, to tell him how scared she was that she could do something wrong and kill her best friend. But Aksel was focused on Lempi, as he should be. She was alone in this. No one was coming.

  At 3:00 a.m. Lempi’s face had gone from bright red with exertion to sweaty pale. Aino had trouble finding her pulse. Aksel looked at Aino. Without saying a word, she knew he understood. She nodded at him and he nodded back, then returned to stroking Lempi’s hands and belly.

  Aino stepped outside and breathed in the cool damp air and all the smells of the river. She straightened her skirt, smoothed her apron, and then put her palms on top of her head and shut her eyes, just feeling the river moving past her. She brought her hands down and looked at them, dimly pale in the darkness of the new moon. She had her hands. Men and women have had their hands forever. Some prayed with them. Not her. She consciously squared her shoulders and went back inside. She knew what had to be done. She didn’t know if she could manage to do it.

  Aino set Aksel to work heating two kitchen knives red hot. She used Aksel’s sharp puukko and a straight razor to cut vertically through Lempi’s abdomen, cauterizing the blood vessels with one glowing knife, switching it with the second knife when the first cooled. Then, she spread apart Lempi’s abdominal muscles to expose her womb and cut again. Massive amounts of blood gushed out. The baby was dead.

  It took nearly an hour to sew Lempi up. During that time, Aksel held the dead baby, a little boy, looking at his face. When Aino was finished, he placed the baby on Lempi’s chest. Lempi fell asleep and Aino took the baby and wrapped it in a towel.

  As early daylight filtered through the window, Lempi suddenly woke up. She turned toward Aksel and threw her right arm across his shoulder as he bent over her, his knees on the floor. She pulled his head down tight against her chest—holding him as if she’d never let go—and then she let go.

  That evening several women from the old henhouse group came by to get the body ready for the viewing. When they were done, they left Aksel and Aino alone. The sunset was beautiful, the high clouds above the river turning into islands of orange and then blood red.

  Aksel lit a candle and puddled wax on the headboard to hold it over Lempi.

  Worn with grief, lack of sleep, and a vague sense she’d done something wrong, Aino walked to the river’s edge. The river brought life to parched uplands. It fed verdant marshes. It pulsed with salmon as they surged toward their birthplaces. The river, however, flowed in only one direction, toward the sea. She felt that Lempi and her baby were flowing there now, flowing with the great river, toward the only destination of everyone.

  She heard Aksel, who’d come up behind her. She faced him. His eyes were dull with grief. Although they were close together on that narrow beach, the space between them was huge. Put
ting one hand under her chin and his other on her shoulder, he tilted her head up. “Aino,” he said. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  She sobbed and hugged him. Her relief was palpable. As they held each other in their pain, Aksel murmured into her ear: “Some wrongs even you can’t fix.”

  Aksel had Lempi buried on Peaceful Hill just outside Tapiola, her dead baby tucked in her arms.

  Aino went over the birth, again and again. If she had only made Lempi tell her about the abortion. Had Lempi bled during that, too? If she knew, she’d have forced her to go to a doctor in Astoria, hang the cost. She hadn’t known, but maybe she still should have forced Lempi to go to Astoria. But not even a doctor could stop interior bleeding. The ifs and buts of a crisis endure forever.

  A week after the funeral, Aino made the journey back to Knappton. Aksel’s clothes were gone. Everything else was left behind—Lempi’s clothes, pots, dresser, glasses, tableware; the lantern on the table; the drawer that held Lempi’s underclothes, which she had prized so highly. The bed showed only the springs.

  Aino walked to the dock and saw the Lempi swinging gently up and down on her pulleys, only she was no longer the Lempi. Gleason, Knappton Packing’s supervisor, had already repainted Number 27 over Lempi’s name.

  In July, Kyllikki gave birth to a healthy baby girl, Pilvi, in St. Mary Hospital. The river flowed on.

  PART FOUR

  1917–1919

  Prologue

  Ilmari dreamed that he stood high above the spire of the little church that he had birthed, and all around him the sea surged before a mighty storm, and the sea flooded the Columbia River and drowned Astoria, and it flooded the Chehalis River and drowned Nordland, and it came flooding into Willapa Bay and then he was inside the little church, and Deep River overflowed its banks and flooded around the church, its waters red with blood, its surface burning with fire. Bullheads threw themselves up onto the land, flopping there, unable to breathe in the bloody water, unable to breathe in the fiery air, choking and dying there, between elements suddenly hostile to life.