Deep River Page 52

  Alma could see that Aino was exhausted and, to ask this, desperate. She looked at her husband’s sister, wanting to help, but for Alma it was Eleanor who took precedence.

  Alma said carefully. “Aren’t you still nursing her?”

  “She’s down to just one or two a day. One really,” Aino added quickly.

  Alma tried to be diplomatic. “I think Eleanor still needs her mother.” Then she quickly added, “And you’ll miss her.”

  “I will, of course, but Alma, just this one week. I’ll pay you.”

  Alma took a silent deep breath. One second she was loving her sister-in-law, feeling empathy for her plight, and then out of her mouth came something that simply infuriated her. That was so like Aino. Alma said very slowly, “She’s my niece.” She let that sink in until Aino’s eyes went to the dishes.

  “Sorry,” Aino said.

  “Don’t hear that from you very often,” Alma said, smiling.

  Aino laughed.

  That was Aino, too.

  Aino returned to Astoria with Eleanor and set about weaning her. She knew weaning at twelve and a half months wasn’t ideal, but she didn’t see any way out. She was exhausted. No good to Eleanor, no good to the co-op, no good to herself. The last weekend in July, she left Eleanor with Alma and Ilmari. She’d have paid far more than aching breasts to finally get some rest.

  She picked Eleanor up the next weekend and brought her back to Astoria for the week, but when she went to Ilmahenki the following weekend, she left her for another week. It was rational. Eleanor could grow up in the country. She was the pet of her cousins—well, at least of the girls. She got fresh vegetables and milk. Why would anyone want to raise a child in the city? Of course, she missed Eleanor, especially at night, but then she was soon asleep and up at five to get to the mill by six. She didn’t want to think about Eleanor missing her mother. She watched every sales order closely, always inspecting the railcars for better ways to load the lumber. Sales kept falling. The co-op missed two payments for logs and the entire management committee had to crawl to the company in question offering a workout plan. Paying the monthly lease for the land was always a near thing. And the wages—the good wages of the war, the eight-hour day—were killing them. In desperation, Alvar Kari called a general meeting and explained the situation. The nearly sixty members, including spouses, sat in stunned silence. He offered two paths. Everyone could take a cut in pay, or people could leave with a promise from the co-op that their share money would be returned when things got better. Everyone took a pay cut. Because everyone earned the same, everyone’s pay cut was the same. Justice, however, was a poor substitute for money.

  20

  The steady northwest wind of the North Pacific High was sparking up whitecaps on the river. From the deck of the General Washington, Aino watched high clouds scudding through the blue sky, disappearing over Saddle Mountain. It was late Saturday afternoon and she was going to see Eleanor at Ilmahenki, which made her very happy. The troubles of the co-op, being alone, and missing her daughter were lost in the great river, running to the sea as it had done, as it would do, for millennia. Life was brief, she mused, and it ended. She didn’t for a moment believe, as Ilmari did, in its continuance after death. This was it—as hard, as sad, as joyful as it was. The future to strive for was a better, more harmonious humanity, not heaven.

  As the boat came around the point to the Knappton docks, she felt the comforting smells, sounds, and emotions of home, a pleasant surprise; home used to be Finland. She had always expected to return after the revolution, but Mannerheim had crushed the revolution in Finland and there were disturbing stories coming out of Russia. She walked by the old net shed, remembering dances, tired happy walks back to Reder’s Camp on Sunday mornings, the girls in the henhouse—Lempi.

  She wondered where Aksel was. Alma said he and his friends, the Bachelor Boys, were constantly mentioned in the gossip of the unmarried girls—and frequently of the married women. It was said they lived in a mysterious camp deep in the forest, hunting and fishing. The five would show up at dances as far away as Skomakawa or Willapa, wild as any loggers, spending money, dancing—but none of them were logging. They must be bootlegging.

  People could make mysterious heroes out of the most ordinary men, Aino thought. Bootleggers. Nonsense. Just young men back from the war who didn’t want to rejoin the same wage-slave system—the system that sent them there for no good reason in the first place. The slaughter had been horrible beyond what anyone could have conceived five years earlier.

  The three-hour walk to Ilmahenki got her there at sunset, a little tired. City life, she thought. She was also thirty-one.

  Deep River, running slow and revealing lots of rock with the summer dry season, was cast in long shadows from the alders growing among the stumps on the Ilmahenki side of the river. Across, on the north side, was the tall old-growth forest. Logging operations on the north side had started downstream near the mouth, but when the war ended, so did they. Temporary reprieve, she thought. Someday, Vasutäti would have to face reality and leave.

  A Ford Model T was parked next to Ilmari’s Packard. Unusual. She walked into the house. Relatives never knocked.

  Ilmari rose from the table. “We just sent word for you. I drove to Ilwaco to get the doctor.”

  Aino hurried into the children’s bedroom without saying a word. The doctor was putting away his instruments and Alma was holding a wet rag on Eleanor’s forehead. Alma stood quickly, stopping Aino’s rush toward the bed. “She’s going to be OK,” she said.

  Aino pushed around Alma and knelt beside Eleanor, who radiated heat and smelled like vomit, just like Aino’s little brother, Väinö, when he died.

  “You’re the mother?” The doctor asked in English.

  Aino simply nodded.

  “She has the Spanish flu. I’m afraid it’s finally reached us here in Chinook County.”

  “Is she going to be OK?” Aino asked.

  “Better chance than if she were older. Odd for a flu.” He sighed. “Wish I could be more positive.” He was counting out a pile of white tablets. “One every half hour.”

  Aino picked up one and looked at him. “Aspirin,” he said. “The latest thing to keep fevers down.” He was shrugging into his coat. “Every half hour. Without fail. If the fever gets worse, you might add a second one.”

  Aino took over holding the wet rag, feeling guilty for not being with Eleanor sooner. Alma quietly left with the doctor. When Ilmari was paying him in the kitchen, she heard the doctor say, “Keep the other kids clear of the house. I’d let her mother do most of the nursing. No sense risking your wife. We’re losing people all over the county. It’s killed over half a million here in America alone.”

  Aino dabbed at Eleanor’s rosebud lips, listening to the Model T rattle off toward Tapiola. Eleanor started vomiting and Aino picked her up so the vomit wouldn’t clog her trachea. Alma came back with a basin of cool water and knelt beside Aino. The retching abated. Aino laid Eleanor down and started taking off her encrusted nightgown. Eleanor reached her hands out for Alma.

  The fever got worse. After several hours, Aino doubled the aspirin, grinding the pills into powder, stuffing it deep into Eleanor’s mouth with her finger.

  The fever continued, mottling Eleanor’s face, coloring her body red, making it glisten with sweat. Occasionally she would try to throw up, but nothing came. She wailed in misery. Aino walked her on the porch in the cooler air. A memory of walking with her dying baby brother crowded in. She thought of praying but then thought that one might as well shake rattles at Eleanor.

  Although they kept up the pace with the aspirin, the fever seemed to be getting worse. Eleanor’s little face was contorted with pain and her tiny arms and legs jerked. Aino felt panic rising in her gut and curling up to her throat.

  Ilmari came into the bedroom, touched Eleanor’s forehead, then felt for her pulse. “The aspirin doesn’t work,” he said. “It could be making it worse.”

  That m
ade her temper flare. “When did you get your medical degree?”

  Ilmari pointed to the single armchair.

  “Rest.”

  “No.”

  “Aino, it’s going to be a long night. I’ll watch her. You get some sleep.”

  “How can I sleep when she’s …” The fear rose from her stomach, past her heart, and she barely stopped herself from screaming.

  Ilmari understood immediately. “We don’t know if she’s dying. That will be revealed. We do know the fever is worse.”

  Aino compulsively started grinding more aspirin tablets.

  “Don’t give it to her.”

  “She’s my child.”

  “Stop. It’s too much.”

  Aino started to cry. She clamped down. No one would see her cry, not even Ilmari. She stubbornly started putting the powder into Eleanor’s mouth. She heard Ilmari walk out the door.

  Aino jerked awake on her knees next to the bed, her head resting only inches from Eleanor’s hot body. There was noise on the porch. She began again bathing Eleanor.

  She could smell Vasutäti before she turned to see her standing next to Ilmari. She had a basket filled with God knows what. Strange roots and flowers. “You keep that stuff away from Eleanor,” Aino said. She turned back to her daughter. She fought fear and despair. The fever wouldn’t break, the doctor was gone, and now Ilmari had shown up with Vasutati. The old Indian certainly knew how to midwife, but midwives didn’t know about disease, and Indians didn’t go to medical school.

  “She came to help.”

  “You went and got her.”

  “Yoh.”

  She could feel both pairs of dark eyes looking at her, noncommittal. They were so alike!

  “Just let her look at her,” Ilmari said. “What can it hurt?”

  Aino stepped away from the bed. Vasutäti immediately went to Aino’s former position, her liver-spotted dark hands gently prodding Eleanor’s body. She stood and picked up one of the aspirin from the pile. “What this?” she asked in English.

  “Medicine,” Aino said. “The doctor says for her to take one or two every half hour.”

  Vasutäti carefully bit off a little piece and rolled it in her mouth. “It has willow energy.”

  “Willow energy,” she said to Ilmari in Finnish. “Jesus Christ almighty.” She was aware that she was cursing like a logger’s wife.

  Vasutäti was looking at her with that steady nonjudging regard. “The willow spirit is making her sick more than the flu,” Vasutäti said.

  “Superstitious nonsense.” Aino’s face was contorted.

  Vasutati turned her head to Ilmari at this, her eyebrows questioning.

  “Aino, listen to her. She’s a true shaman, a healer.”

  “Superstition.”

  Vasutäti looked compassionately at Aino. “Stop the willow medicine or the baby will die.”

  “The ‘willow medicine’ is aspirin and it’s been prescribed by a medical doctor trained at the University of Washington.”

  “Trained in science?” Vasutäti asked.

  “Yes, not mumbo-jumbo.”

  “But you just believe this doctor. That’s religion.”

  “Get her out of here,” Aino said quietly to Ilmari in Finnish.

  Vasutäti calmly laid out some roots at the end of the bed. “Boil these in water, not too long, and make tea. Give the tea to the little girl. Stop giving her white pills.”

  She looked at Ilmari. “Your sister is very afraid and not thinking. She’s giving her daughter too many white pills. A little willow spirit helps; too much will kill her. Talk Finn to her. She doesn’t trust me.”

  “Aino, listen to her,” Ilmari pleaded.

  “Get her out or I’ll throw her out,” Aino said through clenched teeth.

  Ilmari looked calmly at his sister, working something over in his mind. “Yoh,” he said. He escorted the old woman out of the house, talking to her in a low voice in the pidgin language they used with each other.

  Ilmari came back. “She’s gone. You treated her badly, but she knows you’re frightened.”

  Aino was again kneeling at the bed. She looked up. “I’d be a lot less frightened if we just stuck to what the trained medical expert says instead of ‘willow energy.’ What in hell is that?”

  “You want an answer or are you just complaining?” He gently put a hand on the top of her thick hair and dug his fingers down through it and slowly rubbed her scalp.

  She stiffened for a moment, then seemed to collapse, wailing, her face buried in the blankets. “Oh, Ilmari, I’m so scared.”

  Ilmari knelt beside her and pulled her close to him. She stopped her crying.

  After another five minutes, Ilmari still gently digging his fingers into her hair, her head nodded with exhaustion. She jerked it back. Then she felt Ilmari helping her to the floor, covering her with a blanket. “I’ve got her, Aino,” was the last thing she heard.

  Aino woke with a start and threw the blanket off. The bed was empty. She screamed with rage and tore into the kitchen where Alma was feeding the children breakfast. “Ilmari’s gone crazy. Get the sheriff. He’s taken Eleanor.”

  Alma just stood there with a spoon in her hand. The children watched their aunt Aino with their mouths open.

  “Kidnapped!” Aino shouted. “He and that Indian are going to kill her.”

  “Calm down,” Alma said.

  “Eleanor is dying. I’m getting the sheriff.”

  “Your own brother?”

  “My own child!”

  She ran all the way to Higgins’s, called the sheriff, and then ran back to the river. It was low, reaching only to her breasts at the deepest place, and the slow current allowed her to keep her feet until her weight began to bear again. She climbed up the bank, her skirt easily thirty pounds heavier. She took it off, wrung it, threw it over her shoulder, and ran up the path to Vasutäti’s place.

  It was impossible to surprise Ilmari in the woods, and, as she had expected, he met her at the edge of Vasutäti’s little clearing.

  “She’s OK. She’s inside with Vasutäti.”

  “You get out of my way.”

  “You’re irrational with fear. The aspirin is making it worse. I had to stop you.”

  “I sent for the sheriff.”

  Ilmari looked at her sadly. “Bad idea.”

  “I’ll get her back.”

  “No. You’ll just force me to face him off with my rifle.” He turned. She darted past him, but he tackled her and rolled her to a stop beneath him, letting her kick and struggle. She knew he could hold her all day. She stopped.

  “Put your skirt on. I don’t want you in your underwear when the sheriff comes.”

  Well into the afternoon, Ilmari stood guard at Vasutäti’s dome-shaped hut, keeping Aino out but letting Vasutäti go back and forth. At midafternoon Aino saw Ilmari become alert and pick up his rifle. A few minutes later, Sheriff Cobb and several deputies emerged from the forest. They stopped short, seeing Ilmari in front of Vasutäti’s shelter with his rifle.

  The sheriff smiled. Two more men joined him from the forest. The sheriff turned to Aino. “You goddamned Koskis seem to like to stand me off with rifles.” There was some nervous laughter. “Is the child in there?”

  “Yoh,” said Ilmari.

  “I need to see she’s safe.”

  “She’s safe.” He said something to Vasutäti who came out of the door with a bedraggled and sweaty Eleanor in her arms.

  “Baby safe,” Vasutäti said and disappeared back inside.

  “Is that your daughter?” the sheriff asked Aino.

  “Yes. They’ve kidnapped her.”

  “Well.” The sheriff looked genuinely puzzled. “It seems more like a custody dispute.”

  She heard the rifle cock. She turned to see Ilmari calmly pointing it at the sheriff’s feet.

  “The baby stays here,” Ilmari said. “You have to shoot me and Vasutäti both if you want to take her away.”

  “Now, Ilmari, g
oddamnit,” Cobb said. “There’s no need for that.”

  “Good. You want coffee?”

  The posse, if it could be called that, moved to the fire.

  Aino knew Ilmari had them in a standoff. She glared at him. “Eleanor dies,” she said in Finnish, “I’ll kill you. I swear.”

  “Eleanor might die,” he answered in English. “But at least not from aspirin poisoning.” He sat down cross-legged, the rifle cradled across his thighs, cocked.

  “Why don’t you help the sheriff and the boys get some coffee,” he said in Finnish.

  At about four in the afternoon, Aksel and Kullervo broke into the clearing.

  “What brings you boys here?” the sheriff asked. “I don’t see a still.” He looked around exaggeratedly. “But then I never see you boys by a still. That’s why you are still out of jail.” He laughed, proud of his pun.

  Aksel turned to Aino. “What’s going on?”

  She told him. Then Aksel asked Ilmari the same question. Ilmari told his side. Aksel was quiet for a moment. Then he looked at the sheriff. “Custody dispute, right?”

  “I’d say so, but she’s claiming kidnapping.”

  Aksel muttered something about stubborn Finns and turned to Kullervo. “You get two fresh horses to meet me at the Knappton dock.” Then Aksel ran into the forest.

  “What the hell?” Cobb sputtered.

  Kullervo smiled. “I think Sergeant Långström has a plan.” Then Kullervo ran after Aksel.

  Cobb and the lawmen huddled around the fire through the night, while Ilmari sat cross-legged, silent and meditative, in front of Vasutäti’s hut with his rifle across his lap. He was still there as a cool September dawn moved west through the high trees.

  When Aksel and Jouka walked out of the woods into the growing light, leading two horses, Aino gasped. Jouka looked as though he’d been dragged out of a swamp. He was not just thin, but gaunt, unshaven, his eyes sunken and bloodshot from drinking.

  “Sheriff,” Aksel said. “You know Mr. Kaukonen. He’s the child’s father.”

  The sheriff grunted and rose to his feet.