Deep River Page 54

  “How do you know that?”

  “I went back into town. You know”—he smiled—“Eve’s Garden.”

  Aksel laughed and took a sip of the scalding black coffee. Heppu and Jens awoke and stood side by side, peeing about five feet from Aksel and Kullervo, who hardly noticed. Yrjö had moaned and rolled over in his blanket. It seemed he might have been at Eve’s Garden, too.

  “You think there will be a fight?” Kullervo asked Aksel. “I mean a firefight?”

  “You want one?”

  Kullervo looked away. When he looked back, Aksel could see that he did.

  “Those bastards beat hell out of the Wobblies back in seventeen,” Kullervo said. “This time, the Wobblies will fight back. They’re going to have guys with rifles posted outside the Roderick Hotel, so if the legionnaires rush their hall, they’ll take fire from both directions.”

  “The boys learned something in the war,” Aksel said.

  “Only it won’t be legionnaires rushing the Roderick,” Jens said. He, Yrjö, and Heppu had joined Aksel and Kullervo.

  “Who, then?” Aksel asked.

  “They call themselves the Centralia Citizens’ Committee—thugs paid by the president of the Eastern Railway and Lumber Company.”

  Kullervo licked his lips. “Should have brought my Springfield.”

  “Hell, Aksel’s tommy gun,” Yrjö chimed in.

  After eating pork and beans out of cans, they walked along the Skookumchuck into town. When they began walking up Tower Street, they could feel the tension. Jens touched Aksel’s arm and nodded toward a hill just across the river. On it were armed men, probably Wobblies. They would have an unobstructed field of fire along the entire street. Eyes darting now with the increasing tension, the Bachelor Boys began to pick out riflemen on the rooftops. The Wobblies truly weren’t going to be pushed around this time.

  The legionnaires loosely formed into their local posts. All carried rifles for the parade. Many nervously fingered clips in their pockets. Several had already seated their clips in their rifles. Others were carrying rubber hoses and gas pipes. Nervous deputies and city police stood around armed with pistols.

  The Bachelor Boys fell into old habits, moving as a unit, but not too close to each other. Although they had been in the trenches, they had spent many of the final months attacking Germans in French forests where they felt at home.

  They walked by the old hotel that served as the IWW hall since the original one had been burned down. A couple of Wobblies in uniform leaned against the outside walls and more stood inside the door. All carried pistols. Aksel noticed at least three Wobblies in the doorway of another hotel just across the street. Well, he thought, no way in hell anyone was going to burn this Wobbly hall down.

  Then he saw Aino emerge from the Roderick Hotel’s door, that unmistakable carriage, the wire-rimmed glasses, her heavy black hair piled on her head, and, after all this time and the baby, the same fine figure that first took his breath away when he was a boy. He looked away. He didn’t want to be seen for some reason. He moved closer to Jens, always reliable in serious trouble. Having logged together before the war, they’d been in a band of brothers already.

  “These Legion boys look trigger-happy to you?” Aksel asked.

  Jens looked around as they walked. “Hard to tell. Could just be carrying rifles for the parade. So far mostly without the clips in.”

  “Yeah, but we know how many clips you can carry in your pockets.”

  “We do.”

  They had arrived where the parade was forming. Different Legion posts were squaring themselves into formation, unfurling flags, adjusting their staffs into leather pockets attached to shoulder belts.

  Aksel asked the post from Olympia if they could form the back row. They could hear the spatter of snare drums, like nervous hail on a tin roof, the occasional bugle calls and short scale runs.

  Unseen, far ahead, a band struck up “Under the Double Eagle,” and everyone straightened in anticipation. A marching band from a company town just in front of them started “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”

  For a time, the parade moved along in the usual fits and starts. At the corner of Tower and Second Streets, however, as a result of poor planning, the head of the parade ran into its own tail. Aksel heard several men shouting, “The sons of bitches have changed the parade route!” Then he heard a round being chambered up above him. Everything stopped—right in front of the new Wobbly hall.

  Aksel thought he saw movement up ahead and behind the Centralia legionnaires. He heard the commander of the Centralia post shout, “Halt! Close up!”

  Aksel went flat on the ground before he became conscious of hearing a single shot. All the Bachelor Boys were down on the ground with him.

  Then, hell broke loose in Centralia.

  23

  Aino heard the shot. It seemed to have come from the Avalon Hotel across the street from where she was standing by the door of the Roderick. She remained standing, stunned, having seen the legionnaire who had just passed an order for his post to close up go down wounded. Fire erupted around her. Men on both sides were pulling back the bolts on their Springfields and Enfields, levering their Winchesters, firing six-cylinder revolvers and .45-caliber automatic pistols they’d brought home from the war. She was tackled from the side and went down to the concrete sidewalk—hard. She felt the lean body and coarse wool uniform of a soldier lying on top of her. It was Wesley, the young man who had helped her yesterday. “Stay on the ground,” he said. “Don’t move.”

  She lay there, her eyes shut, her hands over her ears, feeling the protective weight of his body. When she opened her eyes, the street was covered with people who’d also gone to the ground. The windows of the hotel had been shot out. Wobblies and marchers were down and bleeding. So much destruction and carnage in just seconds was staggering. Wesley rolled off and said something urgent. She couldn’t hear a word, deaf from the firing.

  Wesley pointed toward the hall with a pistol. Pulling her to her feet by her hand, he jerked her into the hotel. She thought she heard him shout, “There’s going to be hell to pay.” But she couldn’t be sure. She and Wesley emerged into the back alley. Wesley shouted, “Come on. There’s cover by the river.” She didn’t know what he meant by cover and stood frozen there. Wesley jerked at her arm and her natural inclination was to pull her arm back. He looked around wildly, shook his head at her, turned, and headed east toward the river. She came to her senses watching him run from her. She followed her instincts and ran in the other direction.

  The instant the firing died down, Aksel rose and ran hard, jumping over prone bodies, brushing past fleeing women and children, many of them screaming. He reached the door of the hotel looking wildly for Aino. The combat veterans among the legionnaires had reverted to instinct and training. Caught in the killing ground where fire was coming from the hill down Tower Street and from the rooftops all around them, they charged both the Avalon and the Roderick, firing their rifles. Several were already inside the hotel lobbies firing round after round. Askel quickly saw that Aino was not lying on the ground, although plenty of wounded men were. He crouched to the floor and backed out of the hotel.

  A horse galloped down the street, a deputized man on its back. As he thundered past Aksel and the Roderick Hotel, he fired three pistol shots through the broken front window. A black Liberty Six with four men in it roared up behind him. The men wore badges pinned to their chests but no police uniforms. “Keep the bastards penned in there,” one of them shouted, taking cover behind the car. The others joined him, throwing themselves to the ground. “We’ll get the sons of bitches, by God.”

  Aksel saw the Bachelor Boys running toward him.

  “You boys get out of the line of fire,” one of the deputies shouted. They ignored him, running straight up to Aksel.

  “Help me get some of the wounded to safety,” Aksel said, already dragging a wounded legionnaire by his feet away from the fight. Heppu and Kullervo together started pullin
g a large man by each leg, following Aksel to cover in an alley west of a dry goods store. Jens, with a wounded man in a fireman’s carry, came stumbling after them. They all set to work tearing the men’s clothes to make bandages for their wounds. Aksel ran into the store, grabbed three bolts of cloth as the clerk yelled, “Looters! Looters!” Aksel put a bolt under each man’s feet, elevating them to help stave off shock.

  Firing erupted again although it was now sporadic. Again silence. Then Aksel heard someone shouting, “He went that way. Stole three of my best bolts.” Three legionnaires, all with rifles, stormed around the corner into the alley. They stopped short, seeing the Bachelor Boys in uniform and wounded men with their feet on the bolts. The man in the lead smiled. “That clerk thought you were looters,” he said. “You boys armed?”

  Aksel shook his head and sat back away from the wounded man, still applying pressure to the wound. “They’ll be all right,” the man said. “We need every able-bodied man to hunt these bastards down.”

  “It’s not our fight,” Aksel said quietly to the leader. He pulled out a cigarette.

  “Well, it should be. We don’t stop the sons of bitches now, we’ll have the bloodbath they got in Russia. We’re going to hunt these bastards down and then we’re going to hang ’em.” He turned to his companions. “Come on, these boys are cowards.” The men disappeared.

  Aksel stopped Kullervo from going after them. Lighting his cigarette and slowly exhaling smoke, he passed it to Kullervo. “Even cowards need a smoke now and then.”

  Kullervo laughed and took the cigarette, then handed it to Heppu who had a drag and then said, “We need to get these guys to a hospital.”

  “Not our problem,” Aksel said. “Kullervo, go back to that dry goods store and tell that whiny clerk we need blankets. No. Just take ’em.”

  Heppu passed the cigarette to Jens and left with Kullervo. Jens took a last draw and held up the glowing butt to Aksel, who shook his head no. Jens flipped it to the damp ground and they watched it slowly burn out as they waited for Kullervo to return with the blankets. When he did, they wrapped the wounded men in them. Aksel stood up. “I saw Aino Koski standing by the door of the Roderick,” he said.

  “That woman can sure find trouble,” Jens said, shaking his head.

  “These people are in a hanging mood,” Aksel said. “Because she’s a woman they may not grab her, yet. But she’s pretty well-known around here and if they do grab her …” Aksel ground the dead cigarette butt under his boot. “I’m going to look for her.”

  “To do what?” Kullervo asked.

  “Don’t know for sure.”

  The other Bachelor Boys glanced at each other. “Still soft on her,” Kullervo said.

  “I like her brother,” Aksel said.

  “Doesn’t have nearly the chest,” Kullervo quipped. The others laughed. Even Aksel smiled. The smile, however, was from a memory of dancing the Grizzly Bear with Aino.

  Aksel ran back to the chaos of the Roderick, followed by the Boys. He didn’t see Aino. He sent Heppu and Jens to search Tower Street heading north, reminding them that they looked like legionnaires, meaning a Wobbly could try to kill them. He told Yrjö to go south on Tower, keeping close to the buildings on the east side so he’d get shelter from anyone firing from the hill across the river. He kept Kullervo with him and headed west up Second Street.

  Aksel and Kullervo found Aino hiding behind garbage cans in an alley. Aino scrambled to her feet. Aksel pushed her down, hissing at her to be quiet. Then he turned to Kullervo. “Go tell everyone we found her and to assemble here.” Kullervo ran. Aksel spotted discarded curtains next to the cans and he threw them on Aino. She started to push them off, but he just shoved her head down underneath the curtains and she stopped. Then he sat on her and started rolling a cigarette as four legionnaires came running up the alley.

  “You see any of those Bolshevik bastards coming this way?” one of them shouted.

  The wiggling underneath Aksel stopped.

  “We got one of them trying to cross the river,” the man continued, panting for air. Another one, also panting, said, “The red bastard shot Hubbard,” as if Aksel would know who that was.

  Aksel simply shook his head no and struck a match on his shoes. He knew the legionnaires could see the ribbons on his chest and would trust that he told the truth. They ran off, just as the other four Bachelor Boys came running back.

  “Where is she?” Jens asked.

  Aksel nodded down at the pile of curtains beneath him. All four of them broke into grins.

  “We have to get her out of here,” Heppu said.

  There was silence. Then Kullervo said, “I have an idea. Aksel, you stay here with her.” The Bachelor Boys looked at each other, then followed Kullervo.

  They returned, walking under a long, rolled carpet. They dropped it at Aksel’s feet, smiling. Yrjö said, “We took it from the lobby of the Roderick. Told the cops we were from the Willapa Legion post and were taking it as a fair exchange: Wobbly Hall to Legion Hall.”

  Nodding at Kullervo and Heppu, Aksel said, “Security.” They ran to stand guard some distance to the east and west of the others. He pulled the curtains off Aino. She was hugging her knees in a fetal position. She struggled to sit upright, adjusting her glasses, slightly bent by Aksel sitting on her. “Did they get that boy Wesley?” she asked. “He had a pistol. I came this way. He took off toward the river.”

  “Don’t know him and don’t know,” Aksel answered. “All I know is they’re rounding up every Wobbly they can find and they’re in a lynching mood.”

  “Bastards,” she muttered.

  “We have to get you out of here.”

  “My place is with my comrades.”

  “Your comrades are going to be arrested and then killed.”

  He watched her blanch, then struggle to control her fear. She stood erect. “I’ll not run.”

  Aksel could see that her sisu was up. He gave a quick whistle and Kullervo and Heppu came running. Aino looked at Aksel belligerently, as well as with a little puzzlement. “Time to go,” Aksel said to the four Bachelor Boys. They grinned and started unrolling the rug.

  Aino suddenly understood. “No, goddamnit. No. You’re not putting me in that.” She tried to run.

  Aksel jumped her, pinning her arms behind her, taking her to the ground. She tried to kick and bite him, but within seconds she was being rolled up in the rug, screaming in a blind panic, out of control. Aksel had never seen her like that. He realized this was panic from beyond what was happening now. Panic or no panic, it couldn’t be helped. He squatted next to the end of the rug. She tried to spit on him but couldn’t roll her head back far enough to do it. The spit hit the leading edge of the rug in front of her face. Aksel then lay on the ground, his face close to hers. “Shh, shh,” he whispered, as if to a child. He touched her hair. “Shh, now. You’ll be safe. We’ve got you.” He smiled at her. “Think of Eleanor.”

  She stopped her wild struggling.

  “We’re going to the train station,” Aksel said calmly. “Shh, now. You make a single sound, you’ll be in jail and likely dead by morning.”

  No sound came from the rug.

  Aksel loosely stuffed some of the curtains above her head and the five of them spelled each other, walking casually toward the train station. They were stopped twice, but both times gave the same answer, Wobbly rug to Legion Hall rug, and they were not stopped. At the station, they set the rug down, Aino’s end of the roll toward a wall. They took the curtains out, giving her some air.

  They were on the platform two hours, smoking, laying their heads on top of the rug, joking with passing legionnaires, until the train from Tacoma arrived. National Guardsmen piled out, moving into ranks on the station platform. As the troops started moving toward town, Aksel found the conductor, who was looking at his pocket watch. “We’ve got a rug here for our Legion Hall,” he said. “Going to Castle Rock. Where should we put it?”

  The conductor indicated a baggag
e car and they casually dumped the rug in it, Aino still inside, and walked off to a passenger coach.

  At the Castle Rock train station, they retrieved the rug, carrying it into the woods out of sight. Aksel again sent Heppu and Kullervo out as security. Then, he nodded at Jens and Yrjö, and the three of them quickly unrolled Aino onto the ground.

  At first, Aino wanted to scramble to her feet and curse them, but she was so stiff she couldn’t move and so grateful to be unconfined again that she quickly forgot the impulse. Even more urgently, she needed to pee.

  Aksel pulled her to her feet. Those bright-blue eyes were laughing at her. She couldn’t hold on any longer and she hobbled off a few steps, lifted her dress, parted her split drawers, and peed. She wanted to sigh with relief but wouldn’t because she assumed the men were watching her. Embarrassed now, she adjusted her drawers and skirt and turned to face them, her chin up. She saw only their backs.

  “You can turn around now,” she said in English.

  Five grinning faces. God. Men could be such boys, she thought.

  “You have any money?” Aksel asked, again speaking Finnish.

  “My purse is back at the hall. I had a return ticket to Portland.”

  Aksel reached into his pocket and pulled out two five-dollar bills. “You can pay me back later.”

  Aino took the money. “I will,” she said. She looked up at Aksel and then at the Bachelor Boys, who were all watching her, their faces kind but otherwise uncommunicative. “I—” she started. She looked down at her shoes. The tears came. She lifted her chin. “Kiitos,” she said to Aksel, thank you. “Kiitos,” she repeated to the watching Bachelor Boys. She then looked to Aksel for some sort of help. Kullervo, Heppu, Yrjö, and Jens walked across the street and lit cigarettes, leaving the two of them alone.

  She and Aksel stood looking at each other, saying nothing. Finally, Aksel said, “I was at Ilmahenki last Wednesday.”

  “Did you see Eleanor? How is she?” She suddenly worried that Aksel, too, would harbor accusations that she’d abandoned her child.