The gardens began producing food by June, and the threat of famine was no more. The summer was warm with just enough rainfall, and the harvest of 1903 was good enough to produce a little cash in addition to plenty of food to make it through the winter. In the cities and towns, however, inflation was rampant. Real wages fell by 20 percent and the workers’ unrest was growing, only to be met by Russia’s sending more troops to keep things in check.
Every month or so a letter came from Ilmari, usually about four weeks after it was written. Aino loved the strange stamps with their round cancellation mark: “Knappton” curved around the top and “Washington” curved around the bottom. Knappton stood on the north side of the Columbia River, fourteen kilometers south of Ilmari’s new farm on the heavily timbered south shore of Deep River, a coastal river that ran parallel to the Columbia, separated from it by a range of hills. Knappton was about two hours from the farm by foot. No road existed. She imagined Knappton as a beautiful port city on a magnificent river. Ilmari wrote that the Columbia was eight kilometers wide at that point. On its south shore was a huge city called Astoria, Oregon.
It was still hard to believe. Ilmari had 160 acres of prime river-bottom farmland that he’d gotten for free! Ilmari had written that there was a law called the Timber and Stone Act entitling every person to 160 acres of prime timberland for just two dollars and fifty cents an acre. Ilmari had staked out his 160 acres about twenty kilometers north of Deep River and sold it to a timber company for five dollars an acre, leaving him four hundred American dollars. Ilmari had used that free money to buy the same amount of land on Deep River from a family that had gotten their land for free twenty years earlier under another law, called the Homestead Act.
Ilmari’s 160 acres was sixty hectares, four times the size of their farm in Finland, which Tapio and Maíjaliisa had worked on for years and was owned by a rich aristocrat. There were no aristocrats in America—and the government just gave the people free land. The United States must already be a socialist country!
To be sure, Ilmari made it clear that carving a farm out of wilderness was backbreaking, exhausting work. It seemed the trees were big. He’d sold some of his Deep River timber to both clear the land and get cash to start a little blacksmith shop where he earned more cash making tools, shoeing horses, and repairing equipment for logging companies. That, however, had left stumps over two meters high and four and a half meters across that had to burned out to make way for civilized farming. Well, Aino thought, the free land was probably real, but as for stumps two and a half meters tall and four and a half meters in diameter, Ilmari was having them on. In addition, he’d written that it hardly ever snowed. Aino was way too smart to be taken in by this. She remembered similar wild tales of Yukon gold that had swept the district when she was eight.
Ilmari made no mention of marriage or even women. All he wrote about was clearing those damned trees, some steamboat that maybe was going to start service from Willapa Bay to the end of tidewater, where a little Finnish community called Tapiola had formed, another reason Ilmari had moved to Deep River. Many of the Deep River farmers were from families in the Kokkola area. The first structure Ilmari built was a sauna, which he lived in while he worked on his own house. Other Finns in the area helped with what couldn’t be done alone. Everyone worked together, for the good of everyone. Aino was convinced, now, that socialism had truly flourished in the new world.
That winter, old Musti died. Aino and Matti buried him next to the dead baby in the cherry orchard, saying nothing to each other.
Two weeks after the burial, Aino was awakened by Matti holding a wiggling mass of warm fur, the slight smell of urine, and a wet tongue over her face. He dropped the puppy, a little female, and it flopped its way clumsily across the quilt, little tail wagging as though it would fall off. Aino hugged the puppy, looking up at Matti, striving to maintain her dignity. The puppy started yelping, as if jealous of Aino looking at Matti. Aino snuggled with it beneath the quilt.
“Oh, Matti,” she said.
Matti nodded his head in recognition of her thanks. “What will you name her?”
At that moment, the puppy flopped her way to the edge of the bed where she crowed at Matti like a little rooster, tail vibrating.
“Laulu, because she sings.”
In February 1904, the Japanese destroyed the Russian fleet off Port Arthur, Manchuria. Finnish radicals increased agitation for reform and independence. Finnish men in large numbers began refusing to show up for military service. The czar wouldn’t compromise, and the Russian governor general of Finland, Nikolai Bobrikov, met agitation with force, making arrests in large numbers.
The increasing unrest in the area brought in a cavalry unit. The Russian army base just south of Kokkola had no room. The troops were to be quartered with the Finnish farmers. For free.
The family stood in a silent, sober line outside the house as the detachment of Russian troopers looked down on them from astride their horses. Laulu started a high-pitched howling, squatting down on her hindquarters and backing away from the horses, only to dart forward and repeat the action. Aino gathered Laulu up in her apron, quieting her.
The officer in charge entered the house without asking. He emerged from the house and shouted two names. A sergeant and a corporal dismounted and looked inside as the platoon rode off.
The two cavalrymen and the Koskis stood in uneasy silence. Aino watched Matti struggling for control, his right hand just short of where his puukko, the traditional man’s knife, hung from the back of his belt encased in its wooden scabbard. Tapio put a hand on Matti’s shoulder. “Sisu,” he whispered. “Show them nothing.”
The Russians entered the house. The sergeant came back outside and sauntered over to them, smiling. The corporal remained at the door, looking slightly embarrassed. The sergeant pointed to himself. “Kozlov.” Then he pointed to the corporal. “Kusnetsov.” Then he pointed to Tapio, raising his eyebrows. Tapio smiled and blinked. “Kozlov,” the sergeant said, again pointing to himself. Tapio smiled broadly. The sergeant cursed.
Realizing he didn’t speak Finnish, Aino said quietly, “We should show Kozlov the cherry trees.” Tapio shot her a quick glance. “Koz” was the Russian word for “goat” and cherries poisoned goats.
Kozlov, having heard his name, looked at Aino inquisitively, but Aino went as passive as the rest of her family. Rolling his eyes at the family’s stupidity, Kozlov shouted to Kusnetsov and they led their horses to the barn.
Maíjaliisa marched into the house and found one of the Russian’s gear thrown on top of her and Tapio’s bed. She spat on it. Tapio sighed, took out his handkerchief, and wiped it off, sadly shaking his head at her. She knew he was right, and this made her even more furious. She grabbed her pipe from the mantel and stomped outside. Aino found the other Russian’s gear on her bed.
Tapio and Maíjaliisa moved to the loft, Matti and Aino to the barn.
A cold routine settled in. Maíjaliisa had food on the table for the Russians in the morning. When they left, she would put the family’s breakfast on the table. Dinner was around noon, normally the largest meal of the day because it had to fuel work until dark. With the Russians eating both breakfast and supper, however, dinner got smaller. The carefully hoarded sugar was gone within two weeks. Sergeant Kozlov loved his sugar. Evening supper was served separately, the same as breakfast.
The corporal, Kusnetsov, tried to be pleasant. It was clear from the way he watched Aino that she was attractive to him. This pleased her, but she treated him with cold civility.
One evening, Aino was picking up the two Russians’ plates and Corporal Kusnetsov gently touched the top of her hand. She jerked it away and Matti leaped to his feet from where he was saddle soaping a harness next to the fire. His hand went behind him, touching his puukko. In one swift movement, sending his chair clattering to the floor, Kozlov pulled his revolver, a formidable 7.62 Nagant. He smiled at Matti and pulled back the hammer. Kusnetsov spoke to Kozlov, nodding his head toward Matti, seemingly saying, “He’s just a boy.” Kusnetsov raised his right palm apologetically to Aino and said, “Anteeksi,” pardon me, in Russian-accented Finnish. Aino stalked out of the house. Kozlov holstered his pistol and resumed drinking his heavily sugared tea. Matti picked up the harness and followed Aino outside, his face white with rage and humiliation. He was gone until chores the next morning.