In May, the cows gushed milk and the grass was plump with rain and rich soil. They’d seen no snow since February. Even Finns who’d been in the Deep River area ten years still considered Northwest winters comparable to those at home, always in fear of the next subzero freeze that would kill the tender plants pushing aboveground. It never came. Potatoes already showed several inches of vine.
Late one afternoon on an errand to Tapiola, Aino watched two young women holding ribbons next to their faces, getting each other’s opinion, speaking Finnish. That was when she learned that every Saturday night in Knappton there was a dance in one of the large net sheds.
Instead of returning to Ullakko’s house, she nearly ran to Ilmahenki, where she found Ilmari sweating and red faced at his forge.
“Not by yourself,” he said.
“Why do you think I’m here? To smell your armpits? You’ve got to come,” she pleaded. “It’ll be fun.” As soon as she said it, she realized that fun was probably not a motivator for Ilmari.
Ilmari turned over a glowing steel chain link and hammered it into shape. “I already have a girlfriend,” he said with some pride.
“I’m going crazy at Ullakko’s,” she pleaded.
“He’s a good man.”
“Yes. He’s a good man. And about as entertaining as an oyster.”
Ilmari actually cracked a smile.
“Please.” She hated to beg, but a dance. A dance!
“All right. Maybe Matti wants to go, too,” he said. She danced a half turn and was nearly skipping away when Ilmari said, “And only if Ullakko gives you time off.” Walking backward, she wrinkled her nose at him, then ran for Ullakko’s.
Matti and Ilmari picked Aino up at Ullakko’s farm Saturday evening and the three of them started on the trail to Knappton. Aino was aware of Ullakko watching them go but refused to turn around. Soon the forest hid the farm from view. The air was fresh. The forest floor gave off a rich, dark smell and orange shafts of setting sunlight pierced through the seventy-meter-high forest ceiling. Far above them she could hear the gentle wind making the trees whisper to each other.
They walked single file, Aino barefoot so as not to soil or wear out her leather shoes. A squirrel chattered at them from a limb, then in an instant disappeared. She heard it chirping from behind her. They weren’t in a hurry, so they took nearly two hours to walk the six miles to Knappton.
The trail ran down a steep hill, then through alders growing among stumps logged several years before. They emerged from the forest. It was her first sighting of the Columbia River. She stopped. Ilmari nearly bumped into her. She stopped breathing. Her eyes teared. It was as if her heart had left her to flow out onto the majesty. Far off, maybe six miles away, she could see the Oregon side of the river. To her east, the shimmering water flowed from a gap in the Coast Range, more like an immense magical lake than a river.
She felt Ilmari’s hand on her shoulder. He spoke softly into her ear. “Maybe, here is your God.” She reached up and touched his hand and felt him give her shoulder a quick grip. She couldn’t move. She didn’t want to.
Knappton was set on pilings over the river and surrounded by huge rafts of logs, its two sawmills running full tilt. The three walked out on a wharf, passing the Knappton Hotel and smelling the creosote of the pilings and planks. Fifteen feet below them, the tide being low, were rows of open double-ended fishing boats tied fore and aft to ropes on pulleys. The gentle rise and fall of the great river moved the boats, the pulleys softly squealing like a chorus of distant lonely birds. They entered the spacious net shed of Knappton Packing through a huge sliding door. Inside were dozens of net racks, large wooden frames over which were draped the company fishermen’s gill nets, which were being repaired during daylight hours for the next salmon run. The spring Chinook run was over, and nets with smaller mesh were being readied for the June blueback run, small five- to fifteen-pound salmon between two and three feet long with a delicate flavor.
A large floor space had been created, surrounded by square platforms on small steel wheels that held more huge nets in piles. The small steel wheels of the net carts splintered the floor made of six-inch-thick planks. It was the biggest building Aino had seen since the train station in Portland.
She quickly put on her stockings and shoes, tucked her glasses away in the canvas bag in which she’d packed their food, and went looking for a mirror where she managed to blend her longer thick hair with the shorter returning hair.
Near the sliding doors where lamplight from kerosene lanterns was just beginning to make headway on the dark planks of the wharf against the gloaming, the women had all gathered, married and unmarried alike. Aino felt their excitement. There were at least five males to every female. No girl needed to fear being a wallflower. The small band—an accordion, two violins, a single snare drum, and a euphonium—tuned to a piano that had miraculously appeared at the huge doors on a net cart pushed by four loggers. The band members weren’t paid. They were loggers, mill workers, and fishermen who had a gift and loved to play. Because they were also single men, they would take turns leaving the band to have a dance. The unwritten rule was that only one band member could dance at a time. Because the musicians had no time to practice together, they kept to the traditional tunes with their simple chord progressions.
The band sprang to life at the nod of the lead violinist and began a schottische. A wave of manhood hit the shoals of womanhood and there many foundered. Some, however, sailed clear and out onto the floor. Aino found herself in the care of a large Norwegian mill worker. As soon as the dance was over, another Norwegian, apparently her first partner’s friend, took her for the next dance but was himself replaced by a Finnish logger who’d grown up in Tampere. Hambos, polkas, schottisches, waltzes; men getting her punch and popcorn, politely cutting in on each other, taking her on another and then another and another circuit of the floor. She finally pleaded exhaustion and fled to the room set aside for the ladies. It held a three-hole plank that opened to the river beneath. On the rough board walls were pegs for clothing and bags and a single mirror, before which a dozen women were twisting to look at their hair or ducking down to arrange it on top. A few simply leaned against the wall to catch their breath.
Aino, having lived most of her life only with brothers, felt herself being pulled into the flutter and excitement of this other world of girls. She caught a glimpse of herself, her dark hair singular amid all the light brown and blond, her dark eyes among the others’ hazel and blue. Straightening her shoulders, pushing her breasts out, and with the confidence of a queen, she reentered the dance.
Something had changed. Five dark-complexioned men stood quietly by the punch. Americans and Scandinavians looked at them silently. The bandleader signaled a waltz for the band and the staring men turned their attention back to the women. Aino ignored a couple of men trying to get her attention and found Matti next to the bandstand. He seemed to know the violin player.
“Dance with me,” she said.
Matti took her onto the floor, moving gracefully with a firm frame. It was hard to remember he was her little brother.
“Who are the dark ones?” Aino asked.
“Greeks. They work for next to nothing and take jobs away from white people.”
“If they were organized along with all the other workers, that would stop. They would compete together against the capitalists.”
“The unions will never take them.”
“Why not?”
Matti looked at her incredulously. “They’re a dirty people, that’s why not. Their church doesn’t even teach them to read.”
They’d made just two more circuits of the floor when Aino, from the corner of her eye, saw three obviously drunk loggers place themselves directly in front of the Greeks. Drinking inside the building was not allowed, but outside two vendors sold an American whiskey called bourbon and a Canadian whiskey called rye at ten cents a shot. Five shots cost half a day’s wages for many of them. Oh, the stupidity of it, she thought.
When the waltz stopped, the place went silent. An American logger told the Greeks in no uncertain terms to get the hell out and keep going. One of the Greeks turned and said something to his friends, who objected, but the Greek raised the palm of his hand to quiet them. He stepped forward and, of all things, made a slight bow. He straightened himself to his full height, easily two or three inches shorter than the Americans, and confronted them with a proud carriage, his hair oiled and his eyes an unexpected blue. “I am called Demetrius Galanis,” he said in clear accented English. “I am come here to America for same reason as all, to work, to be free, to live in justice.”
“You come here to take our jobs by taking shit for wages.”
Galanis looked at the man. “We take what is offered.”
“They offer you shit, because you are shit. Get the hell out of here. I mean clear out. Go back to Greece.”
Galanis smiled enigmatically. “I am afraid I am welcome even less in my homeland than I am here. Galanis is here to stay.”
“You slick son of a bitch,” the logger growled. He swung and connected. Galanis went to the floor, obviously surprised by the sudden attack. The logger snarled and kicked him.
Kicking a white man when he was down was always despicable. For some, however, kicking a man like Galanis, who wasn’t white, was just sport—for some, not all. A second logger, large, fair-haired, roared from the crowd of onlookers and crashed at a full run into the first, who went down instantly, his legs sprawled out and kicking spasmodically on the ground. His friends came swinging in on the newcomer, but by this time Galanis was on his feet and kicked one of the men in the knees from the side, bringing him to the floor with a scream of pain. The newcomer scrambled to his feet and he and Galanis stood back-to-back, looking warily around them.
Matti, his hand on Aino’s shoulder, called out, “So, this is how you’re dancing tonight, Jouka.” A couple of guffaws followed. The tall newcomer said, “No offense to Mr. Galanis here, but he’s not my type.” More laughs. The man who had been knocked down tried to get to his feet. Galanis kicked his hands out from under him with a smile and the man hit the floor face-first. Then he vomited from too much drinking. People moved back in disgust.
Jouka and Matti carried the man outside and dumped him on the wharf where he would sleep it off.
“Who’s the girl?” Jouka asked.
“My sister, Aino.”
“Is she free?”
“More than you might like,” Matti said.
“Hmmm,” Jouka murmured, looking at Aino as they walked back to Galanis, who reached out to shake Jouka’s hand. Galanis, in his midthirties, was half a foot shorter than Jouka. “Galanis thanks you, Mr. Jouka,” he said in English.
“Mr. Kaukonen,” he said. “Jouka Kaukonen.”
Aino walked up to them. Jouka was hit with the intensity of her dark eyes. “Will you please translate to Mr. Galanis for me?” she asked.
“Yoh.”
“If you Finns and Greeks joined together,” she said to Galanis, “you could raise everyone’s wages. Stop fighting each other for crumbs from the owners like dogs under their table.”
Jouka chuckled and then translated. Galanis cocked his head and looked at Aino like the curiosity that, to him, she was. He turned to Jouka. “Greek women only speak like that in private,” he said in English.
Jouka chuckled. “She’s not Greek.”
Galanis looked at Aino. “Of course, you are right about joining together, but Galanis joins nothing,” he said in English.
Jouka translated.
“Tell him: ‘Galanis is a fool.’”
Hearing the translation, Galanis laughed aloud. “This one has fire.” He shook Matti’s hand and left them.
“It was good of you to help that man,” Aino said to Jouka.
Jouka blushed. “Oh, you know. Underdogs.” He paused. “Even under the table.”
“Don’t make fun. Fools fight each other. Men fight the common enemy.”
This girl both fascinated him and made him uncomfortable. “I work for John Reder. He’s not the enemy.”
“How much does he pay?”
“For a good logger, it can be up to two dollars a day.”
“For how long a day?”
Jouka looked at her, wondering if he should even answer such a stupid question. “As long as it’s light.”
She shook her head at him as if she thought he was a fool. Then his friend, Matti, took her by the elbow and led her back onto the dance floor. In his mind, he heard Galanis’s This one has fire. Jouka Kaukonen had never fallen in love, until now.
As Matti led Aino through the large space between the open sliding doors, she turned to see Jouka Kaukonen taking a slug from a metal hip flask. He raised the flask to her in a salute and she turned away quickly. She didn’t like drinking. But looking at him made her heart light.
More men asked her to dance. They all seemed dull.
At one point, she heard Jouka’s voice calling out a tune to the musicians. The fiddle player, grinning, held out his fiddle. Jouka declined. Then a chant started. “Jouka. Jouka.” The piano player did a quick riff. “Jouka. Jouka.” The whole crowd was chanting his name.
He jumped up to the bandstand made of overturned fish boxes and took the fiddle. He said something to the piano player and the accordion player, they nodded, and he put the fiddle under his chin. Then, with a nod, he was playing a polka.
She’d never heard any music so full of life. She knew a gifted musician when she heard one, and this man, this logger, was gifted. The logger she was with was some Norwegian lunkhead who couldn’t lead cows to silage. She wanted to stomp his toes in frustration.
When the tune was finished, everyone was clapping, many were shouting for more. Jouka turned to the other players for a brief discussion, and then they broke into a pelimanni schottische, filling the room with memories of birch trees laden with snow, quiet fields, and snug houses. Dancers who’d been intimidated by the polka returned to the floor, and it turned out the Norwegian lunkhead could at least dance the schottische. She could barely keep her eyes forward and her posture formal on the steps and hop, wanting to watch Jouka. Every time she faced the bandstand in a turn, she watched Jouka closely, trying not to make her head swiveling obvious.
When the tune ended, Jouka bowed to warm applause. He handed back the fiddle and she watched him go outside. She felt he was leaving her.
She watched him return from outside, slipping something into a pocket. Then, she watched him move between dancing and returning to the bandstand to play another tune or two, but he never seemed to look her way. Around midnight, however, with the band clearly getting tired and people already leaving, Jouka jumped down from the bandstand and very formally asked her to dance. Aino couldn’t help taking a breath that pushed her ribs against her corset.
The dance was a waltz. Jouka placed his large right hand on her left shoulder blade and took her right hand in his left. He seemed to grow a full inch, coming upright and solid. Then he moved. She followed as though she was part of him, as though she had no choice. She wanted no choice. They were moving with the other dancers in a large counterclockwise circle, yet she felt the two of them were truly the center of everything, the refreshment table swinging by, the bandstand swinging by, a glimpse of Matti swinging by, the refreshments table again. The three-quarter time made the dance flow without stopping points, just the beginning of the next three beats on a different foot and the whirling and Jouka’s face above her and above him the rafters of the building and the center point of the whirling rafters.