Reder’s first response was to grab his rifle, several lengths of chain, and some padlocks. Making sure everyone saw him, he locked and chained the mess hall doors.
He handed the rifle to the cook. “Shoot anyone who tries to steal the company’s food.”
The cook gave the rifle back.
Aino and Lempi, anticipating Reder’s move, had carried pots and kettles into the henhouse the night before. With help from the loggers and the tacit approval of Alma and the cook, they’d added more sacks of beans and flour to what they had already hidden in the woods. They built a fire pit in front of the mess hall porch and began cooking. The conflict between labor and capital, spun out so elegantly in political and economic theories, was fundamentally about hunger outlasting avarice.
Everyone chipped in to pay for a doctor from Ilwaco. He changed Iverson’s bandages, grunted in satisfaction at Alma’s work, and said Iverson would heal but would never log again. Iverson turned his head to the wall and spoke to no one for two days. That was when Lempi came into the dark bunkhouse one morning and handed him a cup of coffee. She soon had him talking to her—then to the others.
A week went by without anyone’s even seeing John Reder. Aksel watched his savings for the gill net boat dwindle. Alma Wittala, Aino, and the other girls prepared food on the outside fires until Aino talked Ilmari into improvising some outdoor stoves. Jouka would sit next to the fire pit, playing his violin if it wasn’t raining too hard, watching Aino and the other girls cooking. Matti took advantage of the strike to move cable up to the donkey. He and Ilmari had laboriously spliced two coils of one hundred feet of seven-eighths-inch cable from lengths of scrap. On the first day they each took a coil. The coils could be packed only a short distance before legs and backs gave out. A good part of the time was spent dragging one coil at a time, the two brothers counting aloud and heaving simultaneously on the uphills or when the mud got bad. Matti cursed the cable frequently. Even Ilmari cursed it once. That first day, they got the coils about a third of the way to the site.
At the end of the second week, Alma, Aino, and Lempi added up the strike committee’s cash and took inventory of the food on hand. Then they made up two daily menus, one based on restricted rations and the other on very restricted rations.
Two days later, Aino found herself trying to get a sawbuck pack saddle onto the camp mule, Sally, to go down to Higgins’s store with some of the precious strike-fund money for beans and other needed food. Ten years earlier, Sally had hauled back the heavy main line to the next log. With the arrival of Reder’s first steam donkey, Sally was made redundant, but no one, including Reder, had the heart to turn her into meat as had been done with the oxen. Technically, she belonged to Reder, but even Reder knew she belonged to the camp.
Sally was blowing out her belly to frustrate Aino’s attempt to tighten the girth when Jouka came up and punched the mule just below her rib cage. The puffed-up belly disappeared. Aino quickly cinched the pack saddle into place.
“Want company?” Jouka asked.
Aino looked toward the henhouse. “Lempi was coming. Have you seen her?”
“I did. I told her I’d take her place.”
“You did?” She looked at him quizzically.
“I did. Can’t log.”
They set off for the Tapiola General Store, walking on the rail ties to the path that led down to the Knappton-Tapiola trail.
Their purchases made, they headed back. Jouka was as good at conversation as he was at memorizing poems and songs. He even persuaded Aino to sing some of the old Kalevala songs her father had taught her. Although she sang them haltingly and was somewhat embarrassed, she needed to sing a song only once and Jouka had it in his memory. He would sing it back to her making changes that were subtle or not so subtle but always for the better. After an hour on the trail, walking one on each side of Sally, smelling Sally’s sweet mule smell, singing and joking, they came to the turnoff for Reder’s camp and the uphill climb to the rail line. Jouka led Sally to the small creek that paralleled the trail at that point and let her drink her fill. Aino waited for them, sitting on a mossy nurse log sprouting at least twenty tiny new cedar trees. Watching Jouka pulling on Sally to regain the trail, she felt a rush of affection for him. She had rarely had such a good time, not since—she felt a twinge—Voitto.
Jouka astounded her by kneeling to her level and asking her to marry him.
She was shocked by her desire to say yes. She felt herself quivering with the fight between the yes and the no. He was so unlike Voitto, yet there was the same feeling. Jouka’s words were coming to her as if through the wrong end of a speaking trumpet.
She just sat there, Jouka before her. Finally, she said, “Jouka, it’s … it’s too sudden.”
Jouka looked up at her, fighting, unsuccessfully, to hide his humiliation.
“Jouka, please,” she said softly. “Please get up.”
Jouka stood and looked away from her. “Is it because I can’t read?”
Aino knew she was standing there with her mouth open. So much about him was suddenly clear. She recovered. “No. Heavens no.” She smiled brightly at him and offered her hands, which he took. “I knew that,” she fibbed. She squeezed his large callused hands.
She did not want to hurt him, but she did not want to marry him or anyone. She would always be true to her vow to Voitto. That was the truth. So, she said just that, imperfectly and haltingly.
When she finished, Jouka said nothing.
“I never have so much fun as when I’m dancing with you,” she said, “listening to your music, or just talking, like today. You’re wonderful.”
“Not wonderful enough,” Jouka said.
“I told you. It’s not you,” she said.
He faced her. “How long will you be married to a ghost?”
“Forever.”
Jouka shrugged. “That’ll be tough to outwait.”
She said nothing for a moment. “Come on. We were having such a good time. Sally wants to get home and we’ve got loggers to feed.”
Aino walked over to Sally and slapped her on her haunch. Jouka went to Sally’s other side, slapped her gently, and they walked in awkward silence for about twenty minutes.
“Oh, Jouka, for heaven’s sake, sing a song. Sing that one about Sven Dufva holding off the Russians at the bridge.”
After a moment’s pause, Jouka’s baritone sounded through the trees.
Two days later, John Reder appeared. He found Huttula inside the bunkhouse. “Get the other hook tenders.”
“For what?”
“Just get them.”
Soon, the six hook tenders were standing in a circle around Reder.
“I want you to come with me. I want to show you something before we start talking.”
“You’re willing to bargain?” one of them asked.
“I’m willing to talk.”
They looked at each other, shrugged, and nodded OK. All seven of them boarded the speeder and they pumped their way to Willapa Bay where Reder pointed to several huge rafts of logs, floating quietly on the incoming tide. “Those are all mine,” he said. “And I wish they weren’t.” He turned to them. “And there’s more. Indulge me for a small walk.” He led them up a small hill to the south of Deep River’s mouth where they had a clear view of the south end of Willapa Bay. He pointed out several other large log booms.
“Boys,” he said, “those logs aren’t moving, because the lumber market is in the shitter. Logging has practically stopped around Arcata and Coos Bay and it’s slow clear down to San Francisco. You don’t need to take my word for it.” He pulled a clipping from the Oregonian showing bellwether lumber prices and news of mill closures. “Prices are still going south and you saw the inventory. I just might be better off not logging. You go back up to camp and tell them what you’ve seen.”
Huttula called a meeting by the cook fire after a dinner of beans and only beans. The pigs had all been butchered and eaten. He told everyone what he had seen.
One of the hook tenders said in English, “I don’t worry for me about beans, but my wife, she worries. The baby getting colicky. I not know about nursing baby, but I know about living with a cranky woman.” There were some laughs.
“So, what?” Aino said in English. “So, life at home not so good? You qvit on your fellow verkers up the river because your baby gets colic?”
“Give ’em hell, Aino,” a man’s voice cried.
“She’s not feeding the baby,” came a woman’s voice from the back. That brought laughs from the women.
“You can’t give up,” Aino cried out. “We put so much into this. We not qvitting now, when we almost there.”
“Aino,” Huttula said. “You’ve seen the log booms.”
“Yes. The logs Reder piling up by highballing, logs paid for by Iverson’s legs. Don’t you see? He’s just scaring you. He is scared. I know he having bank loans due.”
“Yeah,” a voice shouted out. “And Margaret’s due as well.” More chuckles.
“Won’t you take me serious?” Aino cried. “He is about to breaking.”
“If the mill verkers go back to verking,” Huttula said, “Reder can pay bills for months with that pile of logs. What have we got?”
“You got your hearts. You’re on the right side of history.”
“You can’t eat history, Aino,” he replied in Finnish. “I’m sorry.” He turned to the men. “I think we’re beat,” he said, still in Finnish. “It was a hell of a try, but I think we’re beat. The market is against us. It will be against the IWW, too. I say let’s vote on it.”
He waited. No one said anything.
“OK, hands up,” he said in English. “Who vants to go back to verk?”
Silently, some with shame in their eyes, some with a defiant I-told-you-so look, men raised their arms. There was no need to count.
Aino fought not to burst into tears.
There were a couple of snorts of derision. A woman called out, “Maybe you should have cried earlier to soften Reder up.”
Then someone else called out: “You got us into this, you red troublemaker.”
Cries of approval and disapproval were all drowned out by Jouka’s scream of anger as he barreled into the last heckler. The loggers hooted their approval of the fight, some rooting for Jouka, others for his opponent. Finally, Huttula and two other hook tenders waded in, grabbing both fighters by their shirts and suspenders and hauling them apart. Jouka was bleeding from his nose and mouth. Aino ran to the henhouse.
“Hey, we made a good try,” Lempi said, sitting next to Aino on the bed. She patted Aino’s knee. “Everyone was for it. Don’t listen to those lunkheads. They’re just trying to make you a scapegoat.”
“I feel so ashamed,” Aino said.
“For losing or almost crying?” Lempi asked. “I saw you.”
Aino nodded her head. “Both.”
“Aino Koski, not a man out there thinks less of a woman who tries and cries. But if you don’t go out there and tend to Jouka right now, they’ll never forgive you. Nor will I.”
Aino willed herself out of the henhouse. Loggers still talked in small groups. She spotted Matti. He was whittling a bowl from a burl with his puukko, talking with Aksel and Jouka, Kullerikki sitting next to them, whittling what looked like a doll’s head.
They all looked up as she approached. Jouka started to stand, but Matti put a hand on his shoulder and kept him seated. Jouka’s face was raw and his nose had been broken. Aino squatted down next to Jouka, touched the bruises on his face, touched his nose. “It’s broken,” she said. “Come with me to the henhouse and I’ll fix it up.” She turned to Matti. “It will need to be straightened.”
Matti and Aksel looked at each other for a moment, then at Jouka. Matti nodded toward the ground. Jouka lay on his back and Aksel and Kullerikki each took a shoulder and pinioned his head. Matti sat on Jouka’s chest. He looked down at Jouka. “Ready?” Jouka nodded. Matti grabbed Jouka’s nose firmly between his thumb and forefinger, wiggled it slightly, and pushed it back into position. Jouka did not flinch.
When Matti leaned back away from his face, Jouka relaxed his body and let out a breath. “Will it ruin my profile?” he asked.
They helped Jouka to his feet and Aino walked him to the henhouse, holding his hand.
Huttula walked to Reder’s house and told him about the vote. Reder came back to the camp with him.
On Monday, April 22, the loggers were back at work. Reder told Aino to pack her bags. She was fired.
When Aino arrived at Ilmahenki, she told Ilmari the strike had failed. He nodded and said, “Maybe now we’ll get some blacksmith work.” Then he said gently, “I can always use help.”
The IWW strikes failed everywhere. The market kept contracting. Men who were rehired after the strikes were almost immediately thrown out of work all over the Northwest. Reder Logging managed to keep its head above water through a combination of smart engineering, experienced loggers—and low wages. None of the loggers complained. They saw outsider loggers walk up the tracks, disappear into Reder’s office, and then walk back down the tracks.
Two weeks after the strike failed, Aksel walked into Tapiola for the dance above Higgins’s store, hoping Aino would be there. She was, but so was Jouka. He came down from the bandstand several times, making it obvious how he felt about her. Aksel got in a couple of dances with her, but a lot of other loggers lined up to do the same.
When the band took a break and Jouka disappeared to take a drink outside, he and Aino were left together by the stair railing.
His mother always said he should ask girls questions about themselves, but he didn’t know where to begin. “How’s Ilmari?” he plunged in, knowing she was now living with him.
Silence, with Aino looking over at the stairs, probably for Jouka.
“Does Ilmari still see Vasutäti?” Aksel asked.
Aino looked back at him and sighed. “Yes. He disappears sometimes for the whole night. Leaves me with all the chores.”
“What does he do there?”
“He says he just sits there and does nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing. He says that’s the point.” Aino laughed. “I love him dearly, but he’s always been a hard one to understand.”
“Yes, but you have to like him.”
Silence, more glancing at the stairs.
“How’s Sampo Manufacturing coming along?”
“Still moving the yarder.” Aino laughed. “My two capitalists. Living in dreamland where everyone gets rich.”
“What’s wrong with wanting to improve themselves?”
She looked at him warily.
“I mean,” Aksel said, “I want my own fishing boat. Is that bad?”
“No. The problem is you’ll be one out of a thousand. It’s dreaming like this that makes labor its own worst enemy.”
It irritated him. “Why do you make everything look so bad? We’ve never had it so good. Here in America we have no class structure. There’s opportunity.”
“For a lucky few. If workers got their fair share of the wealth they create, there would be plenty for everyone. That’s the dream of the IWW.”
“Which is dynamiting its way to power.” Aksel knew he should stop there, but he couldn’t. “That’s what got my brother killed.”
“We’ve never used dynamite. Those are the lies of a capitalist press.” She paused for just long enough to make sure Aksel would get the next point. “What got your brother killed was that someone betrayed him.”
They stood there, angry with each other and silent, Aksel wishing he’d never gotten into the argument. The tension broke when Jouka came up the stairs, happily inebriated, and asked Aino to dance.