Ilmari’s check cleared three weeks after the sale of the Ilmahenki logs and Matti opened an account in Astoria in the name of 200-Foot Logging. The following Sunday, Aino watched Matti and Aksel, who were studying the old steam donkey. The two friends hadn’t spoken for several minutes.
Finally, Matti said, “We’d get more power if Ilmari could rig an extra gear right there.” He pointed to a spot in the machinery.
“Yoh,” Aksel said.
They looked at the problem for a while.
“You’d lose power to the friction,” Aksel said.
Matti said nothing for a full minute. Then he pointed out another spot, “Maybe put it right there.”
“Yoh.”
More silence.
Aino thought she would go crazy. They were not even looking at each other, just looking at the equipment.
Finally, Aksel said, “It’ll take more inch-and-a-quarter cable. It’s expensive.”
“Yoh.”
“What would it leave us?”
“Two hundred,” Matti said.
More silence.
“You said ‘us,’” Matti said.
“Until I get my boat.”
Matti kicked the skids of the donkey gently, thinking. After a while he said, “Saaranpa has fifty acres of good fir and cedar left over from selling his homestead before moving to Astoria. No one will touch it, because it’s on a really steep ravine and over a mile from the river. He’ll sell it for two hundred dollars.”
“That’s the whole farm,” Aksel said. “What do you think we’d get for the logs?”
“Eight hundred. That quadruples the capital.”
“If everything goes right.”
Matti climbed up on the steam donkey and tugged on the large gear lever, moving the cogs into and out of the gears absentmindedly. “Sixty-forty, because I’m putting up the money. You want to look at the site?”
Aksel, his hands in his pockets, looked at his shoes and said nothing. Then he said, “Yoh.”
They shook hands and the partnership was formed.
Aino just shook her head and went back into the house.
The two friends took Ilmari’s boat upriver, towing it over the occasional rapids to just below where Deep River split into the north and middle forks. The river had narrowed to a steep canyon full of prime old-growth trees, thickly packed, most of them six to eight feet in diameter, but some monsters as well.
“I can see why it’s going for just two hundred dollars,” Aksel said. “You’ll have to yard downhill and you’ll get hung up on stumps all day long.”
Matti said nothing, his eyes moving from point to point. He gestured at a large tree. “Can you get a block to the top of that one the way you did back at Ilmahenki?”
Aksel looked at the tree, about a third of the way up the steep slope. “Yoh.”
Matti nodded. “Saaranpa will think we’re suckers. He doesn’t know what we know, and he doesn’t know we know it.”
* * *
Two weeks later, Aksel and Matti collected their final pay from John Reder. On Sunday, they were on the General Washington crossing the Columbia to Astoria. The canning factories were not working Sundays, but the June blueback run would be starting about now, followed by the big August Chinook run. Soon, dozens of canneries would be operating on two or even three shifts, seven days a week, from Hammond near the mouth of the river all the way upstream past Tongue Point on the Oregon side and Skomakawa on the Washington side. Next year, Aksel thought. Always next year.
Saaranpa was home and he sat down with the two of them while his wife served coffee. After half an hour of discussion, Saaranpa and his wife disappeared into their living room, leaving Matti and Aksel looking expectantly, even a little anxiously, at each other. Saaranpa came into the kitchen with a sales agreement. They shook hands on $180. Matti paid him in cash and 200-Foot Logging had its first timber purchase.
“Most loggers would just do it for the logging,” Aksel said in the boat going back.
“Most loggers,” Matti said.
“You’ve only got twenty dollars left.”
“No, twenty dollars of cash and eight hundred dollars of timber. We’ve already made a profit.”
“Golly sakes,” Aksel said in English, mimicking someone who didn’t curse. “Do I get to buy my boat tomorrow then?”
Matti looked at him. “You think you’re joking. Look. You go to the bank and put up your share of the timber as collateral, get the money, then sign a note with someone who sells you the boat, and you’re in business.”
Aksel laughed. “With no money?”
Matti looked up the river at the timber stretching away on both sides of the factories, nearly covering the waterfront of Astoria. “Aksel, this is America.”
Aksel and Matti moved into the sauna at Ilmahenki until they’d built themselves a crude shack next to Saaranpa’s timber. Then they moved the old steam donkey to the Saaranpa site and started logging.
Aino had told Lempi that Aksel was going to hang the high block, and she was at Ilmahenki only an hour after sunrise, helping Aino make sandwiches, getting coffee ready for when the boys showed up. When she poured Aksel his cup, she made sure she brushed his sleeve. He smiled up at her, a little shyly. Maybe she’d been too forward.
When the boys left, she and Aino cleaned up.
“He’s so hard to read,” Lempi finally burst out.
“Yoh. They practice it since they’re babies.”
“Rrrhhh,” Lempi growled in frustration. “Men.”
Lempi and Aino walked to the show, bringing the lunches. Aksel was already up at least eight stories on a Douglas fir, balancing on a springboard and chopping another niche, when they got there. He looked tiny, so far above her, and Lempi felt vertigo just watching him. Yet he was moving around and rigging the block as if he were on the ground instead of on eight inches of wood eighty feet up.
When Aksel came down, Lempi realized she hadn’t been breathing normally. All loggers had to be brave, skilled, and strong, but she doubted any would do what Aksel just did. At the same time, she knew he was no daredevil—even more impressive. She felt proud that she knew this quiet Swede, the best friend of the brother of her best friend. It just seemed so perfect how it could all work out, if only she could make it so.
Aksel was sorting out his gear when Lempi walked up to him. He looked up at her a little shyly. “That’s some good work,” Lempi said.
Aksel gave her a big grin, terribly pleased, but he quickly started fiddling with his gear. He couldn’t think of anything to say, so he just nodded at her, still grinning, feeling like a bumpkin.
She smiled and picked up his ax. “How come this is called a swamping ax?” she asked, using the English term.
It puzzled Aksel that she cared. “It’s because they call cutting limbs and cleaning logs up swamping. It’s the ax we use to do it.”
“You mean it’s different from the ones you use to chop down the trees?”
It pleased Aksel that this girl seemed genuinely interested in what he did. He picked the ax up and showed it to her. “See the bit, here,” he said, moving his finger along its curve. “It’s wider and rounder than the ones we use for felling. Better for cutting through limbs, but not so good for making headway into a big tree.”
“Oh, I see,” Lempi said. Still holding the ax out to her, Aksel watched Lempi touch the ax’s cheek with her fingertips and move them back and forth on it. Then she quickly pulled back her hand. He didn’t know whether to keep holding the ax out to her or put it down.
“Are you scared up there?” she asked.
How to answer truthfully but without looking bad? “Not so much,” he said.
She smiled at him, nodding. He thought maybe it was time to pick up his gear and started to do it.
“We brought coffee and sandwiches,” Lempi said.
“Oh. Good.”
“We’re setting up over there,” she said, nodding toward where he could see Aino. “See you there.” She smiled, then walked away toward Aino.
Aksel assembled his gear to move to the next place. He stood just a moment, watching Aino ready the lunch. He knew that to her he was just her little brother’s friend. Then he had a brilliant idea of how he could change that.