She could hide her bruises from everybody except Jouka. When he first saw them, he went very quiet. He gently put his hand on the bruise on her arm, then withdrew it. Looking her in the eye he said, “Now, are you really done?”
She couldn’t answer him and said nothing.
Winter in the Deep River valley settled in, weeks of cold rain and short days. Christmas at Ilmahenki was a bright spot. Both Matti and Aksel came down from the Klawachuck. Midnight services with candles at the little church were followed by ginger cookies and glögg, sweet hot wine punch garnished with raisins and slivered almonds. Ilmari objected to having alcohol in the house, but he was overruled by everyone else. He didn’t seem to mind too much. Jouka and Ilmari played until four in the morning, Jouka getting increasingly inebriated until he collapsed asleep in the corner, his fiddle on his chest and his bow in his hand. Aino put a blanket over him and crawled into bed with Ilmari and Rauha.
January was worse than December. It brought a wet sluggish snow that made Aino long for Suomi. It gave Ilmari more time to see Vasutäti.
Throughout that January, Jouka would come home soaked through, his boots leaving puddles overnight from water that seeped out of the leather. In the morning, he put them on over dry socks, which turned wet within minutes. In early February, however, Jouka came home with a ray of sunshine.
He burst open the door to the shack, the inrushing cold air making the kerosene lantern waver and Aino jerk back from the list of IWW card carriers she was updating to send to Portland.
Sitting on the doorsill, pulling off his caulk boots, he said, “Reder’s going to buy a Shay!” He turned to look at her, excitement on his face
“OK, what’s a Shay?” she asked, smiling. She knew full well it was a type of logging train engine but didn’t want to deprive Jouka of whatever it was about one that excited him.
He grinned, turned around, and continued pulling off his caulks. “It’s a locomotive that uses a gear to move the power from the main shaft to the drive wheels instead of using reciprocating arms like what we have now.”
“I assume that’s good.”
“You bet it’s good.” He grunted and tugged his second boot off. “It can take sharper curves and go up steeper inclines. Saves lots of money building tracks.” Jouka came over to the table, leaned over her, smelling her hair and holding her shoulders. “I’m going to learn how to run it. I’ll be the engineer.” He moved to the sink, where he poured water into a bowl and splashed his face and hands.
“Did Reder give you the job?”
“No, no. Not yet. And I’ll probably be up against the donkey punchers, because they already know steam. But no one knows how to run a Shay or even more important how to fix one.”
“Why not give the job to Dale Swanson?”
“You heard he had that blackout last month.”
“Yoh.”
“He’s getting old. Reder thinks it’s his heart. Reder will sell Old Number Two and put Swanson in the machine shop.”
“Just like that. One blackout.”
“He’s not going to risk a new Shay on an old man.” He poured coffee and sat down. His clothes were starting to steam and were still covered with dirt and duff.
“You need to change clothes.”
“No. You don’t understand. An engineer can get double what I’m making now. He works out of the rain. It’s like an indoor job!”
“You need to change your clothes.” She looked up at him as she was unbuttoning his shirt. “How are you going to learn how to run the Shay? Give me your shirt.”
Jouka slipped his suspenders down and unbuttoned his wool shirt as he talked. “I’m going to order books about it.”
“Jouka,” she said. “You can’t read. What foolishness is getting into you?”
He stood up and now hopping on one foot tugged off his trousers. “Aksel told me once … when we were both in the bunkhouse … the technical manuals have pictures and diagrams. You don’t need to know how to read.”
“Aksel’s a dreamer and you know it.”
“But, Aino, I saw the technical drawings for Old Number Two. Swanson let me look at them and …” He walked over to the stove and handed her his trousers, which she hung next to his shirt. There was no use washing them, she thought. They’d only be dirty again the next day. Jouka was still talking. “I understood them! Just looking at the drawings. Aino, I understood.”
She’d never seen him as animated and she was happy for him, but she feared that his bubble would be burst by harsh reality. She couldn’t imagine learning anything from a book without being able to read words. All the donkey punchers were Finns from Finland, which Jouka wasn’t. They could all read.
“Your long johns are wet, too,” Aino said.
Jouka turned his back and pulled his arms from the top of the long johns and then pulled the rest from his feet. He handed the long johns to Aino and stood there naked, looking at her.
She had to smile at him. “Get dressed, for heaven’s sake.”
He got his other pair of long johns out of the bureau and put them on as she fired up the stove.
“Aino,” he said. “I can make headway. I know I can.”
A month later the diagrams for the Shay arrived along with two books on steam engines. Jouka cleared the table after dinner every night and pored over the diagrams, occasionally asking Aino to read something. He sometimes crawled into bed after midnight, getting only four hours of sleep before heading back to work at 4:30. He constantly sketched machine pictures from memory, looked at diagrams, and then corrected the sketches. He still played at the Saturday dances, but he was home right afterward, needing to sleep so he could get up with the light on Sunday and keep at the books. He’d stopped drinking.
One Sunday evening Aino returned after dark to find Jouka at the table with the kerosene lamp. He looked up at her when she came in the door. Something had changed in his face these past couple of months. There was a maturity she hadn’t seen before—or maybe it had just arrived. She hadn’t even got her coat off when he said, “There’s going to be a test.”
“What kind of test?”
“The Lima Locomotive Works representative gives it. They build the Shays. Whoever passes gets certified. Reder says that whoever gets the best marks will get to run the lokie.” He used the logger slang for locomotive.
“How are you going to pass a test if you can’t read the questions?”
“Reder says he’ll ask the Lima representative to do it orally.”
“Are you still up against the donkey punchers?”
“Yoh,” he said in a lower voice. Then he brightened. “You know how much time I’ve been spending with Swanson on Number Two. I’ve taken it apart and put it back together at least three times. None of the donkey punchers have done that. Can do that.”
“Maybe they don’t need to.” She watched Jouka’s face change. She’d gone too far trying to protect him.
“Aino, I can do this. I know that lokie so well now.”
She knelt beside him. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I know,” Jouka said. He gently stroked her hair. “I know,” he murmured. “You just couldn’t say it.”
She put her cheek on his leg. This closeness between them, so rare.
The Lima representative had been up to Camp Three two times already. Jouka told her he was clearly in the lead. Still, she remained worried that he was just heading for an embarrassing disappointment. Certainly, he had a way with engines and boilers. Even Matti commented on it. She wondered if she should risk talking with Margaret, but she quickly shut the thought down. She didn’t want any favors from Margaret, and if Jouka ever found out, there would be hell to pay.
He came in for lunch on the day of the test and changed into his Sunday clothes. They were both aware that the test was going to cost them half a day’s pay. She kissed him goodbye and he headed to the dining hall where the Lima rep would be giving the test. She watched him as he made his way on the path through the slash. She looked around at the tumble of shacks; the mud; the six-to-ten-foot-high stumps dead in the ground; the litter of cables, tin cans, and broken boxes.
She looked over at the mess hall, which reminded her of working there. That made her think of Lempi. Aino knew Lempi was being courted by Huttula—an old man like Ullakko, in his late thirties—but Lempi didn’t seem to mind his age. Aino had hoped Aksel would come to his senses, but Lempi just flat out told her she’d given up on him. Huttula was a good worker and she wanted a baby. Boys could wait. Girls couldn’t.
She walked back inside the shack. The letter Ilmari had walked up to Camp Three last Saturday was still on top of the bureau. Word had come from a released prisoner that their father had died in a Siberian labor camp sometime around 1908. He’d lasted three years. He would be fifty-nine now. She felt like crying for the futility of it all: Finnish independence, the revolution, Jouka’s plans, Matti’s plans, the One Big Union. Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. Ecclesiastes, 1:2.
She closed the door, shutting out the mud and smell and noise and dead stumps. Now, even her best friend, Lempi, was going to get married and have children. The image of the little disguised grave by Deep River hit her. She laid her head on the table and cried.
The test was over just before dark. She had made riisipuuro, a thick rice and cream pudding, flavored with blackberry jam, a favorite of Jouka’s. He ate it, saying nothing, and she feared the worst. When he finished, she asked, “Well? How did it go?”
Jouka leaned back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “There wasn’t a goddamned thing on that test that I didn’t know.” He broke out in a huge grin.
She smiled at him, greatly relieved. “Good,” she said.
Three days later, the letter came certifying him as a qualified Shay engineer. Jouka had Aino read it aloud to him three times before he took it over to Reder’s office. Then he made a frame for it and put it on the wall just opposite the door. One night after dinner he took out his fiddle and made a song up about a brave Shay engineer, moving around in rhythm, swinging his body with the music. They both were laughing by the time he finished and together they tumbled onto the bed.
Reder paired Jouka with Dale Swanson for three days on the old locomotive, then moved Swanson to the machine shop, leaving Jouka on his own until mid-April when the Shay was scheduled to arrive. He tasked Jouka with training his best donkey puncher on the old locomotive, freeing Jouka for the new Shay.
Moving huge logs to water is extremely difficult. Moving a thirty-five-ton Shay locomotive from water to railroad tracks is more difficult.
The Shay had arrived by barge, towed and pushed by river tugs to where it now sat, gently moving with the remnant of swell from the wide main course of the Columbia in Margaret Cove.
Jouka stood next to John Reder like an anxious father, looking at the black giant, its boiler already fired and its steam up, soon his to run. The rail line had been completed from the new show to Margaret Cove and now the final piece of track was being finished. Set on pilings, it led right onto the barge.
Reder looked at Jouka. He had chosen to supervise the transfer himself. Jouka understood. If this transfer from barge to rail line went badly, it could bankrupt Reder Logging and end the job of Jouka’s dreams. He climbed into the cab.
The locomotive had been set on rails on the barge. The barge’s rails had to be lined up perfectly with the shoreline rail spur. Cables had been rigged on both sides of the barge’s bow, which had been winched tight to the shoreline, as insurance in case some vagary of wind or tide forced the barge out of line. This, however, was only some insurance against the barge drifting horizontally. The Columbia River had swells. Even though Margaret Cove was sheltered from the main channel of the river, the remains of swells washed up against the beach, making the barge subject to vertical movement should a large swell come into the bay and lift the stern or, worse, move the bow vertically. One slip, one faulty rigging job, one bad or misunderstood signal, one cable snapping, one large swell and the locomotive could go plunging into the deep bay, taking Jouka with it.
Reder looked at Jouka. “Here we go,” he said. He started off toward the boom where he could see everything better.
Jouka peered out the right cab window and then the left, watching the rigging crew manning the cables.
Reder, looking at the river, timing the swell, gave a vigorous hand signal. Jouka, slowly eased steam into the pistons. He tried to become part of the locomotive instead of just being on it. The Shay quivered. More steam. The Shay moved. Barge crewmen on both sides gave him the signal that the wheels of the Shay’s leading bogie had moved onto the land-linked track. Now, came the critical moment. The front of the locomotive hit track on the temporary pilings, taking weight off the barge and causing it to move upward. If Jouka didn’t get across the juncture between barge and pilings fast enough, it would be his first and last time at the throttle of a locomotive, maybe his last time ever. He added power and speed.
The nimble Shay hit the rail line on the pilings at about ten miles per hour, which seemed to Jouka like a hundred. He heard a cheer from the barge crew behind him at the same time he felt the difference in motion beneath him. He was on the pilings now, hoping they had been placed firmly enough so the rail line wouldn’t move as it bore weight. Within seconds, he hit tracks on solid ground. His felt a wave of relief and satisfaction. His heart was pounding. He’d done it.
He stopped the engine and gave a long shrill toot on the whistle. Reder ran down the temporary tracks and climbed into the cab. He pounded Jouka on the back and grabbing the lanyard of the whistle pulled a series of short toots, grinning like a schoolboy.
* * *
Over the next two days, as the same procedure unloaded the railcars, Jouka brought the engine up to full pressure several times and then ran it by itself all the way up the line.
The felling and yarding operations were already running at full speed when Jouka brought the first train of empty cars to the landing. With a long blast on the engine’s whistle, the first load started to the cove where the temporary spur had been replaced by logs laid side by side, perpendicular to the rail line and going down underwater in the bay. These logs formed a sturdy ramp for other logs to be rolled from tiltable car decks to go smashing into the water, raising spectacular fountains.
Jouka lay on the whistle all the way down to the water, bringing in the first load.