After the wedding, Aino refocused on her letter-writing campaign, doing it during what wealthy people called spare time. For Aino, it was sleep time. Since being jailed in Nordland, she had tried to get off two letters a night once Jouka fell asleep. She’d written over five hundred letters, urging other Wobblies and sympathizers to come to Nordland on November 22 to exercise their constitutional rights to assemble and to speak freely. At two cents a letter, that was over a week of Jouka’s wages. This concerned her more than it did Jouka.
As the word about the next free-speech fight got out to Wobblies, it of course got out to the good citizens of Nordland. The Nordland city council, reacting to people’s fears, quickly passed an ordinance shutting down the IWW Meeting Hall and prohibiting the IWW—and only the IWW—from speaking or assembling on city streets. The council also deputized several hundred “prominent and professional” men to protect the town. Jouka urged Aino not to go. Louhi increased her beer inventory.
On November 20, Aino pressed her blouse and long skirt, took in her coat a little at the waist, and left for Nordland. She got off the boat on November 22 wearing her good shoes, which were soon wet with mud and damp sawdust from the streets. She immediately began buttonholing loggers and mill workers outside the saloons and barbershops, handing out leaflets, urging them to attend the rally that night on Crane Street. One of the speakers was to be Joe Hill, Hillström’s latest pseudonym. Aino could never think of him as anything other than Joe Hillström.
The citizens of Nordland were scared. Wobblies had been arriving by train, climbing illegally onto the cars, hanging from the iron rungs that formed the ladders up the sides of the boxcars, clinging to the floors of the flatbeds, huddled on the narrow plank walkways that ran down the center of the roofs of boxcars.
Chief of Police Brewer, basking in his role as protector of civilization, passed out the usual ax handles and wooden wheel spokes to other recently deputized protectors of civilization.
Aino felt like a nesting robin beneath a circling hawk.
The afternoon of the rally, the hawk struck with ruthless efficiency. Hillström, still singing, was frog-marched to jail by four police officers. Angry men grabbed Aino’s bundle of red cards, ground them into the mud, and dragged her to jail as well, but not before beating her with ax handles and billy clubs.
Thrown into a cell by herself, Aino was flooded with memories of the prison in Helsinki, hanging by her wrists from the ceiling, shivering with cold. She backed into a corner of the Nordland cell, clamping her jaw against the pain from the beating, fighting the urge to crumple to the floor in a fetal position. Then she heard the singing coming from the other cells at a volume that sounded as though each cell held several men. Aino walked to her cell door, put her hands on the bars, and joined in as loud as she could sing.
By nightfall, the jail was overflowing. She was now packed in with twelve others, including Hillström. Sympathizers pushed sandwiches through the outer window of the cell but were soon driven away.
When there was no more room to house more of the arrested Wobblies, the deputized citizens simply started dragging men out of jail and beating them. They would herd these men—or if the men were unconscious, throw them—into wagons and haul them out of town, telling them that if they came back it would be even worse for them. They came back.
Louhi watched the whole affair somewhat philosophically, noting that when you have power, you don’t want anything to change, and when you’re powerless, you can’t change anything. She stopped her philosophical musing when Belle Sorenson, the manager of Tannika House, came to her with declining sales figures. Louhi sent for Drummond.
“Goddamnit, Al, it’s plain bad for business. Three-quarters of this town is male and if my arithmetic is still good that makes at least half of the men single. But now three-quarters of them are out there singing songs and making sandwiches for a bunch of communist rabble-rousing antibusiness …” She controlled her temper. “No one’s screwing. Bar receipts are in the shit house. They’re all high and mighty about One Big Union and solidarity with these communist …” She caught herself. “Al, you need to carry two arguments to the city council. First, the city is acting illegally. Don’t think these Wobblies can’t bring in some highfalutin do-gooder lawyers to take the city to court. And the city will lose. It screwed the Wobblies out of their right to have a meeting place. That’s unconstitutional. Then the city screwed them again by making ordinances about where they can gather and give speeches on the streets. That’s also unconstitutional.”
“OK,” Al said, a little bemused. “Why this sudden concern for the Bill of Rights?”
“Because those stupid knuckleheads in the city council, and that includes you, don’t see that if we double these workers’ wages, we double our profits. Where in hell are eight or ten thousand single men going to spend that extra money? They sure as hell aren’t buying encyclopedias and Bibles.”
Aino spent Christmas in jail.
Matti and Kyllikki, with considerable trepidation, went to spend Christmas in Astoria.
It had taken Kyllikki’s mother several months to get her father to agree to let “that goddamned Koski” into the house. Matti had stood his ground firmly, saying, “He can come to my house if he wants.”
The women saw it as just another bump in the road of managing their men for their own good and went to work on it with relish. Kyllikki getting pregnant in early June had lent considerable strength to their arguments for making peace. Still, two stubborn proud men, she mused to herself, watching her husband’s face as he looked at the river, and she wouldn’t for a moment wish them to be any other way. It was like choosing to ride a spirited horse. You knew what you were in for before you got into the saddle, but you still wanted to ride. She smiled and put her hand on her increasingly round tummy. She hoped it was a girl, someone to talk with when she was doing the chores, Matti being gone from dark to dark. Matti wanted a boy, someone to go logging with. She worried about Matti constantly. Someone died in Chinook and Clatsop Counties nearly every other week fishing or logging. And she couldn’t imagine a son going logging. It really wasn’t inconsistent. Her job was protecting her children. His job was protecting her—and that included providing.
“Why do you keep smiling?” Matti asked.
“Just thinking about our baby.”
Matti did not respond.
“What’s on your mind?” she prompted.
“I was just thinking maybe I could bid on some forty-year-old second growth. Pilings are being used building docks, and that seining ground out to the west of us must have one hundred pilings. Second-growth trees might be just the right size. Way easier logging. There’s also government money in pilings: public docks, bridges.”
“Do you ever stop thinking about logging?”
“In bed,” he answered.
“That had better not be because you’re asleep.”
She saw his pleasure in his eyes.
When they reached her house—as she still thought of it—she noticed that her mother had put a beautiful wreath on the door. She hesitated to knock. Even she was nervous. One spirited horse she could manage. Two, with one of them still clinging to the notion that both mares belonged to him, she wasn’t so sure about.
Her mother opened the door. She could see her father through the door of the living room, looking at the river. The foyer had been garlanded with fir boughs and holly. When they walked into the living room, she let out a little squeak and clapped her hands, beaming at her mother and the beautiful tree. It had all the old familiar ornaments in the little crèche beneath it that she had known all her life. Unlit candles were attached to its branches, waiting to be turned into light. “Oh, Mother, it’s beautiful.”
Her mother beamed. Then Kyllikki gave her father a hug and stood back. He was stiff as a fence post and sunk in deep.
He didn’t offer his hand to Matti. Matti stood there saying nothing.
Her mother began bustling around, getting her and Matti seated, asking about coffee. Her father had settled into his usual chair.
Her mother brought coffee in silence.
Well, Kyllikki thought, time for some gentle heels to the flanks. “Isä, I’m sorry we ran off.” She looked over at Matti, smiling. “Aren’t we, Matti?” There was not a sound from Matti. Damn him he could be stubborn and after they had talked about it and agreed. She didn’t want to use spurs. “Matti,” she said quietly.
Matti put his coffee on the end table by his chair. “We’re sorry.”
She allowed herself a moment of triumph, then took a breath. “But we wouldn’t have had to if you hadn’t been trying to do everything you could to stop us.”
Her father put his coffee cup down. So far, they were still both sitting. Her heart rate was picking up. This couldn’t be good for the baby. Oh dear, now what?
Her mother broke in. “We want to apologize for that, don’t we, Emil?”
Good old Mom. She had just reined Daddy around to face a united front. One thing her father never did was disagree with her mother in public.
“Matti,” her mother said, “You’re going to be the father of our grandchild.” Her mother looked right at her father then. She was leaning over the horse’s neck and using the crop on both flanks. Here we go. “Emil, you apologize for sending those thugs.”
“I did no such thing.”
“Emil.”
“I only did it because I wanted so much more for you,” he said to Kyllikki.
Oh, dear, she just got put back in the saddle. “I know, Daddy. I know.”
He looked around, anything to avoid looking at a person. “I only wanted them to rough him up. Discourage him. They didn’t have any weapons and he nearly killed one of them.”
Matti stood up. “You don’t call a goddamned baseball bat a weapon?” he said way too evenly.
“Matti, please sit down,” Kyllikki said.
Matti walked over to the window instead.
“I don’t want some killer in the family,” her father said.
Kyllikki stood up abruptly. “No. Neither do I,” she said. “He’s no killer. It was three to one and they had baseball bats.”
Her father now stood up saying, “He could’ve run.”
Matti turned around. There was cold fury in his eyes. Oh, God, his sisu was up and so was her father’s. She glanced at her mother with a pleading look.
Hilda Saari placed herself between Matti and her husband. “Don’t either of you move or say a word.” Then, to Kyllikki’s horror, her mother left the room.
All three stood, silent. She felt her heart hammering.
Then her mother returned. She held a puukko that Kyllikki had never seen before out in front of her and walked slowly over to her father. Whatever she was saying to him, she was saying it without words. They were just looking at each other.
“You’ve kept that?” he asked. “All these years?”
She nodded slowly.
She watched some struggle play itself out on her father’s face. Then it softened. “Go put it away,” he said quietly. Her mother looked at him with love, nodded, and left the room. He was still struggling with something when she returned.
“Why don’t we all sit down,” Hilda said.
“No,” her father said. He straightened and addressed Matti. “I’m glad you didn’t run. I wouldn’t have either.” He paused. “Didn’t.”
Kyllikki looked at him. She knew this was all he was ever going to say about whatever it was.
Then he smiled and reached out his hand to Matti. “But that puukko of yours cost me one hundred dollars to pay the hospital bill, another fifty dollars each, and one hundred dollars for the man you nearly killed.”
Matti shook his hand. “I shouldn’t have sat outside your house eating that picnic,” he said. “It was childish.”
Something passed between them. Kyllikki didn’t know what exactly, but it was something like a secret handshake. Matti; seeing that knife; her father saying, “Didn’t.” It was all done without explicit words, but suddenly it was as if they were on the same team.
Both men sat down. It was over. They started talking about lumber prices and the growth prospects of Astoria and the lower Columbia region. She looked down at the promise of the new child. She had to laugh at herself. She had a long way to go before she could ride like her mother.
Reder Logging shut down at Christmas because of snow and mud and Jouka visited Aino in the Nordland jail on Boxing Day. He brought an orange and some pulla that Lempi had baked for her. He was subdued. He said he’d had Christmas dinner at Ilmahenki, but Matti and Kyllikki had gone to Astoria for Christmas with the Saaris. After struggling for an hour to make conversation, he left.
Aino spent twelve more days in jail, each day a battle against memories. She held on, sustained by the righteousness of her cause and the support of so many comrades in jail with her.
Ashamed of the way the city was handling the situation, many citizens started to pressure the city council to back off. Drummond rallied business owners who were seeing sharp decreases in sales. They put additional pressure on the council. When the city treasurer pointed out the costs of jailing so many people, the councilors crumbled. On January 7, 1912, they repealed the ordinance banning speech and assembly and even paid some money to the IWW for shutting down its hall.
It was a complete triumph.
Aino, however, returned to a family that was embarrassed and an unhappy husband. Jouka, who had always supported the cause, didn’t make a scene. He just said, “Why can’t you be a normal wife?” and then came back long after dark on Sunday, smelling of whiskey.
Aino vowed to focus on the marriage.