During Lempi’s last trimester, Aino visited her weekly, taking the log train down to Margaret Cove and catching a ride with a fishing boat or tug to Knappton. Several days before the new moon on May 13, Aino moved in with her. Maíjaliisa always said a new moon was nearly as good a stimulator of birth as a full. Aksel slept under a tarp in the boat so Aino could sleep in the bed with Lempi.
Lempi was nervous. Aino suspected the nerves were related to what happened with her first pregnancy as much as the coming birth, but Lempi never spoke of it.
The first contractions came at around six in the evening on May 15, 1916. The tide was flooding, so Aksel was downstream of Knappton on the north side of the river where the salmon would try to catch the tide going upriver. The water was shallow there, so they couldn’t pass easily under the gill net. The setting sun glowed on the sails of the returning boats lined up to have their fish boxes lifted and weighed.
Lempi was doing fine, so Aino went to look for Aksel. She recognized him immediately, focused on bringing his boat into the dock in a light wind. He dropped the sail and rowed the boat up to the standing lines coming from the wharf. He heaved on the stern line, pulling up close to the ladder, and then hopped lightly up the ladder using only one hand. The other held one of the wool sweaters Lempi knitted for him and his lunch pail. He had seen Aino waiting on the wharf and came running.
“Is she OK? Is it happening?”
“She’s OK. It’s happening.”
He ran to the shack. Aino smiled at his receding back. A small pang of envy went through her. Maybe it was her fault she and Jouka didn’t have what Aksel and Lempi had. Jouka loved her and she didn’t love him—not the way Lempi loved Aksel—and that was that. She walked to the shack. Unlike Aksel, she knew there was plenty of time before the baby came. Another long night. She thought of her mother. Maíjaliisa would have known what could go wrong with an abortion and how it might affect a later birth. She, herself, knew nothing about what happened past the cervix. She paused, watching the long shadows of the hills darken the water. Far off to the east, Mount Saint Helens glowed orange. Behind it, even farther east, she saw the last alpenglow off Mount Adams, tiny in the distance, a nub against the gathering dark from the east. It was a rare day, to see all the way to Adams. She hoped it was a good omen.
By midnight, Lempi was in trouble. She was dilating, but the baby simply wasn’t moving down. Something was in the way. Lempi started bleeding.
Aino kept Aksel busy, washing out bloody cloths, boiling them, drying them over the woodstove, sometimes frying them right on the hot metal. The little cabin became overheated. She opened both small windows and the door. Cool air off the water kept the temperature down, but it made the lamp flicker, which made it even harder for her to see. She apologized to Lempi and put her hand in as far she could, trying to feel for the blockage. Lempi clamped down on one of the freshly washed cloths. A wave of contractions hit her and nothing moved. She screamed. The pain passed. She was sweating profusely even with the door and windows open.
The last scream brought Mrs. Leppälä from the hut next door. She carried her nine-month-old, and her three-year-old daughter clung to her skirt. Her husband had gone over to the Hammond side of the river for the night, hoping to catch the next flood just outside the shipping channel.
“What can I do?”
“Hold her head. For comfort. There’s not much else.”
“What’s wrong?” she mouthed to Aino from behind Lempi’s head.
Aino shook her head and nodded toward the door.
“Are you OK, Lempi?” Aino asked. “I need a little air.”
Lempi shook her head no but gasped, “Sure. OK.”
Outside, Aino gave Mrs. Leppälä the best explanation she could.
“She needs a doctor,” Mrs. Leppälä said.
“You have one in mind? You know what the wives of the mill workers call that shoe clerk the sawmill hired.”
“The Handyman,” Mrs. Leppälä answered, as if she were spitting. “She needs a real doctor.”
“If she could afford a real doctor, she’d be in Astoria right now. Besides, she doesn’t have anyone to stay with; they’d have to pay that bill, too.”
When Lempi started screaming again, Mrs. Leppälä took the children away. Her daughter was crying with fear at the screaming and her nine-month-old son was crying because his sister was crying.
At around 2:00 a.m., the blood flow overwhelmed the bandages and soaked the bed. Aksel was holding Lempi’s left hand with both of his hands and pressing it to his face, kissing her fingers. Aino stuffed bandages, still not dry, up as far as she could, but the bleeding was deep inside where no pressure could be applied.
This was far worse than Margaret Reder’s delivery. Margaret wasn’t bleeding like this. She wanted desperately to tell Aksel that she didn’t know what to do. She’d only heard her mother talk about such things. She wanted to tell him it was beyond her, to tell him how scared she was that she could do something wrong and kill her best friend. But Aksel was focused on Lempi, as he should be. She was alone in this. No one was coming.
At 3:00 a.m. Lempi’s face had gone from bright red with exertion to sweaty pale. Aino had trouble finding her pulse. Aksel looked at Aino. Without saying a word, she knew he understood. She nodded at him and he nodded back, then returned to stroking Lempi’s hands and belly.
Aino stepped outside and breathed in the cool damp air and all the smells of the river. She straightened her skirt, smoothed her apron, and then put her palms on top of her head and shut her eyes, just feeling the river moving past her. She brought her hands down and looked at them, dimly pale in the darkness of the new moon. She had her hands. Men and women have had their hands forever. Some prayed with them. Not her. She consciously squared her shoulders and went back inside. She knew what had to be done. She didn’t know if she could manage to do it.
Aino set Aksel to work heating two kitchen knives red hot. She used Aksel’s sharp puukko and a straight razor to cut vertically through Lempi’s abdomen, cauterizing the blood vessels with one glowing knife, switching it with the second knife when the first cooled. Then, she spread apart Lempi’s abdominal muscles to expose her womb and cut again. Massive amounts of blood gushed out. The baby was dead.
It took nearly an hour to sew Lempi up. During that time, Aksel held the dead baby, a little boy, looking at his face. When Aino was finished, he placed the baby on Lempi’s chest. Lempi fell asleep and Aino took the baby and wrapped it in a towel.
As early daylight filtered through the window, Lempi suddenly woke up. She turned toward Aksel and threw her right arm across his shoulder as he bent over her, his knees on the floor. She pulled his head down tight against her chest—holding him as if she’d never let go—and then she let go.
That evening several women from the old henhouse group came by to get the body ready for the viewing. When they were done, they left Aksel and Aino alone. The sunset was beautiful, the high clouds above the river turning into islands of orange and then blood red.
Aksel lit a candle and puddled wax on the headboard to hold it over Lempi.
Worn with grief, lack of sleep, and a vague sense she’d done something wrong, Aino walked to the river’s edge. The river brought life to parched uplands. It fed verdant marshes. It pulsed with salmon as they surged toward their birthplaces. The river, however, flowed in only one direction, toward the sea. She felt that Lempi and her baby were flowing there now, flowing with the great river, toward the only destination of everyone.
She heard Aksel, who’d come up behind her. She faced him. His eyes were dull with grief. Although they were close together on that narrow beach, the space between them was huge. Putting one hand under her chin and his other on her shoulder, he tilted her head up. “Aino,” he said. “It wasn’t your fault.”
She sobbed and hugged him. Her relief was palpable. As they held each other in their pain, Aksel murmured into her ear: “Some wrongs even you can’t fix.”
Aksel had Lempi buried on Peaceful Hill just outside Tapiola, her dead baby tucked in her arms.
Aino went over the birth, again and again. If she had only made Lempi tell her about the abortion. Had Lempi bled during that, too? If she knew, she’d have forced her to go to a doctor in Astoria, hang the cost. She hadn’t known, but maybe she still should have forced Lempi to go to Astoria. But not even a doctor could stop interior bleeding. The ifs and buts of a crisis endure forever.
A week after the funeral, Aino made the journey back to Knappton. Aksel’s clothes were gone. Everything else was left behind—Lempi’s clothes, pots, dresser, glasses, tableware; the lantern on the table; the drawer that held Lempi’s underclothes, which she had prized so highly. The bed showed only the springs.
Aino walked to the dock and saw the Lempi swinging gently up and down on her pulleys, only she was no longer the Lempi. Gleason, Knappton Packing’s supervisor, had already repainted Number 27 over Lempi’s name.
In July, Kyllikki gave birth to a healthy baby girl, Pilvi, in St. Mary Hospital. The river flowed on.