When Matti knocked on the Saaris’ door, Hilda Saari opened it. She called out, “Kyllikki, your children’s father is here.” She left him there.
Kyllikki came from the kitchen, wiping her hands with a towel. Before she said anything, Suvi, now five, burst through the door from behind her, squealing with pleasure. She was up in Matti’s arms, kissing him repeatedly on his cheeks, when Aarni, now three, came through the door, a wooden spoon in his hand. Matti put Suvi on the floor and stood tall, reaching out to Aarni. Aarni pointed the spoon at him, said, “Bang,” and ran back into the kitchen.
“You’re dead,” Kyllikki said, looking at Matti.
Matti opened his arms to her. She folded hers. Suvi, clinging to Matti’s trousers, alternated between looking at Matti and looking at her mother.
“If it wasn’t for the children …”
“I’m sorry.”
“Never. Never again, with the puukko.”
“Never again.”
Matti began to move into the doorway, but Kyllikki didn’t budge. “Never again, cheat on a business deal, cheat on anyone.”
Matti looked down at his shoes. He looked into her eyes. “Never.”
“Suvi,” Kyllikki said. “Show your isä his bed.” She walked back into the kitchen. Suvi looked up at her father, smiled somewhat tentatively, and then led him by his hand down into the basement.
For Matti, starting again from the bottom took on a whole new meaning.
* * *
Four days after Matti’s homecoming, on September 5, 1917, the Justice Department raided forty-eight IWW halls across the United States using the Espionage Act for its authority. In Chicago alone, the department indicted 160 IWW leaders for “interfering with the war effort.” All faced long prison sentences; those born in other countries faced deportation.
Stories circulated in newspapers about strikers being financed by German gold and being organized by German spies. Thugs were hired to beat strikers on the picket lines. Local police forces arrested strikers under any number of pretexts. As the numbers of arrested strikers rose, the authorities resorted to building bull pens to hold them, as they’d done during the free-speech fights. False stories were published in newspapers saying that strikes were being broken and loggers returning to work elsewhere, so strikers would lose heart. Union halls were ransacked. Angry citizens threatened strikers’ families. One striker in Troy, Montana, was burned alive in jail.
Aino knew that she was performing a delicate balancing act. On the one hand, she had to deliver a settlement for Reder to keep Matti free. On the other, she did not want to sell out the strikers, throwing months of fear and hardship under the wheels of the capitalists’ and the federal government’s freight train. She needed a way for both sides to claim victory. After considerable thought, she knew her course.
She started with the family men. All Camp Three families were short on food and, although food could be supplemented with hunting and fishing, winter loomed. The family men would support Aino against the hard-liners. In addition, she made sure that news about the constant arrests of organizers under the Espionage Act was always in front of the men—and always with the carefully worded innuendo that strikers at Camp Three would be next. On September 12, when the Camp Three strike committee met, she was pretty sure the vote on her proposal would go her way.
“We are going to pretend we agree to the next proposal,” she said. “We make sure everyone knows we’re doing this because we’re loyal American citizens and are totally behind the war effort. If it were not for our willingness to sacrifice for the war effort, we would still be on strike.” She paused, looking at each hard-liner in turn. “Then, we’re going to work like Hoosiers and shoe clerks and eat the bosses’ food.”
There was a moment of silence, then a few people who got the strategy laughed. As others caught on, the room started to buzz. Anyone who couldn’t log was either a Hoosier—a dumb farmer—or a shoe clerk: a city boy.
“The bosses will know what we’re doing, but they’ll never be able to buck the pressure from the army. They’ll happily take some logs over no logs. Meanwhile, we get paid and fed by Reder.”
There were smiles of approval, a few choice ideas about how to work like a Hoosier, and the vote went her way.
Aino’s idea spread quickly to mills and logging camps all across the region. When the expected government offer arrived a week later, Reder’s loggers didn’t make a single protest, nor did loggers from the other camps. The big timber industry strike was “settled” under the approving eye of the United States Army. Owners had to accept so as not to appear unpatriotic; they wanted to accept to avoid losing their army contracts.
Trees went down and logs moved to the mills, but there was a dramatic rise in fouled cables, logjams, slipping chokers, logs dropped from too high onto railcars and damaging the undercarriages, lost tools, conferences to plan how to do something that’d been done a thousand times, leisurely lunches, being unable to understand what a head push wanted, and inability to understand English. The owners knew what was going on, but none of them were going to buck their biggest customer, the U.S. government. And—they were making money again.
Watching from the deck of the General Washington as the houses and steep hills of Astoria came ever closer, Aino was despondent. She’d freed Matti and she hadn’t betrayed the cause. Some concessions had been made, but they fell far short of what the loggers needed and she regretted what the strike had cost. She knew many of the imprisoned Wobblies. Public opinion, usually sympathetic to the plight of the workingmen, had turned against them as she’d predicted. The tactic of working like Hoosiers was a balancing act: the pressure had to be kept on owners, but stopping or slowing work too much would be seen as unpatriotic.
The late-September light and crisp air, the water of the great river sparkling in the sunshine, the leaves of the oaks and alders turning yellow with the occasional brilliant red of a vine maple peeping through—all went unnoticed. Amid this beauty, she came ashore on the Oregon side, her new home, carrying the weight of the strike’s biggest cost: Jouka and her ruined marriage.
It took her until sunset to find Jouka at the Desdemona Club, a proud workingman’s club with a sign outside offering its members coffee, tea, and fellowship. With regular monthly payments to the Astoria police and several judges, everyone could enjoy tea and fellowship without interference. Prohibition had been voted in, primarily by Oregon women. Most men didn’t give a damn about it, including the police who let the Desdemona Club alone. Half of them drank there themselves.
The bouncer at the door was surly. There was certainly no law against women being in the club; lots of women were in the club, women of a certain type. But he knew Jouka was inside, so he let her in.
It took a moment for Aino’s eyes to adjust to the low light of three electric bulbs just over the bar. Some of the tables still had kerosene lanterns. The smell of stale tobacco smoke and spilled beer hit her as if she were coming into a warm barn from a cold Finnish night. The open door had briefly cast bright light against the near wall, but now it was closed. Gradually she could make out the bodies and faces of the men and a few working girls. At the far end of the bar, three full and two empty shot glasses in front of him, sat Jouka, staring at the glasses. The Jouka she’d known—bigger than life—looked older and smaller, bending over his drinks as if guarding them instead of tossing them down with laughter. Her heart lurched.
She worked her way through the standing people and touched her hand to his shoulder. He turned toward her, his eyes bleary and slightly bloodshot. “So,” he said. “You gave up organizing for your brother.”
But not for him, she filled in silently.
Jouka pushed a glass toward her on the bar. “Sit down. Welcome to Astoria. Have a drink.”
“You know I don’t drink,” she said.
“Oh, yeah. How could I forget?” He picked up the glass he had offered, gulped the liquor down, then held it in front of her face. “Only half an hour of work on the docks, when I get work.” He signaled with his hands to the barkeeper for two more shot glasses. “You want a beer? Lime phosphate?”
“I want you to come home with me.”
“Where’s that?”
“Well, where are you living now?”
“I’m living in a poikataloja on Fourteenth Street. Three to a room. My roommates will be delighted.”
“Jouka, look at me, please.” He did. “I want to try again. I want to make everything right.”
His face, lit by bare, low-wattage bulbs in ceiling fixtures, was stoic and sad.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
His face contorted, holding back tears. She touched his knee. “I’m so sorry,” she repeated putting her forehead on his thigh.
“Oh, Aino,” he moaned. He came to his feet, pulling her up with him and holding her close. “Oh, Aino. Why does it have to be so hard?”
They talked for over an hour. The poikataloja was out as a place to live for several reasons: it had only a three-holer in the back, no running water, no place to cook, and was occupied entirely by single men. She didn’t want to bring Jouka to Kyllikki’s house, because he smelled. It was awkward enough to impose on your sister-in-law’s parents without that. Jouka had put aside seven dollars in the time they’d been separated. Aino had fourteen dollars left from Jouka’s wages and an additional ten from her midwifery business.
Earning a living as a midwife was no longer an option in Astoria. There was a hospital, and local doctors were increasingly putting pressure on women to avoid midwives, claiming they were untrained, unhygienic, and unsafe. However, with the lumber strike settled, longshoring was picking up. They could get by as long as Jouka’s number got called often enough. To ensure this meant supplying the right people with bootleg whiskey and other gifts, all expensive. They agreed that Jouka would stay at the poikataloja and Aino at Kyllikki’s until they could find a place to rent.
When they left the Desdemona Club it was full dark. The night was clear and cold. The polestar could be seen hanging at the end of the Little Bear’s tail just above the dark hills on the Washington side of the river, but the city’s new electric street lamps made the Little Bear increasingly difficult to see. The Milky Way was undiscernible, lost in a foggy yellow glow.
Jouka walked Aino to the Saaris’. She’d just shut the door when Kyllikki came down the stairs after putting the children to bed.
Kyllikki’s nose wrinkled. “So, you found him.”
Aino nodded.
“At the Desdemona Club,” Kyllikki said.
Aino nodded again, pushed herself off the door, and began taking off her scarf and shawl.
“Come into the kitchen and sit down,” Kyllikki said. “We’ll have coffee. Everyone’s asleep. It’s just us. Like old times, when we first moved in with you and Jouka.”
Aino knew Kyllikki was trying to assuage her pride, reminding her that she and Jouka had put Kyllikki and Matti up.
“So?” Kyllikki said. “Tell me all.”
“Not much to tell.”
“He walked you home.”
“Yes. I feel like a schoolgirl talking to her mother. Stop it.”
Kyllikki laughed. “I will, if you talk.”
So, Aino did. It felt good talking with Kyllikki, so different from the earnest discussions with fellow Wobblies—even the women Wobblies—about ideas, tactics, strike funds, and the myriad of injustices.
“I told him I was sorry,” Aino said. “Twice. What more can I do?”
“We’re going to need more coffee for this one,” Kyllikki said. She poured Aino and herself another cup. Aino noticed that the coffee contained no roasted barley.
“He doesn’t want an apology. Men will say they want an apology, but what they really want is for you to love them.”
“Do you love Jouka?” Kyllikki asked.
Aino didn’t answer for some time.
“In the way you’re talking about, the being-in-love whirlwind … I used to.”
“You might find it surprising you’re not alone.”
That lightened Aino up a little.
“Do you respect him?” Kyllikki asked.
“Other than his drinking. He’s a good man, a hard worker. More than once I’ve seen him wade in to help the underdog. And when he dances …” Her eyes brightened with the memory of dances at Knappton when she was a girl. “It’s like being no longer of the earth; you never want to come down, and you’re perfectly safe.” She paused. “He puts up with a lot from me.”
“That he does,” Kyllikki said.
The two were silent.
“I can’t love him if I don’t,” Aino said.
“Then act as if you love him. Love is expressed by actions. The feelings behind the actions are yours.”
“I want to live my life not act it.”
Kyllikki studied Aino. “Do you want to save your marriage?”
Aino looked down at her coffee, chagrined. “Sure, I do.” She looked up at Kyllikki, her eyes moist. Kyllikki touched Aino’s hand and Aino almost wailed, “I do.”
Kyllikki waited for Aino to get back under control. “So, what does he want?”
“He wants a good job and a family and a normal wife who wants to be married to him.”
“Of course, but you know there’s more.” Aino didn’t answer. “Aino,” Kyllikki prompted. “I know you know.”
“He wants to hold his head up again,” Aino finally said. Aino looked at her coffee. She wiped a tear away.
“Aino, what do you want?”
Cradling her coffee cup, Aino said, in a barely discernible voice, “I want a baby.”