Aino and Kyllikki caught the General Washington on Saturday afternoon and made their way in the dark to Ilmahenki. Louhi arrived two hours later, having caught the last boat from Willapa to the mouth of Deep River, walking the rest of the way, alone with her thoughts. Ilmari suggested she not open the coffin, but she did anyway and sat on the porch all night with a single candle looking at the trampled beauty of her daughter.
Pastor Hoikka gave the funeral service on Sunday afternoon.
That night, Louhi slept with Mielikki. The next morning, as she was leaving, she told Ilmari that as had been agreed when Sampo was formed, Rauha’s share of Sampo had passed to her and she now was the majority shareholder. Still, he was to run it as he had all along. Ilmari pointed out that with Rauha’s share of the profits now going to Louhi, there would barely be enough to keep the children and the farm going. “They’re your grandchildren,” Ilmari said.
“You didn’t need to make them,” she replied and left.
Ilmari stopped going to church. Instead, on Sundays that weren’t too wet and miserable, he would take the children to see Vasutäti. Helmi and Jorma would do what most children did in the woods: dam the creek, look for birds’ nests, dig up licorice root, throw things. Mielikki stayed at the camp along with Ilmari, who took on chores that Vasutäti had difficulty doing.
Vasutäti was moving Mielikki into increasingly beautiful patterns and designs—each basket assigned being correspondingly difficult. Mielikki would bring the basket she’d been working on during the week. Vasutäti would inspect it carefully, pointing out flaws, treating Mielikki as an adult with pudgy fingers. The Ini’sal had little room for a long childhood. Vasutäti taught Mielikki basket weaving the same way she taught Ilmari to enter the space between the kantele notes, guiding Mielikki into the spaces between the basket wands. Being nine and gifted, Mielikki could absorb Vasutäti’s teaching at an uncanny rate.
Being nine, she also could get tired and frustrated. One day she threw her basket onto the ground and sat down abruptly on a log. “When is a basket good enough for you?” Mielikki asked, near tears.
Vasutäti sat down next to her. “There are three good-enoughs in basket weaving. The first is that your basket does the job it was made for.” Mielikki nodded. “The second is that your basket will hold water for a year.” Mielikki showed despair. “The third is when you can make a basket without worrying about whether it is good enough. The third one is hardest.”
Mielikki rubbed away a tear with the back of her hand and smiled.
When Ilmari finished the chores, he would sit by the fire meditating while Vasutäti and Mielikki worked together at the entrance to the shelter. When Ilmari entered that world, that space between moments, even the children’s interruptions were simply part of the whole.
Members of the church came by Ilmahenki on several occasions. Mielikki served coffee, as was the duty of the woman of the house. Ilmari was polite but adamant. If there was a God, He or She or It—as Ilmari mildly put it, knowing this would disconcert them—wasn’t around Deep River.
“Why don’t we go to church anymore, Isä?” Mielikki asked one day.
Ilmari put his hand on her head, as if in blessing, and said nothing for a long time. Then he said, “I don’t know.”
Mielikki, hugged him around the waist and put her cheek on his stomach. “Don’t be so sad, Isä. Please don’t be so sad.”
Two months after Rauha’s funeral, Louhi was back, sitting next to a driver in a black 1915 Dodge touring car. Convict labor had helped push a gravel-and-rock road south from Nordland all the way to Ilwaco, but Tapiola was still connected to that road only by the old wagon road, muddy most of the winter and spring. The going was slow and rough. Still, what had taken two days a decade earlier now took only six or seven hours.
Ilmari watched the car lurch across the field between Ilmahenki and the mill. Maybe he would get an automobile someday. A Packard—he’d seen a picture in a newspaper—now that was a real piece of machinery.
Louhi got down from the car with a valise and leaned in to say something to the driver. He drove off. She waved at Ilmari, shouting, “When you quit work.”
He was proud of Sampo and had wanted to show it to her in action, but she was already disappearing into the house. Sampo Manufacturing wasn’t Pope and Talbot, but it was profitable and the eleven men he employed in two shifts liked working there. The old waterwheel had been replaced by steam boiler, so the mill now ran at full speed winter or summer. Hard shovel work had enlarged the millpond the previous summer. That got the log inventory out of the river, which ranged seasonally from gentle stream to roaring torrent. Now, instead of wrestling the current to move the logs to the chain conveyor belt that lifted them from the water to reach the head rig, the first and largest saw in the mill, they could move logs around in still water and sort them by length and grade to maximize mill profits.
As he lined up the next big log, doing the geometry nearly unconsciously to maximize the value of the cut, he wondered why Louhi was here. Prices for two-by-tens were up—floor joists for barracks. Rotating the log to maximize for two-by-tens, he committed to the first cut. The steam belched out of the boiler, the leather belts roared, the chains clattered. If he made the first cut wrong, he could lose half the value of the log. What did Louhi want? Profits were good. To see the grandchildren? Maybe. She was getting on and he’d heard women sometimes changed when they became grandmothers. He wondered if his mother had changed, but then Maíjaliisa had never seen her grandchildren, other than the pictures they took in Astoria at Palmer’s Studio and mailed to her two years ago. Sure, some people called Rauha an ice queen. But she was a queen, a beautiful queen—and a good worker who took care of the kids. Why did God take her? And that time God took his sisters, Mielikki and Lokka; and his little brother, Väinö? The end of the log slammed into the big saw and the screaming shut out all thought. The saw came clean out of the other end of the log, the heavy carriage slammed back, and the millpond man set the dogs to hold the new face of the huge cant ninety degrees to the next cut. Ilmari was again doing the geometry.
When he turned the mill over to the night shift along with the cutting instructions, he washed his face and hands before walking up to the house. Set an example for the children. Grandma didn’t visit often, maybe once in the summer and then again at Christmas.
Mielikki was making dinner. She had quit school to take on the work of the house and the care of Helmi and Jorma. The herd was neglected; leaving everyone in the lurch, Kullervo had joined the army. Requiring nearly five million men, over half of whom had to be drafted, the army didn’t seem too concerned about his hearing.
Ilmari felt bad about all the children having to take on Rauha’s jobs, particularly Mielikki. Rauha had been a good mother, lack of public displays of affection notwithstanding. He and the children never expected otherwise. If he remarried, Mielikki could go back to school. Maybe one day. God willing. God. A real puzzle.
He watched Louhi setting the table with Helmi who would be eight in October—the same month he would be forty. Old to have such young kids. Couldn’t be helped. Took time to get established. Now there wouldn’t be any more. Jorma was cutting kindling from larger pieces of firewood that Mielikki had selected for their straight grain. He used the hatchet with both hands, but he still did good work for a five-year-old. All three kids were good workers. Rauha had seen to that.
Louhi was helping Mielikki with ladling the stew and had silently acknowledged his entrance. They all sat. Admonishing the children to sit up straight and have good manners in front of their grandmother, he said grace. Louhi motioned for them all to pass their bowls to her and she ladled out the stew. If Louhi’s hair were as blond as Rauha’s—maybe in ten years Rauha would’ve looked like her. He wished his mind would just stop going that way.
Leaving the girls and Louhi to finish the dishes, he went to split more firewood from the rounds he’d sawed several days before and to tend to a bad hoof Helmi had spotted on a heifer. Jorma tagged along after him in the dark. Maybe Jorma could handle the farm when he got old. They returned to find Louhi reading the girls a story from one of the books she bought for them last Christmas. Jorma snuggled on the floor next to her feet to listen as well. They now had three books. The children knew the stories practically verbatim. After Bible reading came bedtime. Then it would be time to talk to Louhi. Time was something Louhi never wasted.
“I’m selling the mill.”
It stunned him. “Why? We’re making record profits. The mill’s in good condition, the crew well trained, none of them likely to get drafted.”
“The war will be over by next year, maybe earlier.”
Ilmari just blinked at her. She sighed, then she smiled. “You’re a good blacksmith and you’ve built a fine little mill, but you’re a lousy businessman, Ilmari. Without Rauha, well, I don’t have time to run the business myself.”
He kept quiet.
“The barracks are built. We’ve got airplanes coming out of our ears. Prices will start to fall before peace, not after. Mills will be going down like hay in August. We sell now. When the prices are high.”
He couldn’t help looking across the fields to the mill—clattering and screaming—electric light from a small generator making it possible to run the night shift. It was all part of Ilmahenki.
“I don’t want to sell it.”
“I figured. I’ll put a third of my shares into a trust for the kids. It would’ve been that way if Rauha had lived. The cattle are yours.”
“I suppose that’s fair.”
“Fair,” she harrumphed. “That’s why you’re not a businessman. Ilmari, it’s generous. You can hire someone to help with the kids or get remarried.”
“Mielikki needs to go to school.”
Ilmari went out on the porch. Some stranger would take part of Ilmahenki. Worse, a legal document called a corporation, without even the decency to be a stranger. He looked at the mill for about ten minutes, then he walked back inside.
“You’re the majority owner.”
“Yoh.”
The Dodge returned early the next morning and Louhi left.