Aksel pitched a lean-to by the river on a narrow rocky beach close to Tongue Point. The beach was sheltered from view by salal and salmonberries growing under alders that had sprung up after the old-growth trees had been cut down in the 1880s. He joined a small tent city of itinerant loggers, hoboes, sailors—merchant and navy, American and otherwise—who’d jumped ship or whose contracts had expired and who chose not to sign on again. Although June gloom had set in, the occasional rain was light. Astorians called the month Juneuary. The ground above high tide was slippery with mud or river slime only for a day or two after a real rain, but otherwise solid, if not dry. Bluebacks were running and a short walk took a man into good deer hunting. So, mingled with the smell of cigarettes, bootleg whiskey, and alder smoke came the good rich smell of venison on a spit or salmon pressed to cedar boards and arranged to roast in a circle around the fire. An old rowboat had been beached there and Aksel used it more than most.
Matti had moved Aksel to running the diesel yarder, a physically easier job. This left him with enough energy to fish at night and most of the day on Sundays. Whenever he hooked into a particularly nice salmon or sturgeon, he cleaned and butchered it into steaks and dropped some off for Matti and Kyllikki’s family as well as his friends still at the poikataloja. On occasion, he left a nice cut in Aino’s sink but only when she wasn’t around.
* * *
One Sunday in July, Kyllikki invited Aksel to stay for her special fish-head stew after he dropped off a beautiful fourteen-pound summer-run steelhead.
“Where’d you get the fish?” she asked casually. His Sunday clothes smelled like wood smoke.
“Up by Tongue Point, just off the railroad trestle.”
“Long way upriver for a rowboat,” she said easily.
Aksel hesitated and then said, “Oh, you know fishermen. We’ll go anywhere and tell no one.”
She knew something was amiss.
That evening, she put her young ones to bed and told Matti and the older children that she was going to visit Aino-täti for some just-woman time and she walked to the poikataloja. The gloom of the morning and afternoon had been driven off and the river stood clear in the late summer evening all the way to Cape Disappointment at the north side of its mouth. The air smelled of tide flats and woodstoves. The sun seemed to hang suspended above the river’s mouth over the unseen ocean as if reluctant to set, as if not wanting to end one of the year’s longest days.
She found Aino cleaning up after supper.
“What was for dinner?” Kyllikki asked.
“The usual stew.”
“We had a nice steelhead stew at home tonight.”
Oh.” Aino was now on the alert.
“Yes. Aksel brought us a nice fourteen pounder.”
“Nice of him.”
“I thought so. I gave him the eyes.”
“Nice of you.”
Aino returned to scrubbing her pots. Kyllikki went over to the stove, picked up the two-gallon blue-and-white-speckled coffeepot to ascertain its contents, got two cups, filled them, and set them on the end of one of the long dining tables. “You going to join me?” she asked Aino.
“Looks like it,” Aino said. She dried her hands and sat down.
Kyllikki looked at her and saw suffering. “Aino, what happened?” she asked. “Aksel isn’t living here, is he?”
“Not yet.”
“Did Aksel tell you … anything?”
“No. I smelled tide flats and alder smoke on his Sunday clothes this evening. Where is he?”
“I don’t know,” Aino said miserably.
Aino told Kyllikki the whole story, including the fight, the May Day speech, and the delicate handkerchief from France.
“I’ve said it before,” Kyllikki said. “You’re the smartest fool I know.”
“I am.” Aino nodded her head in agreement. After a moment she said, “Can you make a guess where he is?”
“From the smell, I’d say he’s living rough somewhere along the river. He said he got the steelhead off the trestle by Tongue Point, so I guess somewhere around Alderbrook.”
“Do you think he’ll come back?”
“If you don’t act, he won’t. I guarantee it. To him it’ll feel like crawling. And it would be. Now, it’s your turn to go to him.”
“I don’t crawl.”
Kyllikki exploded from her seat, slapping her hand on the table. She had never been so angry with her beautiful, proud sister-in-law. “You goddamn stubborn Koski.”
Aino started to speak.
“You shut up and listen.”
Aino shut up.
Kyllikki was surprised at the fury she felt, and it came boiling out in words. “You broke that man’s heart when you married Jouka. Then you broke Jouka. Then Aksel had his heart broken again when he lost Lempi and the baby. And you … you …” Words failed her.
She sat down and leaned across the table. “Aino, this is it. That man needs his heart back and you, by God, you will go to him with your heart in your hands and you will offer it to him and if you don’t, you will live with a stone in your chest for the rest of your miserable proud life.” Kyllikki’s own heart pounded. She saw she’d actually frightened Aino. Good! Good, good, good!
Aino opened her mouth and closed it. Her face had gone pale. It was the face of someone frightened to her core that she might have lost everything.
Kyllikki rose and walked behind Aino. Putting her hands on Aino’s shoulders, leaning her head close beside Aino’s, she felt her magnificent black hair against her own soft blond. She nuzzled her cheek against Aino’s head just above her ear and said softly, “Go find him. I’ll finish up here.”
Aino took her wool shawl and head scarf to ward off the chill air coming off the river. She also took a kerosene lantern. She began walking upriver, starting at Fourteenth Street where the ferry docked. Soon, she came to the end of the plank streets built up on pilings. She reached the railroad tracks and continued on them, moving eastward, looking for shanties or tents. When she spotted a little bunch of them, she would find men sitting by fires, smoking, talking in the lingering twilight. The twilight shifted north, outlining the Washington hills as the hidden sun moved around the pole. By midnight, only the faintest glow in the north showed beneath a clear night sky. Standing on a log railroad trestle she saw the embers of dying campfires across the tide flats, glowing on a beach just downstream from where Tongue Point joined the river’s south shore. After an hour of backtracking she found a way to reach solid ground. She then walked back upstream to where she’d seen the glow of the dying fires.
Her wet shoes and stockings smelled of what the river left behind as it ebbed. She picked her way between embers and dark tents. She found two men drinking from a single bottle. They looked at her in surprise.
“I’m looking for Aksel Långström,” she said.
“Next to the water”—on of them pointed—“over there.”
She continued, leaving the faint red light of the dying fire behind, moving again into darkness, only a sphere of lantern light moving along with her, casting quavering shadows. Up ahead, she saw the faint glow of a cigarette. Her pulse quickened. She moved toward it, hope rising. She saw the outline of a tarp lean-to and the figure of a man leaning back against what looked like an upturned rowboat. The man turned to look at her.
The lantern lit Aksel’s face so that it seemed to glow in contrast with the dark tarp behind it and the night all around. She stood still, looking at that face, for the first time really seeing it. All these years. All these wasted years. And now, this beautiful strong human face she truly saw for the first time.
“Aino?” Aksel asked.
Aino held the lantern to her face. She felt the tears streaming down her cheeks as he rose to his feet. She put the lantern on the ground and ran to him, squeezing him against her, and all she could do was say his name over and over again and, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” kissing that face everywhere until he stopped her by putting his hands on her head and holding her still and kissing her long and slow and so tender.