Aksel tried several times to talk with Aino. She had politely but firmly said she needed space to think.
Throughout the summer he’d seen ads in the Oregonian for carpenters unafraid of heights. Seattle City Light was building a dam. It was going to be the highest dam in the world. He gave Matti several weeks’ notice, said a formal goodbye to him and Kyllikki at Sunday dinner, and on Friday, October 22, 1926, after his last day of work, Aksel boarded the train for Portland. There, he took the Union Pacific to Seattle and then north to Mount Vernon, Washington. He caught the Seattle City Light bus that worked its way on gravel roads up the Skagit River to Diablo Canyon, deep in the Cascade mountains.
Aksel reached the sprawling camp of workmen at the base of Diablo Canyon in the evening darkness. The huge project, already in its ninth year, had started with boring a tunnel through the basalt roots of the North Cascades. Then, slowly and steadily, form by form, scaffold by scaffold, concrete pour by concrete pour, the Diablo Canyon Dam rose ever higher toward its planned 389 feet. Seattle City Light planned on having it provide enough power to light the bulk of the rapidly growing city by the early 1930s. For now, power at the construction site came from a small temporary dam on Newhalem Creek, several miles downstream. It lit the mess halls, the workshops, and the work site. The rest of the camp was lit more softly by low-watt electric lightbulbs, the occasional old kerosene lantern, and new Coleman gas lanterns.
Aksel looked north and skyward. He could see the Little Dipper above the dam and just the tip of Boötes rising above the ridge to the east that hid Arcturus. The partially completed dam from this angle just blocked Polaris. He looked up at the east ridge again, reassured knowing that Arcturus would be in the sky within a couple of hours. Some things were still right in heaven. He’d heard that the dam was built upstream from the major salmon spawning sites. If it wasn’t, no salmon would make it past this point. At least it would never happen on the Columbia, he thought. No one could dam a river that big.
Aksel didn’t show up for the Christmas holidays and then Aino refused to go to the New Year’s dance to welcome in 1927. Kyllikki could stand it no longer. On January 3, the first day the children were back in school, she knocked on Aino’s door as she let herself in.
Aino emerged from her bedroom, disheveled, a book in her hand. That wasn’t a good sign; she’d normally be up and working by this time.
Kyllikki waited. “Are you out of coffee?”
Aino shook her head. “Sorry. Not thinking clearly.”
Kyllikki rustled up some biscuitti while Aino brewed coffee. Then, the preliminaries out of the way, Kyllikki plunged in.
“Why did Aksel leave?”
“We had a fight.”
“You kicked him out, didn’t you? Why, for God’s sake?”
Kyllikki watched Aino’s face cloud with grief. She decided to ease up.
“Has he written?”
Aino opened the drawer of the bureau and picked up a stack of letters and postcards.
“Do you answer them?”
She shook her head.
“What is wrong with you?”
Aino couldn’t look her in the face. She got up, agitated, walked to the door, then walked back and sat down.
Kyllikki asked her again, gently. “Aino, what’s wrong?”
Aino slowly shook her head back and forth. Her eyes were tearing. “I can’t tell you,” she whispered.
Kyllikki reached across the table and gently touched Aino’s hand. “Hey. It’s me, Kyllikki. There’s nothing I won’t understand.”
Aino started with Voitto. As she slowly told the story of her involvement with Voitto’s organization, the man from Helsinki taking control, the raid, and Aksel’s part in its betrayal, Kyllikki found herself holding Aino’s hands in hers, giving her all she had in her heart. Then, Aino began to talk about the torture. Kyllikki wanted to let go of her hands and cover her own ears, but she did not. She held Aino’s hands firm and opened her heart. Aino was sobbing openly now—for a quarter of a century she had been holding in the horror only to find that the man she loved was the man she’d hated all that time. The sobbing grew to uncontrollable bawling with Kyllikki holding Aino’s body close to her own, letting her shake but never letting her go.
When the storm finally passed, Kyllikki looked into Aino’s eyes. “You’ve lived with this alone for a long time. I don’t know how you bore it.” Then she said, “Aksel’s lived with it alone just as long.”
There was a soft grunt of understanding.
“Maybe if you two could share the burden …” She left that dangling in the air. When there was no response, she turned Aino’s face to her and said, “Forgive him. You were both children. Maybe if you forgave him, you could both find peace.” Aino remained with her head on the kitchen table, listening but not responding—not wanting to respond. Kyllikki knew how hard it was to forgive. “You need to go up to the Skagit and tell him.”
“No,” Aino mumbled into her arms. “I can’t.”
Kyllikki gently moved so she could lift Aino’s face from the table. Holding her beneath the chin, forcing Aino to look at her, she gently said, “You’ve always been a strong woman, Aino. But now, it’s time to be a woman of strength.”
After a silence, tears still running down her face, Aino said in a small voice, “But he’s a white and a capitalist.”
“Aino, he’s a fisherman.”
Aino started to laugh through her tears.