Aino boarded the train for Portland the next morning after stops at Woolworths and Grimson’s Ladies Apparel. She hadn’t seen Aksel in nearly three months. Kyllikki moved into Aino’s apartment to cook for the bachelors, leaving Suvi to watch the younger children under her grandmother’s eye.
When Aino arrived at the dam site, she could only gape. The dam towered over everything. The workshops, machinery, sounds of hammering and sawing, screeching of engines and cables, men shouting, took her back to the early days at Reder’s Camp. For a moment she reveled in the sight and sounds of big work being done by big machines. She also had to admit that in spite of being in love with Aksel, she’d forgotten how good it felt to be one of a few women among so many men, who were all trying not to stare at her.
Everyone knew Aksel and simply pointed toward the face of the dam when she asked where to find him. She reached the downstream side and squinted skyward to the dam’s horizon. She thought she recognized Aksel high on a scaffold, moving nimbly and seemingly without fear, doing his work. She watched him for some time, wrapping her coat around her in the cold air, her shoes wet from the snow and mud of the construction site. On the way up to the site, she’d caught glimpses of the high granite mountains of the North Cascades, different from the volcanic mountains she could occasionally see from the Columbia River or from the top of a logged-off hill. Now she felt their presence, wild in a roadless wilderness, stretching north, east, and south of her, unseen because they were obscured by low clouds and the steep walls of the deep canyon that would soon be a deep lake.
She began to shiver with the cold and shouted up at him. She might as well have been shouting into a typhoon. She found a huge wooden cable spool, climbed up on it with her suitcase, and sat there, dangling her legs, watching the action, looking up constantly to see if Aksel saw her. At one point, she saw a makeshift elevator move up the face of the dam. It was designed for carrying materials, so it had no handrails. A man sat nonchalantly on the deck, his legs dangling into space, smoking a cigarette. The man got off and walked over to Aksel. The man pointed down at her. Aksel turned and saw her. She felt her heart leap and jumped to her feet, waving her arms, wishing they were wings. He waved back broadly and joyfully. She kept waving, making little jumps up and down on the cable spool. They finally stopped waving and Aksel went back to work. She knew he could not see her until after quitting time.
She settled in again on the big wooden cable spool. Men would stop by, offer her coffee from their thermoses, ask her who the lucky man was. All of them knew Aksel and it made her proud to be Aksel’s—what? Girlfriend? Hopeful fiancée? Wet snow fell occasionally, just on the edge of being rain. It didn’t stick but merged with the mud. She tried pulling the burgundy felt cloche hat lower around her ears. She’d been assured it was the latest style by the saleslady at Grimson’s and that it went perfectly with her dark hair and eyes. Right now, however, she wished she’d worn her old wool scarf that not only covered her head but also kept her neck and face warm. She occasionally stood on the huge spool, stamping her feet. She was cold, but she didn’t mind. She couldn’t imagine waiting someplace where they couldn’t see each other.
It was dark by 4:30. The men worked with gas lanterns and under lights powered by the small temporary dam downstream. At 6:00, she saw Aksel on the open platform of the makeshift elevator. He rode it down hanging on to one of the cables, watching her watching him. When the platform reached bottom she was there to meet him.
Aksel hugged her, whirling her around so her legs swung out behind. Her burgundy flannel velour dress had cost her nearly a week’s wages. The latest fashion, its skirt only just covered her knees when she was standing and for a moment she feared it would fly up and expose her thighs above the welts of her stockings or even her new champagne-colored silk teddies. Then, she didn’t care. She had her arms around his neck and she never would let go again, never, ever. He stopped whirling, her legs dropped to the ground, and they were waltzing, Aksel singing “Lördagsvalsen” in Swedish, while his fellow workers grinned, lit cigarettes, and watched with amusement—and some envy.
“Kom fölg mig nu Aino lägg armen om min hals!
De ska’g å undan uti slygande fläng I denna vals.”
Aino, follow me now; put your arm around my neck. This waltz insists that we whirl together.
They found a cheap hotel in Newhalem, a town of nearly a thousand people that had sprung up downriver.
That night, Aksel pulled a small box from his pocket, took out a thin gold ring with a small single diamond set in it, went to one knee in the traditional manner, and asked if she’d marry him. She said yes with no hesitation in her heart. Her yes felt right, as if there were no other choice, just this acceptance. How right everything was.
Aksel slipped the ring onto her finger, whispering, “This was in my pocket that night.”
“I’m glad you didn’t pawn it,” Aino said.
They both laughed and held each other as if they could stop time.
They agreed on a June wedding date and then they agreed it was moral and right to sleep together. Kyllikki had lent Aino a soft cotton nightgown, low cut and trimmed with lace that flowed to her ankles and made her feel beautiful. She let Aksel take off her new teddies.
They talked and made love then made plans and made love again. Aksel was sure that this time, when the dam was finished, he’d have enough money for his boat. They’d live for a while at the poikataloja and then, when the money from the fish came in, they’d buy a house, maybe in Alderbrook where land was cheaper and where Aksel could moor his boat and walk to it from the house. After a long discussion, they decided Aksel shouldn’t wait for the project to finish but instead stay and work just long enough to buy the boat. In the dark early morning hours, she stood with him, bundled against the chill among men stamping their feet in the cold and the glow of cigarettes and she said goodbye. She had been away from the poikataloja three days and it was time to return. It was like a small death, an emptiness that could be endured only because of the promise of reuniting.
Aino was filled with ideas about how to make the basement of the poikataloja more of a home, with thoughts of getting Eleanor to stay with her, them, and with dreams of the fishing boat and maybe, someday, a house of their own—and perhaps children, their children. She would turn thirty-nine in March, she mused, but why not?
Aksel would also find himself daydreaming about life with Aino. He’d been promoted to crew supervisor and was making good wages, almost all of which he was saving for that future life. He was in such a lulling state when he hopped onto the platform of the elevator that would take him to his current place of work, high up on the dam. The elevator had a load of iron rebar, a maximum load, to minimize the up and down trips. As the platform climbed the face of the dam, Aksel heard a thin tink as one of the strands of the cable he was grasping broke. Apprehension filled him. There was another tink. He began shouting for the operator to stop. He couldn’t be heard. The platform with its heavy iron load continued up the face and the tinks became a whirring noise of breaking strands of wire. The cable snapped. The platform lurched to hang from the three other cables, dropping Aksel, holding a stub end of the cable in his hand, down the face of the dam, the rebar flowing after him as there was no retaining wall or handrail.
Aksel had been writing several letters a week and Aino had answered every one of them. Then, his letters stopped.
She wrote to him every day but no answers came. She grew increasingly uneasy.
On Friday, April 8, a letter came in a Seattle City Light envelope, addressed by typewriter. She put it on the table, not wanting to open it. After half an hour of agony, she read the letter, informing her Aksel had fallen, jamming his right tibia up past his knee and into his groin area. They amputated just below the knee. The letter was signed by a company nurse. At the bottom scrawled in a shaky hand, Aksel wrote, “God gave me two legs for a reason. I can still work.”
But he couldn’t work at the dam site. They let him go without any compensation.