They lived constantly within the sight, sound, and smell of the sawmill, but to Emaline it was worth it to be in a place where rainfall was never going to be a problem, where they could always count on shade from the tall trees, where the land wasn’t blowing away, where Red had other kids to play with. The men worked long, hard hours, so during the day the little town belonged to the women and children. Women with children too young to go to school tended to group together, talking and gossiping while the children were given a pretty free hand to run about as they pleased. Emaline was afraid of children falling into the Columbia, but they tended to stay around the town, far from the river. The men worked ten-hour shifts, six days a week. With Jake training men to box in the evenings, he was gone almost all the time. Red blossomed in his father’s absence. He was more talkative and less nervous. When he wasn’t playing with the other children, Emaline took him for long walks. It was fascinating to her as much as to the boy, because so much of this was new, the trees and flowers and birds, even the little animals they saw in the forest.

They had been in Oregon less than a month before Jake started complaining about the job, saying that he was never meant to carry a lunch bucket and punch a clock and do the same thing day in and day out for thirty years. When Emaline pointed out that he hadn’t even been doing it for thirty days, he stormed out of the house and went to go hit the heavy bag at the makeshift gym. He was talking about going back into the ring, but Emaline said she would not put up with even one more fight. He was nearly thirty-eight, old for a boxer, he had been out of the ring for five years and his skill and speed had eroded, even if it wasn’t obvious when he was working with amateurs. Above all, he now had a six-year-old boy to raise. If nothing else, he owed it to Red not to go out and get himself hurt. He agreed, but as the summer went by and the promised strike failed to materialize, he grew more and more restless. When Clay Tatro finally announced on the first day of October that the strike was on, Jake was the happiest man in Millwood. He wasn’t exactly spoiling for a fight, but a fight would be a welcome change after the daily drudgery of the mill.

For three weeks, Jake walked the picket lines in front of the silent mill until at last the word came. The owners of the Columbia River Lumber Company said they were going to get the mill up and running one way or another. That meant bringing in scabs. Scabs would mean a fight.

38.