Helsinki White

34

I call Kate and tell her our business is done for the day. She says they’re in a bar called The Cow, not too far from where we are right now. My first thought is if she’s drinking again. I’m not sure why her drinking over the past days concerns me. She’s never been a heavy drinker and she started on Vappu, when drinking is almost enforced by law. She’s been spending time with people who drink a lot, like Mirjami and Jenna, and so it’s natural that she would drink a little more, too.

I suppose my concerns are twofold. One: it’s interfering with her responsibility as a mother. It prevents her from breast-feeding. Two: I’m concerned it’s the result of something deeper, caused by me or my job. I know this is going to be a drunken evening, so I brought baby formula in case she gets three sheets to the wind again.

We meet up with them at The Cow. Mirjami and Jenna are drinking Lumumbas. Kate is having hot chocolate. One might say, a virgin Lumumba. I observe Mirjami’s reaction to me. There is none. She still turns me on, but I suppose her love for me has waned, thank God. The girls are half in the bag. The day didn’t go as planned.

They went to Naantali, but it’s early in the season. Muumimaailma isn’t open for a couple weeks yet, so they couldn’t play with the trolls. Kate got her fill of handicrafts and the old town. It’s on the chilly side, so the girls thought the wise thing to do would be to start drinking early. Kate is a little bored, sitting in the bar watching the girls drink, but she says they have good senses of humor and keep her entertained. Also, she can’t quite get accustomed to the idea that it’s acceptable to bring a baby into a bar. But it’s different here than in the States, she’s come to realize. People come to bars to meet, drink coffee, read newspapers. It isn’t all about boozing. Bars are also social centers.

We’ve had quite a day and sit down for a beer-Sweetness lines three shots of kossu up at the bar and downs them one after the other-and after relaxing for a few minutes, we head out to my brother Timo’s place. Sweetness shows no sign of inebriation. It’s mostly because of his size, but I’ve never met anyone with a head for alcohol like his. It’s often considered a manly attribute, but also often leads to liver failure and early death. It concerns me.

Timo is five years older than me and the black sheep of the family. Dad always told him what a worthless piece of shit he was. Timo took it to heart and set out to prove him right. As a teenager, he was always in trouble, committed petty crimes, skipped school more than he attended it and dropped out at sixteen. At age twenty-five, Timo did a seven-month stint in prison for bootlegging. Because of this, Mom has spent years singing his praises as an angel and proclaimed him her favorite child. It’s obvious she does this because his criminal past is an embarrassment and disappointment to her, and it humiliates him when she goes on about him.

He was too much older than me for us to spend much time together or get to know each other well while we were growing up, but we’ve always gotten along. There are four of us brothers. He and I are big men. Jari and my other brother, Juha, are little guys. Juha, the oldest of us, settled in Norway years ago and I don’t even remember the last time we were in contact.

Timo is bright and foresaw the future. He drifted for a while before eventually settling in Pietarsaari, in western Finland. He got a job in a paper factory and worked there for seventeen years. It was a union job, he made a lot of money and he saved. When the plant got outsourced to India or China or somewhere, he bought this farm outright. Timo’s got the full-fledged redneck thing going on. Overalls, beer belly, full beard and baseball cap.

The place has a lot of charm. He and his common-law wife, Anni, give us a tour. They live in a rambling old farmhouse next to a lake. They’ve been together for more than twenty years, raised two kids, a boy and girl. They’ve grown up and moved out. Timo and Anni have a big barn, a sauna building with room for guests to sleep over in it, just a few steps from the lake, and a tiny house, like a dollhouse, just big enough to walk into. It’s just got a bed in it, another place for overnight guests. Jenna gets all excited. It’s like a home for Muumit and she wants to sleep in it. I read Sweetness’s face. He’s hoping he’ll spend the night in there with her.

They take us on a tour. Timo has a still in the barn. He makes pontikka-moonshine. He has a tin cup beside it and offers tastes.

“What exactly is it?” Kate asks.

“Alcohol made from malted grain,” Timo says. “I’ve infused this batch with mixed berries that we grew or picked ourselves, and I put some chocolate bars into the mash.” He turns the tap, puts a healthy measure in the cup. “Have a sip.”

“What’s the alcohol percentage?” I ask.

“A little over eighty.”

“Careful Kate,” I say. “It can burn your lungs. Put it in your mouth and sip it without inhaling.”

She tries it, her face lights up, and she declares it delicious. The girls sip too and agree it’s yummy.

Timo offers the cup to others. Milo says, “We have some shooting practice to do. I think I’ll wait until after.”

I check my watch. It’s eight. The long days are upon us. We still have plenty of time to shoot.

“Actually,” Moreau says, “a small amount of alcohol will steady your hands. If you have problems with shaking hands, I suggest you get a prescription for a beta blocker. It will steady you considerably.”

Milo sips the pontikka and also pronounces it top-notch. I skip the booze for now, as does Moreau. Sweetness takes a big mouthful, swallows, and sighs from satisfaction. He takes his flask out of his pocket. “Do you mind?”

“Help yourself,” Timo says.

Sweetness sucks the flask dry of kossu and fills it with pontikka.

“Not to seem inhospitable,” Timo says, “but my home is your home, except for the loft of this barn. It’s off-limits to law enforcement.”

So he supplements his income with stolen goods or some kind of contraband. It’s not always about money. Some people need to commit criminal acts to feel alive. I guess Timo is one of them. “No problem,” I say.

“Where do you want to shoot, and can I shoot with you?” Timo asks.

“Of course,” Milo says. “We want to shoot some pistols, a shotgun, a sniper rifle, and try out some flash-bang stun grenades.”

“For the rifle,” Moreau says, “we need at least five hundred meters.”

Timo points across the road at a hillock. “My neighbor is away. We can set the targets down here by the lake, shoot down from up there, and the bullets will just land in the water. The others we can just shoot here by the barn.”

“I’ll put the grill and sauna on,” Anni says, “so after you boys have your fun, we can eat, drink and relax.”

“Sounds perfect,” I say.

Milo and Sweetness bring the arsenal from the SUV. We start with the lockbuster shotgun, which is self-explanatory. Use eye and ear protection. Special ammo made from compressed zinc powder or dental ceramic expends all its energy and disintegrates the lock. Angle yourself away from flying shrapnel when you shoot, and that’s it. We don’t have any locks to break, so we just fire it once each so we know what it’s like.

We set up pistol targets at twenty-five feet, which Moreau says is a longer shot than you think, since most gunfights with pistols take place within seven feet of the combatants.

Milo considers himself an excellent shot and he is, but Moreau tells him that he’s doing it wrong if he wants to be a true pro. Milo uses both front and rear sights. He should ignore the rear sight, pay attention to only the front sight, and use the pistol as if he’s pointing his finger at the target, in a sense, without aiming the pistol. Milo didn’t come for a lesson, just to try out his Colt. I see that he resents the lecture.

Moreau demonstrates. His Beretta is cocked, locked and holstered, meaning he draws, flicks off the safety, a round slams into the chamber and the pistol is ready to fire. He warns that many shooters lose their toes by shooting them off while learning this most efficient manner. I throw seven empty beer cans into the air. He hits each one while it’s at the top of its arc.

Milo can’t hit anything without using the rear sight. He takes great pride in his shooting skills. His frustration level is high but he tries to hide it, just purses his lips and says nothing.

“Not to worry,” Moreau says. “Burn up a few thousand rounds on the practice range and you’ll shoot as well as me. Anyone can.”

I try. “I’m right-handed but left-eyed. Shooting is difficult for me because of it. I can keep the bullets on the target, but can’t shoot a tight pattern.”

“I retract my previous statement,” Moreau says. “You will never be an expert marksman.”

I don’t mind. “I’d better just keep my gunfights within those seven feet you talked about.”

“You’ve already killed a man, though,” he says. “After the first time, people usually stay calm and are able to perform. That counts for as much as practice.”

This is Sweetness’s first time firing a gun. Ambidextrous, he’s wearing the two Colts Milo gave him in shoulder rigs on each side. He makes a couple of tentative first attempts, just trying to aim and pull the trigger. Both were close to bull’s-eyes. “I think I got the idea,” he says. He re-holsters, cocked and locked. I cringe, certain he’s going to shoot himself. He draws smooth and proceeds to blast the center rings out of two side-by-side targets. “Like that?” he asks.

Moreau’s grin is wry. “Yes, like that.”

Milo’s hands are bunched into white-knuckled fists. Sweetness stole his thunder and left him seething.

Timo tries all our pistols, blasts off about a hundred rounds fast. He’s a pretty good shot. He practices, he says.

We set the targets up by the lake, careful to make sure the rounds will hit the water, and at a steep enough angle so they don’t ricochet off the surface and land in someone’s living room miles away. Moreau drives a stick in the ground, blows up some balloons he brought along, and attaches them loosely to the stick with string. We drive across the road and up the hill, about six hundred yards from the lake.

Milo takes out the.50 caliber Barrett sniper rifle, a cannon that can kill at two miles in the right hands, wants to show off his knowledge, starts reciting the user’s manual. This makes Moreau impatient. “Yes, yes, yes, an integrated electronic ballistic computer that mounts directly on the riflescope and couples with the elevation knob. Three internal sensors automatically calculate the ballistic solution.”

Milo shuts up. The shadows surrounding his eyes are dark and cloudy. The corners of his mouth turn down. He thought this would be his day to shine and he’s outclassed.

Moreau lectures on how to set the weapon up, and it’s complicated. He talks quickly and much of it is lost on me. He explains body posture, how to lie down and take pressure off the chest so breathing and heartbeat don’t interfere. He loads four rounds in it. He says it should take only three rounds to sight it in. He shoots three times, making adjustments. His fourth shot is a bull’s-eye. Each shot sounds like the crack of doom, and the recoil looks punishing.

He loads the clip full. “Now let me show you what is possible.”

He lies down and shoots. He cuts the stick and frees the balloons. They drift and bounce. He pops them all, never misses.

He turns the gun over to Milo. Much of the skill in using the Barrett depends on understanding the science behind it, and so it falls into Milo’s sphere of excellence. He sights it in with three shots and fires a few more rounds in a pattern as tight as driving a nail. I can see he’s had enough. He’s a small man. I’m guessing the recoil will leave him black-and-blue.

It’s Milo’s baby, and must be sighted in for an individual shooter. Sweetness declines to shoot it, so Milo won’t have to sight it in again. Also, he says he’s getting hungry. Sipping pontikka is building his appetite. I decline because that kind of shock doesn’t seem therapeutic for a post-brain-op patient. Timo blasts it a few times because it looks fun. He shoots a tight pattern lower and to the left of Milo’s because the gun isn’t sighted in for him, and he wears a big grin when he’s done, so I take it he enjoyed himself.

It’s getting late and the sun is setting, so we set off a couple flash-bangs. The noise and intense light are intended to incapacitate. Instructions: Pull pin, throw, turn away. Plug ears and close eyes. They blow in three seconds. They’re still bright and loud enough to slightly disorient, even out here in the open. In a closed room, they must be devastating.

We drive back over to Timo’s house. I’m starved and good smells emanate from the grill and sauna. We go around back and find Anni, Mirjami and Jenna relaxing in lounge chairs on the patio. I hear the sounds of retching. Anni has Anu in her lap. “Bad news,” Anni says and points. I walk over and find Kate on all fours, hiding in some bushes, puking her guts out. She manages to look up at me. She says it slow. “I sorry.”

I sit down beside her for a minute and put an arm around her.

She slurs, “Pontikka.”

I’m afraid she’s going to get puke in her long red hair, and so I pull it back and tie it in a loose knot to keep it away from her mouth.

“Please go away,” she says.

I’ve been there, know the feeling. “OK. I’ll come back in a little while and check on you.”

I go back to the patio. “What happened?”

“Mirjami and Jenna wanted some more pontikka,” Anni said, “and Kate took some, too. I gave them all doubles, and Kate didn’t drink any more after that. It just hit her bad.”

Drinking is like anything else, it takes practice. Kate doesn’t practice. Mirjami and Jenna do. They have small glasses of pontikka on the brick floor of the patio beside their chairs, alongside bottles of pear cider. They’re hammered.

It’s chilly out. The girls have their jackets on and blankets wrapped around them, but this is early Finnish summer, and the attitude is Goddamn it, we will enjoy ourselves outside, no matter how much it sucks.

I take Moreau aside. “I want to talk to Veikko Saukko tomorrow.”

He doesn’t answer, just starts typing a message into his cell phone.

It’s almost eleven p.m. “Isn’t it a little late for that?” I ask.

“He never sleeps. It interferes with his drinking.”

The answer is immediate. “Ten tomorrow morning.”

Boozing, puking people preparing to drink rotgut all night. It’s going to be an ugly morning.

Milo, Sweetness and Timo plow into the pontikka, chase it with beer. I get a plate of grilled sausages and vegetables and sit next to Timo. He says, “You know what we discussed, about talking things out, about why we haven’t seen each other.”

“Yeah.”

“I got an idea. In general, it’s because we come from a fucked-up family. Why don’t we just leave it at that, not talk about it, and enjoy the evening.”

“Deal.”

And we do. I go back in a little while to check on Kate. She’s done puking and near to passing out. I carry her to a spare bedroom. Moreau and I don’t drink. He because he doesn’t, and me because I have to care for Anu. I’m not in the mood anyway. Moreau, Timo and I had a good sauna and dip in the freezing lake. Anu had her first sauna and seemed to enjoy it.

We come out of our second round in the sauna to find Milo and Sweetness in a drunken fistfight. Moreau moves to stop them, but I say no, it’s been a long time coming. I think Sweetness will stomp a mud puddle in Milo’s chest, but he holds his own. Sweetness is fast, but Milo is small and even faster. He gets in close and works inside Sweetness’s reach, slips his punches. Sober, Sweetness would have killed him, but the pontikka evened the odds. Milo lands some good ones, but they don’t pack enough power to put Sweetness down, and in the end, they’re rolling around in the grass, drunk and laughing. They go to the sauna bleeding together.

Afterward, Sweetness and Jenna disappear, and I hear love grunts come from the Muumin house. Anni wakes Timo up from a lounge chair and takes him to bed. Milo and Mirjami must have passed out in the sauna. I set an alarm for seven, and join Kate in the spare bed.