The Wanigan (2 page)

“It will be a kitchen by day, Annabel, and a bedroom for us by night.”

When Mama saw my disappointment, she tried to cheer me. “Think how cozy you and I will be with the kitchen's stove to warm us.”

“Mama, you said we would be on the wanigan three months. What about the hot stove in July?”

“The river will cool us, Annabel.” Mama sighed. “We must make the best of things. With the money Papa and I make this summer, we will be able to buy a small house in Detroit.”

With that hope I had to be satisfied.

When I had my first look inside the wanigan, my heart sank. The two narrow cots that Mama and I would sleep on would be put down at night and taken up in the morning, so that during the day there would be no bit of the wanigan that was all mine. There would be no room for Papa, who would sleep with the other men. It would be the first time I had been separated from Papa, and I thought it would be lonely on the wanigan without him.

We would live for months in this shack, moving by day and tied up to shore at night. I imagined bears and wolves climbing into the wanigan while we slept. The most humiliating thing of all: I heard the chore boy, Jimmy, call Papa and the other men who would float down the river with us by the hateful name of river pigs.

Such, for the next months, will be my miserable life. As Mr. Poe says,
“On this home by Horror haunted
…”

LONE WATERS, LONE AND DEAD

The evening of the first day of May, Mama and I boarded the wanigan. There were bits of ice like frozen lace along the edges of the river. Tatters of snow lay deep in the woods. I was still wearing my scratchy long underwear.

Though the stove gave off some warmth, I shivered in my bed. I heard the sound of the coyotes howling. I thought of Bandit and put my hands over my ears.

It was my habit each night to escape my unhappy fate by imagining myself in some faraway time or country. This night I pretended I was riding a camel across the desert on my way to an Arabian palace. The sun shone and I swayed gracefully on top of the camel. At last I fell asleep to the kitchen smells of cinnamon and dried apples.

Sometime before dawn I heard Mama getting dressed. Through the cracks in the wanigan the river mumbled and grumbled to itself. I turned over and settled into the warm spot I had made in the bed.

I lay there thinking that as crude as the cabin in the woods had been and as coarse as the lumber camp was, the wanigan was worse. Every day I would have to get used to a new place I had never seen before and would never see again. I said to myself that I was the most unhappy person in the world. Feeling very sorry for myself, I folded my cot and put my quilts away. I splashed water on my face, slipped into my dress, and pulled on my wool stockings. When I looked out the wanigan's one window, there was nothing but the dark looking back at me.

Mama was busy preparing breakfast for the men. The kitchen was full of shifting shadows from the kerosene lamp that swung from the rafters, calling to mind Mr. Poe's

… o'er
the floor and down the wall,

Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!

There was a pot of coffee boiling on the cookstove and a pot of oatmeal so thick I could hardly stir it. Bacon was sizzling in the pan, and the griddle was covered with morning glories. That's what the men called Mama's buckwheat pancakes. Mama sent me out on deck to bang two frying pans together to summon the men from the bunk shack.

I watched the men and the chore boy, eager for their breakfast, jump from the bunk shack to the wanigan. They hurried past me to crowd into the cook shack. The sand and mud from their boots dirtied the floor. There was no room for a table and chairs in the wanigan, so Papa and the other men, along with the chore boy, ate where they could. They heaped the food onto their tin plates and poured coffee into their pannikins. The pannikins, tin cups with no handles, warmed the men's cold hands.

There was much reaching and grabbing. “Give me the tin cow,” one of the men said, snatching a can of milk right out of Papa's hand. Another man grabbed a pitcher and poured a flood of molasses onto his pancakes.

The chore boy reached for the margarine. “Hand me the axle grease,” he said.

Only Papa, with his quiet voice and neatly combed hair, looked to be a gentleman. The other men, with their loud voices and untidy clothes, did not.

Penti Ranta, stocky and red-faced, is a Finn who fought in the war to preserve the Union. Thomas Johnson, whom the men call Big Tom, is an Indian. I don't believe I have heard above five words from him. Frenchy de Rossier, with his bushy beard and the wide red sash he always wears around his waist, looks like a pirate. He comes from Canada and speaks in a crude jumble of English and French. Teddy McGuire is Irish. Unhappily, his son, Jimmy, accompanies him. Jimmy is the chore boy and a terrible trial to me. He is clumsy and careless and leaves behind him a trail of broken crockery. Nothing gives Jimmy greater pleasure than to mock my manners and breeding by calling me Princess Annie. Such are my companions on this May morning.

I must admit that all the men are respectful of Mama. With her neatly braided black hair, her long, tapered fingers, and her graceful and elegant ways, they can see that she was gently brought up. Although they call her Gussie when her name is Augusta, they are quick to lift a heavy pot or move a barrel of flour for her. They always have a kind word for her cooking. They try not to curse or spit in the wanigan. Not spitting is hard for them. Their cheeks, like those of a squirrel gathering acorns, grow so fat with tobacco juice I am afraid they will burst.

On this first morning Frenchy was quick to compliment Mama on the coffee. “Dat's strong enough to grow de
cheveux
, de hair, on de turnip, ma'am,” he said.

With no niceties observed, breakfast was over in mere moments. The men took out their oilcloth lunch bags. They stuffed the bags with bacon, biscuits, hard cheese, oatmeal cookies, and dried prunes, which they call logging berries.

Then came the disgusting part. The men rolled up their trousers, which they shorten to keep out of the way of their spiked boots. They removed their socks and shoes. Scooping up handfuls of lard, the men rubbed the lard onto their feet. Next came three pair of socks and heavy boots greased with beeswax and tallow. The men would be in and out of the freezing water pushing the stranded logs off the shore and into the river. I knew their feet must be kept dry. Thank heavens they obeyed Mama and took the lard from a special bucket she had set aside for just that use.

I watched the men walk the wanigan, with Mama and me right in it, down the river to its new docking. A man on either side had stuck sharp pike poles into the riverbed. Hanging on to the pikes, the men walked from the front of the wanigan to the rear, pushing the cooking shack and the bunk shack that was tied to it as they went. In between the walks, the men let the swift current push the wanigan even farther down the river. When the men had made many such walks back and forth and the wanigan was just where they wanted it, they brought it close to shore. They dropped anchor and climbed over the side to begin their work, leaving us to discover where we would spend this day. Next day the wanigan would be moved again. In this way we would travel the hundred and seventy miles to Oscoda.

Papa was the last to leave. He gave me a quick hug and waded ashore. Mama watched, too. She stood beside me, a worried look on her face. She always hated to say goodbye to Papa in the mornings. In the winter there had been the danger of Papa being crushed under falling trees. On this trip there were new dangers. I had overheard the men say that on the river drive there were sure to be slippery logs, deep water, and dangerous logjams.

I stood on the deck watching Papa disappear into the woods. Like Mama, I worried that something might happen to him. I feared my dear papa might meet some tragic fate in Mr. Poe's
“lone waters, lone and dead … still waters, still and chilly.
”

The early-morning light was thin as skim milk. Overhead a V of geese headed north. The geese sounded like Gabriel's horn, the long tin horn that had called the men to meals back in the lumber camp.

On one side of the river there was nothing along the shore but empty fields and a crop of tree stumps left behind by the loggers. On our side of the river, where there had been no logging, the pine trees soared more than a hundred feet. Even if I stretched my neck, I could not see to the trees' tops. Ahead of the wanigan floated thousands of logs, so that the whole river looked like it was made of wood.

My unhappy thoughts at what lay before me were interrupted by a terrible crashing and banging of pans from inside the wanigan. Jimmy collected wood for the stove and polished the stove with blacking to keep it from rusting. It was also one of his jobs to scrub the pots. It was a job Jimmy detested. I had heard him say to his father, “Why must I stay with the women? I can free up the logs along the shore as well as any man.”

Teddy McGuire shook his head. “You're only twelve, son. That's no job for a boy. One misstep in that raging river and you're done for. Don't whine, there's a good boy. I don't need to have the likes of you causing me grief. I've enough to worry me.”

Mama went into the kitchen to see to all the commotion. I stayed out on the deck of the wanigan to avoid being in the same room with Jimmy, who was sure to find some way to torment me.

Just as I feared, I soon found Jimmy beside me. Once the pots were cleaned, Mama was glad to get him out of the kitchen. Jimmy is tall for his age and skinny, with large, clumsy hands and ragged nails because he bites them. His feet are large, too, so that he looks like a puppy with big paws who will grow into a great dog. He has red hair, which his father calls ginger. His father cuts Jimmy's hair and one side never matches the other. Jimmy has no mother to care for him, so that his shirts were missing many buttons until Mama sewed them on for him.

Jimmy's story is a truly tragic one. His mother died a year ago. Papa said it was diphtheria and Jimmy had it as well. After his wife's death Teddy McGuire was left to care for Jimmy. Since lumberjacking was all Teddy McGuire knew, he took his son along with him. Jimmy became the chore boy in camp. I pity Jimmy having no mother to care for him.

Once I expressed my deep sorrow at the death of his mother, but Jimmy said it was none of my business and ran away. Mama said it was too hard for him to talk about his mother's death. Even so, I thought he needn't have been so churlish.

That morning I had no wish to speak with Jimmy and pretended to be studying the shore.

Jimmy stared most impolitely at my feet. “If you had a proper pair of boots,” he said, “instead of those fancy laced kid-leather things that aren't good for anything, you could go along the bank with me. You could help me pick up firewood for the kitchen stove.”

It was my dearest wish that Jimmy would just disappear. “I haven't the least desire to accompany you anywhere.”

“You're so stuck-up, Princess Annie, it's a wonder you can bear to breathe the same air everyone else does.”

While it's true I pride myself on my manners and deplore those of the lumberjacks, no one wishes to be called stuck-up, especially when they aren't at all. I felt my lip trembling and tears start up. I did not see how I could spend weeks and weeks shut into a tiny cabin with no company but a cruel boy.

I turned my face away but not quickly enough.

“Hey,” he said, “you don't have to blubber. If you can't stand for me to be on the wanigan with you, I'll get my own barge.”

Jimmy swung himself from the wanigan onto a huge pine log floating in the river. He stretched out on his back as if the log were a couch and waved to me. The log floated along with hundreds of other logs on the river's flood. A moment later it bumped into another log, and Jimmy was flailing about in the icy water. He climbed out of the river, leaking water from his cap to his boots. As he jumped onto the bunk shack to change his clothes, he gave me a furious look. I kept my countenance, but it was hard not to smile.

THIS HAUNTED WOODLAND

Mama called me inside the wanigan. The whole shack had the sour, yeasty smell of rising bread. Mama was looking tired, as she always does after the hard kneading of a big batch of dough.

“Annabel, I heard you talking with Jimmy. You are very hard on him. You ought to have a little consideration for the poor boy, motherless as he is.”

I hated scoldings from Mama. She always looked so sorrowful about my bad behavior, as if it truly hurt her. “But he's so rude,” I told her.

“He is a little clumsy in his ways, but I believe he only wants to make friends with you. He doesn't know how to go about it. You must meet him halfway. Now help me set the loaves.”

Relieved the scolding was over, I scooped up a handful of the dough, patting and folding it in the way Mama had taught me. The dough felt like the softest down pillow. The fragrant brown loaves that came out of the oven seemed a miracle to me.

When we finished setting the loaves, I soaked the dried apples for pies, peeled a great pile of potatoes, and shed tears over a peck of onions. All the while I worked, I was engaged in the learning of Mr. Poe's poetry. This day I had chosen the lines:

Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber,

This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

I didn't understand exactly what the words meant, but the dark woodland on the one side of the wanigan truly appeared mysterious.

Mama was taking a moment to rest in the wanigan's single chair. Her face was pale and I saw she had pinned up her long hair any which way. It hurt me to see her so worn out. “Mama,” I asked, “don't you get awfully tired of all this cooking? Don't you wish you were in a beautiful garden reading poetry with flowers all around you and servants to bring you a cool drink and little cakes with pink frosting?”

Mama sighed. “Annabel, what's the use of wishing for something that will never happen? It just makes you unhappy.”