The Wanigan Read online

  When the men climbed onto the wanigan, Mama threw her arms around each one of them, never caring about their wet clothes.

  “I can’t thank you enough,” she said. “You saved my William’s life.”

  “He’s the one took the chances,” Teddy McGuire said.

  Papa gave a little laugh. “Never remember having so much fun in my life.” He took my hand. I felt the cold and the wetness and shivered. I looked up at him. He was smiling down at me, but there was no smile in his eyes, only a look that said he was mighty glad to be there.

  After they changed out of their wet clothes, the men were back in the wanigan for supper, making jokes and laughing about what had happened. I noticed, though, Mama and Papa were sitting close to one another. Later I saw the men looking out at the river of logs that floated ahead of us. They looked at them as if the logs were a raging tiger that had learned how to escape from its cage.

  ALL WE SEEK TO KEEP HATH FLOWN

  I awoke with a most woeful feeling. I was miserable. This was the day I would have to part with Bandit. The day before Bandit had snatched one of the fish meant for dinner and had run off with it. He was so big and strong I had trouble holding on to him. I knew in my heart that it wasn’t fair to keep him in a cage, yet when I let him loose nothing in the wanigan was safe. He ate the pies Mama set out to cool. He even ate a cake of soap, so that little bubbles came out of his mouth.

  “Annabel,” Papa had said, “the best thing for Bandit is to let him go.”

  “Just think how happy he’ll be to make friends with other raccoons,” Mama said.

  I held out for two days but today was the day. Since it was a special day, Mama let me give Bandit a pancake, which he ate in dainty bites, making scallops as he turned it in his clever paws.

  With Bandit in my arms, Jimmy and I waded onto the sandy shore. The land there had not yet been timbered. Instead of acres and acres of stumps, there were tall pines. We walked under the branches of the giant pines, their fallen needles soft under our feet, their fragrance all around us. A hawk with a red tail took off from an overhead branch. Deerflies buzzed around us. A crow whose caw was half bark and half cough scolded us.

  “It’s too empty here,” I said. It was. The shade from the feathery pine branches kept out flowers and grasses. I didn’t think it would be a cheerful place for Bandit to live. We kept walking until the land dipped and we came to a bowl of timbered land. There were grasses and shrubs where little brown birds flew in and out. A narrow creek, almost hidden by the grasses, divided the bowl in half. Jimmy looked at me and I nodded.

  We settled down in the grass. I scratched Bandit behind the ears the way he liked and gave him a kiss. Jimmy patted him on the head. I opened my arms and let him go. At first Bandit just sat there, but after a minute he ambled down to the stream. He stuck his nose into the water. In a minute he was back on the grass, a wriggly crayfish in his paws. We could hear the crackle as he bit into the poor crayfish’s shell.

  Soon he was running off into the meadow, not even looking over his shoulder. I thought of Mr. Poe’s sad line: “All we seek to keep hath flown.” First I had lost my dog, Bandit. Now the little raccoon was gone. I couldn’t help the tears.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have given him to you.” Jimmy gave me a quick look.

  I thought about what he said. It was true. If I had never set eyes on Bandit, I wouldn’t be sitting there crying.

  Finally I said, “I’m glad you gave him to me. If I hadn’t been so happy with Bandit, I wouldn’t be so sad about losing him.”

  Wild canaries swayed in the tops of the yellow mullein plants. A bumblebee buried itself in a blue flower. A chorus of cicadas was humming the same tune over and over.

  Jimmy’s voice sounded hoarse. “My ma used to tell me stories and make me cornbread, and I sure wouldn’t have gone without a ma, even though I did lose her.”

  I could see Jimmy was embarrassed at telling me how he felt, for he jumped up, shouting, “Bet I can get you lost.”

  The next minute he disappeared. I had followed him into the woods, not paying attention to where we were going. Now I had no idea which way to head.

  I called Jimmy’s name a couple of times, but there was no answer. I started off in one direction, but after a minute or two, I came to a tangle of blackberry bushes that seemed unfamiliar. Either I was walking in the wrong direction or I hadn’t noticed the bushes before. The briers caught at my skirts and scratched my legs. The deerflies got caught in my hair. I changed direction. I began to search for the little stream. I thought I could follow it, for it must flow into the river. The little stream had disappeared. I tried another direction and found nothing but piles of slash, the branches the lumberjacks had cleared from the trunks. The slash was as high as my head and there was no way I could climb over it.

  In the distance I saw pines and walked toward them. But when I reached them, I found they were not nearly so tall as the pines Jimmy and I had walked through. Everything around me was unfamiliar. I felt as if I had entered a huge building with a thousand rooms and no way out. I thought of hungry bears and wolves.

  There was a quick movement behind a bush. Not a bear or a wolf, but Jimmy. “Told you I’d get you lost.”

  I hated Jimmy. I wouldn’t say a word to him but dragged sullenly along behind him. When we got to the wanigan, I climbed on board, still furious. All I could think about was getting even.

  After supper I had my revenge. Teddy McGuire brought out his violin. He accompanied Penti Ranta in “Marching Through Georgia,” a favorite of the Union soldiers. “Hurrah! Hurrah!” Penti Ranta sang. “We bring the jubilee! Hurrah! Hurrah! The flag that makes you free!” He sang with much spirit and we all joined in the chorus.

  “Now, Jimmy,” Teddy McGuire said, “let’s hear ‘The Flower of Kildare.’”

  Jimmy’s face turned red from his ears to his forehead.

  “No, Pa,” he pleaded.

  Teddy McGuire gave Jimmy a stern look. “Now, boy, don’t make me coax you. God gave you a fine voice. Use it.”

  Jimmy looked as if he might jump over the deck and flee into the woods, but his father’s eye was on him. Still blushing, Jimmy stood up and began the song. The words were pretty enough, with much about beating hearts and sweet kisses. I could see how it pained Jimmy to sing such words in front of everyone. I was standing at the back of the deck behind the others. As he sang, “Soon will my heart beat with joy,” I clasped my hands over my heart. As he sang, “Again her sweet kisses I hope to receive,” I made kissing motions with my mouth. You wouldn’t think it possible, but Jimmy got even redder. When he finished, he didn’t wait for applause but stormed over the side of the wanigan and disappeared into the bunk shack. He wasn’t seen again that night.

  Before I went to bed that evening, I asked Mama, “Why is Jimmy so nice sometimes and so hateful other times?”

  Mama smiled. “Well, dear, Jimmy is a good and kind boy, but I believe his soft heart embarrasses him. He thinks it more manly to be rough and bold, but I’m sure his good nature will always get the better of him. And, Annabel, it would be kinder if you stopped tormenting the poor boy. Don’t think I missed your taunting him tonight.”

  “But, Mama, he—”

  “Now, Annabel, that’s enough. Go to sleep.”

  But I lay awake for a long time thinking about Bandit alone in the woods and whether I would ever speak to Jimmy again—and whether he would speak to me. At last I imagined I was queen of an enchanted forest where wolves and bears did my bidding and I had a castle full of well-behaved raccoons.

  THE MOSSY BANKS

  When I awoke the next morning, I hurried as I always did to look out the window. Each day I found something new to see. A great blue heron swept by, legs arrowed out behind it. A kingfisher was perched on a branch looking for small fish. A mink slunk in and out of the logs. There were high banks on either side of the river. A deer was grazing on the crest of the south bank. I resolved to tell no one about the deer. Tasty as
venison was, I didn’t want to see the graceful deer on my plate.

  Papa and the other men ate their breakfast quickly. There had been little rain and the river was low, leaving many logs high and dry. The men were now working the riverbanks from sunup to sundown.

  I watched them climb over the deck and wade ashore. The Indian, Big Tom, stood beside me for a minute looking out at the river. With more words than I had ever heard from him before, he said, “My people traveled this river from Lake Huron to Lake Michigan. In the same way you travel up and down a road in a wagon, we traveled up and down the river in our canoes.” He sighed. “It sure looks a different river now.” The next minute he was over the side and joining the others.

  I imagined what the river must have been like long ago, with birchbark canoes floating down it, and with no lumbermen and no logs and no wanigan. As the canoes glided silently along, the Indians must have seen bears and wolves and all the secrets of the woods that we never saw, with our noisy traveling.

  After the men left, Jimmy asked me to go exploring with him. I wanted to say no, but I remembered Mama’s words. Since Jimmy had forgiven me my teasing, I resolved to put aside my anger at him for losing me in the woods. Warily I agreed.

  Jimmy and I climbed to the top of the steep bank and walked along the path deer had made on the bank’s crest. Mr. Poe had written of such “mossy banks and … meandering paths.”

  Jimmy and I had a fine view of the river and the harvest of logs that floated along on its surface. The hot July sun beat down on us. Mosquitoes hummed about our heads and needled our arms and legs.

  The bank had been timbered, with nothing left but a few twisted oaks that gave no shade. Grass and wildflowers had taken root. Orange hawkweed and lacy wild carrot were everywhere. We scared up squirrels and a fat woodchuck who waddled away, stopping every now and then to look over its shoulder at us. I kept an eye out for Bandit, though I knew he was far away. Twice we found patches of raspberries and ate until the crimson juice ran down our chins.

  Suddenly Jimmy stopped and put his finger to his mouth. At first I thought it was just another of his silly games, but when I listened I could hear men’s voices coming from the river below us. Jimmy signaled me to stay quiet. We walked on tiptoe, keeping back from the bank so the men wouldn’t see us. The voices grew louder. We crept to the bank’s edge and peered down. They weren’t our men. Two strangers were hunched over the end of a log. The log had been stranded along the bank when the river level had gone down.

  I saw that the men had a marking hammer. “What are they doing?” I whispered.

  Jimmy was watching the men. His mouth was a little open.

  “Why are those men marking the logs here along the river?” I asked, still whispering.

  “They’re timber pirates,” Jimmy whispered back. His eyes were very large. “Look at the mark they’re making. They’re putting a circle right around our star. They’ll say that’s their mark. A circle around a star. They’re stealing our logs.”

  Sure enough. They moved on to another log with our star and hammered a circle on that one. When they finished, they wedged their pikes under the logs and sent them down the river. When the logs reached the mouth of the river in Oscoda, the timber pirates would claim them for their own.

  With the logs safely in the river, the men got ready to move downstream.

  “We ought to go back and tell our papas,” I whispered.

  Jimmy shook his head. “By the time we get back, they’ll be on their way, stealing our logs farther downstream.”

  “We’ve got to stop them,” I said. I was furious. It wasn’t right that they should steal our logs and then get away.

  “I got an idea.” Jimmy looked at me. “You game?”

  “Sure.” Inside I wasn’t so sure.

  “I’m going to make them chase me. When they take off after me, you go and get their marking hammer. After you’ve gone a distance, throw the hammer someplace where they can’t find it but remember where it is. Don’t wait for me. Just run back to the wanigan and tell the others.”

  Before I could say a word, Jimmy stood up and began running and shouting at the same time.

  The men dropped what they were doing and stared up at Jimmy. He was making so much noise crashing through the underbrush and throwing stones down at them it sounded like more than one boy. The men began climbing up the bank. I crouched down, but they were after Jimmy and never noticed me.

  The minute they were out of sight, I took a deep breath and began slipping and sliding down the sandy bank, skinning my knees and bottom. I was tumbling so fast I thought I would go right into the river, but at the last minute I caught on to a pine seedling growing from the bank and broke my fall. For a moment I was too scared to move, but I thought of Jimmy being chased by those evil men and I kept going.

  The marking hammer was just where they left it. Hanging on to the heavy hammer with both hands, I started back along the river toward the wanigan. My arms felt like they were being pulled out of their sockets. I didn’t know how long I could carry the hammer, but I wanted to get far enough away so they couldn’t guess where I had thrown it.

  The banks rose almost straight up from the river, so I had only a few inches of shore to stumble along. Part of the time I was in the river, climbing over old logs and slippery boulders. All the while I was worrying about Jimmy and what the men might do if they caught him.

  A small creek joined the river. There were no logs in the creek. I held tightly on to the marking hammer and swung it back and forth and then let it go. It landed in the middle of the creek with a big splash. I was sure they would never find it, but I would know where it was because there was a lone pine to mark the spot.

  I scrambled back up the bank and headed for the wanigan. Though I was running as fast as I could, it seemed farther than I remembered. As I rounded each bend, I thought I would see our shack. I couldn’t catch my breath. For a terrible minute I wondered if I was running in the wrong direction, but I was sure the river had been on my right.

  Suddenly, below me, there was the wanigan. I shouted, “Timber pirates! They’re after Jimmy! Quick!”

  Papa and Big Tom and Frenchy were just below me in the river, prizing out a log. Papa climbed the bank, Frenchy right behind him. Farther down Penti Ranta and Teddy McGuire had heard me and were running toward us.

  I blurted out my story and in seconds they were on their way. Papa called over his shoulder that I was to go down to the wanigan. I turned slowly in that direction, but as soon as I had caught my breath I hurried after the men.

  I could hear them thrashing through the woods shouting Jimmy’s name. More shouts. Jimmy’s voice. Then the angry voices of the pirates. There in front of me were all of our men and—running toward them—Jimmy. Chasing Jimmy were the two timber pirates. He had managed to lead them back toward the wanigan. The minute the pirates saw how many men were after them, they spun around and began to run in the other direction. Big Tom chased them, but he was soon back. He was laughing. “They won’t show their faces around here again.”

  Jimmy and I told our stories. On the way back I pointed to where I had thrown the marking hammer. Penti Ranta waded into the creek, held his nose, and disappeared under the water. He came up shaking off the water and sputtering. Back down he went. This time he came up with the marking hammer.

  “Just the evidence we need,” Papa said. “This will help us claim any logs of ours they’ve marked.” He smiled at me and Jimmy. “I must say, you two make quite a team.”

  I didn’t look at Jimmy and he didn’t look at me.

  That night a storm blew up. From the window I could see jagged flashes of lightning. A moment later the thunder boomed out. There was too much commotion to let me sleep. Mama left the lantern on for me. I lay in bed going over and over what had happened that day. Though my pillow wasn’t velvet, I thought of Mr. Poe’s lines:

  This and more I sat divining,

  with my head at ease reclining

  O
n the cushion’s velvet lining

  that the lamp-light gloated o’er…

  At last the sky was quiet and there was no sound but a gentle dance of rain on the river. I made up a story in which I soared over the forests on the back of a great eagle, flying so high that just before I fell asleep, I caught a glimpse of the whole world all at once.

  THE WAVES HAVE NOW A REDDER GLOW

  Mr. Poe could surely have written a poem about what happened later that night. At first I thought the shouts that awakened me were a part of some fearful nightmare. Mama was shaking me gently and telling me I must get up. I felt as if I had gone to bed only moments before, but there was a reddish glow in the window that I thought must be the sunrise.

  “Don’t be frightened, Annabel, but hurry and put on your things. I’ll be just outside.”

  I got my petticoat on backward and didn’t bother to lace up my boots. When I went out onto the deck, I saw that Papa had climbed over from the bunk shack. He was standing with Mama. Jimmy and the rest of the men were on the deck of the bunk shack. Their clothes were as mixed up as mine. Their suspenders were hanging, their feet bare, and their shirts unbuttoned. For the first time since I had known him, Frenchy was without his red sash.

  The red glow lit up the northern bank. There was a scorching smell. For a moment I wondered if something was burning on the stove. The red glow moved toward us and above it was a black cloud. Smoke!

  “Is it a forest fire?” I whispered.

  Papa nodded. “It must have been set off by the lightning.”

  I heard the roar of a train rushing along, but there was no train, only the fire’s anger. “Will we get burned?”

  “No, we’re probably in no danger,” Papa said. “We have to hope the fire won’t jump the river.” I saw him give a worried look at the thousands of logs floating ahead of the wanigan.