The Wanigan Read online

  Using their pikes, Big Tom and Frenchy began walking the wanigan down the river, away from the fire, but the fire was moving quickly.

  There was a tearing noise and a fireworks of sparks as the flames leapt from the crown of one pine to the next. The fire was catching up with us. Black ash sifted over the wanigan. The smoke was so bad I could hardly breathe. Papa climbed onto the wanigan’s roof. Jimmy handed him pails of water and Papa sluiced the roof. Behind us Teddy McGuire was doing the same to the bunk shack. Pail after pail was lowered, filled, and emptied.

  Sparks flew about. A bit of fiery branch landed on the deck. Mama grabbed at the brooms, dipped them into the water, and handed me one. She quickly swept the branch into the river. More branches landed on the wanigan and we swept those off, too.

  “William,” Mama asked in a trembling voice, “ought we to get off and onto the other shore?”

  “If the fire jumps the river, Augusta, we’d be safer right here in the water.”

  I thought of the river crowded with wood and I wasn’t so sure.

  Big Tom said, “This is a good river. I’ve known it all my life. It’s not going to give us any trouble.”

  But the smoke got so thick we had to wrap wet handkerchiefs around our faces.

  Jimmy laughed at me. “You look like a robber about to hold up a stagecoach.”

  I tried to come up with something to say in return, but I couldn’t think of anything but the fire. Mama was coughing, so she had to go inside. I saw that Papa wanted to go after her, but he had to keep sluicing the boat. I looked at Papa, wondering if I should go to Mama.

  He shook his head. “Your mama will be all right. We need all the help we can get, Annabel.”

  Lighted branches, like small torches, fell around us. Papa took care of the roof. I went after the branches that landed on the deck, sweeping them into the river. When the glowing torches fell into the river, you could hear the sizzle and see a little puff of smoke. The reflection of the fire on the water made me think of Mr. Poe’s lines:

  The waves have now a redder glow—

  The hours are breathing faint and low…

  Three deer plunged into the river just ahead of us. They scrambled over the logs and clambered up the opposite shore. Jimmy and I looked at one another. I knew we were both thinking of Bandit and of all the birds and animals we had seen in the woods. We might be in danger but at least we were in the river and safe for now. But what would happen to the animals?

  The men took turns at pushing the wanigan along. One hour went by and then another. Drops of rain began to fall. We all looked up at the sky, hoping and praying. Our prayers were answered. Sheets of rain came down, soaking the woods and the wanigan and soaking us. We didn’t care. We just stood there cheering the rain.

  The fire died out. There were no more flames now, only burnt trees like black skeletons and wisps of white smoke rising up from the damp earth like a crowd of ghosts.

  We got no sleep that night. Mama had recovered and had tea and molasses cookies for everyone. Penti Ranta laughed and said, “If I had jumped into the river back there for my morning bath, the water would have been nice and warm.”

  “In Canada,” Frenchy said, “we had us one grand feu. Dat feu, it lasted two days. Nothing left for miles. Next year, all green again. Wid de trees all burned up we got us good farmland. De feu, it did de farmers’ work.”

  “The lumber company that owned that land surely won’t thank that fire,” Mama said.

  “Those trees weren’t hurt by the fire,” Big Tom said. “Just a little scorched on the outside.”

  I couldn’t help thinking of the frightened deer escaping the fire and wondering if Bandit was safe. I guess I was pretty tired because I went inside the wanigan, where no one could see me, and cried. Not even Mr. Poe, who was always miserable about something, had a poem that was as sad as I was.

  THE WEARY, WAY-WORN WANDERER

  It was a week after the fire when I awoke and looked out the window to see my first gull. It swooped over the wanigan and lighted onto the water. A moment later it was far overhead, no more than a white thread against blue sky.

  At breakfast Papa told me, “The gull means we’re nearing the end of our journey, Annabel. Oscoda and Lake Huron are only a few days’ float from here.”

  Mama breathed a sigh of relief. I cheered right up as well. I thought the gull was like the dove in the Bible that brought back the olive leaf to Noah because the waters had subsided from off the earth. I told myself nothing would make me happier than to live in a house perched on land. For a second I wondered if I would miss the wanigan, but the thought disappeared with the happy prospect of dry land and real houses.

  Soon we saw the houses, houses and barns, and people standing along the banks of the river, staring at us and waving. I waved back.

  Big Tom said, “They can hear the logs coming down the river a long time before we get here.”

  As we neared the mouth of the river, the men could talk of nothing but the prospect of an end to their hard, wet work. In Oscoda our logs would be chained together into great platforms called booms. The booms would be tugged to the sawmill or loaded onto boats bound for Detroit. Finally, after all these months, the men would be paid for their work.

  They talked of how pleased they would be to come to the end of their labors and to receive their wages. Still, all the men seemed quieter than usual, as if they were sorry the season was ending.

  Papa said, “I’ll tell you, fellows, I’m through with lumbering.” He gave Mama a fond look. “This year has been hard on Augusta. We’ll take our wages and head down to Detroit. I’ve got a friend who’ll put me to work on one of the barges on the Detroit River. We’ll find ourselves a little house with a garden for Augusta and a proper school nearby for Annabel.”

  I looked at Mama and Mama looked at me. It was like the sky had opened up and you could see right up to heaven. I tried to imagine what it would be like to live in a house that never moved and to go to a proper school instead of running around the woods with Jimmy. I told myself that I would be with well-bred people with agreeable manners. Our guests would not come to dinner in their undershirts or spit tobacco juice. Instead the men would wear starched white shirts and the women pretty dresses, and the conversation would be held in polite voices. But there might be no fiddle and no songs and no dancing either.

  Penti Ranta, Big Tom, and Frenchy announced that they would head back to a lumber camp in the fall.

  Big Tom said he knew just where the next camp would be. “There’s a stand of pine trees reaching a hundred and fifty feet straight up in the air. You can tell when they’re ready for cutting. It’s the way the branches whisper to one another. It’s a sound you never forget.” He sighed. “Still, I hate to think of cutting them down. Soon there won’t be a tree left along the Au Sable.”

  I thought of how Big Tom had once told me, “The river sure looks a different river now.”

  “After we get us a little fun in de city,” Frenchy said, “our moneys dey all gone.”

  “Not that we don’t mean to save our money,” Penti Ranta said, “but every year it disappears and this year is sure to be no different. “ He sighed, but he didn’t seem too unhappy.

  “I’ll be right there with you, boys,” Teddy McGuire said. “I’m heading back to the lumber camp as well.” He looked at Jimmy. “My boy here will stay with his aunt in Saginaw. He’ll get some education and unlearn his wild ways.”

  Jimmy winked at me. “You can take me to Aunt Elsie’s,” he told his pa, “but I’ll never stay there. No hound dog ever sniffed his way back faster’n I will.”

  The river widened and deepened as we neared its mouth. The logs floated easily now. The men had little to do but poke one or another log to keep the wooden river flowing.

  Because we were nearing the end of the journey, Mama took special pains with the meals. There were doughnuts for breakfast, and for supper she made baked beans the way the men liked them, with both molasses
and maple syrup, and potatoes fried crisp with onions and lots of blackberry pie. Jimmy and I had been picking blackberries every day. There were scratches on our arms and legs and my dress had purple stains. Fast as we picked the berries, Mama turned them into pies.

  For all Mama’s efforts the men didn’t cheer up. Teddy McGuire kept his violin wrapped up in its oilcloth. There was no dancing or songs. There were stories, but they were all about the things that had happened on our drive, the logjam and the timber pirates and the fire. The men weren’t letting our trip go.

  It was August when I awoke and ran to the window to see Lake Huron. Riding on the lake were schooners and steamships, tugs and paddle wheelers. There were houses and stores and a sea of logs that went on forever.

  As we reached the town, Frenchy hopped over the deck and climbed onto a huge log. Balanced on the log, he floated ahead of the drive as if he were its king, his peavey raised as if it were a banner. The townspeople gathered along the shore, waving and cheering. Our journey was over and our work nearly done.

  Jimmy and I watched the boom company sort out the logs marked with our star. Papa had shown the company the marking hammer, so we got the logs with a circle and a star as well. A part of our boom would go to the sawmill in Oscoda, and the rest would be loaded onto steamers and sent down Lake Huron to Detroit.

  “Next year,” Papa said, “you’ll see new houses in Detroit made out of boards from these very logs.”

  All leftover supplies from the wanigan were divided up amongst the men or sold off. The time came to pack our things. Saying goodbye was harder than I thought it would be. For the first time I realized I might never again see Penti Ranta, Frenchy, Big Tom, Teddy McGuire, and Jimmy. Ever.

  When it came time to say goodbye to Jimmy, he stood first on one leg and then the other, not knowing where to look.

  “We could write to one another,” I said.

  “Sure,” Jimmy agreed. “By next year I’ll probably be a chopper or a skidder like my dad. I’ll tell you where we’re logging.”

  I had put down in my best handwriting two lines of Mr. Poe’s poetry to give to Jimmy:

  Oh, hasten!—oh, let us not linger!

  Oh, fly!—let us fly!—-for we must.

  They had a strange effect upon Jimmy, for he slapped his hand over his mouth. I believe he was hiding a smile, though why he should find such sad lines amusing I could not imagine.

  After a moment he said, “Here’s something for you.” He thrust a piece of paper at me. And after shaking hands with Papa and with a very red face planting a quick kiss upon Mama’s cheek, he hurried after his father.

  I opened the piece of paper to find Jimmy had made a drawing of the wanigan. On the deck he had drawn the two of us standing side by side, big smiles on our faces.

  Mama and Papa and I took a room in a boardinghouse for the night. The next day we would be on a steamboat headed for Detroit. The boardinghouse was neat and tidy. Our dinner table was covered with a starched white cloth, and the food was served not on tin plates but on china plates. But with just the three of us, dinner seemed a quiet and lonely affair.

  That night I slept in a real bed with clean white sheets. In the morning the first thing I did was to run to the window to see where we were. What a cruel disappointment to find we were right where we had been the day before!

  Later in the day Mama, Papa, and I stood on the shore and watched as the wreckers used crowbars and claw hammers to pull apart the bunk shack and the wanigan. There was nothing left of our three months’ journey. I felt as if it were me that was being torn apart.

  The streets of Oscoda were sprinkled with sawdust from the lumber mill. Papa, who had once been a wheelwright, pointed to the lumber wagon’s wide, flat iron tires. “The sawdust keeps the tires from sinking into the sandy roads,” he explained.

  Lumberjacks from all over the northern part of Michigan had taken over Oscoda. They crowded into the stores to buy new clothes and boots. Mama hurried me past the taverns, which took a lot of hurrying, for there were a great many. From a distance I saw Big Tom and Penti Ranta walking along the street. When they saw Mama and me, they waved in a friendly way, but they did not stop to talk with us. I saw that they had another life now and I was no longer a part of it.

  The next morning we boarded the steamship that would take us down Lake Huron to the Saint Clair River, Lake Saint Clair, and finally the Detroit River and the city of Detroit. We sailed past cabins and small farms whose fields ended at the lake’s edge. I began to imagine what our house would look like. Papa would be working on the river barges. Perhaps we would have a little house on the water. I imagined myself watching the boats. Mama promised me I would not have to sleep amongst salt pork and flour barrels but would have a room of my own. Papa promised I would have a dog.

  I thought of Mr. Poe’s words:

  Like those Nicean barks of yore,

  That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,

  The weary, way-worn wanderer bore

  To his own native shore.

  Of course, the river was not exactly perfumed and the wanigan hadn’t been a Nicean bark, whatever that was, but we would live on our native shore. We would have our own house in Detroit. There would be shops to visit and a real school. There would be friends. I would see Papa’s barge going up and down the Detroit River.

  I believed my new life would be very pleasant, but I knew I would always be watching the river, hoping to see the wanigan floating by.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  In the early 1800s, when settlers first came to Michigan, they thought the giant pine trees a nuisance. They wanted cleared fields for their crops. By the 1830s, pine was king in Michigan. Lumber camps were everywhere. In spring, when the ice melted, the logs were sent down Michigan’s rivers, down the Tittabawassee, the Pere Marquette, the Au Sable, the Shiawassee, the Saginaw, and the Manistee. In 1850, in Manistee alone, sawmills produced seven million feet of lumber. Michigan pine was shipped all over the country. If your house is old enough, it might be made from Michigan pine. Give it a friendly pat from Annabel.

  About the Author

  Gloria Whelan is a poet, short story writer, and novelist best known for her children’s and young adult fiction. Whelan has been writing since childhood and was the editor of her high school newspaper. Many of her books are set in Michigan, but she also writes about faraway places based on her travels abroad. In 2000 she won the National Book Award for her young adult novel Homeless Bird. Her other works have earned places among the American Library Association’s Best Books for Young Adults, the International Reading Association’s Teachers’ Choices and Children’s Choices, Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People, and Los Angeles’ 100 Best Books. Whelan has also received the Mark Twain Award and the O. Henry Award. She lives in Detroit, Michigan.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright© 2002 by Gloria Whelan

  Cover design by Mimi Bark

  ISBN: 978-1-4976-7386-1

  This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

  345 Hudson Street

  New York, NY 10014

  www.openroadmedia.com

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