The Wanigan

by Gloria Whelan

  The Wanigan

  Gloria Whelan

  For Alyse,

  whose great-great-grandfather

  was a lumberjack

  CONTENTS

  On This Home by Horror Haunted

  Lone Waters, Lone and Dead

  This Haunted Woodland

  In the Month of June

  Mountains Toppling Evermore

  All We Seek to Keep Hath Flown

  The Mossy Banks

  The Waves Have Now a Redder Glow

  The Weary, Way-worn Wanderer

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  ON THIS HOME BY HORROR HAUNTED

  I will be forced to live in low circumstances. The crude shack in which I will dwell will have no resting place but will move continually. I will not be where I was the day before or where I’ll be the next day. All around me will be nothing but the river, the logs, and the wanigan.

  I don’t blame Mama and Papa. They are victims of tragic circumstances. Three years ago, in the year of our Lord 1875, when I was but eight years old, Papa bought a farm in the northern part of Michigan. Until then we had lived in Detroit, where Papa had worked as a wheelwright, making wheels for wagons and barrows.

  When he and Mama heard of land for sale, they spread out a map of Michigan. They showed me how all of northern Michigan was a lovely green color.

  “Green to grow things on,” Papa said. “The gentleman who wants to sell the farm tells of land that is hungry for a plow. He says a man can own more acres than he could walk over in a day. He promises wild berries in the meadows, game in the forests, and fish in the rivers, all there for the taking. The price of land is cheap,” Papa said. “Why shouldn’t we have our bit of it?”

  We had a selling-up of our house in Detroit. Someone walked through it, poking into the cupboards and corners, owning it before they bought it. The auctioneer came and sang all our furniture away. People carried off Mama’s rocker and my bed. They took away the china, thin as eggshell, that Grandma had left us. It was like a merciless wind blowing through our home. “Papa,” I wailed, “they’re stealing everything.” Papa had to explain to me what was happening.

  I was relieved to see Mama hang on to our best dresses and keep back her books and Grandma’s tea set from the auction. I imagined that on our new land I would sit beside a stream and would read my favorite poems.

  Mama says that like her, I have a delicate and tender nature. Every day I improve my mind by learning some lines from one of the great poets in Mama’s book of poems. My favorite poet is Mr. Edgar Allan Poe. My name is Annabel Lee, just like the name of one of Mr. Poe’s poems. Mr. Poe wrote these words:

  From childhood’s hour I have not been

  As others were—I have not seen

  As others saw.

  I think that is very lovely. His words are true of me for I am always watching out for things of beauty. Unhappily, where we are now, there are few things of beauty.

  We left Detroit with high hopes. Papa had the look on him of someone who has opened a book he can’t wait to be reading. He said we’d grow potatoes big as pumpkins and pumpkins too big to get your arms around. Mama was all plans. She had a bolt of cloth for curtains and chair covers. She said our rooms would be filled with wildflowers from the woods.

  With many kisses and promises of writing to one another, I said farewell to my best friend, Mary. The only thing that kept me from shedding tears was my dream of our new home, with me picking roses from our garden and gathering apples from our orchard.

  I sat in the wagon holding on to my small dog. I called him Bandit because the black fur around his eyes made him look like he was wearing a mask. I told him soon he would be running through the woods making friends with all the wild animals.

  Papa was badly cheated. Our house was only a cabin. The snow crept through the chinking as if it meant to bury us. There wasn’t a soul around for miles to admire Mama’s curtains. The land was all sand. It grew nothing but rocks. Our crops wilted and our cow died.

  On the worst day of all, Bandit was out in the yard gnawing on a venison bone. The bone was left over from a deer Papa had shot to keep food on the table. We heard a terrible howl like a scream. Then more snarling howls. Papa ran outside. Mama hung on to me and wouldn’t let me go after Papa. Bandit had gotten into a fight with a coyote.

  The winter ground was too hard to bury Bandit, so Papa made a wooden box. Mama lined it with warm flannel. When spring came and the ground softened, we buried Bandit and I planted daisies on his grave.

  That summer the well where we got our water dried up. Every ear of corn we shucked was ugly and useless with corn borers. At last we gave up. Papa got a poor price for our farm. To put bread in our mouths, he took a job as a lumberjack. Mama, though unused to such hard work, assisted the camp cook.

  It was a sad two days’ journey from the farm to the lumber camp. The camp was very rough. The men were loud and coarse. Papa, Mama, and I had a little room, which Mama made as tidy and comfortable as she could. Papa made a shelf for her books and Mama set out Grandma’s tea set. Unfortunately, our room was next to the kitchen, so some days it smelled like sauerkraut and some days it smelled like dried codfish.

  In the bunk rooms the men slept upon straw, which they called marsh feathers. They chewed tobacco and did not care where they spit. They slept in their clothes with their heads resting on “turkeys,” sackcloth bags that held their extra clothes. Nothing got washed until Sunday, which was called, most inelegantly, boil-up day. The rest of the time their dirty, wet socks were draped over the rafters of the bunk room to dry.

  In spite of their coarseness, Mama was friendly to all the men. If they forgot their manners and spit in her presence, she pulled in her skirts and looked the other way.

  Mama was never too tired to school me. When she was only eighteen, her parents had died of typhoid fever and she had been left to make her own way in the world. She became a teacher. Numbers and spelling were old friends to her. Together we did sums and read from Mama’s books of poems. Though Mama encouraged me to turn to more cheerful poems, I always chose Mr. Poe because his poems were so melancholy. I was sure he could have turned our unhappy experiences into a lovely, sad poem that would bring tears to the eyes of all who read it.

  Each afternoon Mama set the kettle to boil, put a spoonful of tea leaves into Grandma’s teapot, and poured us a cup of tea. While we drank from the dainty cups, Mama told me stories of the house she had lived in as a girl. It had a big front porch with a swing. “And a lawn, Annabel, with beautiful green grass.”

  As she spoke, I looked around the camp. Since there was little there of beauty, Mama’s stories and Mr. Poe’s poems were a great comfort. Still, I was sure I was not meant to waste away in such unrefined company and in so uncivilized a place.

  I did all that I could to raise myself above my sad surroundings. I kept my clothes neat, and I tied up my hair each night in rags so that it curled in a pretty way. I shined my boots, and before I went to bed I rubbed a bit of lard into my hands to keep them soft. Nothing I did could rid my hair or my clothes of the odor of the pine trees. The smell of pine was everywhere. We breathed it and ate it and slept with it.

  I drew up a calendar and counted off the days until the winter would be over. I kept myself apart from the men and had nothing whatsoever to do with the chore boy, Jimmy.

  It appeared to me that the only purpose in life for the men was to see how many trees they could cut down. All day long I heard the cry “Timber” as the giant pine trees fell. The choppers cut nicks in the trees. The sawyers cut the trees down. The swampers lopped off the bgranches. The sprinkling wagons laid down a layer of water, which turned to ice in the freezing Michigan winter. The skidders slid the logs over the ice to
the sleighs. The loaders put them on the sleighs, and the teamsters hitched up the ox team and pulled the sleighs over the ice to the river. There along the river bank the logs were stacked into great wooden walls awaiting spring.

  At last the snow melted, the spring rains came, and the river rose. In winter the river had minded its own business. Now, suddenly, it was flooding onto the banks.

  With much excitement the men placed a charge of dynamite amongst the logs. There was a terrible boom and a great roar. I put my hands over my ears and hid under the bed. The men shouted and cheered. The logs came crashing down into the water to begin their float down the Au Sable River to Oscoda and Lake Huron and the sawmills at the river’s mouth. The journey through miles of wilderness would take three months.

  I was glad to see those logs go. I hoped that now that it was spring, we would return to Detroit and civilization. With a sigh Mama explained that we didn’t have enough money. I had to bite my lip to keep from crying.

  “Papa and four other men will follow the logs as they float down the river,” Mama said. “You should be proud of your father, Annabel. Only the best of the loggers are chosen. Their job will be to rescue any logs belonging to our company that are hung up on the shore. At night your papa and the other men will sleep on a floating bunkhouse that will trail down the river behind the wanigan.”

  “The wanigan, Mama?”

  “The wanigan is a little floating house where I will do the cooking and where you and I will sleep for the three months it will take the logs to make their way down the river.”

  I imagined the wanigan would be something like our dear little white house in Detroit, with its small sitting room and my little bedroom. I even hoped there would be a porch with chairs where Mama and Papa and I could sit and watch the river. It was not to be.

  Imagine my disappointment as I stood shivering at the river’s edge watching the camp’s carpenters fling rough, worn boards every which way to build two ugly shacks upon two ugly scows.

  “But, Mama,” I said, “the carpenters must have made a mistake. There is only one room in the wanigan.”

  “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 c
ame 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.”