The Wanigan by Gloria Whelan Page B

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.
    â€œPapa 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.”
    â€œThe wanigan, Mama?”
    â€œThe 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.
    â€œBut, Mama,” I said, “the carpenters must have made a mistake. There is only one room in the wanigan.”
    â€œIt 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.”
    â€œMama, you said we would be on the wanigan three months. What about the hot stove in July?”
    â€œThe 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