The Wanigan by Gloria Whelan Page B

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.
    â€œNext 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.
    â€œWe could write to one another,” I said.
    â€œSure,” 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