The Wanigan Read Free Page A

His feet are large, too, so that he looks like a puppy with big paws who will grow into a great dog. He has red hair, which his father calls ginger. His father cuts Jimmy’s hair and one side never matches the other. Jimmy has no mother to care for him, so that his shirts were missing many buttons until Mama sewed them on for him.
    Jimmy’s story is a truly tragic one. His mother died a year ago. Papa said it was diphtheria and Jimmy had it as well. After his wife’s death Teddy McGuire was left to care for Jimmy. Since lumberjacking was all Teddy McGuire knew, he took his son along with him. Jimmy became the chore boy in camp. I pity Jimmy having no mother to care for him.
    Once I expressed my deep sorrow at the death of his mother, but Jimmy said it was none of my business and ran away. Mama said it was too hard for him to talk about his mother’s death. Even so, I thought he needn’t have been so churlish.
    That morning I had no wish to speak with Jimmy and pretended to be studying the shore.
    Jimmy stared most impolitely at my feet. “If you had a proper pair of boots,” he said, “instead of those fancy laced kid-leather things that aren’t good for anything, you could go along the bank with me. You could help me pick up firewood for the kitchen stove.”
    It was my dearest wish that Jimmy would just disappear. “I haven’t the least desire to accompany you anywhere.”
    â€œYou’re so stuck-up, Princess Annie, it’s a wonder you can bear to breathe the same air everyone else does.”
    While it’s true I pride myself on my manners and deplore those of the lumberjacks, no one wishes to be called stuck-up, especially when they aren’t at all. I felt my lip trembling and tears start up. I did not see how I could spend weeks and weeks shut into a tiny cabin with no company but a cruel boy.
    I turned my face away but not quickly enough.
    â€œHey,” he said, “you don’t have to blubber. If you can’t stand for me to be on the wanigan with you, I’ll get my own barge.”
    Jimmy swung himself from the wanigan onto a huge pine log floating in the river. He stretched out on his back as if the log were a couch and waved to me. The log floated along with hundreds of other logs on the river’s flood. A moment later it bumped into another log, and Jimmy was flailing about in the icy water. He climbed out of the river, leaking water from his cap to his boots. As he jumped onto the bunk shack to change his clothes, he gave me a furious look. I kept my countenance, but it was hard not to smile.

THIS HAUNTED WOODLAND
    Mama called me inside the wanigan. The whole shack had the sour, yeasty smell of rising bread. Mama was looking tired, as she always does after the hard kneading of a big batch of dough.
    â€œAnnabel, I heard you talking with Jimmy. You are very hard on him. You ought to have a little consideration for the poor boy, motherless as he is.”
    I hated scoldings from Mama. She always looked so sorrowful about my bad behavior, as if it truly hurt her. “But he’s so rude,” I told her.
    â€œHe is a little clumsy in his ways, but I believe he only wants to make friends with you. He doesn’t know how to go about it. You must meet him halfway. Now help me set the loaves.”
    Relieved the scolding was over, I scooped up a handful of the dough, patting and folding it in the way Mama had taught me. The dough felt like the softest down pillow. The fragrant brown loaves that came out of the oven seemed a miracle to me.
    When we finished setting the loaves, I soaked the dried apples for pies, peeled a great pile of potatoes, and shed tears over a peck of onions. All the while I worked, I was engaged in the learning of Mr. Poe’s poetry. This day I had chosen the lines:
    Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber,
    This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
    I didn’t understand exactly what the words meant, but