The Western Light by Susan Swan Read Free Book Online

gravy sandwich.”
    â€œThat’s a fine way to talk about a cousin.”
    â€œWell, he’s my third by marriage, so it doesn’t count. Besides, you have to know what people are made of. It don’t matter if you like ’em.” Sal smirked as if she’d won another argument about me seeing the world through rose-coloured glasses. Big Louie said I was too trusting. Sal always saw the worst in people. I guess together we had the world covered.
    â€œBY THE WAY,” SAL SAID, as she began stacking dishes. “Next time I introduce you to somebody, don’t wear that hat. You look like a darn fool with it on.” My cheeks burning, I tossed my Lone Ranger hat onto the table. At that moment, Little Louie came in with a tray of coffee cups. We went to the window and watched the prisoners climb into the hospital van. The teenage boy got in first; the other men filed on next, while Sib and Jordie Coverdale stood talking to John. In his dapper raccoon coat and chocolate-brown Fedora, he looked every inch Gentleman Jack, and I thought uneasily of the way he had glanced around our living room. Maybe he thought we didn’t deserve our home. Or maybe he didn’t mind, because Morley’s family came from the wrong side of the tracks like the Pilkies so he was just damn glad that somebody like my father had made a success of things. While Little Louie and I watched, he grabbed Sib’s cigarette out of his mouth and flung it into the air. He laughed as the burning tip of the cigarette plummeted downwards. Jordie laughed, too. Turning our way, John spotted Little Louie and me by the window. He waved. I didn’t move a muscle. Then he waved again, so I waved back. Beside me, Little Louie made a soft, astonished noise in her throat as he leapt up into the bus, taking the steps three at a time.

7
    I WAS TOO SHY TO TELL JOHN HOW MUCH I IDENTIFIED WITH Mac Vidal, who had been born an orphan in Vergennes, Vermont, and was brought up by relatives in a canal boat on Lake Champlain. Before he struck oil and found his long-lost father, my great-grandfather had a pretty hard time of things, which made me feel that he would understand my situation. Not just with Hindrance, but with Morley. It was my intention to borrow hope from Old Mac’s success.
    The oil boom had started before my great-grandfather arrived in Oil Springs. By the late 1850s, settlers realized that money could be made from oil seeping out of the gum beds in Enniskillen swamp. They drilled for oil to make kerosene, which provided good reading light. Before then, everyone used candles except for the rich, who could afford whale oil. But after a Canadian geologist, Abraham Gesner, found a way to refine kerosene from oil, people began using kerosene lamps, which burned at the rate of a quarter cent an hour. Soon men from all over the eastern United States and Canada came to Enniskillen County hoping to strike it rich.
    My great-grandfather was one of those men, although he didn’t start out looking for oil. As I’d told John, Mac Vidal stumbled by accident onto the boom in Southwestern Ontario. In 1862, he had come north looking for his father and he was crewing on a lumber scow on Lake St. Clair when an oil gusher blew on the Canadian side. The oil poured down the streams and rivers faster than the men could store it. Old Mac forgot about his father and followed the oil to its source in Enniskillen County, where he began drilling for oil himself. He was helped by his aunt, Old Louie, who brought along her meagre life savings, which came in handy when Mac Vidal owed $291 to another oilman. Old Louie auctioned off her things, including the mahogany cabinet that her Huguenot ancestors had brought over from England, and my great-grandfather paid off his debt and went back to drilling. When his oil gusher came in, he bought back Old Louie’s things and they moved from their shanty in Oil Springs to the mansion he built in