The Western Light Read online

  He turned to Sal, popping his fingers against his palms. “Mary saw my sign protesting my innocence. I bet you didn’t know mental patients can’t get their cases reviewed, eh?”

  I shook my head, taking in his clean, shapely hands. The moons at the base of his cuticles were shiny with clear polish, as if he’d painted his nails like a woman.

  “You and everybody else. But I aim to change that. Well, I guess we’re acquainted now, aren’t we?”

  “In a manner of speaking, Mr. Pilkie.”

  “In a manner of speaking, Mr. Pilkie! What a fancy way to put it! You have manners, just like your old man.”

  Flattered, I tried not to let it show.

  “Okey-dokey, Mary. I’ll behave.” He pointed at my history book. “What have you got there?”

  “I’m writing a composition about my great-grandfather, who was an oilman in Petrolia.”

  He examined the tintype of Mac Vidal thoughtfully. “Now isn’t that something? You look just like him. Something determined about the mouth.” He popped his fingers again and added, “My great-granddaddy was in the oil business down there. So you and I have a connection to Petrolia. How do you like that?”

  “Maybe your ancestor worked on my great-grandfather’s rigs.”

  “Maybe.” He sounded doubtful. “You aren’t fooling me now, are you?”

  “I’m telling the truth, Mr. Pilkie. Cross my heart and point to heaven, my great-grandfather’s boat ran into an oil slick on the Great Lakes. The slick was caused by an oil gusher near Petrolia and he followed the oil to its source and struck it rich.”

  “That’s quite a story,” he replied.

  I showed him the page from my grandmother’s book that quoted the Sarnia Observer Advertiser from August 5, 1858. He whistled as he read it out: “‘We lately heard of the discovery of a bituminous spring in the Township of Enniskillen … that will continue an almost inexhaustible supply of wealth, yielding at the lowest … not less than one thousand dollars per day of clear profit …’ Imagine, Sal! A thousand bucks a day!” he said.

  “That was in the old days,” Sal replied. “They don’t make a dime now.”

  “Sal’s right. My grandmother says the price of oil hasn’t gone up in years,” I added.

  He asked how my great-grandfather stored his oil, and I showed him a picture of the clay storage tanks like the ones my ancestor used. I skated over the mechanics of “puddling” the tank walls because I considered myself more like Morley, without a practical bone in my body.

  “Did you know your father saved my life when I was a kid?” he asked after I finished. “I got an appendix attack at the Western Light. It was blowing up a storm so we couldn’t leave the island.”

  I looked at Sal. I wasn’t supposed to know about Morley helping John’s father take out John’s appendix.

  “Or do you want me to tell you another story?”

  “Well, we sure don’t want to hear about your wife and baby girl,” Sal said.

  John’s face closed up. He drummed his fingers angrily on the kitchen table, his dark angel’s eyes glowing.

  “Please tell me about you and my father, Mr. Pilkie.”

  “Call me John,” he replied, his eyes softening.

  “Okay, Mr. Pilkie.”

  He snorted. “We Pilkies are dogans, eh?” He lifted a gold chain out of his shirt and wiggled its tiny gold cross. I made admiring noises and he tucked away his gold chain and said: “Well, Mary, before Doc Bradford, we only went to Catholic doctors. But when my granddaddy put his fingers too close to the sawmill blade our Catholic doctor wouldn’t come. It was January, and snowing hard. So the sawmill manager phoned Doc Bradford. Your daddy didn’t care about us being dogans or cat-likers, as you Protestants call us, and he didn’t care about the weather, either. If you ask Doc Bradford to come, he comes lickety-split. Everybody knows that. Doc Bradford is our hero, eh? And two hours later your daddy arrived in his sleigh at my grand-daddy’s sawmill. He sewed two of my granddaddy’s fingers back on and closed up the hole on the little one because the saw had chewed it to bits.”

  He bent back his baby finger, and I imagined I was looking at his grandfather’s four-fingered hand.

  “And then Doc Bradford went back out into the storm,” Sal said. “Can you imagine anything so crazy? He drove the horse and sleigh across the frozen bay.”

  “He was just doing his job, Sal.”

  “You hush up, John,” Sal interjected. “You don’t know this part and I do. I know the nurse who was working in Doc Bradford’s office back then. Doc Bradford lost his bearings.”

  “I do so know this part. Her daddy put down his doggy and let it find the way home.”

  “That’s what Doc Bradford did,” Sal said. “He had a fox terrier by the name of Tipper, and the little dog picked its way through the ice and led your father back. ’Course, once Doc Bradford got to the mainland, he knew where he was.”

  “But Mary wants to know how her daddy took out my appendix. Look girls, here’s the damage.” He lifted up his shirt and Sal and I gaped at the laddered scar that vanished under his belt.

  “John, for the love of money.” Sal slapped his arm and he tucked his shirt back under his belt. “I guess I need one of these to make me remember, eh?” He grinned at me and reached for Sal’s cigarettes. “Well, here goes, Mary.”

  “Entertaining the ladies, Pilkie?”

  We all jumped. Sib Beaudry stood in the doorway.

  “Sal, you keep this. Your boyfriend here says I have to go.” He threw over Sal’s unlit cigarette and Sal caught it with a flirtatious yelp. For a moment, Sal looked almost pretty and it came to me that Sal was still a young woman even though she was ten years older than Little Louie, who was twenty.

  “That’s enough palavering, you two.” Sib gave Sal a dirty look.

  “Wait a sec, Sib, will you?” John leaned close, and I smelled something tangy, like shoe leather mixed with lemon juice.

  “Mary, a smart girl like you needs a desk of your own.”

  “Get moving, Pilkie,” Sib snarled. “Now.”

  “Oh, cool your jets, eh Frenchy?” The next thing I knew John was kissing my hand and then he kissed Sal’s. Sal giggled. I blushed. Sib’s face turned red. “Don’t take any wooden nickels, Mary,” he called as he sauntered out of the kitchen.

  “So what do you think?” Sal asked after they’d gone. “You met the mad killer, eh?”

  “He doesn’t look like a killer. He’s not mean enough. Do you know what he said when the Bug House boys threw snowballs at him?”

  “You tell me.”

  “He said, ‘Aim low and you hit something.’ Why would he say that?”

  “He was making a joke, Mouse Bradford. John thinks highly of himself. I should know. He’s my cousin. And he’s slicker than a gravy sandwich.”

  “That’s a fine way to talk about a cousin.”

  “Well, 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.

  “BY 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 Petrolia.

  After the mansion was finished, he called it The Great House and brought his father to live with old Louie and himself.

  In my composition, I had been trying to describe the extraordinary details of old Mac’s early life. Little Louie was encouraging me — or pretending to, that is. I couldn’t help thinking my aunt wished she were back writing newspaper stories instead of researching our family history. She considered Big Louie’s enthusiasm for our past “a bourgeois embarrassment,” and she was fond of reminding my grandmother that Leon Trotsky said North American workers would rise up one day, and families like the Vidals, who considered themselves members of the educated upper class, would become social democrats like my aunt and her friends.

  THE MORNING AFTER JOHN PILKIE came for tea, I overheard my aunt and grandmother arguing in the guest bedroom. I crept across the hall and peeked through the crack between the wall and the door. My aunt was in bed in her pyjamas, peering at a letter through a small magnifying glass. Newspaper pages lay scattered on the floor along with three apple cores, an empty box of Tampax, and a half-full package of Sweet Caps.

  “Look at this mess, Little Louie. When will you grow up?” Big Louie picked up the apple cores and dumped them into a wastebasket, and then she started in on the newspapers. I waited for her to pick up the empty box of Tampax, but my grandmother ignored it, maybe because it shocked her. Sal hid her boxes of sanitary napkins in the towel cupboard and she would have died of shame if anyone found them.

  “Mom, take it easy. I have to help Mouse with Old Mac’s letters, remember?” Little Louie waved her cigarette at the bundle of papers on the bed. My grandmother said in a softer tone: “Well, I’m glad to hear that, Louisa. It’s time you stopped thinking about yourself. Mary needs you.”

  “Mom, Mary seems pretty grown-up to me.”

  “Nonsense. She’s under the influence of that woman.”

  “You mean the next Mrs. Morley Bradford?

  “He’ll never marry Sal. She’s his ex-nurse,” my grandmother said.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure. You didn’t send me up here to look after Mary and you know it. You want to keep me from seeing Max. Mom, that girl tricked him. She told him she was pregnant when she wasn’t.”

  “Well, she’s married to him now, isn’t she, Louisa?”

  “It’s not Max’s fault. She lied to him.”

  “Dearie, we’ve been over this a hundred times and I’m as sorry as you are about the situation. But you’ll have to move on. You need somebody solid, who can give you a comfortable life.”

  “I don’t want somebody like that. They’re boring,” Little Louie shouted.

  “Lower your voice, dear. Little pitchers have big ears.” Big Louie started for the door. “I have to go now and see about lunch.” I flattened myself against the wall. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched her saunter down the hall, her silk kimono floating behind her like a kite tail. When the coast was clear, I stared again through the crack in the door; this time, a faint, flowery smell tickled my nose. “I thought I heard you outside,” Little Louie whispered on the other side. “Look, don’t pay any attention to what Mom and I said. It was just girl talk. Do you want to read old Mac’s letters?”

  “Yes,” I whispered back. There was no point explaining that Morley was too busy for a romance with Sal. Or asking my aunt about Max Falkowski and his shotgun wedding. I’d heard Sal call a girlfriend’s baby “premature” when it was born seven months after the wedding ceremony, but what Little Louie said about Max’s wife was something new: women pretending to be pregnant so men would marry them. It was unspeakable business, so for once, I tactfully avoided a dangerous subject, and accepted the letter my aunt handed me. It had been sent to Old Louie, my great-great aunt, and there was no doubt about its author. You could tell it was my great-grandfather by his bred-in-the-bone optimism. It tainted our family history with myth, a propensity (and yes, I knew I was using the word properly), a propensity I was guilty of myself. For instance, when he was an old man, my great-grandfather claimed it had been a beautiful, hot June afternoon when his ship floundered in the oil slick. This was one of Old Mac’s exaggerations; in 1862, June on the Upper Lakes had been sunless and cold. He also claimed that the oil danced with iridescent lights. Crude oil is dark green as it spurts from the ground and it only sparkles if the oil is thinly spread, but according to the letters he wrote as a young man, that afternoon the oil lay as thick on the water as black mud.

  8

  June 30, 1862,

  Oil Springs, Canada West

  Dear Aunt Louisa:

  Thank you for giving me the letter Father sent Mother in which he stated that she was to forward her letters to him via Fort Gratiot, Michigan. I believe circumstances beyond Father’s control were the reason he failed to contact us after Mother died in childbirth. I hope Father won’t hold it against me that I was baptized a Vidal and not a Davenport.

  Will you believe me if I say I have profited from seeing the waters of Lethe first hand? It happened after we left Detroit. The evening before, the lake was clear of oil; but, the next morning, it was overcast and cold and the frost had froze off the tails of cows on the American side. Soon the reason for the gloom became apparent. A half hour out of port, our scow ran into an oil slick. It covered the surface of the lake for miles with a black and vile-smelling pitch.

  The smell of rotten eggs was overpowering. I could hardly breathe in the stench. My eyes burned and all of us in the crew cried like whipped spaniels. In no time the smelly pitch coated the hull of our ship from bow to stern; it is no exaggera
tion to say we resembled a bark from the underworld.

  The oil was from geysers in a hamlet called Oil Springs and it stopped shipping on the Upper Lakes. A single spark from a ship’s boiler room would have set the oily waters ablaze. So we were obliged to head for Mitchell’s Bay on the Canadian shore along with all of the Mackinaw fishing fleet.

  After the lakes cleared, we ran into oil again in the marshlands below Wallaceburg, where the filthy stuff had finished off most creatures. The tall grasses along the riverbanks were flattened by oil, and we saw helpless sandpipers and crows flopping in the ooze. Strange to think this place is called “The Venice of America.” In the marsh, we used pike poles to kill off the rattlesnakes, which crawled on board to escape the oil. A tug came and towed us up river, and that is when my fortunes changed. I hope you will not think poorly of me for jumping ship in Wilkesport, a real boomtown, very rough-and-ready. I felt compelled to see what had unleashed such a catastrophe.

  So I followed an Indian trail along Black Creek and found myself standing on a vast floodplain when I came out of the oak forest. Not a single tree had been left standing. Tall, three-legged structures covered the plain, which resounded with the click-click of metal drills. I counted 200 oil derricks. Possibly there are a great many more. On the plain, men were making bungholes in barrels and others were engaged in filling them. Still others waded through puddles of oil to stack a wagon with the barrels. On a ridge, men stood stirring huge smoking kettles.

  I was looking at the aftermath of the Bradley gusher, which had coated our ship with oil. From the mouth of the Bradley Well, where oil bubbles up in every direction, there is a perpendicular tube some sixteen feet high and four inches in diameter from which the oil is conducted into six or seven large storage tanks. A great deal of oil spills over and is lost. A stopcock has been inserted into the top of the tube to prevent waste but even so it overflows. Imagine, if you can! When it blew, this well produced 5,000 barrels of oil a day.