The Western Light by Susan Swan

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.
    Alas, I had no cash to lease a rig so I am back at canalling again, dragging a stone boat stacked with oil barrels fifteen miles through the swamp to the Wyoming railroad station. In answer to your question, I am too busy to find Father, although I have heard that a man with Father’s name was living at Maxwell, a Utopian Community on Lake Huron, near Port Sarnia. When I strike oil, I will build a big, warm house in Petrolia and bring Father home. No relative of mine, be he named “Vidal” or “Davenport” shall find himself in need of food and shelter as long as I live.
    Â 
    I remain your faithful nephew,
Mac
    Â 
    I finished the letter as Sal called us for lunch.
    â€œIt’s sad, isn’t it?” Little Louie said, tucking the letters away. “The way Old Mac wanted to find his father?”
    â€œWell, he found his father and struck it rich.”
    â€œOh, is that what you think?” Little Louie asked.
    â€œBig Louie told me Old Mac had his cake and ate it too. She says he crawled out of the sea mud and discovered gold in the muck he sprang from.”
    â€œMom should have been a poet.” Little Louie started to laugh. “She has a way of putting things.”
    DOWNSTAIRS, SAL HAD SET OUT a platter of egg salad sandwiches and brightly red, green, and yellow Jell-O desserts, which quivered in their bowls when we sat down.
    â€œI hear you told Mary that Old Mac found his father,” Little Louie said.
    â€œYes, he did; and that’s enough out of you, Dearie. Father had a bad start in life, but he turned things around for himself. He was a great hero, a man for his time.”
    â€œSpare us the sermon, Mom,” Little Louie said, rolling her eyes at me. I smiled timidly back. I hated getting caught between them.
    â€œOld Mac’s letters are historical relics. You’ll see, Louisa,” my grandmother retorted. “One day, they’ll be enshrined in a museum.”
    Beside me, my aunt drew a noisy breath, and the three of us concentrated on finishing our Jell-O. It was true that Big Louie believed in continuity the way other people worshipped God, even though none of the Vidals had taken church seriously since my great-grandfather. My grandmother was fond of telling us that the tiny sea creatures in ancient Lake Michigan were the missing link in our family history. The story of the primeval fish was a Biblical parable as far as she was concerned.
    According to my grandmother, over six hundred million years ago, when the planet was just four billion years old, these poor martyred sea creatures died for the Vidals and their tiny carcasses dropped to the bottom of the ancient lake. Two hundred million years later, the shellfish were crushed by Beekmantown limestone pressing down on the sea floor. And fifty thousand years later, the glaciers dumped clay sediments that pushed our shellfish deeper into the earth, turning them into the black gold that gave Old Mac his fortune.
    Every time Big Louie told us this story, my aunt almost died laughing. Died laughing was one of the things that grown-ups said if they were having fun. Sometimes they said, “I laughed my head off.” But when kids like me said somebody laughed his head off, it usually meant he was laughing at our expense. And that was how my aunt laughed at my grandmother’s stories.
    â€œDo Old Mac’s letters mention the Pilkies?” I asked.
    â€œNow why would they do that?” my grandmother asked.
    â€œJohn Pilkie has relatives in Petrolia.”
    â€œI wouldn’t take his connection to Petrolia seriously if I were you,” Big Louie replied. “Put that man out of your head, Mary.”
    But I didn’t put him out of my