The Western Light by Susan Swan Page A

have to say. Don’t you dare come up, Max. Please stop mailing me your books and magazine articles. What we had is over. I thought you understood when I explained why I wouldn’t go all the way with you. If the choice were between a hamburger and a lobster dinner, I would rather wait until I can eat lobster every night.
    Â 
    Love, Louisa
    Poor Little Louie. Max’s wife pretended to be pregnant so she could trick him into marrying her and now the sneaky creature really was pregnant, and there was nothing my aunt could do about it. It was too unfair for words. And how terrible to want someone you couldn’t have, although the world was full of such cases, like Sal admiring Morley, and getting the bully Sib Beaudry instead, and me longing for Morley’s attention when sick people needed it more. Why couldn’t we get what we wanted, like my great-grandfather, Old Mac? Now that was another confounding question. Were we designed to want too much? And, if we got what we wanted, why didn’t it come in the right amount? Why couldn’t the world hand out what we sought in exact measurements like the ingredients Sal used for baking my fave — angel food cake?
    But there was something worse in my aunt’s letter. The word “crippled.” Physical flaws were common then, so people were more inured to the sight of kids like me with limps or facial deformities. Today, these problems are mostly fixed by surgery, or physiotherapy, but nobody expected them to be cured when I was twelve. You could even argue that such flaws were less deplored because people were used to seeing others with them.
    And I, too, expected to hear people talk frankly about my leg in a way that nobody would now.
    But it was hurtful to think that my aunt would call me crippled. It made me feel like a tragic character in somebody else’s family. And she’d never criticized Morley to my face for neglecting me. She was always careful to point out that my father had treated more serious polio cases than mine. I put the letter carefully back on Little Louie’s desk, and tried not to think about Sal saying snoopers are always sorry they snooped.

15
    ON THE FIRST DAY OF THE SUMMER HOLIDAYS, I ROSE AT SIX, and pulled out the first page of my composition about my great-grandfather. At the bottom of this page, I stenciled in the words:
MORE TO COME
. I stuck the page into an envelope and stencilled,
Dr. Morley Bradford: Personal
. I underlined
Personal
three times. Satisfied, I put on my Lone Ranger hat and headed for Morley’s office, carrying the envelope.
    Morley’s office was at the far end of the hall, in the storage room with its shelves stacked with old shoes, tennis rackets, and leather-bound copies of
Boy’s Own Annual
magazine. I wasn’t allowed in it, on account of his ship-to-shore radio. Morley kept the radio on day and night in case a freighter called about bringing in a sick crewmember.
    At the door of the storage room, I heard its familiar crackles of static and a voice said: “Can anyone hear me? Over.” I knew the sound would bring my father running so, as quickly as I could, I squeezed myself in behind my father’s winter coat hanging from the window in a plastic cleaner’s bag. Sure enough, Morley walked in a moment later. He sat down at his desk and put on his ship-to-shore earphones. His fingers, twice the length of mine, fiddled with the dials. Dr. Shulman’s voice immediately filled the room.
    â€œAre you there? Over.” When the static died away, my father said: “I’m here, Rob. Over.”
    â€œI’m on my boat.” Dr. Shulman’s voice broke up. “Pilkie has escaped. Over.”
    â€œWhen?” Morley asked. “Over.”
    â€œLast night. Over.”
    â€œThe poor bugger.”
    â€œDamn it, Morley, speak up, over.”
    â€œI said Pilkie wants attention for his case. Was anyone hurt? Over.”
    â€œNo. We found