Джеймс Кейн - The Moth

“Does anybody?”

“It’s a mess just the same. And if all that wasn’t bad enough here, now there’s the allocation.”

“The—? Did you mention it?”

“I don’t say it wouldn’t have worked, the safe and sane policy, though it reminds me a lot of my uncle. But then came the price wars, after the depression got started, with everybody pumping oil like mad, and selling it for what they could get. So of course that would damage the field, by lowering gas pressure. So after the election, in connection with the blue eagle there was all kinds of talk, and they were allowed to do some regulating. It’s all supposed to be voluntary, but they tell you what you can pump just the same... Twelve hundred barrels a day! For my six wells! When they’re capable of yielding three times that! Is that fair, now I ask you? What good is a new one going to do me if that’s how it’s got to run? And — he makes me perfectly furious with the attitude he’s got toward it.”

“What attitude?”

“... Maybe that’s where you come in.”

“If I come in. What are you hinting at?”

“Suppose there was all kinds of undercover stuff going on. Suppose not everybody believed in this blue eagle. Suppose quite a few people said it was nothing but a blue buzzard? Would you pay too much attention to this allocation stuff? Just how much do you believe in ethics?”

“You mean, would I sell it bootleg?”

“Yeah, that’s what I mean.”

“No.”

“I never noticed you so terribly honest.”

“Oil and wives are different.”

We started climbing down, and at the cemetery she turned in, walked over, and after a little way, stopped. I saw her drop something on a grave. It was chalk white, and I was pretty sure it was one of the geraniums that grew in a bed in front of the shack, something quite a few people have, as it’s one of the few flowers that’ll grow near the sea. It crossed me up, as usual, that mixed in with the hundred-per-cent bad was something good. She came back and I gave her arm a little pat. She took my hand in hers and we went back to the car. “Will you think it over, Jack? Because if you’d take it over now, before we get started on that new well—”

“I won’t take it over.”

For two or three weeks she kept it up, with a lot of talk about how she was just as fed up with two-timing as I was, and wanted to ring down on it, and get started in some kind of decent way, but couldn’t, with that well about to start, because if that got under way before she had the showdown she’d have to let him go through with it anyway. After a while she quit talking about it, but one Monday night she was over, and it turned out the well had started, and as it took all of his time she could get out any night now. We went down to the shack, then on the way headed for Long Beach. I was nervous, and kept begging her to watch where she was going, for fear we’d run into somebody. She found a place on top of Signal Hill, not far from the refinery, and peeping around the bubble tower we could see Branch with two or three guys, poking around with a flashlight. “The rig-builder has just set the concrete for the four derrick corners, and Jim has to see how the work is done.” After that, every night we’d have a look, and almost sooner than you could believe it they were putting up steel, and then it was in place, and the crown block was up. She tried again, to get me to take over, and said she had money, a lot of money, that was mine if I’d only say yes. I kept telling her I knew nothing about oil, but that just made her beg harder. One night, when we parked, we could hear the rotary table, and see the white helmets under the lights. They were drilling.

Two or three nights after that we went to the shack, and she cried, then lay in my arms without saying anything. After a while she went out in the kitchen and lit the gas and put on the kettle. In a minute I went out to keep her company, and we stood around a few minutes in the dark. Then, just as she was reaching for the coffee, a car door slammed on the other side of the dune. She looked out and then cut the gas. “Oh, my God, Jack. It’s my husband — and Dasso!”

“Well — you asked for it.”

“Why in the world didn’t I think of it? It’s about two miles closer to the well than the house is, and — Jack, what are we going to do?”

“I don’t much care.”

That wasn’t, strictly speaking, true. I hated the whole damned business, but not like I hated the idea of facing Branch. Maybe I’d got to a certain point, but if there was still any way to duck a showdown, I’d take it, so when she grabbed me and pulled me in the living room and shoved me in a closet that had been built in one corner to hold rods and tackle, I went as fast as she did, and held my breath maybe a little tighter. It seemed funny to be jammed in there with her, half of me scared to death, the other half full of the same creepy feeling she always gave me, of wanting her.

Outside, they were knocking the sand off their shoes on the walk, then the key clicked in the lock and they were inside and a light was shining through the crack. Branch said sit down, he’d rustle something up in a minute, and went in the bedroom, where the liquor cabinet was. In the living room, there was scraping and bumping and moving around, and I don’t think Dasso was doing a thing but looking at the pictures of Branch catching fish, but he sounded like a whole troupe of acrobats practicing the double front. Then Branch was back, and they seemed to be pouring a drink, and for a minute or two neither of them said anything. Then they began talking about the well and Branch said he was quite satisfied with the way it was going, and said Dasso ought to take quite some credit to himself. Dasso said it was going all right and they had another drink. Then all of a sudden Dasso said: “Well, goddam it, who said it was going all right? It’s going the best of any well I’ve seen put down, and maybe it’s something yours truly had a little to do with, but mainly it’s the big boss, a guy named Branch. A well’s like everything else, it goes in exact proportion to how you plan it And this one’s been planned right, believe me. Everything’s been taken care of, from the right crew to the right geological report to the right contracts to the right equipment. If we’re drinking to me, we better hoist one to you while we’re about it, and make it a good one.”

“O.K., then. Drink out.”

“Drink out yourself.”

“I’ve still got a little.”

They got around to number three in due course, but not until she almost choked on the dust in there, and had to squeeze on my hand till I thought the nails must be drawing blood to keep from coughing. Pretty soon I heard her breathe: “Thank God,” and you could tell from the scraping and bumping that had started again that the drinking was over and Branch and Dasso were ready to go. And then I heard Dasso say: “Jim.”

“Yeah, what is it?”

“What’s the window doing open?”

“Well — you put it up... Didn’t you?”

“Did I?”

“Or — maybe I did.”

“Did either of us?”

There was a long time when nothing was said, and then: “Jim, were you ever shadowed?”

“Not that I know of.”

“I was once. On that forged title case, over at Santa Fe Springs. It had hardly started before I knew it, and I didn’t know how... Jim, I got a funny feeling we’re not alone.”

“Come on, have another drink.”

“No, I mean it.”

“Well, for God’s sake, let’s have a look.”

“O.K., let’s.”

She felt like some violin string, tuned to the point it breaks, and all over the place were footsteps, and then they stopped. Then: “Dasso, you’re seeing things. There’s nobody here.”