Джеймс Кейн - The Moth

The new well was near Mendel’s fence, starting another row of six. The temporary sump I had made was right alongside of it, and the new sump, the bigger one I was going to build that would hold us a while, was at the lower end of her property. But on something of that size, I couldn’t jackleg the way I had on the little sump, so I told Stelliger to come on Tuesday, and that Monday morning drove up to Long Beach and found a place that had a second-hand transit. Then I came back, borrowed a roughneck off the driller, and began setting stakes for tire grading. I’d been at it maybe an hour when that sixth sense, or my ear maybe, told me something was wrong. I looked over. Dasso was nowhere around, but the guy on the mud pump was at the screen, looking down at the stuff that was flowing back over it, Then the driller noticed something and looked up. Then the pump gave two or three coughs, while the pump man dived for the throttle. He was too late. It blew out with a noise like a cannon. Steam roared all around, the driller reached for his throttle, and everything stopped.

By one o’clock, a trouble-shooter was out there, from a pump company I found in the classified phone book, that I had to find somehow or other, if anything was to be done, as Dasso didn’t show for an hour, on account, he said, of slipping down to the Hilton to see Branch. He acted like that was all right, and while they were putting new parts on, I took a little walk around so I wouldn’t blow my top and pretty soon that brought me to the refinery. On the other side of the fence a guy was standing, watching what was going on. I guess he was around fifty, tall, thin, and leathery-looking, the way they all seemed to be in this business, and he had on the same overalls, canvas cap, and open shirt the rest of them wore. He spoke, and I did, and he told his name, which was Rohrer, and there didn’t seem to be much to do but tell mine, which I did. He said he figured I was the new super on Seven-Star, which was the first I knew we had a name, and I said I was. He kept looking at me, like he was trying to size me up, then said something that sounded like some kind of a feeler: “Always had a friendly place in my heart for Seven-Star. Great little company, not too well handled, if I may say so.”

“... How do you mean, Mr. Rohrer?”

“Well, they’ve made their deal, or I hear they have, with Luxor, and it’s none of my business and year after year they pass me by. But between you and me and that gatepost over there, a little refinery can often switch things around, these days especially, in a way the big company can’t. Or shall we say — won’t?”

He winked and I asked him if he ran the refinery and he said he did: “All by myself most of the time. Hits people funny, on an oil plant, that you don’t need a whole gang running around and eating lunch when the whistle blows at noon. They forget it all works on valves and gauges and shut-offs, and one man, if he knows what he’s doing, can handle it just as good as twenty.”

“If he knows what he’s doing.”

“... I guess you’re kind of new here.”

“Well — just a little.”

“As we all are — once.”

He studied the gang for a while, then said: “Little trouble, I see, with your pump.”

“Blew a cylinder head on me.”

“Unusual, nowadays... Used to be, a pump would blow out almost any time, but not now, the way they get corings whenever they want, and can tell what they’ve got. Mr. Dillon, just from what I know of the formation they’re into down there, I’d say that mud needs conditioning. There’s a lot of material over there, piled up over there in bags, but I haven’t seen one pound of it dumped in all morning.” Then, as I could feel my face get hot, on account of never having heard of weight material, he went on: “You’re new here, as we’ve said, and you probably don’t know it’s up to the drilling foreman to watch what you’re in, from the corings, and keep the mud at proper consistency, to control its viscosity and weight as required, and it has to be him that’s responsible. And — speaking of matters of that kind, I’d say yesterday was a very funny time to get caught short of a mud sump, and still funnier time with nobody around to see where the stuff was running, for somebody accidentally on purpose to put in a call for an officer.”

“... What are you getting at, Mr. Rohrer?”

“I told you I felt friendly?”

“You sure did.”

“Keep your eyes open, boy.”

I went back to the pump, and they had it going again. The guy from the pump company checked two or three things, then said to me: “Mister, it’s all the same to us, and fixing pumps is our business. Just the same, unless you want to have this trouble again and practically all the time, if I was you I’d keep an eye on the consistency of that mud.”

I thanked him, watched how the roughnecks kind of looked at each other, and at Dasso, who stood there shaking his head. I let it jell on that basis, and then, kind of easy, without getting excited, I said to him: “Dasso, I think he means you.”

“Means — who did you say?”

“Were you watching it?”

“Well — I wasn’t here, Jack. I—”

“Where were you?”

“I told you. I was at the Hilton. Mr. Branch—”

“Nobody came to me for leave to go to the Hilton. Myself, I was putting down stakes. I can’t build sumps, watch the condition of mud, and do eighteen other things you’re supposed to do. Now if you want to stay on here, I got to know if you’re where you’re supposed to be, accepting your responsibility, or over to the Hilton cocktail bar, lolligagging all over the place on things I’m not even informed about. Now which is it going to be?”

“O.K., but if a goddam pump man can’t—”

“He doesn’t issue materials.”

He stood blinking at me, and he wasn’t kidded: he knew I didn’t know. But when I’d stood up for my pump engineer, that put the men on my side, and for that round he had to go along. The trouble-shooters left, he pulled down two bags of Aquajel to dump in the tank. But we’d lost plenty of time.

“Hannah, it’s just plain sabotage, and the guy is out to throw a monkey wrench into us every way there is, and as often as he can get away with it. So far as I can see, and from the little that Rohrer said, it’s him alone and doesn’t involve the rest of them. I mean, it may have, as of yesterday. The three drillers were on the Bakersfield jobs, and they were friends of your husband’s, or anyhow had worked for him. The rest, the boiler man and the pump man, are local, and I don’t think they care, one way or the other. Whatever they may think of me coming in, they take it like it comes. But Dasso means trouble. And if you’ll take a tip from me you’ll do one of three things. You’ll fire me, and at least make some kind of a play to get going again with your husband. With me out of the way, Dasso can run it fine, and will, whether Branch sobers up or not. Or, you’ll fire Dasso and let me muddle through, which I don’t recommend, but I’ll do my best. Or, you’ll fire us both and let a drilling company take over, which considering everything, is what I think you should do. But you’re just piling up trouble for yourself if you let things go on as they’re going now.”

“We’re keeping him, and you’re going on.”

“But look what it’s costing you.”

“Nothing like what it’ll cost to fire him.”

“How do you figure that out?”

“There’s the bank end of it, for one thing.”

“You mean — on the loan?”

“If we have a little trouble now and then, over a sump or a pump or something of the sort, that’s nothing. They all have trouble, and nobody thinks a thing of it. But when something human comes up, what they call a moral risk, God help us! They’ll call for immediate amortization, for more security, maybe liens on the filling stations, I don’t know what. Because they know that once I make any major changes, everything stops, and within twenty-four hours it’s practically a new deal. Whatever we do, we don’t joggle it. So Dasso’s a rat. He’ll pull stuff, and it’ll set us crazy, and it’ll cost. But at least the hole is going down, we’ve got our crews, we’re a going concern. The other way, we’re just an abandoned rig. And besides—”