Джеймс Кейн - The Moth

I’d been crouched with about forty other people, two or three hundred yards away, down the hill. I heard somebody call. When I turned, she was there, at the wheel of her car, and then I remembered seeing some car following the taxi. She said the hospital doctor had given strict orders I was to come back, but I paid no attention. I still had this idea there was something I had to do, and looking back at it now, I can understand how Caruso, when he got caught in the San Francisco fire in 1906, came running out of his hotel with a signed picture of Theodore Roosevelt clutched to his chest. It maybe didn’t look like much, but probably hit Enrico as the most important thing in the world, something he had to give his life for, if necessary. If from now on I acted like a bit of a fool, you might remember there’s something about fire that affects you that way. All of a sudden it came to me what this was that I had to do. Sliding around on my belly, trying to work my way closer, I’d come to three of my roughnecks who were fried up pretty good by the look of their faces, but weren’t paying any attention to themselves, on account of trying to do something for Funk, the driller that was on duty when she went up, who was under a blanket and weeping and bawling like some kid. And up close there, through the smoke I could see our shack, and every piece of paper we owned, our payroll cash, every contract, every permit, as well as our safe, was in it. It was on fire. The firemen would douse it with a hose, it would steam, the flames would go out, and then here they were again, just like somebody had lit them with a match. And it seemed to me I had to save it. I stood up in front of Funk and the three roughnecks. “O.K., men, let’s get our shack.”

“God, Mr. Dillon, do we have to do that?”

That was Funk. He sounded like some hysterical girl. “You want your money, Funk? You want to get paid?”

“Yeah, but can’t them firemen—”

“What’s the matter, you afraid? You want your money, that’s where the money is, and I don’t know how to pay it to you without first we go get it.”

They looked at me, the shack, and each other, and how much they wanted of it was nothing at all. But when I led on they followed. We slid downhill, where it was cooler, and at least that made them feel a little better. Then, up the road beside the cemetery, we began moving toward the fire again, and they began to whimper. I kept leading on. Every few steps we’d hit the dirt, face first, and crawl.

Then at our feet, running along the side of the road, I saw a length of hose. Pointing toward the shack, not ten feet away from me, was the nozzle. And then I knew if I could only get up there with it, get the door open and knock a hole in the floor, I could shove that nozzle through somehow and wrap it around the joist that ran under the doorsill. Then we could use the hose as a hawser, to pull the shack out on the road. It didn’t make sense, but nothing did, that night.

I yelled to Funk and the roughnecks to hold everything, grabbed the hose and began dragging it toward the shack. It was awful heavy that way, and the best I could do was two or three feet at a time, jerk, rest, then jerk again. But then once the fire licked close and I yelled from the pain of the heat, even while I was diving for the ground. It veered off, but after that it was too hot for anybody. I had to have something to shield me, and a few feet away, at the upper end of the Luxor property, I saw one of those signs that read “Keep Right” on one side and “Closed, Please Use Other Entrance” on the other. It was nothing but a board, maybe two feet wide and three feet high, but it had feet, so I could shove it ahead of me and hide behind it. I went and got it, put it between me and the fire, then under cover of it I pulled my hose two or three more feet, then pushed the board three or four feet, then pulled up my hose, and so on. Once, from up the hill, there was a yell, and I’d just squeezed myself behind it when here came the flame, licking all around me, and so hot I thought I’d go crazy. But water came too, where the firemen up the street had seen me and given me protection with their hose, even though they didn’t know what in the name of God I was up to. At last I got near the shack, so it was between me and the fire, and had a little real protection. The door was locked, but I threw my weight on it and it broke. I reached my hand inside, and sure enough there was the hatchet I had used to sharpen stakes. I came down with it on the floor, and pretty soon I had one board loose, then another. I pulled up the nozzle, pulled it through and jammed it, so it was caught. I went racing back to Funk and the men. “O.K., boys, come on with it — heave!”

We heaved, and it was nothing but an eight-by-six shack any wind could have blown over, but it could have been the Woolworth Building for all we were able to move it. I began to scream, but Funk put his hand on my arm and I looked. A car was backing up. It stopped, and Funk bent the hose over the rear bumper and said something. It ran ahead two or three feet, then stopped as the hose tightened. Then the rear wheels spun and you could smell rubber. Then it got traction and the shack began to move. It came slow at first, but once it was over the ditch it came sliding almost as fast as a man could run, right down the middle of the road after the car, with me and Funk and the gang running with it and yelling, and people cheering from behind the ropes in the block below. Then the joist pulled out and what had been a little building with door and windows and a roof just collapsed into a pile of kindling. A woman got out of the car and opened the luggage carrier. The gang got the safe aboard, then the filing cases, transit, hatchet, and junk. Next thing I knew I was in the car, and then I saw Hannah was driving. “Well, Jack, are you satisfied?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Pretty silly, you know.”

“Couldn’t let the stuff burn though.”

“What stuff? It would have been replaceable, except for the cash, and even that’s in the safe — a guaranteed fireproof model, and it ought to be, as it cost enough. But you’re not replaceable.”

“Gee, that’s tough.”

“Will you go to the hospital now?”

“I won’t go anywhere.”

“Look at yourself in that mirror.”

“What for?”

“You’re burned. Badly.”

“O.K.”

But it was daylight and I caught sight of the car. It looked like smallpox had hit it, with the paint raised up in blisters all over, and the foundation red bleeding through in big ugly blotches. I began to get sick thinking what I must look like, and all the time she was unloading the stuff in a filling station my stomach kept fluttering and clutching. All around were star clusters, and the trademark “Seven-Star,” which was the name of the gas she sold, the first I’d seen of it. But I wasn’t paying any attention. My face and hands had started to feel hot, and all of a sudden I was begging her to get me to a hospital, quick, for fear I’d claw all the skin off before they could fix it.

I stayed in the hospital that week and the next. In addition to the bandage on my head, that they kept changing, there were bandages on my hands and neck, and all over my face, except for three slits over my eyes, nose, and mouth. In spite of all they had smeared on, I itched like I’d been put down in quicklime, and about every hour a new doctor was there, saying the head wasn’t so bad, in spite of a pretty deep cut, but the burns, which I had inflicted on myself, were critical. Between doctors were Chief Wolfson, of the fire department, Mr. Bland, the city attorney, and Mr. Slemp, head of the department of oil and gas. They asked me plenty, but they all came back to the blowout preventer, and I thought I’d go nuts tracing it back and forth, when I came on the job, whether I’d inspected the thing before I had it attached, how many wells it had been used on before, and so on. About the second day Chief Wolfson let the cat out of the bag. They’d got a hook on it after they dragged the pipe out of the way, pulled it out, taken it over to fire station No. 1 and gone into it, taking pictures, and making a record of every nut, bolt, screw, and part. And the rubber gasket inside, that forms part of the packing that takes care of pressure, was rotten. I’d been expecting something like that, so what I said was I hadn’t known about it, but would rather put off talking until the hypos had worn off, and my mind was clearer. But Wolfson was no sooner out of the door than she jumped up, where she’d been sitting there listening, and blew off. “So that’s what Dasso was waiting for!”