Джеймс Кейн - The Moth

“Sure.”

“Well... what about it?”

“The fire you mean, or what you think of me?”

“Why... the fire.”

“I thought that’s what you meant.”

“Listen, Dillon, if it’s a question of what I—”

I stepped over, and he stopped, but I didn’t take any satisfaction in it, even if I had shut him up. “... O.K., the fire. My fire, I think you said. What about it?”

“What are you doing about putting it out?”

“Well — am I? If it’s my fire, what the hell have you got to do with what I’m doing? Maybe I like a fire. Maybe it’ll come in handy to light my cigarette with — of course I don’t smoke, but for a lighter like that I could learn. Maybe I think it’s pretty.”

“Listen, Dillon, cut the comedy and get down to bedrock. That fire’s on your property, that’s true — or Mrs. Branch’s property, but we understand you’re rather high in her counsels now, as they say. Just the same, it’s a community affair, and a damned serious one, so don’t think it’s just a private show of your own, to crack jokes about.”

“O.K., let the community put it out.”

“Hasn’t the community responsibility, with regard to the fire department and all, been explained to you?”

“Why don’t they put the fire out?”

“They’ve tried. They’ve tried everything they have the legal right to try. They’ve tried foam, and they’ve tried fog. They’ve done what they can. The rest is up to you.”

“You mean, where fifty firemen flopped, I can go out there and tell it to stop and it’ll stop? Say, I’m good, ain’t I?”

“Dillon, you’ve got to shoot that hole!”

“Why don’t you shoot it?”

“I’ve told you, stop trifling! You—”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute, WAIT A MINUTE!”

It was one of the guys that had just come in, and he got up and stared at White, who called him Mr. Mace and asked him what was on his mind. “Listen, Mr. White, I’ve been sitting here, paying attention to what’s been said, and I’d like to ask that question too: Why don’t you shoot it?”

“What are you trying to insinuate, Mr. Mace?”

“I’m not insinuating, I just want to know.”

“... Mr. Mace, my bank is not in the oil business, or in the business of putting out fires. We’re in the business of discounting paper on proper security, and whether you believe it or not, our only interest in this is getting our security, which is the property that has been pledged for these various loans, back on its feet again, so it’s good instead of bad!”

“Yeah, but just the same, the longer this goes on, the more operators get foreclosed out and the more property the bank acquires. And by New Year’s Day—”

“I resent that!”

White was like some lion as he got up and walked around the table. And sore as I was, and sick as I was, I believed him. I didn’t believe the bank wanted a bunch of properties that had been ruined, or was up to any tricks, but all of a sudden four or five of them, the small operators, were on Mace’s side, pretty excited. Pretty soon Mace turned to me. “Did you mean that, Dillon? That you’d let somebody else shoot it?”

“You want me to cross my heart?”

“You understand what this is? If that well is shot, that could wreck it. That could be the end of it, and that’s why the fire department can go just so far and no farther. You know about that?”

“What good’s the well doing me now?”

“And you’ll let us shoot it?”

“Brother, I’ll kiss you for it!”

She was pretty sulky about it, specially at the idea of how much she owed, what the well had cost her, and all the rest of it, as it lined up from the point of view of the future. But she didn’t argue about it, or act like there was anything else to do, until I happened to remember Rohrer, and his line of chatter about it being a wonderful time to buy a refinery. I told her about it as something funny, but she began staring at me, where I was back in my hospital bed again, and hardly said anything when the nurse came in with my dinner. She closed the window, to shut out the roar, and put the screen up, to cut off the glare, then went back to the chair that had been put facing the bed, and watched me eat. Then she poured my coffee and when I was done, took the tray out in the hall. Then she came back and sat there some more and stared at me some more. Somewhere around seven she said: “We are in the pig’s eye going to let them shoot it.”

“What?”

“Something funny goes on here.”

“Like what, for instance?”

“White, and what Mace was talking about.”

“There’s a well blowing off, if that’s funny.”

“And money’s being made out of it.”

“Listen, White’s a banker.”

“He’s a banker, and he’s not in the oil business, and he likes to flirt with me in a quiet way, and he’s a swell guy, and I like him. Just the same, without his wanting it that way, or trying to work things around that way, money’s about to be made out of that gasser of ours. Big money. Right on the dot, as soon as the notes say he’s got to, he’s foreclosing, and that means if that well keeps burning long enough, he’ll own the whole hill, and — oh no, Mr. Dillon, we’re not letting them shoot that well. Not till we’re cut in. Not till—”

“I’m sorry, I’ve given my word.”

“And who are you?”

“I’m sorry, just an employee. A former employee as of now. You want to block them off, you get somebody else to do it. So far as I’m concerned—”

“Jack.”

“... What?”

“Quit kidding me.”

“You think I love you too much to walk out?”

“No. You don’t love me at all, though maybe I can make you if we ever get out of the woods with this. But that damned machinist’s soul won’t walk out, no matter what I do about it. Jack, listen. If they shoot it we’re sunk. We’ve got no well, all we’ve got is the six old ones, and what we owe will swallow up what they pump for the next hundred years. Except it’ll more than swallow them up, and that means we’re just like the rest, we’re foreclosed. Can’t you see how it works? If the well goes on, White gets those other places all around, and probably the refinery. If it’s shot, he gets us, really the best property of all, because while I’ve only got six good wells, I’ve got a whole acre of land, and can get permits for more wells, which are the main thing. But — if White wants us, he’s got to make a deal. Rohrer was right, to that extent. It’s a wonderful time to buy a refinery — or steal one.

“Think White’ll buy you one?”

“He might, when I get through with him.”

“Doing what, for instance?”

“You’ll see.”

If my face hadn’t been red from the fire, and what White had to say to me, it would have been the color of steamed lobster after listening to that judge. He gave her the temporary injunction that she asked, of twenty-four hours, sight unseen. Then next day he heard the case, with Mace on deck as defendant, and ten other operators that were going to chip in and pay the cost of what they were going to do, and about a hundred newspaper reporters, photographers, townspeople, and God knows who-all. I hated it with everything there was in me. I hated it I had promised Mace, and had to renege, I hated it the fire was still going on, I hated it that we had caused a community catastrophe, and were trying to use it for our own gain. But I couldn’t turn against her, and I had to go on the stand and say that while I had given Mace a tentative promise, I’d gone into the matter further and come to the conclusion that our interest was seriously involved if we destroyed the well; that experience had shown that as soon as the pressure eased, with the escape of gas, the fire could easily be controlled; that a little time was the main factor, and that we were entitled to it; that all danger to surrounding property had been abated by the fire department; that no emergency any longer existed. I stepped down, and there were arguments by lawyers, especially by this young guy Horlacher that she had called up that night, and had a huddle with at her house, without me being present at all. After a while the judge took off his glasses, polished them with his handkerchief, then began swinging them back and forth by one earpiece, while he thought. Every so often he’d look outside, in the direction of the hill, where you could see the thing, burning brighter than ever. Then he began to talk. He talked mainly at me. He said it was common knowledge I had accepted a job, a job of grave responsibilities, which I had no capacity to hold, either in the matter of training, or by temperamental fitness. He said it had been alleged repeatedly in the newspapers, and not denied so far as he knew, that the catastrophe had been brought on by my negligence, a negligence all the more egregious in that science had relegated such things to the past, or had so relegated it if the most elementary appliances were properly utilized, which they were not. He said the fire involved the whole town, and especially every participant in the Signal Hill field. He said for me then to resist, on the basis of specious, trifling, and as he suspected, insincere arguments, the relief which public-spirited citizens were willing to provide, at their own expense, was an exhibition of contumacity unparalleled in his knowledge. He said my real motives, whatever they might be, were a subject on which he was not informed, but he could only wish it lay within the power of the court to punish me, and severely. He said in view of all these considerations, and the emergency, he was denying the application with the harshest rebuke he knew how to administer — costs to the plaintiff.