Джеймс Кейн - The Moth

In the corridor, Mr. Slemp, the state oil and gas man, grabbed me by both lapels and all but shook me: “What are you trying to get away with, Dillon? Do you know what this is I’ve got in my hand? It’s an order, requiring you to abate that nuisance, that threat to this whole oil field, by shooting that well or whatever means there are available to you! By doing, at your own expense, exactly what they’re now getting ready to do, free — at least to you. That’s it, I sat there, listening to that judge, letting him sock it to you in words, and not doing what I had a perfectly good legal right to, sock it to you in dollars, grief, and sweat. You hear me, Dillon?”

“I hear you.”

“You’re in luck and you don’t know it.”

“O.K., you said it.”

“Don’t expect me to say it twice.”

He turned and went off. She had been trying to get a word in edgewise, and tell him it was her, not me, that had cooked the thing up. That didn’t take care of me feeling more and more like one of those untouchables they’ve got in India, or maybe a leper with a couple of hands and a foot missing. I must have looked glum, because she said: “I’m sorry, Jack.”

“Thanks.”

“Well, you don’t have to snap at me.”

“I don’t have to be here, so far as that goes. I’d just like to say, though, that so far as I’m concerned at this time in this company and at this particular place, a nice chummy boxcar, with a floor board busted loose to let the fresh air in, a hot journal under one end and a flat wheel under the other, would come under the head of something to throw nip-ups about.”

“Now you’re being just plain nasty.”

“But not like our well is nasty, sweetie pie.”

So that was how come we all gathered the next morning to see the grand exhibition of fireworks that was put on by Mace & Co., not incorporated. They had wired two guys in Texas that make a business of putting out oil-well fires, but found they were tied up and went ahead on their own. Before we even got there, from court that afternoon, they were putting in concrete anchors for their poles, one in the road beyond the cemetery, the other in a vacant lot between the well and the Golden Glow. In the wet concrete they sat big steel eyes, and it was hardly set before they were bolting their masts to the eyes, big hundred-foot steel poles, that they rented from a company that made stuff for broadcasting towers. They worked all night, and by daybreak they had their guy cables rigged, and were pretty near ready with their main cable, a half-inch line between masts that was to carry their traveling blocks, so when they had everything ready they could lower their charge on a falls, explode it and put an end to the show. The masts weren’t in line with the well, as there was a danger that if the main cable tightened right over it, it would melt in the heat and come apart. They were set so it would run maybe twenty feet to one side, but the idea was that a light guide cable, worked by two crews maybe two hundred feet apart so it didn’t run over the well either, could pull the charge over in position. So that’s how it was done. When the concrete was set, the poles were raised and guyed. The main cable was pulled up, and the traveling block, with the falls under it, attached. The charge, one hundred and fifty pounds of blasting powder, was in a big can that rode on a steel seat, with the detonator wire rigged in through the top. By ten o’clock everything was ready. Mace gave all signals with a police whistle, and when he sounded four sharp ones the can began going up in the air. Then he sounded three, and it began to move on the main cable, swinging and spinning like something going aboard ship. When it got to the middle, he whistled once and it stopped. Then the gangs on the guide cable began to tighten up, and it began swinging toward the hole. But to my eye it was low. By now, with derrick gone and rotary platform gone and everything wooden gone, there was just this casing sticking up out of the concrete cellar floor, that was flush with the ground. There were four or five feet of it, and why, instead of bringing his can up level with the top of it, or above it, Mace kept bumping it along hardly clear of the ground, I couldn’t quite see, though Rohrer was to explain it to me later. But here it came and here it came, and hit the pipe like a croquet ball hits the stake, and hit it again and bounced off again, and still no signal from Mace, and still it didn’t rise higher. Then came a flash and a shock that sent poles, cable, blocks, and everything crashing to the ground. She and I were standing by her car, near the Luxor place, at least three hundred yards away, and even though we dived we weren’t any too soon, as stuff began falling all around us. But when we took our fingers out of our ears the fire was roaring just the same, and when we looked it was brighter than ever. Up near it men were running. Two of our gauging tanks were tilted over at a crazy angle, one of the masts was lying across the hind end of the Golden Glow, asbestos had torn loose, and was scattered around everywhere. She kept straining to see. “But look, Jack, it’s still burning!”

Uptown, newsboys were yelling my name. When we bought a paper it said the grand jury was going to investigate the blast, and see if criminal charges could be brought against me. What I had to do with it they didn’t explain, but when we pulled up in front of the hospital, three guys that seemed to be waiting jumped out at me. She gunned the car and shook them off, then started for her house without going back to the hospital. When we got inside she sat me down in the living room, and made me a drink and had the housekeeper, Irene, get something to eat. Irene treated me as though I wasn’t there. Hannah paid no attention, but rang the hospital, and said I was in a somewhat rung-up state on account of something that had happened, and she was keeping me with her till next day. I had another drink, then began to feel sleepy, and must have corked off, because when I woke up it was late afternoon and the phone was ringing. She answered, and somebody seemed to be coming. She was pretty glum. When the bell rang, a little after seven, it was Rohrer. He was in one of those hard-rock suits they all seemed to have, and was shaved and shined and had a haircut, but his face was long, and he sipped on the drink she poured for him without saying anything. Then after a while he mentioned how he’d known her father, and talked along on quite a lot of stuff that didn’t mean anything. Then he got started on White, and how bitter the little independents were against him. It seemed the foreclosures were starting. “They feel it’s not right. They feel it’s an act of God that they had nothing to do with, and there ought to be a moratorium. You may be surprised to know I’m on his side. The refinery’s in hock to him, we’ve got our foreclosure notice too, we’re hit just as bad as anybody. Still and all, White’s up against more than they realize. It’s not a question of being a good guy and giving other good guys a break. He’s got government examiners and the federal grand jury and all kind of things to think about. I mean, if the paper and law say foreclose, and he don’t foreclose, then he’s liable, and if the stockholders should lose, or if the bank shook, then all the independents from here to Texas and back couldn’t save him. He’s got to take those properties, whether he wants to or not. And yet in spite of that and of how they feel about him, I believe what he says when he tells them he’s not in the oil business, he’s in the banking business, that he’d rather have good paper than bad land, and will do his best to save them — if he can.”

He asked what about her foreclosure notice, and she said it wasn’t due for ninety days, as all payments had been kept up to the time of the fire, and no more were due right away. He said he wished he was fixed like that, that his foreclosure was set for next week. Now at last he took a paper from his pocket, some thin typewritten sheets with a blue cover that looked legal. “Mrs. Branch, as I often told your father and I’ve told Mr. Dillon here, I’ve thought for a long time if we could only marry your wells to our refinery, well, we could go places. There’s a lot of angles to it I don’t go into here, but not to get too mysterious about it, we have one son of a gun of a time getting oil to run on, and from the beginning we’ve just done a trucking business and we’re running stuff that moves by the dark of the moon, both in and out. And you’re under contract, for the next couple of months anyhow, to a company that don’t care if you go well or not, that’s got all the oil it can handle, that leans over backwards to observe all this red tape they’ve sewed us in, that won’t take but a limited amount of what your wells can pump, and that’s got no more in the way of a future for you than a snowball has in you know where. Well, I’m a stubborn fellow. I hate to give up. So this is what I’ve done. I got an option out of them, my owners I mean, that says you can buy that place for ten thousand dollars. The refinery, that is, with lease on the land and everything that’s on it, and they’d be glad to get it. Cost me fifty dollars of my own money, twenty-five dollars for the option, twenty-five to a lawyer for drawing it up. They’re hooked up all wrong for the oil business, but they’re straight people and you needn’t be afraid they’ll play you any tricks.”