Джеймс Кейн - The Moth

“Who are they, Mr. Rohrer?”

“Just fellows Mr. Dillon has seen a dozen times around, that chipped in for Mace and his dynamite job, and never even bothered to tell him their name. Little fellows in the oil business, that have to be crooked in order to be straight. I mean, maybe their oil is hot but their word is good.”

We sat talking about it, pretty gloomy. He made no bones about it, it was a pretty poor deal, an option to buy for ten thousand dollars, something that would be foreclosed in a week, and so useless, from what was roaring next door, that nobody would lend a dime on it, or anything. “But, Mrs. Branch, I only say, where there’s a thousand-to-one chance, let’s take it. You got the ten thousand dollars, or can get it on this residence property here, or somehow, and I’ve got the thirty-day option. We admit it’s a poor outlook. Mace has got going again, and got authority from the state man, and money enough, to tunnel into the well, under the cemetery, and tap that casing. That’ll be plenty of time for most of them, as the foreclosures aren’t all due as soon as ours, but it’ll take ten days to two weeks, and it won’t do us any good. However — we don’t know. Maybe it rains hard and the fire stops. Maybe the pressure eases, and the well stops. Maybe — it’s a thousand to one but at least it’s a chance.”

“Can they do that? Go under the cemetery?”

“Probably.”

“My family are buried there, it so happens.”

“If it was a question of blocking them off, like you tried to do once, maybe those graves would do it, though it’s my impression that whole cemetery question was settled long ago, as there’s hardly a company, including yours, that hasn’t whip-stocked under there for whatever they could pump out. But as it’s a question of hurrying them up, or would be if it was possible to hurry them, why I’d say your family’s no great help.”

She went out, came back with her handbag, and laid down some money. I could see it was ten-dollar bills, and she counted out ten. He handed five back. “I don’t ask anything for myself in this, Mrs. Branch — though of course, if we get a deal, I wouldn’t be offended at an offer to take over the whole production end, from wells to gas, oil, and asphalt. But I’m not interested in corings from the option. The fifty dollars I paid out, O.K. on that. This other fifty dollars I can’t accept.”

She picked up the tens and he began reading her some kind of assignment, in her favor, he’d had typed on the bottom of the option. Then he signed it and handed it over to her. “It’s yours now any time you want to exercise it.”

“Just a matter of ten thousand bucks.”

“You never can tell.”

We sat there, all pretty gloomy, and she put out another drink and we drank it. After a long time he turned to me and said: “You know why Mace has got to go in the side of that hill with a tunnel and timbers and big gang of men — or thinks he has?”

“I bite. Why?”

“He wrecked that casing, with his shot — or thinks he did.”

“Well — wasn’t that the idea?”

“You think so?”

I said what else would it be, and he looked at her, and she didn’t know any different, and he kind of grinned into his drink, then said: “I talked to quite a few people. I talked to a dozen people today — two dozen. All in the oil business, and they all thought, same as you, that the purpose and object of the shot was to wreck that casing, to stop up the hole and shut off the fire and leave them all sitting pretty — to say nothing of ruining a well that cost Mrs. Branch two hundred thousand dollars.”

He began to giggle into his glass, and she freshened it. Then: “Isn’t that the most amusing thing you ever heard in your life? Don’t that show how little people know about their own business? Imagine that! There’s casing there, five lines of it, one inside the other, from the eleven-inch pipe you started with down to the five-inch line that’s carrying the gas. It runs up through a cellar floor made of solid concrete, and yet with a charge of dynamite Mace thought he could wreck the top of the well, so dirt and rock and stuff would cave in on it and stop it up — if that’s what he thought, though I’m beginning to wonder if he really thought anything. I mean, there’s such a thing as bringing up stuff to go boom, closing your eyes, and trusting to luck. You ask me, Mace heard all his life about shooting a burning well, got it in his mind a certain way, and had no idea why you really do shoot it, and neither did any of his friends. And mark what I say: He shot it. He’s going around saying the heat set it off prematurely, and as he was using a push-button switch, that just snapped off after he pressed it, it didn’t know any stories to tell on him. But listen: I was with him, and I know. I was right in the next room there in our little refinery office, where he had his wires, not looking outside, but looking at him, because I was wondering why he didn’t give them one on his whistle, to hike his powder up higher—”

“I remember — it was dragging the sump.”

“And I saw him press that switch!”

“But how should he have done it?”

It was she that said it, but I was opening my mouth to, because by then I was plenty crossed up. He said: “He should have exploded it over the well. Over the open end of the casing, where the gas is pouring out. That would have made a tremendous concussion, enough to drive the gas down in the pipe — we don’t know how far, because nobody was ever down there to measure. But far enough. A real jolt, to interrupt the flow for one, two, or maybe three seconds. Then it roars out again, but the fire is out. It’s just like your gas stove. You cut it off one fifth of a second, the shortest time it takes you to close the valve and turn it on again, and it’s out, isn’t it? It’s the same way with a burning well. Stop it that long and it’s still roaring, so far as the gas goes. But the fire’s out. You can get in there, and look at it, and work on it. You can stand next to your pipe. There’s no more heat.”

“Yeah, and then what?”

“You shut off that gas. With a gate.”

“A—? Something we swing on?”

“A valve. You close it.”

“You got one with you?”

“What you need, you get it made. Any good oil-tool works can do it. And it’s no great job to put on. If the flange is still there, the attachment with bolt holes around the edge that goes on all casing, to hold the Christmas tree when the flow starts, you just slip the edge of your gate over it and drop one bolt through. Then you turn it till all holes are in position and the gate is square on the pipe. Of course the gas whistles and hisses and scares you to death, but it’ll go through without any trouble. Then when all your bolts are tight you just close your valve and you’ve got it. It’s got handle bars on it, so a couple of men can turn it — or if you’re getting fancy with it, you have it made hydraulic. Me, I’d take handle bars. In emergency, make it simple... And if the flange is gone, you shove in an inside pack. It’s the simplest thing in the world. You take a length of pipe small enough to go inside the inner casing with some room to spare, and around it put three wide bands of rubber. Around it, above the rubber bands, threaded on it to turn, and sized to slip easy inside the casing, you fit a collar. On the end of the smaller pipe you fit your gate, handlebars and all. You slip the whole thing down into the casing, with everything open, so the gas flows right on. Then you screw down the collar till it bulges out the rubber and makes a tight seal against the casing. Then you screw down your gate, and you’ve got it. To put the thing on, once it’s made, ought not to take more than two hours.”