Джеймс Кейн - The Moth

“Why doesn’t Mace do that?”

“Maybe he don’t know about it. But if you ask me, he’s gun shy. He made a mess of one shot, and now he’s dogging it. He’s doing what they do when the casing is wrecked — when it’s all gone, from sand and pebbles cutting it out, ten or twenty feet down in the ground, with the pressure throwing dirt up and cratering it all around. Then there’s nothing to do but go down and get it. They work in by tunnel, peel off outer casing, throw a split sleeve around the inner pipe, cut through that, put a plug in, then come out through the tunnel with a new line of pipe and with that save the well. That is, if it all goes well. If not, in the end they have to get the Eastman survey outfit in, let them line up a new well, whip-stock down with it, intersect the burning well at maybe five thousand feet, pump it full of mud, close it and lose it. Or drive into the oil sand just beside the burning well and take the pressure off. And all that is six-figure stuff — and it’s on her. Under the law, she’s booked with it. Nice.”

“You mean, it would be just a two-hour job if that goddam fool hadn’t wrecked our casing?”

“Jack... did he wreck it?”

“Well... ask me another.”

His mouth twisted over on one side, he hitched his chair closer, and said: “He thinks he did. So all right. He thinks he wrecked it, and that wrecking it didn’t work. And as black smoke is bellying down, and nobody can see, why maybe he’s right. Maybe he did wreck it. He sure wrecked everything else, so it’s reasonable he’d be discouraged. But me, I’ve been looking at it. From my refinery office I’ve been looking at it, whenever the smoke clears a little, which it does every couple of minutes, when a puff of wind hits it. That casing’s just like it was! It’s sticking straight up!”

“After that blast?”

“You know anything about explosions?”

“Not much.”

“They’re tricky. They’re governed by a little principle called the cone of burst, which is the direction the discharge of energy takes, so something right in the path of it is blown to shreds, and something three feet away is hardly jarred. If you ask me, it was just this crazy idea he had, of wrecking the pipe, that saved it. That can of powder was yawing around, there on its falls, like a boat coming about in the wind, and if it was four or five feet from the pipe at the time he touched his button, the cone of burst would run slightly over the end of it. Of course, you might have been shaken up plenty, if you had been standing there, but then you’re not made of high-grade steel.”

“Rohrer, what are you getting at?”

“Jack, why don’t we shoot it?”

“You and me?”

“And her.”

“O.K.”

Her eyes had that shark look as she said it, and his face lit up as he raised his glass to her and had another sip of his drink. “That’s it. All three of us, you, Jack, Mrs. Branch, and myself. The masts are still out there, lying around — they haven’t got around to gathering them up yet. The cable’s there, the firemen’re there, and Mace is there. I’d just love to steal his men off him, so he has to stand around and watch us. Me, I’ll line it all up. I mean, I’ll get an outfit started on that inside pack and what has to be done. Her I want right by me, to run errands and phone and O.K. bills and handle finance. You...”

“Yeah, me?”

“... Jack, I’m not sure I’d have rigged those masts the way Mace rigged them. I think I’d have guyed one big mast to a step, and from that run a swinging boom — but those are the masts we’ve got, and we’ll have to make them do. But the way I want to do it, I don’t have any sap blowing whistles. I’ll be in the refinery office, and I’ll throw the switch. But the can of dynamite itself, I want to swing on that cable. Swing, like rockaby baby. And somebody’s got to swing it.”

“Meaning me?”

“Meaning you.”

He looked at me, pretty sharp, and went on: “You’ll have to be close. That can has to be swung a few times, short, controlled swings, so I can check how high it’s going to go, and everything else. Whoever swings it has to do it with a wire. We can’t use rope — it would burn in twenty seconds, once it got close to that heat. We use wire, plain baling wire. I’ll need three, four, five, six, or a dozen trial swings, and then she’s got to rock — one, two, and a heave. When she’s right over the hole, at the one moment when anything swinging stops stock still, I’ll touch my button. By that time you should be flat on your face, and with luck — and the cone of burst as I think it’ll develop — you’ll be all right. But get this, Jack: maybe...”

“Maybe I don’t have any luck — is that it?”

“Yeah. That’s it.”

It was all ready, the inside pack made, the masts rigged, and the dynamite wired up, around sundown of the third day after that. I was there, with Rohrer inside the refinery office, looking like Superman dressed up for goalie on the interplanetary hockey team, in asbestos from helmet to shoes. The firemen had seen to that, and fact of the matter, it seemed to me they used as much juice on me as they did on the fire, which was pretty hard to get sore about. I had a helmet, mask, flyer’s suit, and gloves, everything either made of asbestos or quilted with it or stuffed with it, so if something went wrong at least I wouldn’t get fried like a bug in a light. And it seemed idiotic, the little I had to do, in relation to what it might cost me to do it. My job, as Rohrer said, was get out there, close to the fire, and give signals, whether the can was to go up, down, or sidewise, and how much. Then, when it was hanging right, I was to swing it, a little bit, a little bit, then more, then wham. It would all take, as well as I could figure out, five minutes, no more, and hardly any work.

Rohrer had arranged the cable stuff a little different from the way Mace did it. Instead of having the main cable between masts, strung tight, and a hoisting job done on the can with the falls and traveling block, he had the can set and all adjusted so when the main cable tightened, everything would be in place with a minimum of swinging. It had been in place, as a matter of fact, for two days, pending arrival of the pack, which was what we were waiting for. Around five o’clock here it came, in the yellow truck of Fuller & Co., who made it. I reached for my mask, but Rohrer stopped me. Then he went in the next room and put in a phone call. Then he came back, and sat watching down the road. In about five minutes a siren sounded, and an ambulance came through. It parked by the Golden Glow. “All right, Jack.”

I went out, stepped over what was left of the fence, and went on our property. I knew it must be hot but through my suit, and the asbestos soles on my shoes, I didn’t feel it. I heard something and looked around. Two blocks away, back of the ropes, was a crowd. They were giving me a cheer. I grabbed hands and shook them. I found my baling wire, pulled it tight, and waited. In a minute I heard Rohrer yell and the main cable began tightening. The pulley on the falls began nodding and jerking, wanting to roll to the sag in the middle, but the firemen on the guide cable held it. Then little by little the firemen let the falls pulley have its way and the dynamite left the ground. As it eased toward the middle it began spinning around. I tightened on my wire, which was fastened through a hole in the bottom rim of the can, to steady it. When it was near center it stopped. I sighted and wig-wagged, and it moved to exact position. Rohrer called at me to start some trial swings. With the total height, which included the dip on the main cable plus the drop of the falls, it had quite a radius, and I was surprised how slow the swings were. It seemed to me the can was riding a little high and I signaled. They let her down. I tried again and it seemed O.K. Rohrer called me over. “Jack, she’s not quite swinging true. Take position three or four feet to your right.”