Джеймс Кейн - The Moth

“O.K.”

“When you hook her up, holler.”

I went back, picked up my wire, and moved over to the point he said. I started her swinging again, and this time he called it was right. I pulled a little harder on the wire and the arc lengthened. I didn’t take up slack, on my wire I mean, for each swing. I’d let it slip through my fingers, then, on the far swing, when it would tighten, I’d pull. It must have taken five seconds for that can to swing over and swing back again, and I’d hate to tell you how much will power it took each time to increase that pull. But then, pretty soon, she was due. I heaved, yelled, and hit the dirt.

It seemed to me I was in some horrible surf, made of wool, that was trying to tear me apart, and yet through it all I could hear the roar, and had a horrible feeling I had done something, I didn’t exactly know what, all for nothing, and eternity would go by, and I’d never have peace again. Then I could hear her voice, calling my name, and some other voice, a woman’s, talking to her, and a man’s. They were a nurse and a doctor, it turned out afterward. Then would come this pain in my head, with balls of fire shooting around. That was from their pressing on my eyeballs, a little trick they’ve got, to bring you to. I must have answered, then, so they quit it, because everything stopped. I was trying to say something and she was talking to me. “Forget the fire. The fire’s out. You put it out. Don’t you remember, Jack? You shot it out, then they brought you here—”

“In how many pieces?”

“One — and a little concussion.”

“Yeah, but the goddam roar—”

“Is gas. They’re working on it. Open your eyes, you’ll see. There’s no fire any more. You already put it out, and there are pieces in the paper about it, and everybody thinks you’re wonderful, and—”

I opened my eyes, and it was the same old hospital room, but the glare was gone, and even the roar didn’t seem quite what it had been. And then it stopped. She looked at me, and we waited, and it seemed too good to believe that it wouldn’t start up again. But then the phone rang, and she grabbed it. As soon as she answered she handed it to me. “Jack!”

“Yeah?”

“Rohrer.”

“Oh, hello.”

“She’s out and she’s in! Boy, oh boy, we’ve got her. We’ve got her, and she’s still good, the best well that’s come in on the goddam hill in a year, and Mrs. Branch gets her refinery, and hells bells, boy, can’t you say something?”

“Pal, I love you.”

It was a year, I guess, before I began sobering up, not from the champagne we drank celebrating, but from the business, and what I did for it, and from her. From the minute she took up the option, things began to break, and everything I touched turned to gold. First off, when we started our pumps on the other wells, they worked fine, and no particular damage had been done, so right way we got stuff to sell. When we brought in the new well, it was a heavy producer. The tanks were a five-hundred-dollar repair job. Our Luxor contract was nearly up, so we could put in pipe to the refinery right away, and a few weeks later make the switchover. Next, Mendel asked for pipe, and a week later, Perrin, so instead of Rohrer having to beat all the bushes on the hill for enough crude to keep himself busy, he had all he could handle, and could run to capacity. They didn’t have anything against Luxor, except that Luxor had done nothing while they were facing ruin, where I had risked my life and put out the fire. Then we had luck with still another well, that went down to the zone the previous permit had covered, and came in big. Next, we were offered a string of small filling stations, on lease, for so little we couldn’t turn them down, even if I hadn’t had a tip that the Sepulveda road, where three or four of them were located, was to be improved. So when pretty soon business began to grow, we had a deal that let us make money and put our Seven-Star sign all over Los Angeles, in fifteen or twenty different places. We were nothing but a little independent outfit, but at last, as they say, we were integrated. We had wells, we had a plant, we had outlets. When our business was good, we got our price, retail. When it was off, we got rid of our surplus to other independents, but still made something. I made connections that took our lube, fuel, and asphalt, so wherever you looked, stuff was flowing. And wherever you listened, there was a pump. It’s a wonderful thing, a pump. It’s automatic: you sleep and it still goes. It’s like a heart, putting life into you.

And if ever a woman could make a man drunk, from how she looked and thought and did, Hannah would be the one. Her eyes kept that shiny look, and she never got enough of me, which of course didn’t antagonize me. On looks, she was a knockout, a lot more than I had had any idea of when I first met her. After things began to break for us she began to dress, and made me do it. We took in shows in Los Angeles, she in gold gowns, with gold shoes and gold things in her hair, so she looked like something from Egypt, and me in white tie and silk hat. Wherever you went you could hear them ask who she was, and you could see she was made for drawing rooms and boulevards and opera houses. She said I was too, so we got along all right. And yet, that first Christmas we had, when she worked three days on the snow garden at one end of the living room, I looked at it when she cut the juice into it, and wondered if I really cared whether the train jumped its switches or not, or the dancing doll was flush with the plexiglass pool, so she was really skating. I tried to tell myself to snap out of it, that I had everything I had ever wanted, a dream job, big dough, the respect of the business I was in. I had a car, a Packard that just floated. I had an apartment, looking right over the ocean, in the Castile Arms, one of the swank places on the water front. I had a woman with every kind of looks there was, and a husband, just to make it really good, because Branch wasn’t making any motions toward divorce yet, and she couldn’t marry if she wanted to. And yet, if it was what I had been thirsty for, it never came clear, really to quench thirst, but had bubbles in it, like the damned champagne she was always drinking, and that I got so sick of I felt like life was nothing but one long string of Christmas afternoons. After a while I had it, or thought I did, what some of the trouble was. What stuck to my ribs was the job, and the stink of oil, and all the things I was able to do with it, so it really did things to me. But to her, for all her talk about my “machinist’s soul,” none of it meant anything but the money it brought in, and the things she could buy with it. Even that, I think, I could have stood, if she had stuck to cloth of gold and mink and opera tickets. But after a while she took the place in Beverly. It’s about twenty miles up the line, where all the movie stars live and Eastern millionaires. Her house cost four hundred dollars a month, furnished, with swimming pool out back and badminton at one side, and it was just right for the parties she began to give. They got bigger and bigger, until pretty soon everybody came, columnists, stars, directors, and writers, and after a while even the gangsters, which in that part of the world is really showing class.

Little by little it began to get on my nerves. I’d get in around five, all full of some deal I’d made, and find some fish-faced dame sitting around with two guys, talking about what Lubitsch could do if he’d only try musicals. Hannah’d fix my old-fashioned, and I’d sit there grinning without saying anything, which was the tip-off, because a guy with a drink and a deal, if he’s not saying any thing, he just doesn’t like it there. Then one day I came home and a party was going on out there at the pool, and when they went home it was getting dark. I sat finishing my drink when she started batting at something. Then a shadow began flitting around from the patio lamp. I looked up as she was swinging a newspaper, and grabbed her arm. Then I snapped out the light. Fluttering over the wall by the magnolia tree, went the biggest, blue-green luna I had ever seen. When I turned around her eyes were blazing at me. “What’s the idea of the Londos grip?”