The Moth

  “A wonderful time to buy a refinery.”

  “A— ? For who to buy?”

  “You, maybe.”

  “How would I buy?”

  “You could get the money.”

  “Off those trees that got burned up?”

  “Off something else that’s burned up.”

  “I don’t get you.”

  “That dame would let you have it, Mr. Dillon.”

  “... Has she got it?”

  “She could have.”

  “I doubt if she’s got enough.”

  “What you got to go on? To doubt on?”

  “She’s hard hit too, you know.”

  “Kid, I said it’s a wonderful time to buy a refinery. Have I got to say more? Listen, my owners are up against it. They’re doing no business and they got to do business or they’re sunk. I mean they owe money. I mean there’s a certain community builder of this locality, that might answer to the name of White if somebody happened to look him up, that’s accommodated them to the tune of quite a few thousand bucks, and he’s been reasonable, I’ll say that for him. Him and his bank. But the more reasonable they were, the worse it is now. I mean, the result of all that reasonableness has been that nothing has really been paid off since 1929. We got notes, they all got notes, that have just dangled, with a little chopped off them now and then. But at least we were working. But now that goddam thing is running wild, it’s burning and nobody knows when it’s going to stop. These gassers, they go on for months sometimes before they shoot ’em or tap ’em or they cave in or whatever makes ’em quit. I mean, they’re really little volcanoes all by themselves, and nobody knows what’s going to happen, or when. Boy, they’re scared, and White’s no help. He’s scared too, and he’s putting on the heat. They need dough, and any reasonable amount—! How do you know she can’t afford it? I’m telling you, it’s a wonderful time to buy a refinery!”

  It was the first it had entered my mind, the idea that if you had a hole in the ground that was running wild and on fire at the same time, there might be a way to make something out of it. Later on, I polished that idea up, and as I’ve told you, hit the jackpot. But not that day, even to rise one inch to the bait. He shook his head and said: “Kid, I like you, I see things in you only an old-timer would have eyes for, and I’ve felt it, it’s in the cards you should get this teapot I work for. With that property of yours—assuming those wells are not injured and I don’t think they are—and this little pop-goes-the-weasel I’ve got, we could have the snuggest little business around here. And you don’t even hear me, you don’t even know what I mean.”

  After a while he looked up and I swear he turned green. He put his hand on my arm, then was standing beside me laying a buck on his check. He said: “You don’t mind, kid, if I duck? If I beat it the back way? It’s better they not find me here! I mean, it’s better you and I not be seen talking together!”

  With that he was gone. Outside, there were voices, and then, through the window, coming into the place I saw White, Branch, Dasso, and four or five of the guys who had been at the house that first Saturday afternoon, when I was a gentleman and a scholar and a good judge of liquor, besides being an all-American back and a bass singer.

  23

  THEY JAMMED A COUPLE of tables together, out in the middle, and I leaned back where I wouldn’t be seen, but couldn’t help hear, though God knows I didn’t want to be there, and would have ducked out with Rohrer, if I could. They ordered sandwiches, and talked along, and it turned out Branch was working for Luxor now, and had cut out the booze, and had Dasso under him. They all made quite a lot over him, but anybody could tell this mob was really being steered by White. Then pretty soon one of them, a guy named Perrin that sang bass in the choir, but had a property next to Mendel’s with four or five wells on it, opened up, and who he was talking about was Mr. Jack Dillon, and what he had to say about the gent was slightly hot. He talked like he was just hashing it over once more, what had already been said somewhere else, maybe in the Luxor offices, if that was where they met before they came here, and was toning it down a bit so as not to string it out too long. I’d hate to hear him when he was really putting in the fine points. He kept wanting to know why I wasn’t indicted and sent to Folsom prison, because, he said, “if ever a son of a bitch was guilty as hell that guy is, just as much as any arsonist they’ve got in there now, and in some ways as much as any murderer.”

  For some reason, White, the one he was talking to, put it up to Branch: “Have you explained to him, Jim, how that is?”

  “I’ve tried to, Mr. White.”

  “Perrin, it can’t be done.”

  “Why not?”

  “Matter of law.”

  “Isn’t ruining our oil field against the law?”

  “The law says ‘willful negligence,’ ‘willful destruction of property,’ ‘willful failure to use caution and care’—and that stops us. If he’d been on speaking terms with Dasso, if he’d given him a chance to have that blowout preventer opened up and put in order, if he’d once rung Jim Branch about it, then we’d have him, because if he was informed, and failed to act, he’d be nailed for the whole trip. As it is, no court would sustain an indictment. What’s more, even if we could get an indictment, sustain it, and convict in court, I’d be against it.”

  “But my God, Mr. White—”

  “What good would it do you?”

  “Isn’t that some good, to put him behind bars?”

  “And your fire going on all the time?”

  On that, there was a long time when nobody spoke, and I could hear lunch being served, and some of them, at least, eating. Then White went on: “The law governing oil development is lax, it certainly is. If you ask me, nobody ought to be allowed to touch a spoonful of mud around a well without a license, and I’d make it as hard for a man to get a super’s ticket as a license to skipper a ship—and for the same reason: lives and property are at stake, and he’s responsible. But they didn’t ask me, and we’ve never gone after that much law for fear we’d get ten times that much, and the fact is, no license is required. That puts it on the criminal side, and unfortunately being a goddam fool is not a crime, not when this supreme court we’ve got gets through with it. And furthermore, once you indict him, maybe he skips. And if he’s not here to do something about her, she’ll still be aburning come New Year’s Day. That’s what we got to remember. It may be your pool but it’s his fire, and he’s the one that’s got to put it out.”

  “Yeah, but when?”

  “If I can get to him, I’ll try to find out.”

  Two or three more guys came in, that I’d never seen before, and Jake took their order. Then he came over with my check. All of a sudden a chair scraped, and Perrin was standing there looking at me. “Oh hello, Dillon, so it’s you. Well you been sitting here. What you got to say?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “Come on, you—”

  I got up and he squared off, but Dasso jumped up and grabbed him and I could see Dasso hadn’t forgotten the punch I’d given him there by the well. White kept looking at me with a little smile. Then, after Perrin sat down, he said: “Well, Dillon, as they say, you asked for it. If I’d known you were there I suppose I’d have laid off a little, just as a matter of manners—but I didn’t know it, and said what I really thought —and I suppose you heard it. Yes?”

  “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 t
he 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.

  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.”