The Moth

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 the 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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”