“What’s to be done?”
“... Could you take a ride?”
So she lent me the keys to her car and I went off for a ride, so as not to be there in case he came. I headed south, and there it was, still doing business at the same old stand, pouring flame and smoke right into the sky and spreading a pall over the city that made the sun look like some kind of a thin red dime. I passed the hill, and off to my left could see firemen and ropes, where they had it blocked off. When I got to the traffic circle I couldn’t hear it, and when I leveled off toward Seal Beach I couldn’t even see it, or the smoke. It was a beautiful sunshiny day and for a few minutes it was like being let out of jail to be able to leave it behind, feel like myself once more, and just roll, even if it was in a car that looked like it had smallpox from what the heat had done to it. But then, around Huntington Beach I began to think about it again, and I guess if you left a tiger in the front parlor, you’d run away if you could, but there’d be a limit to how far you could go, or how much you could drop him out of your mind. Pretty soon I turned around, and in almost no time I could see it, a red torch shining against the blue.
I parked at the ropes, got out, and went through. A fireman stopped me, but when I said who I was he let me pass. I walked to the bottom of the hill and circled around, and all the time I stared at it, and listened to it, and inhaled it, where the heavy greasy smoke would lick down. And once more, I could feel myself get a little wild, as I beat against the question: Why did this thing, this crazy, roaring thing out of a nightmare worse than any nightmare I ever had, have to happen to me? Then I began getting a little weak, and edged around, hoping to get to the Golden Glow and get something to eat. That brought me to the top of the hill, and below me was spread a deserted forest of silver derricks and towers and tanks, with not a wheel, not a walking beam, not a rotary table moving, with no fire showing under a still, and no human being in sight, except for kids staring through the ropes and a few firemen running a water pumper and a foam generator, just in case. Everywhere, on the refinery, on Mendel’s property, on the upper end of Luxor, on the stores and cafes and filling stations, were sheets of asbestos, held on by wires, or nailed to roofs with little tabs to keep it from tearing. The firemen kept one hose going, so everything, once every ten minutes maybe, got a good wetting.
I tried the door of the Golden Glow and it opened and Jake stared at me ten seconds before he knew me. He asked how I was, and I told him, and he said they’d had a time around there, yes, sir, quite a time. But he wasn’t too friendly, and when he had my order, for beer and coffee and sandwiches, he went off. Over near the bar were three firemen having lunch and talking about baseball, which had just started again. My stuff came and I ate and felt a little better, then felt somebody looking at me. I looked up and it was Rohrer, in another booth. He finished his coffee and came over and looked, like he couldn’t believe his eyes. “Is that you, Mr. Dillon?”
“Yeah. Little worse for wear, but it’s me.”
“They sure fixed you up.”
“Fire out there. I went too near it.”
“I saw you. They gave you a hand, as I recall.”
“They should have waited. In the hospital I was better.”
“That I can believe.”
He caught me up on what had happened, but so far as real stuff went, there wasn’t much to tell. Soon as they got first things under control, like the oil and near-by property, the firemen had gone to work on the fire itself from the well. “Getting apparatus near it was the tough part, but working behind shields and throwing up barricades of one kind or I another, they got a concentration of water lines in there, four or five on each side, with fog nozzles on them. That took them a couple of days, but then they let go with them, driving right into the flame, and got wonderful results. Right away, sprayed fine like that, the water turned to fog, and then in a few minutes to steam, or pure vapor, all around that fire, cutting it off from oxygen, choking it. It was a beautiful thing to see, as the fog crept up and up, and above that they began hitting it with regular streams, and
they
began turning to fog, so for a minute or two, except away up in the air, there was hardly any flame, nothing but black smoke billowing all around, which was the real sign, because of course flame is nothing but incandescent smoke anyway, where the carbon particles are heated white hot, and when it goes black, it’s cooling. A big crowd was out there, and you could hear the mutter go around, and yells as boys hollered to other boys to come look, so you had that feeling, it’s been licked, they’ve got it. Then I heard one of the firemen begin to yell cusswords at the top of his lungs, and here it came, just a little puff of wind that didn’t last five minutes. But it tore a hole in the fog, and the fire leaped back to the hole, with a roar like nothing you ever heard, just like when you light a gas log in the parlor, you know how it does? Just leaps around, purring like a cat purrs, but this was more like a herd of elephants purring. Then they had to start all over again, and I guess they tried it a dozen times. But they never got a real fog again, and I guess you can’t blame them, when they kept it up for three days with no luck, just to quit. A dozen of them were in the hospital with burns and all kind of injuries by that time, and they’re human too.”
He told about how he’d had to drain his own tanks and whatever he had, but the battalion chief had been decent to him, letting him run his stuff into my sump, so he could burn the gasoline a little bit at a time, while they foamed everything but one corner. “But—we’re standing still. Not doing a thing. Does that mean anything to you, Mr. Dillon?”
“No more than the rest of it. Fact of the matter, I’ve reached the point where one more thing closed down is one more thing, that’s all.”
“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.
T
HEY 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.”