The Moth (26 page)

“You a musician?”

“Hell, no. Oil’s my business. Been at it thirty years, ever since I was twelve years old. Kind of a roving wildcat, I guess you’d call me, anyway till I put down a well for a lady that had a property and then married her. After that I settled down, if you can call it settling down to try and manage the little end of some of the worst made deals ever seen in the field. But it’s all I know, so I do it. That and the choir. No, I’m no musician, but I found out something funny about them a long time ago. They know all there is to know about music, except music. I mean, they can yiddle their fiddle or tootle their tooter or bear on their beartone so long as somebody tells them
what
they yiddle or tootle or bear down on. But to pick out something themselves, and get it in the right key, and learn it, and sing it, why, that would be a little too original for them. So when I went in the choir I began doing some of those things myself, and next thing I knew I was in charge of it all. I just about know two flats from three sharps, but if you sit down and learn it by heart you can teach it to them well enough, and if I do say it myself, when we’ve got everybody present and our things rehearsed up, we’ve got as nice a little choir as you’re going to hear in some time.”

I said I’d been a boy soprano when I was young, so of course that made us buddies, and we talked along pretty sociable. I kind of wished he’d talk more about oil and less about choir, but at that I kind of liked him. We came in sight of the sea, the first I’d seen of the Pacific Ocean, and he stopped to let me take a gander at it. Then he went on and pretty soon turned into a place that seemed to be his, and said he had to make a couple of phone calls, but then we’d go. He parked in front of the house, and I could hear him in there talking, but there seemed to be quite a lot of it, so I got out and took a stretch. It was a pretty place, a white frame house with a garage out back, tall trees around it, and lawn clear out to the road, maybe a hundred yards of it. Pretty soon he came out and said a guy was going to call him back, but it wouldn’t be long. I said he should take his time. Pretty soon I could hear him at the piano, going over some kind of church music that sounded familiar, but he played so bad I couldn’t place it. But then pretty soon I had it: a Dudley Buck
Te Deum
I’d sung a hundred times. I hummed it under my breath, and it seemed funny that the whole melody part was too high for me, though once I had stepped into it like it was nothing at all. But when he came to a bass solo it was just right and I rolled it out: “The glorious company of the apostles praise Thee!” Well, if I’d set off a pack of firecrackers out there I couldn’t have got action sooner. He was at the door in a second, looking all around, and then, at last, at me. “Was that you?”

“Just helping out.”

“Holy smoke, what a voice!”

“No, just a barroom buzzo.”

“But it’s great! Say, you said boy soprano, but you never said a word about what your voice changed to. Look, that sounded like the Metropolitan Opera.”

I explained a little about singing to him, how easy it is for a fourflusher to sing a few notes so they sound like a million dollars and really not be any good at all. Nothing I could say made any impression on him. So far as he was concerned, somebody by the name of John Charles Chaliapin had fallen out of the sky and hit him over the head, and he wasn’t going to have it any different. “Well, all right. If you think it’s good, who am I to argue about it? Once I got five hundred dollars a week for it, and if you insist, we’ll agree it’s worth a thousand now.”

“Well—”

“Yeah?”

“Never mind.”

What he meant, I didn’t need any mind reader to tell me, was that I should sing in his choir the next night, and why not? I had nothing to do, and it had been quite some time since anybody had admired me, unless it was Holtz, for the way I fixed flats. “However, if you really believe all this, and feel your choir could use me over the week end, we might waive the question of pay, and—”

“Would you?
Would you?”

We shook hands and told names. His was Branch, it turned out, Jim Branch. He took me inside, and next thing I knew he’d shaken up a drink, a housekeeper was serving sandwiches in the big living room, he was playing me some new Pinza records he had, I was singing along with them, and he was as excited as a kid with a new puppy. Then pretty soon we seemed to have a party going on, with six or eight or a dozen of his friends, all sunburned like he was, all looking like they’d get more fun out of a nice pile driver than a grand-opera record, but all pretty good guys, willing to humor him along. He was about as bad on the piano as he could get and still hit a few notes, but we had some
Maine Stein Song
and
Vagabond King
and
Mandalay,
and I threw in plenty of winks with it, so nobody got the idea it was to be taken seriously. And then all of a sudden, off in a corner by itself, I see a gimlet eye drilling me through and I almost went through the floor. Because to me that spelled Las Vegas and trouble. I kept on yodeling, but began thinking fast. And the more I thought the less I knew what to do, because if I slipped outside and tried to beat it, he wouldn’t have been human if he didn’t pick up the telephone, and then there’d be a patrol car, pulling up beside me with cops. If I stayed, at least I’d know what was going on. So I bellowed some
Old Man River
and they clapped and yelled for more, but pretty soon he lurched over in front of me, took a sip of his drink, and said: “Y’ call y’self Dillon?”

“That’s right.”

“Why?”

“Dillon’s my name.”

“Who y’ think y’ kidd’n?”

“Why, nobody, that I know of.”

“Me?
Y’ try’n kid
me?
Why, goddam it, I seen y’ play. I seen y’ play football, play right halfback f’ Fall River, seen y’ play against Prov’nce, ’n y’ name’s
Healy!”

I guess there was more, something about a touchdown I scored on some pass I intercepted in the last quarter, quite a play, the way he told it. But I didn’t exactly hear it. All I got was a mumble, as they all began talking to each other, and then a silence, as they sat looking at me. I got my breath and said: “That’s right, except it wasn’t Providence. It was Green Bay.”

“That’s right. Goddam if I—”

“And I did call myself Healy. Under the rules, the eligibility rules, I mean, you can’t play college football once you’ve played pro. But if you need the money, you’ve got to change things around. So—”

“You
Jack
Dillon?”

“That’s me.”

“Of—Mar’land?”

“I’m the guy.”

“Holy jumping...”

I told you, they were more bedrock than musical, and at the way he kowtowed in front of me, they all went into a different key. They were nothing but oil men, drillers and contractors and engineers, but most of them had been to college, and there’s something about a guy who uses steel that goes for football more than he does opera. All of a sudden it was a different kind of afternoon, with the piano forgotten and the party going on around me, with drinks and jokes and friendly talk. Most of them were from the West and had never heard of me, but that made no difference. And changing my name made no difference either. That a guy could even stay on the same field with the Green Bay Packers and not get killed was wonderful to them. To me, it all felt great. I wished it could go on that way forever.

Somewhere along the line I took a trip to the powder room, and from there to the bar to sweeten my drink. At a table, reading a magazine, was a woman, and I remembered I’d seen a car drive up and heard some kind of whisper going on. I started to go, but she motioned to me, and then looked up.
“Oh!
I thought you were one of the oil gang, or petrol patrol, as I call them.”

“No, just a visiting fireman.”

“I’ve been told. Mr. Dillon, is that it?”

“To his friends, Jack.”

“And quite a celebrity, I believe?”

“You’re supposed to bow.”

She got up and bowed. “I’m Mrs. Branch.”

“I’m very pleased to know you.”

“To her friends, Hannah.”

“Now I’m not only pleased, but honored.”

“I don’t believe you are at all.”

“Anyway, excited.”

“Now
that’s
more
like
it.”

She fixed my glass and made a light one for herself, and we stood there looking at each other. She was maybe twenty-five, a little less than medium height, kind of thick in the chest and what went with it, slim in the waist and what was below. All that you could see fine, in the blue slacks and a peppermint-candy sweater with stripes running around. But what you noticed most was the eyes, and I still don’t know if they really looked like they did, or were a production job, from what she did to bring them out. Her hair was light, with a brassy green in it, and fell on her shoulders in curls. But her skin was copper, like some vase in a Chinaman’s window. I’ve seen plenty of sunburn in my time, but never anything like that, and it made the eyes look like something that came out of the sea. They were big, and light gray to start with, but with that dark color around them, they had a dangerous, slaty, sharky expression, and I think she knew it, and did everything to heighten it. But when we got to talking, it was about me, and what I did. She acted surprised when I said I squirted spray on a fruit ranch. “A celebrity, engaged in labor? I thought at the very
least,
you tasted tea, with sighing maidens bringing it to you, with a rose petal in every cup.”

“Well, the dope’s brought by Mexicans.”

“The—what did you say?”

“Dope. Soup. To kill the bugs. They bring it in trucks, roll off the drums, and stack it up at one end of the row so we can put it in the tank and squirt it on the trees.”

“Sounds fascinating.”

“But—let’s talk about you.”

“Me?”

“That sunburn. Are you that way all over?”

“... I wonder.”

She stared at me so I couldn’t look away. I went over to where she was perched on a stool by the bar, and I knew, and she knew, what I meant to do. I was going to give that sweater a wipe, from her waist to her neck, that would tell how she was all over. But from somewhere inside me came a warning, a gone, sick feeling that reminded me of what the liquor had made me forget: If that wipe did tell something, and we began to whisper date, I’d be no more use to her than a cigar-store Indian. So when I got to her I stopped, mumbled how good-looking she was, gave her a light kiss on the lips, and took a sip of my drink. Her eyes flickered, and she looked at the floor. Then: “Have I got something
on
me?”

“On you? How?”

“Like Flit. Or Larvex? Or Clorox?”

“No. Why?”

“Just wondered.”

She drank out, put down her glass, and went in where the party was, while I sat there. But then she was back. “Why did you do that?”

“What?”

“You know what I mean.”

“You got a husband?”

“Aren’t you his guest?”

“Then ask
him
why.”

“You mean it’s honor? Man to man? That stuff?”

“It could be.”

“I’ll be damned if I believe it.”

“There’s some of it around still, whether you believe it or not. A guy gives me a lift, invites me in, treats me fine—that would be swell, wouldn’t it, if I turned around then and made a pass at his wife.”

“There’s only one thing wrong with that.”

“Which is?”

“You
did
make a pass at her.”

“Says who?”

“You think a woman doesn’t know? It could be a mile away, but if it goes click, it’s a flash that goes from one to the other, and it’s like nothing else on this earth. And it could be an inch away and mean nothing, like that rotten little kiss you dusted me off with.”

“Maybe that’s when I remembered.”

“You mean, honor?”

“About time, I’d say.”

She thought that over, then said: “No. A woman does that. Remembers her honor, or whatever she winds her clock by. But when she does, it isn’t easy. It’s a struggle, and costs her plenty, and she sighs and sobs and moans. But you, you didn’t struggle. It went click, and then—nothing.
It was just as though the juice had suddenly been turned off.”

“Somebody leaned on my disconnect switch, probably.”

“Oh, God,
is
there such a thing? Can I buy one?”

The party went on the rest of the day and most of the night, there and in town and all around. Pretty soon I got so I knew one from the other, and they began to have faces and names I could tell apart. It turned out nobody had come for social purposes especially, but had dropped by on business, just regular Saturday-afternoon powwows. The guy that had spotted me was named Dasso. He was tall, thin, and red-haired, maybe around thirty, with glasses so thick they had circles in them, and gave his eyes that gimlet look. He worked for Branch, as super at the wells. He had brought over a driller named Butler and some geological dope that they were taking to Bakersfield Monday. Then there was Mr. White, that seemed to be connected with the bank, and a couple of engineers he had brought with him, that managed to get in quite a few looks at the blueprints. Mr. White I went for pretty heavy. He was tall, square-shouldered, and around fifty, but quiet, with a little grin when something made him laugh, and dressed in white duck, that advertised him for an old-timer, as not many wear it any more. It was at his house we had supper, and of course cocktails, and in his pool I won the bet with Dasso, five dollars I could touch all the ladders under water, one time around, without coming up. Around midnight I was back at the Branches, with a room all to myself, and fresh pajamas, shirt, and underwear waiting for me. Next morning, in church, we did the
Te Deum
and two anthems, and I sang
The Lord’s Prayer.
That afternoon we fished off Mr. White’s boat, but were back in time for more anthems and Handel’s
Largo.
The singing I made pretty solemn, and maybe it wasn’t so hot, by Victor-Red-Seal standards, but at Sts. David and Joseph, in Long Beach, California, it went over fine.

During all that time she’d been out there, on the edges somewhere, drinking long drinks at the pool, sitting in a back pew of the church, stretched out on a hatch cover while we fished, rubbing herself with oil so the sunlight would get in its effect, quite something to see. I wasn’t talking to her, though, until Sunday midnight, after we’d all come back from the church, and she went out to the kitchen to fix lunch for Branch, Butler, and Dasso, on their trip next day, as the housekeeper’d been given the holiday off. I went out and helped, anyway to cut bread crusts off and spread butter while she sliced up ham and tongue and egg. She was in the same dark dress she’d worn to church, but when she put on a cellophane apron she looked more like herself. I mean, it was invented to display goods, and does. I strictly kept eyes front, but pretty soon she said: “Is there something I can get for you?”