The Moth (29 page)

“What attitude?”

“... Maybe that’s where you come in.”

“If
I come in. What are you hinting at?”

“Suppose there was all kinds of undercover stuff going on. Suppose not everybody believed in this blue eagle. Suppose quite a few people said it was nothing but a blue buzzard? Would you pay too much attention to this allocation stuff? Just how much do you believe in ethics?”

“You mean, would I sell it bootleg?”

“Yeah, that’s what I mean.”

“No.”

“I never noticed you so terribly honest.”

“Oil and wives are different.”

We started climbing down, and at the cemetery she turned in, walked over, and after a little way, stopped. I saw her drop something on a grave. It was chalk white, and I was pretty sure it was one of the geraniums that grew in a bed in front of the shack, something quite a few people have, as it’s one of the few flowers that’ll grow near the sea. It crossed me up, as usual, that mixed in with the hundred-per-cent bad was something good. She came back and I gave her arm a little pat. She took my hand in hers and we went back to the car. “Will you think it over, Jack? Because if you’d take it over now, before we get started on that new well—”

“I won’t take it over.”

For two or three weeks she kept it up, with a lot of talk about how she was just as fed up with two-timing as I was, and wanted to ring down on it, and get started in some kind of decent way, but couldn’t, with that well about to start, because if that got under way before she had the showdown she’d have to let him go through with it anyway. After a while she quit talking about it, but one Monday night she was over, and it turned out the well had started, and as it took all of his time she could get out any night now. We went down to the shack, then on the way headed for Long Beach. I was nervous, and kept begging her to watch where she was going, for fear we’d run into somebody. She found a place on top of Signal Hill, not far from the refinery, and peeping around the bubble tower we could see Branch with two or three guys, poking around with a flashlight. “The rig-builder has just set the concrete for the four derrick corners, and Jim has to see how the work is done.” After that, every night we’d have a look, and almost sooner than you could believe it they were putting up steel, and then it was in place, and the crown block was up. She tried again, to get me to take over, and said she had money, a lot of money, that was mine if I’d only say yes. I kept telling her I knew nothing about oil, but that just made her beg harder. One night, when we parked, we could hear the rotary table, and see the white helmets under the lights. They were drilling.

Two or three nights after that we went to the shack, and she cried, then lay in my arms without saying anything. After a while she went out in the kitchen and lit the gas and put on the kettle. In a minute I went out to keep her company, and we stood around a few minutes in the dark. Then, just as she was reaching for the coffee, a car door slammed on the other side of the dune. She looked out and then cut the gas. “Oh, my God, Jack. It’s my husband—and Dasso!”

“Well—you asked for it.”

“Why in the world didn’t I think of it? It’s about two miles closer to the well than the house is, and—
Jack, what are we going to do?”

“I don’t much care.”

That wasn’t, strictly speaking, true. I hated the whole damned business, but not like I hated the idea of facing Branch. Maybe I’d got to a certain point, but if there was still any way to duck a showdown, I’d take it, so when she grabbed me and pulled me in the living room and shoved me in a closet that had been built in one corner to hold rods and tackle, I went as fast as she did, and held my breath maybe a little tighter. It seemed funny to be jammed in there with her, half of me scared to death, the other half full of the same creepy feeling she always gave me, of wanting her.

Outside, they were knocking the sand off their shoes on the walk, then the key clicked in the lock and they were inside and a light was shining through the crack. Branch said sit down, he’d rustle something up in a minute, and went in the bedroom, where the liquor cabinet was. In the living room, there was scraping and bumping and moving around, and I don’t think Dasso was doing a thing but looking at the pictures of Branch catching fish, but he sounded like a whole troupe of acrobats practicing the double front. Then Branch was back, and they seemed to be pouring a drink, and for a minute or two neither of them said anything. Then they began talking about the well and Branch said he was quite satisfied with the way it was going, and said Dasso ought to take quite some credit to himself. Dasso said it was going all right and they had another drink. Then all of a sudden Dasso said: “Well, goddam it, who said it was going all right? It’s going the best of any well I’ve seen put down, and maybe it’s something yours truly had a little to do with, but mainly it’s the big boss, a guy named Branch. A well’s like everything else, it goes in exact proportion to how you plan it And this one’s been planned right, believe me. Everything’s been taken care of, from the right crew to the right geological report to the right contracts to the right equipment. If we’re drinking to me, we better hoist one to you while we’re about it, and make it a good one.”

“O.K., then. Drink out.”

“Drink out yourself.”

“I’ve still got a little.”

They got around to number three in due course, but not until she almost choked on the dust in there, and had to squeeze on my hand till I thought the nails must be drawing blood to keep from coughing. Pretty soon I heard her breathe: “Thank God,” and you could tell from the scraping and bumping that had started again that the drinking was over and Branch and Dasso were ready to go. And then I heard Dasso say: “Jim.”

“Yeah, what is it?”

“What’s the window doing open?”

“Well—you put it up... Didn’t you?”

“Did
I?”

“Or—maybe I did.”

“Did either of us?”

There was a long time when nothing was said, and then: “Jim, were you ever shadowed?”

“Not that I know of.”

“I was once. On that forged title case, over at Santa Fe Springs. It had hardly started before I knew it, and I didn’t know how... Jim, I got a funny feeling we’re not alone.”

“Come on, have another drink.”

“No, I mean it.”

“Well, for God’s sake, let’s have a look.”

“O.K., let’s.”

She felt like some violin string, tuned to the point it breaks, and all over the place were footsteps, and then they stopped. Then: “Dasso, you’re seeing things. There’s nobody here.”

“O.K. If I can put a little water in it, I’ll have that other drink.”

“Help yourself.”

The kitchen door squeaked, and in hardly a second it squeaked again. Then Dasso said: “Jim.”

“Yeah?”

“That kettle’s hot.”

There was the longest silence I ever heard, then the front door opened, and footsteps sounded outside, going around the house, but of only one person. How long we stood it I don’t know. We just stood there and stood there and stood there. After a while her hand tightened on mine, and then loosened. Then her breath began to come in gasps. I knew she’d pass out if I didn’t do something. I opened the door.

He was facing us, in one of the beach chairs on the other side of the gas log. When she staggered out of there, he sat like a stone. But when he could see who I was, he jerked up on his elbows for maybe a second, like he could hardly believe his eyes. Then he leaned back. But he didn’t only lean. He shriveled into his clothes, so that what had been a big man seemed small.

She sat on the table, and poured a spoonful of liquor into one of the glasses, drank it, and shivered. I sat down somewhere. It was a long time before anything was said, and then he said: “This is why you wouldn’t sing for me?”

“I guess so, Mr. Branch.”

“And it started then, that Sunday?”

“Yes.”

He turned to her: “Hannah, why didn’t you tell me?”

“How could I?”

“But—there’s nothing you can’t tell me.”

“Would I stab a knife into you?”

“But I think you’ve forgotten, it was what we said. I told you if ever there came anything you were to tell me. There’s nothing I couldn’t forgive you, Hannah—except not being frank with me. That makes me feel—all alone—left out of your life. I don’t know anything to do about it.”

“I’m sorry, Jim.”

It came to me they weren’t acting like a man and his wife. They were acting like a father and his child. Instead of taking her by the throat, or me by the throat, or somebody by the throat, he was reasoning with her, being noble, or whatever it was. And she, instead of roaring around and asking what he was going to do about it, was acting meek and sorry and lowly, like some kid that played hooky from school. I said: “Can I say something to you two people?”

Neither one of them said anything, but I kept at it: “Never mind what I have to do with this. You know when you’re a heel or you don’t. But as to how things were before I got here, all I can say is that I think Hannah turned to you, Mr. Branch, at a time when she was pretty low about her father, and that what she reached for, even if she didn’t know it, wasn’t a husband, but somebody to take the place of her father, and that’s why—”

He cut me off: “We’ve been all over that.”

“Yes, Jack. Naturally.

“You mean you
knew
it?”

They didn’t answer me, and then she began talking to him: “It all seemed so simple, Jim, and so wonderful, the way you said it. My father was gone, and you wanted to be a father to me, and take care of me, and see that no harm ever came—and you did. How could I try to tell you you didn’t? You did everything you said you’d do, but you were a little late. I looked like a little girl to you, and some ways I was, but there were other ways you didn’t know about. There were those years in college, and the years right after—and then I wasn’t a little girl any more. I was a wild dame, looking for a good time, and plenty grown-up. Oh, I was honest enough. I wanted our life the way we said, and I felt saintly, the way a woman ought to feel. But when I was alone, I’d want to be wild again, and then—I popped off one day, that’s all. It’s not Jack’s fault. At least he wouldn’t keep on wearing a surplice, and singing for you. You’ve got to say that for him.”

“I haven’t chided him ... or you.”

He poured himself some liquor, and I thought he drank it off pretty quick. Then he had some more. Then he asked her if her car was here, and when she said it was in the garage, he said he and she could take that and Dasso would drive me to the ranch, then gave her a little pat and said it was time they were getting home. She didn’t move. He said it again, with all kinds of explanations about how of course he would forgive her, and more of the same, until my teeth began to go on edge, though I wanted her to make it up with him. She still didn’t hear him, then started to cry. He started to cry. I wanted to cry. He poured himself another drink and drank it, then had another and another. Then Dasso was there, tapping him on the shoulder, saying come on, the new shift was coming on, they’d have to go. He got to his feet, picked up the bottle, drained the last of it, tried to set it down, and missed. I picked it up, put it on the table. He picked up the cork, put it back in the bottle. It took him five minutes. Then he went reeling to the door, Dasso’s arm around him.

When I heard them drive off I lit the gas, went out in the kitchen and made coffee, and made her drink some. Then I put her to bed. I spread a blanket over her. I found a blanket for myself, wrapped it around me, and camped in a chair. When the sun came up, she was asleep, but I was still sitting there, trying to figure where I was at with my life, if any.

T
HE SUNDAY AFTER THAT
I slept late, as spring means work on a fruit ranch, and I’d had a hard week. Around ten o’clock, when I strolled over from breakfast, church bells were ringing somewhere, and I had a wild notion to sing in the choir because I felt like it, and at last have peace, even if it hadn’t much glory attached to it, or much pay. It had been a week since I’d seen her, and it seemed that maybe I never would again, and that I could forget about her, and everything she’d mixed me up with, and especially Branch. It wasn’t all hope, either. One night, on a trip to Whittier with the light truck, I had taken a sneak to have a peep at the well. It was just like it had been, with the rotary table going around in the middle, a driller camped at the drum, roughnecks standing around, and Dasso off to one side, giving orders. It looked like she didn’t need me, and I might be out. That suited me fine. Because coming home that Monday morning, with her at the wheel saying nothing and the gray damp drifting in from the ocean, I’d had a bad time. It had hit me all in a lump as it hadn’t before, that it was all very well to talk mean to her, and maybe she was cold and maybe she was wild and maybe she was bad, but it took two to cook up the kind of cross we had tried to get away with, and here at last I tumbled that one of them might be me. But a week had gone by, and I’d heard nothing from her, and there was no getting around it, I might be out.

This Sunday morning, though, I had hardly gone in the bunkhouse before there came a rap on a horn, fast, sharp, and nervous. I went out, and there she was, in the car. I walked over and said: “Well stranger, where you been keeping yourself?”

“Jack, I’ve been keeping myself a good many places, and I’m fine, and it’s a beautiful day, but—will you please get in so we can talk as we go and not take the whole day about it?”

“We in a hurry or something?”

“All hell has broken loose.”

“... What kind of hell?”

“At the well! Will you get in, so we can go?”

I got in, and we whizzed to 101, and were leveled off for Long Beach before she went on: “It’s the police, and what they’re threatening to do to us if we don’t take care of the mud. It’s—all over the place and you’ll have to do something about it.”

“All over what place?”

“The street!”

“If I’m to help, say something.”

“When they pump it the cuttings add to volume, and water is added too. So more comes out than goes in. The increase in volume makes an overflow. It has to be pumped somewhere. Generally a sump—a big sink banked up with dirt. But the man my husband made his arrangements with, on the next property, has changed his mind, or needs his sump himself, or something. He says it was on a personal basis with my husband, and now it’s different, or—I don’t know what he says, I haven’t even seen him. But we’re cut off from his land, and we can’t stop drilling and the mud’s running out into the street, and it’s a violation, and the police are there, and—”