“No, thank God.”
“It’s just horrible. And it frightens me to the inside of my bones. It — ruins me, I’ve no illusions about that. And yet — it fascinates me... What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“Something must have gone wrong.”
“Ask Dasso.”
“... What’s he got to do with it?”
“He was up there, waiting for it. In the Golden Glow, parked at the window, all but holding a stop watch.”
It seemed to me I had to get over by the well and do something, I didn’t know what, but terribly important. Pretty soon I jumped out of bed, and went staggering to the closet for my clothes. “Jack! You can’t go out! You’re in no condition to! And besides your clothes were sent out to be washed — they were filthy, from blood! There’s nothing there but your suit.”
Off in the hall I heard a buzzer, where she was calling a nurse, and in a minute one came. All I had on was a hospital shirt, but fat chance that stopped me. If coat, pants and shoes were what I had to wear, I might as well be getting them on.
Come hell or high water, I was due on the hill, and meant to get there.
The taxi man couldn’t get within two blocks of it on account of the crowd, or at least he said it was the crowd. If you ask me he was plain scared, and I didn’t blame him. What was coming out of that hill was the most frightening thing I’d ever seen in my life. It was shooting straight up in the air, a red plume in the night, just like one of those torches you see at the end of a pipe, burning gas off the wells in Texas, except instead of being three or four feet high, this was three or four hundred. It swung this way and that, sometimes licking down to the ground, when there’d be yells and screams, and all the time sending off thick clouds of smoke that were black one second, blood red the next. To one side, leaning at an angle, was what was left of the derrick, with girders curling up like bacon on the griddle, and dropping off with a clatter. On the other side, by what would have been Mendel’s fence if it hadn’t burned to a row of charred string pieces, was the pile of drill pipe, all twisted up like a mile-long snake, and part of it showing red hot. Later in the day the firemen dragged it off with a falls they rigged, and cut it up with a torch. Now, though, they were letting it lie, and concentrating on the oil that was plopping in gushes out of the well, where the pressure would force it to the top, but didn’t quite carry it up in the air. It was running down the hill with flames all over it, where it was burning, and from that, and the heat, came the danger to people standing around, and other property, that it would catch fire. So the firemen on the three foam generators were smothering it with foam. The guys on the engines were drenching everything with water within two hundred yards: Mendel’s stuff, the refinery, the Golden Glow, the grocery store next to it, the garage next to that, the filling station on the corner, and even the trees in the cemetery and derricks on beyond. Other firemen had pushed up the road, within maybe fifty feet of the well, and were racing back and forth with cans full of dirt. I couldn’t tell what the idea was, at first, but then I saw they were making a trough, kind of a ditch on our land, that they could divert the burning oil into, and run it into the big sump I had made, below the refinery. In a few minutes they had their bank of dirt ready, and then the oil flames began sliding toward the sump, which was billowing with foam before even the oil slid into it. The foam put the flames out.
I’d been crouched with about forty other people, two or three hundred yards away, down the hill. I heard somebody call. When I turned, she was there, at the wheel of her car, and then I remembered seeing some car following the taxi. She said the hospital doctor had given strict orders I was to come back, but I paid no attention. I still had this idea there was something I had to do, and looking back at it now, I can understand how Caruso, when he got caught in the San Francisco fire in 1906, came running out of his hotel with a signed picture of Theodore Roosevelt clutched to his chest. It maybe didn’t look like much, but probably hit Enrico as the most important thing in the world, something he had to give his life for, if necessary. If from now on I acted like a bit of a fool, you might remember there’s something about fire that affects you that way. All of a sudden it came to me what this was that I had to do. Sliding around on my belly, trying to work my way closer, I’d come to three of my roughnecks who were fried up pretty good by the look of their faces, but weren’t paying any attention to themselves, on account of trying to do something for Funk, the driller that was on duty when she went up, who was under a blanket and weeping and bawling like some kid. And up close there, through the smoke I could see our shack, and every piece of paper we owned, our payroll cash, every contract, every permit, as well as our safe, was in it. It was on fire. The firemen would douse it with a hose, it would steam, the flames would go out, and then here they were again, just like somebody had lit them with a match. And it seemed to me I had to save it. I stood up in front of Funk and the three roughnecks. “O.K., men, let’s get our shack.”
“God, Mr. Dillon, do we have to do that?”
That was Funk. He sounded like some hysterical girl. “You want your money, Funk? You want to get paid?”
“Yeah, but can’t them firemen—”
“What’s the matter, you afraid? You want your money, that’s where the money is, and I don’t know how to pay it to you without first we go get it.”
They looked at me, the shack, and each other, and how much they wanted of it was nothing at all. But when I led on they followed. We slid downhill, where it was cooler, and at least that made them feel a little better. Then, up the road beside the cemetery, we began moving toward the fire again, and they began to whimper. I kept leading on. Every few steps we’d hit the dirt, face first, and crawl.
Then at our feet, running along the side of the road, I saw a length of hose. Pointing toward the shack, not ten feet away from me, was the nozzle. And then I knew if I could only get up there with it, get the door open and knock a hole in the floor, I could shove that nozzle through somehow and wrap it around the joist that ran under the doorsill. Then we could use the hose as a hawser, to pull the shack out on the road. It didn’t make sense, but nothing did, that night.
I yelled to Funk and the roughnecks to hold everything, grabbed the hose and began dragging it toward the shack. It was awful heavy that way, and the best I could do was two or three feet at a time, jerk, rest, then jerk again. But then once the fire licked close and I yelled from the pain of the heat, even while I was diving for the ground. It veered off, but after that it was too hot for anybody. I had to have something to shield me, and a few feet away, at the upper end of the Luxor property, I saw one of those signs that read “Keep Right” on one side and “Closed, Please Use Other Entrance” on the other. It was nothing but a board, maybe two feet wide and three feet high, but it had feet, so I could shove it ahead of me and hide behind it. I went and got it, put it between me and the fire, then under cover of it I pulled my hose two or three more feet, then pushed the board three or four feet, then pulled up my hose, and so on. Once, from up the hill, there was a yell, and I’d just squeezed myself behind it when here came the flame, licking all around me, and so hot I thought I’d go crazy. But water came too, where the firemen up the street had seen me and given me protection with their hose, even though they didn’t know what in the name of God I was up to. At last I got near the shack, so it was between me and the fire, and had a little real protection. The door was locked, but I threw my weight on it and it broke. I reached my hand inside, and sure enough there was the hatchet I had used to sharpen stakes. I came down with it on the floor, and pretty soon I had one board loose, then another. I pulled up the nozzle, pulled it through and jammed it, so it was caught. I went racing back to Funk and the men. “O.K., boys, come on with it — heave!”