Down in the Well
By Charles Shea LeMone
Roger Grant owned 42 acres of remote hillside property in Southwest Virginia—which he’d purchased two years prior when living in Washington, D.C. became too stressful. At least twice a week he explored new corners of the land with his German shepherd, Ginger. On one of those cold spring mornings the sun was still low in the sky and masked by dark rain clouds as Ginger bounded ahead on the return hike. Using a walking stick to aid his ascent, Roger followed her up a steep incline that cut through a stand of birch trees. It was a deer path he’d never traversed before; and the surrounding oaks were tall and massive. He made a mental note of each one of them.
Straining from the physical demands of the climb, and short of breath, he finally neared the ridge of a plateau and the gravel road leading to his split-level house. An old wooden palette covered the abandoned water-well located in the middle of a patch of tall saw grass. By the time Roger noticed it he’d already taken the step he would later regret. The moment his full weight came down the rotted wood gave way. A cry of despair escaped his lips as he plunged down the hole too fast for his grasping fingers to cling to an edge.
The long fall he expected was broken by the protruding roots of two old oak trees. The immensity of his shock was momentarily mollified. Then a few planks from the broken pallet slipped through the joined roots. Several seconds passed before he heard them splash into the water some three-to-four-hundred-feet below. Clutching an arm around one of the mighty roots, and telling himself not to panic, he evaluated his situation. The opening to the well was about twelve feet above. Ginger stared down, barking.
“It’s okay, girl,” he said in a calm voice that, under the circumstances, surprised him. “I’m all right!”
Unabated by his words, Ginger began digging frantically. Then Roger noticed a rock not too far above his head. It stuck out of the earthen surface like a huge Pinocchio nose. Carefully, he found footing on what was left of the pallet. Daring to reach up, he gripped the rock with the intention of pulling himself up, praying he’d find more footing at a higher level to climb to the rim of the well where Ginger was still digging. But as soon as he lifted himself off the pallet the rock became dislodged. It fell to his left and crashed through the roots, mangling two of them.
The passage of time it took until the rock splashed down seemed even greater than the rotted plank’s descent. Anxiously, Roger turned his attention to the roots that had offered him a safe haven to that point. The rock had created a larger opening as it crashed through, making his position on the remains of the pallet more precarious. Meanwhile, Ginger had obviously realized that digging her way to him was futile. Instead, she gazed down at him whimpering.
“Too bad you’re not Lassie,” Roger said. “I’d tell you to go find help.”
Time slowed in the dank hole. With each passing hour Roger tried to imagine someone coming along to rescue him. However, he knew the possibility of that happening was remote. About noon, torrential rains slashed down from the sky. Soon his clothes were soaked through to his skin and the ever-present thought of dying in the well, thirty-two-years-young, made him shiver even more than the cold weather.
How ironic, he thought in a maze of fleeting and jumbled reflections, moving away from the city to be safe only to die hopelessly alone in an abandoned well. It would have been better to chance getting robbed again at gunpoint—shot in the heart instead of conked over the head by his assailant and dumped unconscious in an alley. Then his mind leapt back to a conversation he’d had with the realtor on his first trip to inspect the house and land. She’d told him there was once another home on the property that was razed after a tree fell on it during a thunderstorm.
“But,” she’d added, “you’d be hard pressed to find any evidence of that place still standing.”
More irony at work, he thought, having stumbled upon the former home’s well opening.
“No,” he declared to himself, “no evidence still standing.”
When the faint light from the circular shape above him grew murky with the coming of night, the rain slackened. Occasionally, Ginger looked down then backed away. He feared falling asleep only to slip through the opening in the roots and go crashing to the very bottom of the well to drown. Maybe that would be a better fate, he mused, wondering if hypothermia was affecting his thoughts almost to the point of giddiness.
Oddly enough, he’d stayed wide-awake most of the previous night worrying about his financial security. How groundless those concerns now seemed. During his first year away from the city he was able to stay busy as a commercial artist, freelancing for three advertising agencies. Working from home also allowed him more time to devote to his abstract paintings and sculptors—dreaming of the day his eventual success would allow him to stop accepting commercial assignments all together. But he was still waiting for that day to arrive—having only sold three works in all that time. The long hike he’d taken that morning was primarily done to estimate how much the oldest trees on his land were worth.
In fact, the money he’d earn by selling the timber was exactly what he was calculating when he looked down to see the rotten pallet covering the well opening. More irony piled on irony, because it was the roots of two old oak trees that had broken his fall and were all that separated him from the bottom of the well.
He dozed off on several occasions during the night. Each time he awoke his stiff-muscles ached more from the confined position he was forced to adapt. Consequently, he preferred sleep as a willful way to avoid the obvious futility of his situation.
“There’s no avoiding it,” he said in a woozy voice. “I’m going to die down here.”
During one of the vivid dreams he experienced, he was sitting by the fireplace in his house with his girlfriend, Karen, who was also his agent. The champagne glass she held up sparkled from the firelight as she spoke with a gleaming smile and animated brown eyes, “Let’s celebrate your success with a toast and spend the rest of the evening making sweet love.”
Her hale and hearty body was so warm and willing. He caressed her closely, inhaling the scent of her lavender-fragranced soap and the brand of lemon shampoo she used to wash her soft and silky auburn-hued hair. It was as though she was melting by osmosis into his very being to become united as one with him. Then like a whiff of smoke she faded in his arms leaving him alone in a burning house. Roger shook himself awake from the alarming dream, but it lingered like a stake buried in his heart; the fresh memory of how such a divinely sensuous moment could transmogrify into horror.
He assuaged his dry mouth by sucking moisture from a shirtsleeve. For the next hour his thoughts overflowed with memories of Karen. She was so unlike his former girlfriend, Teresa, the runway model and social butterfly who was never happy unless her calendar for the month was full of cocktail parties to attend. Karen, conversely, savored the frequent weekend visits she spent on his hilltop. Diners she’d whip up and a rented movie to watch and she was more than content. She also understood the long hours of solitude he needed to create and would curl up on the couch in the living room or on a chaise lounge outside in the sun reading a magazine or book. Easy going, articulate, self-assured and witty Karen now seemed like a phantasm he’d only imagined as a real person of flesh and blood--as unattainable as the surface of the ground above him.
As the sun brightened the sky on a new day, he flashed back to a conversation he’d had with Karen the previous morning. He’d call her to find out if there was any news about a pending art show at a respected New York gallery. She was on her cell phone and the background noise of Washington D.C. traffic irritated him as they talked. More annoying was the fact that Karen directed their conversation to cover a detailed report about a friend’s illness and her long day dealing with conflicting reports from two doctors. Normally, he accepted what he labeled Karen’s bleeding-heart compassion and her overly involved concern for her friends and family’s problems. But having spent a restless night estimating how long he could survive as a freelance commercial artist without seeking full-time employment, he interrupted her curtly.
“Do you think I called you to hear all this? You’re supposed to be my agent.”
There was a long pause before Karen responded, “I’ll call you back at a better time.”
Roger squeezed his eyes tight in the well wishing he could erase the memory of that last conversation. How insensitive and selfishly motivated he’d reacted to the woman who showed him nothing but love and devotion. Was that how Karen would remember him most? Moreover, was his behavior that morning indicative of the kind of person he’d become? Those were some of the questions he asked himself. As he examined his sense of self-worth the answers he received were not encouraging. He thought back on all of the friends he never called anymore and the friends who had eventually quit calling him. Yes, he had to admit, he’d become a cold and indifferent person to any concerns that were not directly related to his success or immediate pleasure. He’d forgotten how to care for anyone but himself. That was as clear to him now as the sure death he was due to suffer, alone and regretful.
Late that afternoon he dreamt Ginger was leaning over the entrance to the well barking. The shape of a vaguely familiar face was beside hers gazing down. He smiled, relishing the moment even though he realized he was merely dreaming.
“Wake up!” he heard a voice shouting as Ginger licked his face while they were lying in his bed at home.
The dream changed and he found himself back in the well. Then a spider landed on his face. He swatted at it.
“Wake up!” the voice repeated.
The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was the screw-on end of a water hose dangling in front of his face.
“Tie it around your waist and I’ll pull you up.”
Later that night, when Roger regained consciousness in a dimly lit hospital room, it took him several minutes to put fragments of the recent past together so that it made sense to him. Chester, a neighbor who he allowed to hunt turkeys on his property was responsible for rescuing him. He’d related the circumstances to Roger while they waited for an ambulance to arrive—moments before he passed out due to a lack of water, nourishment and hypothermia.
Lying still in the bed, he reviewed what he’d learned. Chester had driven to his house that afternoon, the first day of spring turkey hunting season. Finding no one home, he decided to wait until another day to see if he’d have any luck outsmarting the turkeys for a change. He’d ignored the presence of Ginger, barking by the side of the road when he drove up to the house. But it was impossible to dismiss her as she stood in the middle of the road blocking his truck on the way down. Having established a friendly relationship with the German shepherd, Chester correctly surmised that something was wrong. Grabbing his 30-30 Winchester, he followed Ginger straight to the well about a-hundred-feet into the woods. Seeing the predicament Roger was in, Chester ran back to the house and returned with the water hose.
“Thank God for turkey hunting season,” Roger said to himself.
From the corner of his eyes, he noticed movement. Quickly, Karen was on her feet and beside the bed.
“Roger,” she said in a reverential voice. “You’re awake at last.”
“Seems that way.” He reached out to her and they embraced for a long time in silence. Then her body trembled noticeably a second before they released each other.
“I’m still shuddering from the thought that I almost lost you,” she explained.
He gripped one of her hands in both of his and said, “I’m not the same man who fell down into that well. If you liked him, though, you’ll love the new me.”
“Then the new you is going to love the good news I’ve been dying to tell you as soon as you woke up.”
“Hold that thought.” He pressed a finger to her lips. “For the time being, let’s just celebrate what’s most important to me right now.”
She cocked her pretty head to the side and asked, “Which is?”
“You love me and I love you.”
With a smile bright enough to light the entire room, Karen snuggled into the bed beside Roger.
