There were eleven feet of nylon rope, and tied to the end was a small canvas bag. The bag was completely sealed with wax, but the fabric had deteriorated so badly that it opened when the pump man lifted it onto the truck. Inside was a metal tobacco tin containing a brass key, two photographs, and a folded piece of paper dated 1971.
The first photograph showed my father standing beside the well when it was deepened that summer. He was twenty-three. The second showed the same spot from a different angle, with three men standing beside the pump. I recognized one of them immediately. He was the man who owned the neighboring farm until he disappeared in 1974. Nobody in my family had ever mentioned him.
The paper was written by my grandfather. It said that during the 1971 drilling, the crew had struck something beneath the original well shaft. They stopped work for two days, then continued after my grandfather was told it was “nothing worth asking about.” But at the bottom he had written one sentence that made me read it twice: “If they ever pull the pump again, don’t let them put it back before you check the east wall.”
The pump man looked at me and asked where the east wall was. We pulled up the old survey and found the original well wasn’t centered where everyone thought it was. The shaft angled several feet underground toward the neighboring property. The brass key fit a lock on an old iron access plate buried beneath the collapsed stonework. And when we lifted it, we found a second chamber that wasn’t on a single county map.
