Paulo took off his shirt, spit on his hands, and ran the rope through the pulley wheel at the top, and then wrapped the rope twice around the tree and braced it against his hip.
After checking my headlamp, I kicked off the sides, hung briefly, and then let Paulo lower me into the hole on what I hoped was my last trip. As the light above me grew smaller and the darkness wrapped around me like a blanket, I thought about the incongruity of my life. So little made sense.
The rope above me was piano-wire taut. How precarious life was down here for me as I hung by a few fibers. If the rope broke, I might climb out, but if I were to slip, it’d be the last time I ever slipped.
Finally, the rod and hammer clanked rock below me and my feet touched down. I stood, ankle-deep in water, and began trying to make sense of my world. It was tough to tell whether the water in which I now stood had seeped down or leaked up. The area around me was wider—whereas the well shaft was maybe three to four feet in diameter, here it was wider than my outstretched fingertips. The walls were worn smooth where the pressure of the water through the years had hollowed out a cavity.
The water was cold, which was a change from the water I’d been standing in since I’d started digging. Previously, the water and mud were a slimy, warm mush, but this was different. This was like a mountain stream. It was cold, and when I cupped it in my hands, clear. I knelt and ran my fingertips along the rock beneath the surface of the water trying to sense any flow of water. Any place at all where I could feel a trickle. While I didn’t sense water flow, it did get colder. There was a definite place below my feet where the rock and water were the coldest.
The steel pole and hammer were concerns. If I struck water and had to get out of here fast, I didn’t want to leave them in the bottom of this well to forever fill it with rust and poison those above, so I made sure the tethers to each were tied. I didn’t know what would happen when I broke through the rock, but I had a feeling it would not be gentle.
I steadied my footing and placed the point of the steel pole in the center. Getting a good grip on the hammer, I practiced raising it above my head and bringing it down onto the pole, making sure I had enough headroom to swing and then asking myself where the hammer would end up if I missed—which was both possible and likely.
I’d hesitated long enough. People were thirsty. I held the steel pole against the solid ground with my left hand and raised the hammer with my right. I’m not sure if it was my crouched position or what, but the reflection of the rock at eye level caught my eye. A smooth piece of rock had been carved and there were words in it. I couldn’t make them out because they were packed with mud, but after a few minutes of tracing the letters and prying out the lines of rock, I smiled at that old man. He was obviously shorter than me, and while he hadn’t signed his name, his signature was clear. I rinsed the wall several times. It read: “AGUA DE MI CORAZÓN.”
I thought about trying to cut out that rock and give it to Leena, but it was part of the whole and Michelangelo himself couldn’t have cut that piece out of the shaft. It was staying. If I’d had my phone I could have taken a picture, but cold, wet, damp holes in the ground are no place for electronics so I’d left it in the truck up top. This note would have to be between me and the old man.
I’d wasted enough time. I raised the hammer, steadied the pole, and slammed the head of the hammer as hard as I could down against the pole, driving it into the rock below my feet.
Nothing.
I waited, thinking whatever was about to happen might take a second.
Still nothing.
I hit it again. No response. Again. I was met by silence and no water. I struck it six or eight times. Then twenty more. But nothing changed down in that hole. Over the next hour, I chipped and bored and banged my way into that rock, making very little progress. My right arm had become a noodle, and my left hand and forearm were bruised and tender where the hammer had hit the pole and then slid or slipped off. I was growing increasingly frustrated because, standing in “new” water, I thought for sure I was close. Exhausted and not wanting to surface, I sat, soaking my hands in the water that had crept over my ankles and contacted my shins. I knew the water had not been that deep when I got down there. Water had to be coming from somewhere because there was more of it, but it was certainly not coming up. I’d have better success against the Rock of Gibraltar. I leaned back, staring up at the pinhole of light above me. Only then did I feel the drip.
Against my neck.
I turned, and just below the rock where Alejandro had carved his inscription was a small indention, or cavity, that oddly enough stood at heart level. Didn’t take a genius to realize that the rock in the middle of the cavity was of a different feel than the rock that surrounded it. As I studied the old hammer and chisel marks made in the older rock around the edges, the newer rock stuck out. Smoother. More porous. No chisel marks. Took me a minute to realize that the power and pressure of the mudslide had stopped up the well. Without giving it much thought, I tapped it with the hammer and the drip increased. Another tap and the drip turned to a tiny, solid stream. Ready to be done with this, I reached back and slammed the hammer against the face of the rock.
Bad idea.
Evidently all my pounding had worked the plug loose, and all it needed was one more swing of persuasion. The bowling ball–sized rock shot past my face, followed by a fire hose stream of water that slammed me against the far wall and pressed me against it with such force that I couldn’t budge. My head ricocheted off the rock and the whole world went black. My headlamp was gone, but I was also having trouble staying conscious. Water had filled the cavity and risen to my neck by the time I registered what was happening.
In the dark, I reached up and pulled down hard on the rope, which was followed by a slight delay. Then without warning, it snapped back hard and rocketed me from the water. I sucked in my first deep breath of air in half a minute and held fast to the rope above me. My feet had just cleared the water when something below me snagged and held me to the bottom. The rope tightened, and I was caught in the middle between a force pulling me up and a force that wouldn’t budge below me. The water rose around me, bubbling up with massive force, quickly filling the shaft and rising past me. Within a matter of seconds, I was immersed and the water was shooting past me as I hung suspended in the shaft unable to free myself. It took a second to register that the line attached to the steel spear was taut and would not budge. That meant that the pole itself was lodged and preventing my exit. I groped in the dark, finally finding it braced horizontally across the shaft of the well where it was caught in the narrowing of the shaft. The only way to get it to release was to return down, which was exactly what my long single tug on the rope had told Paulo and Zaul that I did not want to do. They were topside pulling with all their might, thinking that’s what I wanted.
The water had long since engulfed me as I twisted and writhed in the well shaft, caught between those pulling me up and the steel rod holding me down. Somewhere in there the thought occurred to me that I might very well die right there, drowned in that shaft, only to float to the surface days or weeks from now as whatever held me down set me free.
My reaction to that thought was strange. I wasn’t afraid and fear was not my primary emotion. I mean, I’d rather be alive than not, but if I drowned in that dark hole, I can make a pretty sound and fast argument that I deserved it. Anyone with a cursory look across the effect of my life would agree. I was not a good man, had not been, and the effect of me on the rest of the world had not been positive. As the picture of my life played like a fast-forward video across my eyes, I saw more tears than smiles. More anger than laughter. The sin of my life had been and remained indifference, and in that instant, I was indifferent to my own death. Something deep inside me had to be dysfunctional.