The plan was to finish transplanting some saplings. We started the project yesterday and got one little tree successfully in the ground before a sudden afternoon storm rained us out. Should’ve only taken an hour to complete the job. But nothing is ever that simple. Before long, we were clearing brush to make more room for our new little trees.
We cut away at overgrowth around a big quartz rock that, we discovered many years ago, served as a lid to something else. Wiping sweat off his brow with one hand, the other leaning against his shovel, my husband turned to me and asked, “Where’s that Santi when you need him? He should be doing this!”
I was surprised and pleased that he remembered the scene from House Key when Santi and Jordan decide to move the big rock. Indeed, the rock that inspired the scene covers an old dry well neatly lined in stone descending into a dark, uncertain depth.
Readers first learn of the well early in the book during the Prologue when King instructs Emaline to run for cover. The scene takes place in what I call the middle past. The well comes up again in the present time during the chapter, Lockdown, when Jordan suffers a dissociative episode. She plunges into the distant past when Evangeline and Gaston, architect and builder of the infamous well, first settle the land on the wrong side of the Indian hunting path.
Jordan describes how she “…reached out with one hand, expecting the cool, dark metal underside of my desk, but touched instead another rough surface, cold and damp. I read with my fingertips that it was stone, evenly cut and stacked with no mortar at the seams.”
A little later in the story, we make a shocking discovery in the chapter, Ultimatum, when Jordan observes Evangeline through the eyes of another (hmmm?) and notes:
“She was disheveled, strands of blonde hair hanging loose from her braid. But her eyes were hard and determined.[…]I would never forget her expression as she looked into the hole of the well and then up at me, eyes wide.”
And then we are doubly surprised toward the end in Deacon’s Due, one of the darkest chapters. But I’ll say no more.
My husband suggested removing the rock altogether and filling the well–long since dry–with dirt. But I’m not so sure. Nonetheless, just like the characters in the novel, we couldn’t resist the temptation to roll the rock away. We didn’t have a strong Clydesdale stallion aptly named Stonewall on hand for the occasion, so we used our trusty tractor. After several tries, we succeeded in pushing away the rock that was much bigger than it originally appeared.
My husband shone the flashlight down the deep hole and furrowed his brow. After a long pause, he announced he had counted three bodies.
“No way!” I exclaimed.
“See for yourself,” he responded as he handed me the flashlight.
Indeed, the benign white rock and the well beneath it have inspired mysterious discoveries in House Key. I suspect there are probably more tales of travesty and deceit waiting to be revealed in the next story…
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