"The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery."
- Francis Bacon -
I grew up on St. Croix in the Virgin Islands.
St. Croix has been ruled by seven different nations through the centuries. Before it was a United States territory, it was owned by Denmark. The Danish influence remains in many ways, including many old stone mills and wells.
Most of these structures are now abandoned, or a part of a museum, or re-purposed into residences.
This is the true story of a youthful adventure back in the '60s.
A Stone Mill or Well - By Z_dead from London, UK CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
From the age of thirteen,
I owned a series of mopeds and small motorcycles that got me around the island.
My sister was about four years younger. We both attended the same school.
While we had typical sibling rivalry issues, most days sister and I at least peacefully coexisted. Some days, we even got along pretty well.
On one of those good days —
it was either a Saturday, or it might have been after school — I took my sister for a ride on the back of my Honda 90. We went exploring along the southern coast of the island.
I can't recall with precision now, but it must have been somewhere along Southside Road that we noticed an old stone well tower a ways from the road to the north. There were dirt tracks leading in that direction, and so we went to take a look.
The track soon got very narrow. I parked the motorcycle, and we continued on foot.
Mill Seen from the Inside - By FloNight (Sydney Poore) and Russell Poore (Own work by Russell and Sydney Poore) CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
I was in the lead, so I saw it first.
Right at the edge of the well, there was a mound of coins.
Eyes wide, I ran up to the pile and began stuffing coins into my pockets. My sister followed, and began gathering them as well. Meanwhile, we wondered out loud what in the world this was all about?
Perhaps someone had pulled off a vending machine robbery, and hid their stash in the bottom of the well?
Or robbed a bank?
Or an armored car?
There had been nothing on the news about it.
Maybe a sack tore open on the way to the lip of the well, leaving a pile of coins lying there?
The wells are bat-homes.
I looked down into the well, but it was too deep and dark to see anything. I dropped a rock and tried to estimate the depth by timing its impact at the bottom.
During the day, the bats hang from the walls asleep. At night, they fly out and go about their task of helping to control the bug population of the island. There was, no doubt, years of bat guano accumulation at the bottom of that well.
We scoured the surrounding area.
There were a few more coins scattered here and there, some along the path that we had not noticed on the way in.
This was around the time that the U.S. began withdrawing silver coins from circulation. Most of what we found was silver dimes and quarters, as well as nickels. I don't remember how much, but it was enough to be more than interesting.
An Unsplash Photo
Photo courtesy of Emily Morter and http://unsplash.com
What's at the bottom of the well?
I often thought about returning to the well with a rope and a winch, descending to see whether there might be a vast cache of coins buried in the murky mire at the bottom. But I never quite got it together.
Maybe it was the thought of being surrounded by all those bats?
Or digging my way through the guano?
Though I continue to wonder, I have to acknowledge now that I may never know.
FIN
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