Sketch for the opening chapter of a Middle Grade novel in which four young people investigate a subterranean world, reachable by way of an ancient Indian well in the woods.
Nelson B. Snelson of Beau Peres (locally pronounced as Bo-Paris), the greatest city in Missouri, heads to the country to spend another summer with his interesting cousins, the Jonsons. His parents offer to drive him, but Nelson B. Snelson chooses to go alone and by train. Nelson likes old-fashioned experiences, and unusual experiences, and almost any kind of experience at all. On his way to his cousin’s big old unfarmed farm in German County, his mind teems with memories of the fun he and his cousins had the previous summer. The landscape comes alive for him — the two big barns and other old farm buildsings, the creeks, the tractors, the long meandering hikes through the woods to special places like the old fireclay mine, the abandoned log house, the artesian well.
His three cousins and their mother meet him at the train station with bashful, embarassed welcomes. They are an introverted family. But Nelson understands — they will open up once they are out of the town and back among the hills and woods that are their natural element.
And they do. By the end of the first day, the children are chattering and laughing with continuous excitement the way they always have. Nelson is their favorite city cousin, and the Jonsons are some of Nelsons favorite people on Earth. Although he has many friends, both kids and adults, Nelson B. Snelson finds that he clicks with his country cousins in a way he does not with anyone else.
After several days of adventures and play, however, the three country kids grow quiet and subdued, almost worried. Nelson tries his best to raise their spirits, but it is to no avail. If he didn’t know better, he would think that someone had died or was soon to die.
One morning, the Jonson kids disappear before Nelson has awakened. Nelson’s aunt tells him that the kids have gone on one of their daylong hikes and though it would be too much for Nelson so soon, before he had gotten his country muscles back. They have left a list of activities he can do on his own. Nelson is baffled, and not a little angry, and more than a little hurt. But he sets out to make the most of his day alone.
Eventually he begins to piece together a lot of little clues in his cousins’ recent behavior. He decides they are in trouble of some kind — but what kind? He racks his memory for further clues. He has an inspiration, and runs through the woods to the little barn where the Jonson family keeps its tools — rakes, hokes, pry bars and a many other kinds of implements. As he suspected, one particular tool is missing — the long-handled hook. He knows where his cousins have gone.
Fetching sandwiches first, he heads off into the hills, and after an hour of hard climbing and scrambling, he finds himself in a small, shaded valley, his skin torn from brambles and his knees sore from crawling up and over some very steep and rocky slopes beneath some low, thick brush, and damp and dirty all over from sweating in the summer heat and dust. He makes his way to the artesian well, a bubbling pit of water that flows out into a little stream that meanders down a little rocky hill into the valley’s creek.
He was right — the long-handled pole hangs from the branch above the well, its hook curved over the branch and the wooden handle reaching about two feet into the water. The Jonson kids have been cooling themselves in the artesian well. But why had they not invited him? And where are they now?
He calls and calls, and studies the area for clues, and thinks and thinks. He lowers himself into the water to cool off, gets out and studies and thinks some more, and eats his sandwiches, and cools himself again, and takes a nap — and that’s when an idea comes to him, while he is asleep.
He had noticed, on his first dip into the well, that the hook was bitten firmly into the branch above. It has surprised him, because the Jonson kids were very thoughtful towards trees, especially favorite trees like this one, which was grand and old and beautiful and had grown a special branch down low and strong above the well, like a friendly arm, and was in their minds almost person. It was not like them to risk cutting into the bark of a good old gentle tree like that. Nelson climbs up onto the l0w-hanging branch and sees that he was right — the hook has scraped a bare spot on the top side of the branch and has actually bitten into the white, moist wood beneath the bark.
He puzzles some more, and decides what has happened. The children have been spinning themselves in the well. He lowers himself in to the water once more to test his theory. The well is a cylindrical hole, apparently carved ages ago by the Native Americans who lived here first. It is easy to lower oneself into the well, but not so easy to climb out of. The stone walls rise about a foot above the water level, and because the well is a fairly tight cylinder, it is hard to get your arms up to the top ledge and lift yourself out. That is the purpose of the long-handled hook. By climbing the handle, a person can easily get themself back out of the hole. An adult could probably do it without the handle, because an adult, being taller than the hole is deep, and too big to “crouch down” in the water, would only have to stand straight up and plant his elbows on the top ledge and so climb out. But to Nelson’s knowledge, no adult has tried, not in these times, and it does not seem like a thing any adult would try.
Spinning must be some new trick the Jonson kids have found, thinks Nelson. I don’t know how this will help me find them, but it might give me the next clue, which will lead to the next clue.
And so he gets down into the well again, the cold water icing his body and mind into a bright aliveness, and the rush of constantly rising water climbing upward under his pant legs and tickling up his bare torso. He grips the pole and pushes himself downward — as far down as he can, until his feet are on the bottom and his head and hands underwater and his cheeks are bulged outwatrd. Gripping the pole just below his chin, he twists with both hands, causing his body to turn the opposite direction. He revoles all the way around.
Intersting, he thinks. But not VERY interesting. What is it my cousins got from this that I’m not? He spins a few more times, imaginging that he is one of his cousins, then the other cousin, then the other cousin, trying to experience what they might have experienced, or think what they might have thought.
He comes back up for air, and shouts, “Oh, wait!” He remembers the exact way the hook had been bitten into the overhead branch. “They turned the other way.”
He takes another deep breath and pushes himself down into the water again. He grips the pole at chin-height again, and twists, but this time in the other direction. And his body turns opposite of the way it turned the first time. He goes around, and around, and around — six times. He is almost out of air. He will go around one more time, then climb out and try to see what it is he is still not seeing. Why would his cousins push themselves underwater in the artesian well and turn around so hard that the old farming hook scraped bark off the friendly old tree and cut into its woody muscle. There is almost no one who would wonder so hard about such a little thing. It is probably safe to safe there is almost no adult who wonder it. Nelson B. Snelson was one of the rare kids who would think such a mystery worlth solving, and as it turned out, it is a good thing he was. Although there would be times when he almost wished he weren’t.
Nelson never made his seventh turn. Six turns were all it took to spin himself out of this world and down into another.