There was one who tried to sound the bottom; some of the visitors have even tried to claim it was the writer who told them of this first-hand, but this seems apocryphal. A man was found on a soggy ledge about twenty feet down screaming into the hole. He claimed he had heard a second man at the bottom and was trying to decide whether it was another person or his own echo.
Around the well several soggy white squares were sighted; on close examination they were revealed to be twelve-inch album jackets, bleached almost beyond recognition. One examiner turned the jacket over to find a faded graphic of the word "Boston" distorted to form a spaceship rocketing through outer space. When this same examiner turned over each white square he found them to be identical, though sometimes the cover, sometimes the reverse was uppermost and therefore unreadable. The absence of any other litter, and the absence of indeed any other title on the sodden cardboard squares, was an object of speculation for the few who heard the reports, but entirely mundane for the reporters themselves.
In fact, the only first-hand observer who seemed to find any cause for action in the accumulation of Boston album jackets was the same who had climbed into the well. His original intent, he testified later, was to discover if any jackets had fallen into the well or if the presence of the jackets around the mouth were the result of an eruption from the interior. He then expressed a willingness, even a desire, to continue his descent in search of support for the eruption theory or an alternate. Another observer who came after this man suggested that the well created a disturbance in the air that funneled the rejected jackets down from the upper atmosphere. His theory does not explain, however, where the jackets may come from and why they are all Boston jackets.
The problem, said the man who had made the descent, was the lack of interested climbers. His gear consisted of a filthy pair of orange rubber gloves, a yellow slicker and a pair of lightweight trail shoes. He had no experience climbing, indeed had never even had the desire to learn; his only motivation was a search for the truth of the matter. The few other observers who had spent time on the island sympathized with his monomania, as they had all been burdened with idée fixes of their own.
The complaint of the investigator, in fact, points to an unusual pattern in the visitors to the island; all, when asked, could not remember the specific moment they decided to go, and indeed could not explain why they would have gone. They all testified, however, that it seemed the thing to do and more in the way of an obligation or an unpleasant task long-deferred. Once there, they promptly forgot even this gossamer shred of motivation and could think only of when they could leave again. For most visitors, this initial period of anxiety that, for some, sharpened to panic was psychologically the most punishing of all the various internal states undergone. As far as anyone connected with the place knows, this trauma has never directly resulted in death. But as one visitor pointed out, this statistic could be difficult, if not impossible to prove, because the only independent verification of the island's visitors is the bus driver, and there is a rapid turnover of drivers on the route; in fact, the route is considered a low-grade assignment and is considered by many to be a sort of penalty, assertions by the transit authority notwithstanding.
One visitor, among the first to the island after transit service began, said that his initial period of anxiety was acute and protracted. After several weeks of emotional turmoil, latterly darkened with thoughts of suicide, he opened a locker in the corner of the shack to find a rod and reel of the kind used for surf fishing. He could not explain why he had never opened the locker before; perhaps, he said, he assumed it was as bare as the rest of the shack and the land it occupied. With the rod and reel he found several weights and plugs, and a few tools, which he used to contrive a rig for casting into the waters below a cove, accessed by a rugged sort of natural stair from the shack.
The fish he took, a kind of sea bass, were excellent, according to his testimony. He said that the means to take the fish and the means to cook them had been there all along, but the thought to seek them out had never occurred to him until the last possible moment, in psychological terms. All the visitors agree on this point: on first arrival, the shack seems devoid of any comfort; and, by all accounts, it is a singularly uncomfortable place, but it is not inhospitable. Visitors to the island are extremely sensitive on this distinction, one which seems difficult, if not ludicrous, to outside observers. In fine, the solutions to the island's central problems are not presented except at the point of absolute need. All visitors testify to this essential fact in various ways.
This does not mean that the island produces the physical counterpart to any caprice of the visitor. In fact, each visitor has admitted that the island is remote in every way possible and offers no psychological entree. Only when the visitor submits to its reality, they say, does it give even the means for sustenance, let alone any kind of emotional satisfaction. It goes without saying that the island can sustain only one at a time; the obvious question of a pair or group on the island has gone unasked since its appearance in written and verbal history. In any event, visitors say, the question is answered definitely and unequivocally the moment the bus doors open.
The bus driver, when asked for her observations, would only talk about the route itself; the station at the island, she insists, is like any other transit center, except that the shelter is perpetually flaking and streaked with rust. She does report that the LED display that shows the date and time of the next bus is perpetually dark. A transit official said that a maintenance crew rides over once a year to service the shelter, but the corrosion and cruel winters have made the display all but useless. One maintenance team undertook to remove it, but a family of tiny rodents was found inside the housing and they stopped work until an environmental study could be completed. The study, says the official, will be completed sometime within the next fifteen years. Then, she said, it will be reviewed for recommendations by a citizen board.
The surf fisher denied that the journal he filled with elaborate but ultimately masturbatory fantasies was "provided", a term some visitors have used to describe the way in which the very thing they needed was found in an obvious place only after weeks of privation; he had brought the journal to make notes on the bus. He had never considered, he said, that he might use it on the island. Some of the dirtiest sections he removed for modesty's sake; some he removed for fuel; a few he first adjudged to be too dirty to leave behind he let stand, whether as a form of childish vandalism or public service he could not decide, then or at the time he related his experience.
Other visitors have admitted that the extant sections were dirty indeed, but not entirely unknown to them, and some called them a "comfort". In any case, they have been preserved at least from human mutilation, if not from the effects of the damp.
On the mainland the surf fisher has opened an office subsidized by his own business and the contributions of other visitors and observers. The space is an old storefront and is most like those general stores lately grown from trading posts common in the latter half of the nineteenth century. He offers replacements for the items found in the shack, even if they seem to have no clear use. For example, one visitor found a thirty-year-old map of Los Angeles county under the bed. In the store can be found a well-stocked box of old maps of Los Angeles county and city, carefully arranged in chronological order. When asked why these items take space from the more traditional furnishings, he invariably says "you never know".
The bus driver, with whom he has struck up a relationship, can be found there often, sitting on a high stool by the display case and drinking powerful coffee. In fact he admitted that he wished she had been his driver on the first trip so that his subsequent masturbatory journal entries could have been that much more fruitful, baroque, less ingrown, and of course much much more dirty. He repeats this almost as an incantation, and always in her presence. She smiles and blushes each time in exactly the same way, but says nothing.
A report that could not be confirmed stated that the shopkeeper intends to publish a book of the dirty parts of the original journal that he destroyed, arranged in random order. The title is projected to be "The Dirty Parts I Destroyed". When asked for confirmation of this the well-climber could offer none, but supposed that the book would be self-published.
Another great story!
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