but albie cracked her skull open after the traveling man had left her cold and then he tied a block on her feet and tumbled her down the old well and twenty years later albie died peacefully in his bed of a heart attack , just as his son joe will die later in this story , and perhaps someday a kid will stumble on the old well where it is hidden by choked blackberry creepers and pull back the whitened , weather-smoothed boards and see that crumbling skeleton staring blankly up from the bottom of that rock-lined pit , the sweet traveling man 's necklace still dangling , green and mossy , over her rib cage .