8
Well, for a day or so all this action perked up Kellyanne a bit. It perked Lightning Ridge up too, I reckon. People around here like to get ahold of weird things, and they got so involved with the idea of Pobby and Dingan and my sister Kellyanne that they seemed to forget about Dad and Old Sid the Grouch for a while. And no one had tried to burn down our fence recently either. But even though everyone was giving her plenty of attention, Kellyanne still wasn’t eating. She really did think that Pobby and Dingan had died now, and all she could talk about was bringing their corpses back. She said she’d feel plenty better if she could just be with their dead bodies. But bodies still need finding. I was getting a bit impatient with all this and so I said: “Kellyanne, you’re worrying Mum and Dad sick. Everyone’s trying to help, but you know damn well that you’re the only one that’s ever going to find Pobby and Dingan or Pobby and Dingan’s bodies or whatever. Now, either find them or forget about them so you can get better and we can go back to normal!”
Kellyanne looked like she was thinking this one over and over. Eventually my sister said, “Ashmol. Please can you go out one more time to Wyoming and go down the mine. I’ve got a hunch about it. A sort of a feeling.”
“What? You want me to go down the mine looking for Pobby and Dingan?”
“Please. And go alone and at night so that people won’t be able to see you, and you won’t get into trouble.”
“You think they’ll be there?”
“Like I said, I’ve got a hunch.” She put her head on the pillow and pulled the blanket up to her chin. “Maybe they got lost in the drives and their bodies are still lying there in the dark all starved.”
“Supposing I go,” I said. “How will I know it’s them? I can’t
see
Pobby and Dingan like you can. Never could.”
Kellyanne didn’t answer. She had fallen asleep, and her arm was thin and deathly-looking. There were rings under her eyes and her face was the colour of shin-cracker.
9
So that night I got dressed into warm clothes and took a sausage from the fridge and put it in my pocket. I could hear Mum and Dad talking in their room in murmurs. I also got a ball of string out of the garage. I crept out of our camp and tiptoed over to where I keep my bike lying down in the dirt. I pushed it out of the drive so it didn’t clank too much. And then I tied my little pocket torch to the handlebars with a bootlace and started the long journey out to the Wyoming claim. My heart was beating so hard it was like someone was pedalling inside of me.
When I was half the way out to Wyoming I stopped and asked myself what the hell I was doing going looking in the middle of the night for two dead people who didn’t exist. It seemed like a pretty stupid thing for a kid to be doing. I almost made up my mind to turn around and go back, pretending I’d found the corpses of Pobby and Dingan straight away. But I knew Kellyanne wouldn’t believe me. So I decided just to go and have a look down the mine shaft, and hang out there for an hour or so, so that at least I could say I’d been down and done my best. I thought Kellyanne would appreciate that. And she’d think I’d come a long way since the days when I used to punch the air where Pobby and Dingan were supposed to be. And I didn’t want her to die thinking I was the kind of Ashmol who didn’t believe anything.
It was a good ten miles of cold road to the claim, and once I got off onto the dirt tracks it became harder to see where the hell I was going. I had to weave my way in and out of the burs and bindies. Luckily I sort of knew the way across the wheat paddock to the Wyoming claim blindfolded, because I’d been out there so many times with Dad. But I still had to guide my bike along the tracks without going down any potholes or knocking into any rocks. It was scary, though, being out there on my own, and so, to brave me up a bit, I kept pretending to be James Blond and I made myself a Colt .45 revolver out of two fingers and a cocked-back thumb and held it down by the leg of my trousers as I rode along. I swear for about fifteen minutes I almost forgot I was Ashmol Williamson altogether.
Well, it was now so quiet that I could hear the blood in my head creeping around and my teeth chattering together. Plus—there was this huge sky with stars peppered all over it, and I remembered Dad telling me that for each star in the sky there was an opal in the earth, and that opals are hidden from view because they are even prettier than stars and the sight of a whole lot of them would break people’s hearts. And I also remembered him telling me that all this land where Lightning Ridge is now was once covered by seawater and how all kinds of sea creatures had been found fossilized in the rock. I felt a shiver go down my spine just thinking about how strange this was, that a sea was once here where now there is nothing but dry land. And suddenly I thought how maybe if this amazing thing was true it was just possible Pobby and Dingan were true too. But then I told myself: “Jesus, mate, you’re losing your marbles, you fruit loop. Snap out of it.” And that made me bike a little faster towards my dad’s opal claim.
When I got there I undid my torch and turned it off. I laid down my Chopper and tiptoed off carefully, because I was worried that Old Sid might wake up and think I was ratting his claim. See, ever since my dad punched him in the face for calling him a ratter everyone knew that Sid stayed up late with a candle burning in his caravan, eating his frill-neck lizards and holding a gun out of his window. And I also knew he had bought a guard dog, which was why I put a sausage in my pocket.
Sure enough, Sid’s dog ran out barking. He was attached to Sid’s caravan by a rope. I threw him the sausage and crept over to our mine, taking care not to trip on the star-picket or fall down any holes that had been left uncovered. I heard that dog slobbering in the dark. When I got to the mine shaft I remembered how my dad would always say, “Always put your lid on when you go underground, kiddo!”—and so I tiptoed over to our old caravan and took out a yellow mining helmet from underneath it. I put on the hat and tightened the strap up under my chin. And that made me feel a little better. Then I tied my torch to my belt by the bootlace.
The mine shaft was narrow and dark. I lowered myself down carefully onto the ladder. There was only enough room on each rung for my toes, and so I had to grip extra hard onto the sides with my hands as I climbed down, in case I lost some footing. Normally my dad came down with a cord and a light-bulb thing that’s attached to the generator, but all I had was my little one-battery torch, which didn’t let off too much light.
One foot after the other I went down backwards, trying not to think about how I would end up if I fell. After every five steps I took a breather to make sure I was still alive and on the ladder and not at the bottom in a heap. And the further I went down the more I felt like I was in some throat, being swallowed by some monster.
Well, pretty soon my foot was on the bottom rung and I was standing on the floor of the ballroom. It felt like I was still on the ladder, because I could feel where the rungs had been pressing into my feet.
Before I set off into the darkness I remembered the story Kellyanne had told me from her
Book of Heroes
and Legends
about a Greek bloke who went into an opal mine to kill a giant huntsman spider, and how he took a ball of wool so he could follow it back out and not get lost in the drives. And that’s why I’d packed a ball of string and I tied it to the bottom rung of the ladder and went off down the drive. I was concentrating so damn hard on what I was doing that I nearly forgot why I had come in the first place.
I set off across the ballroom flashing my torch around and being careful not to walk into any props. The light of my torch lit up the red clay. I kept thinking I could see weird, wrinkly faces looking at me from the walls. And the further I went the more the faces became faces of people I knew or had heard something about. And one of those faces was like Old Sid’s and one was Jack the Quack and one was the bloke with the stinking breath who almost clobbered me at the Digger’s Rest. And one was Peter Juvenile Sidebottom. I put my mind off all these faces by saying out loud, “Sandstone and clay. Sandstone and clay. Sandstone and clay,” over and over again just to remind myself what a load of hooey all this face stuff was.
I took the drive on the left, ducking my head the whole time, even though I didn’t need to by a long shot. I kept walking, unravelling the string as I went and keeping an ear out for the slide of a snake.
Well, I knew these drives pretty well, but after a bit I found a new tunnel on my left which I hadn’t ever been in before. There was a strange monkey in the left wall. And a monkey isn’t a thing that swings through the trees but the word we miners use for a sort of a hole. And I figured it must be where Dad had been jackhammering recently, because he had left his pick there. Well, there was a smell of some kind which I’d never smelt here before. I reckoned it might just be the smell you get at night down an opal drive, because I’d never been out in one at night like this. Anyway, I went through the monkey and as far as I could go along the new drive.
Well, right in this corner I waved the torch around until I suddenly saw something pretty unusual. There was a massive heap of rubble in the corner. It wasn’t just opal dirt and tailings. Oh no, it seemed like the whole part of the roof had collapsed and fallen in like a big mushroom. The first thing I thought was: “Shit, that means some more of the roof might fall down on top of me.” I turned to follow my string back to the ladder, thinking that the last thing my family needed right now was a squashed Ashmol, when suddenly I had this peculiar kind of mind-flash which made me freeze in my tracks. I said to myself: “What if Pobby and Dingan got caught under the pile of rock?” And then I listened carefully and sort of convinced myself that I could hear a little moaning and breathing. And then I, Ashmol Williamson, found myself calling their names. I really did. “Pobby! Dingan! Don’t worry, Ashmol is here! Kellyanne’s brother! Pobby and Dingan! I’m here to rescue you.” But then I remembered that Kellyanne was convinced they were dead, and that meant they probably were. And so I took off the stones more slowly and didn’t hurry so much. But I was so excited I could have filled up a bucket with my sweat and sent it up on the hoist.
I set about on hands and knees taking off rocks and moving them to one side until I got to the floor. And there suddenly, right in front of me, was the wrapper of a Violet Crumble chocolate bar. And it was just great to see something a little familiar with those good old words written on it way out here in the middle of nowhere. But then suddenly my eye caught hold of something else flashing up at me. Something sitting there in the dark. Waiting. A sort of greeny-red glint. I headed straight for it. It was a nobbie the size of a yo-yo, and when I shone my torch on it I could see there was a bit of colour there. My heart beat the world record for the pole vault. I brushed the dirt off as best I could and then I licked the nobbie. It was opal. Green. Red. Black. All of them together. It was strangely warm, like it had already been in someone’s hand or close to someone’s skin. I sat there for a while, my heart doing a back flip, thinking: “Shit, we Williamsons are going to be rich bastards!” I rolled it around in my palm and licked the dirt off again to make it shine. And I reckoned the opalized bit was as bright as a star and the size of a coin, or a bellybutton. And that gave me the idea. This was Dingan’s bellybutton. This was Pobby and Dingan, who got trapped under the roof of the drive where it fell in. And the smell I smelt earlier was death. And the last thing they ate before they died was a Violet Crumble. Everything sort of fit together perfectly.
I put the nobbie in my shoe and the Violet Crumble wrapper in my pocket, and my torch in my mouth, and took up the bodies of Pobby and Dingan in my arms. They were heavier than I’d thought. Much, much heavier. I made my way back along the drive towards the foot of the ladder, the torch moving along the browny-red walls. And I found myself groaning and muttering as I dragged Pobby and Dingan back. There was something heavy about the air too, if you know what I mean.
At the foot of the ladder I paused and set Pobby and Dingan down gently, remembering that there was no way a little bloke like me was going to get them up to the top all by myself. So I laid them both down and took off my coat and draped it over them. As I climbed up the ladder I kept looking back down over my shoulder to make sure the corpses were still at the bottom. And then I got back on my Chopper and pedalled back home under a sky which was still laid up with opal-fever. I was colder than any cold thing a bloke could think of.
10
I didn’t sleep the rest of that long night, but when the morning finally showed up I walked into Kellyanne’s room to tell her what had happened. Everything smelt a bit of sick. I shook Kellyanne on the shoulder and said, “Wake up, Sis. I’ve got to show you something. Wake up!” Kellyanne’s eyelids fluttered and her eye peeped out. She looked like she didn’t have much life left in her. I felt sort of desperate. It was going to be me against death. Me on my own. Not James Blond, not Luke Sky-walker or nobody, but just Ashmol Williamson speaking to save his sister’s life. I’d seen Fat Walt and the legendary Domingo and Joe Lucas and all those others fail. I kind of knew this was my last chance and so I took a real deep breath.
“I did what you said, Kellyanne—I went down the mine last night—and guess what—the roof had collapsed in one of the drives—Pobby and Dingan got caught under it—I know it because I found the opal that Dingan wore in her bellybutton—they were lying all bruised in the mine—they were—honest—they were there—and they were dead. But they looked peaceful, like—they were lying together holding hands—and they were still a little warm and everything.”
Tears started coming out of my eyes, maybe cos I was knackered, but also because I was damn worried that Kellyanne wasn’t going to believe a word of what I was saying. I was afraid that if I stopped talking she would suddenly turn and say, “Stop being a drongo, Ashmol. That wasn’t Pobby and Dingan,” so I just sort of spouted everything out in a big blabber. “They had their eyes closed, Kellyanne—in Pobby’s hand was a Violet Crumble wrapper.” I waved the wrapper around while I was talking to try and get her attention. “You can see for youself, Sis—I left the bodies laid out at the claim, under my coat—because I couldn’t lift them—see—and if you come with me I’ll show you. But you gotta believe me—they were there—I lifted off the rocks and I could smell them—no kidding—the roof came down on top of them—there were no props or pillars—it came down and squashed them—honest—I dragged them back to the ladder—but I couldn’t get’em up—I really couldn’t.”
Well, then I looked at the floor and sort of rubbed my ankles together, and cracked the joints in my fingers.
“Can I see the opal?” Kellyanne whispered after a while.
I took off my shoe and held out the opal in the palm of my hand, which was shaking like a fish. I suddenly got really worried, because I thought: “This opal doesn’t look like nothing anyone would put in their bellybutton.” It was too big.
But Kellyanne sat up suddenly and put her arms around my neck and said: “Ashmol! You’ve found the bodies. You’ve found Pobby and Dingan! This is it! This is the stone that Dingan wears in her bellybutton!”
When I heard this I was suddenly all unplugged and relieved and excited. This huge smile had taken hold of Kellyanne’s face. It was like a big rock had been lifted off her. I suddenly thought: “Great! It’s all over! I’ve done it! Now Kellyanne will get better and everything’s going to be fine.”
But Kellyanne looked at me and said: “Now all you’ve got to do, Ashmol, is arrange the funeral.”
“What?” I thought for a minute she was talking about her own funeral.
“All people have funerals. And so must Pobby and Dingan. I can’t relax until they’re buried, Ashmol. I’d do it myself, but I can’t because I have to go to the hospital in Walgett for a few days.”
She looked at me again with those tired eyes. I wasn’t too sure the hospital would be able to get rid of the dark rings around them.
“You can pay for it with the bellybutton,” she said. “That’s what Dingan would have wanted. That’s what she always said. ‘When I die,’ she said, ‘pay for my funeral with my bellybutton stone.’”
“How much does a funeral cost?”
“A fortune, I think, “ Kellyanne replied. “But the opal should just about cover it.”
My heart sank when I heard this. I never knew death was so expensive. I had reckoned on buying a new house and getting my mum an air ticket for a holiday in England, and all kinds of other stuff, with the money from that opal. But I made up my mind there and then that the most important thing was getting Kellyanne well again, and if that meant trading an amazing opal for a grave for Pobby and Dingan, then that was what I was going to do.
“I’ll only do it if you get better and stop worrying the hell out of Mum and Dad,” I said, all firm. “And only if you promise not to go dying, because then I’ll have another funeral to arrange and that’s going to be a real chore.”
“I promise,” said Kellyanne. “Thanks, Ashmol. And now you promise me something too. Promise you won’t tell Mum and Dad about finding Dingan’s opal.”
“Okay. Okay.”
“And that you won’t go showing it to anyone except the funeral director.”
“I promise.”
“And don’t go trying to get any money for it. This isn’t your opal, and it’s not Dad’s opal either, Ashmol. This is Dingan’s bellybutton. It isn’t some ordinary stone you can go making a heap of money from.”
I thought about this long and hard, and I thought what a shame it was that I was going to be giving away my first red-on-black. And then I said:
“I promise not to go making any money on it.” And then I left the room, almost worn out with promising.