11
So the next day, after Mum and Dad had gone off with Kellyanne to take her to the hospital, I walked out on the road that goes past the golf course and out to the cemetery. I walked past the sign which says
Lightning Ridge
Population—?
And the question mark is there cos of all the people who pass through, find nothing and give up and go back home. And because of all the folks out hidden at their mines in the bush. And all the criminals and that who don’t care to register themselves down on the electoral roll. My mum said she reckoned there were around eight thousand and fifty-three plus Pobby and Dingan, that’s eight thousand and fifty-five residents out at the Ridge all together. But now Pobby and Dingan were dead I guess it was back to eight thousand and fifty-three.
As I walked I turned Dingan’s bellybutton around in my fingers. I had been so busy I hadn’t had a hell of a lot of time to look at it. It was pretty incredible. A mixture of black and greens, and when you turned it a flash of red went shivering through it from side to side. And it was wrapped up cosy in a doona of white-and-brown rock. It had good luck written all over it, that’s for sure. And it was warm from the Lightning Ridge sun.
I finally got to the cemetery and I had a good look around. I’d never been there before. It’s a small, quiet place not far at all from some mines and about the size of two claims strung together. If you look hard you can see the tops of drilling rigs peeking over the trees like dinosaurs or skeletons of giraffes. Well, you could tell which ones of the dead people had struck opal and which hadn’t, because some of the signs were cut out of stone and marble, and some were just two bits of rotting wood crossed over. Kellyanne was right. Death looked like it was just too expensive for some people. Plus it was weird thinking of all those dead people under the ground, especially when you thought about how a lot of the dead folks had spent their lives working under the ground as well. Many of the signs said
Killed in Mining
Accident.
And there were flowers and colourful stones under their names and most of them said R.I.P. I used to think that meant they’d sort of been ripped out of their lives like opal ripped out of the clay.
I noticed that Bob the Swede had a bit of space next to his grave. Room enough for two more, I thought, if old Bobby-boy budged over a bit. There was graves for little kids who died young as well. They were under piles of earth like the mullock heaps out at the mines, only reddy-brown. I suddenly felt mighty sad about Kellyanne and I was thinking what it might be like if she had to be buried out here in a sad little grave with a few plastic flowers in front, and all because a couple of imaginary friends died out in my dad’s mine. But I told myself to stop thinking like this, and that everything was going to be okay now, because I’d managed by some fluke to find the bodies. She’d get better once she’d mourned at the funeral I was going to buy with Dingan’s bellybutton stone. There were tears in my eyes, but. Maybe it was cos I had to get rid of my first opal. Anyway, I think it was only the second time I ever had them in my whole life.
12
I knocked on the door of Mr. Dan Dunkley, the funeral director. A voice said, “Come in.” I turned the handle of his door and entered.
Mr. Dan was a fat man with too many chins for his own good. His office was spick-and span—well, spick, anyway—and he was sitting at his desk with his cheek in his flabby white hand. Behind him he had a grinding wheel going and a couple of dibbers and dob-sticks laid out on a tray next to a bottle of methylated spirits and a Little Dixie Combination Assembly. On his forehead Mr. Dan had his weird glasses for looking at opals. Like most people out at the Ridge who don’t have the guts to mine, he did a bit of cutting and buying and selling on the side to keep him ticking over when not enough people were kicking the bucket.
Mr. Dan looked up at me. He didn’t know who I was, unlike most people, and my guess is he wasn’t too sociable and only got to know people when they had croaked it. I said: “My name is Ashmol Williamson and I have come to talk graves.”
Mr. Dan took off his specs and did a frown and lit up his pipe. After a while he muttered: “School project?”
“No sir,” I said. “You may have heard about my sister Kellyanne Williamson? She’s dying.”
Well, I figured he was bound to twig when I told him Kellyanne’s name. He probably had her coffin all ready and made up out back. Sure enough, a bit of a nod came up on his face.
“Reason she’s dying is she lost two of her friends a while back. And she’s sad,” I said.
“Oh,” said Mr. Dan. “I didn’t know that. All I know about you Williamsons is that your daddy’s in a spot of trouble.”
I walked over and bunked myself up onto Mr. Dunkley’s desk and sat there like a cat, looking at him. “These friends of my sister,” I said, “they went missing. They were gone a few days and nobody could find them.”
Mr. Dan suddenly looked interested. “I didn’t know any of this.”
“Well. You’re the only one who doesn’t,” I said. “See. That’s the reason you ain’t had too many people coming in with opals to sell recently. Everybody’s been out looking for Pobby and Dingan all day long. Nobody’s been mining.”
“Are you sure you ain’t making this up, kid?”
“Positive,” I said, all confident and smart, like James Blond.
Mr. Dan walked over and switched the grinding wheel off.
“Well, boy, what do you want me to do? Go looking for two kids down a hole? Happens all the time, little fella. Kids don’t take any notice of where they’re going, cos they got their heads in the clouds, and then they trip up and fall. Wham! Splat!” Mr. Dan whopped his hand down hard on his desk.
There was a silence, and then I looked at him and said, “There’s no point in going looking for them, Mr. Dan. I don’t want you to do that. The thing is, these two friends of my sister’s, they are sort of imaginary. They don’t exist. They’s invisible. And besides, I’ve found them, or found their bodies at any rate. They’re dead.”
Mr. Dan almost choked on his pipe. He sighed and said, “Listen, kid. Ashley, or whatever you’re called. I’m a busy bloke. Now hop it.”
“I noticed there is a space next to Bob the Swede in the cemetery,” I said, refusing to budge.
Mr. Dan took the glasses off his forehead. “You been playin’ around in my cemetery, kid?”
I didn’t see how he could claim it was his cemetery. The dead owned it. It was their claim. Or else they were ratting it under his nose.
“I wanna buy that space for a grave for Pobby and Dingan,” I told Mr. Dan. “You see, I don’t think my sis is going to get better until she sees them buried once and for all.”
“You can’t bury imaginary people,” said Mr. Dan. “There’s nothing to bury.”
“Believe what you want, Mr. Dan,” I answered. “Just let me buy the claim. Let me have a space in the cemetery.”
“What you offering?”
“Opal.” I took off my right shoe and fished out Dingan’s bellybutton. I had chipped off all the dirt and polished it up with a cloth so it looked better than ever. So beautiful and sparkling. My fingers didn’t like handing it over. Mr. Dan Dunkley took it in his big hand and held it under his light. I was all twitchy and I never took my eyes off it once.
“Fuck me dead!” he said. “Where d’you get this, kid? You rat this? You better not have ratted this. Where d’you get it?” I never saw anyone put on his opal-glasses so quick.
“Noodling.”
“You found this noodling?”
“Yup. Noodling on a mullock heap at my dad’s claim.”
“This don’t look like no opal some kid found noodling on his dad’s mullock heap. I reckon you ratted it from Old Sid.”
I started getting a bit pissed at this. I suppose I was beginning to feel like Kellyanne and Dad. It wasn’t too cool having folks not believing what you were saying all the time.
“I bloody well did not,” I said.
“This is a valuable stone. This is worth a lot of money, kid,” said Mr. Dan.
“Is it worth as much as a grave and a couple of coffins?” I asked him.
Mr. Dan sharpened up his eyes and looked me up and down. He leant closer over his desk.
“Just about,” he said in a whisper. “Your daddy know about this, son?”
“Nope. And I don’t want him to. Because if he knew about it, Mr. Dan, then he’d go crazy with excitement and then he wouldn’t let me buy Pobby and Dingan a grave with it, and then Kellyanne wouldn’t get any better.”
“Anybody else know?”
“Nobody ’cept Kellyanne.”
Dan Dunkley held the stone under the light again and twisted it around so the red flash streaked across it. I could see those colours coming up beautiful and I knew I was on to a winner.
“Okay, son. You got a deal,” said Mr. Dan. “I’ll let you have the grave for the opal.”
“Great!” I said. “And I want you to arrange the funeral for Pobby and Dingan too, Mr. Dan,” I said. “And make it realistic. My sis won’t get better if it’s not realistic. You better make it like a funeral for two normal kids and make them coffins and everything and read some Bible stuff. Make it on Sunday at eleven.”
“I’ll talk to the preacher,” said Mr. Dan, not taking his eyes off Dingan’s bellybutton stone. “And you’d better talk to him too. He’s gonna think I’m doolally or something.”
13
I walked out of Dan Dunkley’s house a little dazed. I was pleased I’d got a space for Pobby and Dingan in the cemetery, but I had a hollow, aching feeling behind my ribs which wouldn’t go away. I couldn’t believe an opal had passed through my hands so quick. An opal I had found on my lonesome on the Williamsons’ claim at Wyoming. I felt like I was living in a dream or something. Everything was moving so fast.
The preacher was a small weedy man drinking beer from a green bottle on the stump of a sandalwood tree around the back of his pokey white church. I told him what was what. After a long pause he looked at me and said, “Okay, I’ll do it, young Ashmol. Now you’d better give me some hard facts about these little imaginary friends, so I can make me a speech.”
I thought about it long and hard. Eventually I said: “Well, vicar, they was quiet and they always went around together. And they liked chewing lollies, and Violet Crumbles and Cherry Ripes.”
The preacher noted these things down on his pad. He repeated the words “Violet Crumbles” and “Cherry Ripes.”
“And they used to go and bathe at the Bore Baths with Kellyanne.”
And then I reeled off a sort of list of all the things I had learnt about Pobby and Dingan:
Pobby was a boy and the oldest by a year.
Dingan was the pretty one. Real pretty. And smart as a fox.
They didn’t leave no footprints because they
walked in the same place as Kellyanne.
And Pobby and Dingan weren’t scared of
the big kids in Lightning Ridge.
And Dingan read books over your shoulder.
And Pobby liked going out to dance in the
lightning storms.
And Dingan could run real quick and play
rigaragaroo.
And they liked Kellyanne better than anyone
else.
And Pobby had a kind of limp, and when Kellyanne was late for anything she always said Pobby slowed her up and she was late because she had to wait for him.
And Pobby could walk through walls.
The preacher made some more jottings and I saw him running out of page.
And Dingan had an opal in her belly-button.
And Kellyanne always sat in between Pobby and Dingan on the bus to Walgett.
And Dingan was a pacifist, because every time I stamped on her or punched her and said, “If Dingan is real why doesn’t she hit back?” Kellyanne would say, “Cos Dingan is a pacifist, stupid.”
And they was generous, because Kellyanne was always thanking them for being nice to her.
And they talked English or whistled to make themselves understood.
And you had to be a certain kind of person to hear them.
The preacher had stopped writing and was staring into space. “Thanks, Ashmol,” he said. “That’s plenty of information. Now, take care of your sister, and I’ll see you on Sunday.”
“Will Pobby and Dingan go to heaven or hell, vicar?” I asked before I went. I was sort of testing him out to see if he’d take Kellyanne’s friends seriously.
The preacher thought long and hard about this and said: “What do
you
think?”
“Heaven,” I said firmly, “so long as there’s Violet Crumbles there.”
“I think you’re right,” said the preacher and took another swig out of his green bottle. As I rode off on my Chopper he shouted: “I shall be praying for your father, Ashmol Williamson!”
“Do what you want, vicar!” I called back. “Just come up with the goods.”
I zoomed off down the road thinking about heaven. It was like the ballroom of an opal mine. Full of people with lamps on their heads. And everyone was singing Elvis Presley songs and gouging, and swinging picks.
14
Before I got home I stopped off at Humph’s Moozeum, which is a place full of amazing junk. The Moozeum is just down from the half-built castle which the bloke Domingo who I told you about was building single-handed out there in the middle of nowhere. That’s Lightning Ridge for you. People go all weird on you all the time, because it’s so hot, and they start building castles and shit.
The man who owns the Moozeum is called Humph and he has spent his whole life collecting weird things. Well, I liked to stop by and talk to him sometimes, and when I was sad it was a good place to go to cheer yourself up and get your mind on something else. There is a whole load of outhouses and old buses and cars and bits of mining machinery, and bush fridges, and there is a whole assortment of objects, old pictures, bones, bottles, books, sewing machines. There’s a car up a tree, and Humph even has the toes of one of his miner-friends pickled in a jar. He is getting some bloke’s leg pickled too. He has a chunk of fossilized Turkish Delight from Gallipoli, and a bottle of vodka which he says a band called the Rolling Stones gave him. He is a clever old bugger, Humph. You never know if what he is saying is true.
One of the sections of the Moozeum is underground, and that’s where I found old Humph sitting at the little bar he has in the corner. He was wearing a big floppy hat. “Ah, Ashmol,” he said. “Any news of Pobby and Dingan yet? Bit like looking for a needle in a haystack, I reckon.”
“Yeah, I found them,” I told him proudly. “They were both dead.”
Old Humph didn’t know whether to say “Good” or “That’s too bad” and so he just grunted and held up something to show me. I trundled over and stood looking. I was pretty impressed. It was a framed invitation to the funeral of Princess Diana. And the writing was done in really fancy silver lettering and there was a royal stamp on it and everything. “You got invited to the funeral of Princess Diana?” I asked with my eyes wide open.
“Did I hell!” said Humph, fairly splitting his sides with laughter. “This little bewdy I cut out of a magazine and stuck down on a piece of card! Don’t tell anyone, mind. The tourists love it.” That was Humph. He was a cunning old-timer who didn’t care too much about the truth of things so long as there was a good story in it, and most of the time he told people about his fakes anyway, so they could see how clever he’d been.
“Could you do me some invitations for Pobby and Dingan’s funeral?” I asked.
“Having a funeral, are you?”
I nodded. “I reckon Kellyanne won’t get better until we bury the dead bodies and show them some last respect.”
Humph nodded solemnly. “I wouldn’t have minded having their dead bodies in my Moozeum,” he said. “I haven’t got any dead imaginary friends in my Moozeum yet. ’Bout the only thing I haven’t got.”
“Maybe Kellyanne will let you get Pobby’s finger pickled and put in a jar,” I suggested.
“Maybe,” said Humph, taking a swig of Johnnie Walker. “So how many invitations do you want?”
“I want to invite everyone in Lightning Ridge.”
Humph nodded solemnly and scratched the top of his floppy hat.
“That makes eight thousand and fifty-three by my calculation,” I said.