Ben Rice - Pobby and Dingan

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.

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.

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.