Ben Rice - Pobby and Dingan

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.”

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.