Ben Rice - Pobby and Dingan

Well, in the last hour before dark Dad pulled himself off his backside and looked real hard. You had to hand it to him. He got down on his knees and crawled around in the dirt. He rummaged through piles of rocks. He looked behind trees, in front of trees, up trees and down trees. He crossed over onto the next claim, which was owned by Old Sid the Grouch. He shouldn’t of. But he did. He searched like he was mad, and there was sweat slipping down his cheeks. He worked harder than he ever mined in his life, I reckon. And it was hard to believe he was searching for Nothing. Diddlysquat. Stuff-all. And then there was a piece of very bad timing.

Old Sid, who lived out there in a camp made out of pieces of corrugated iron, came running out from behind a weeping-wilga tree and stood by the star-picket at the corner of our claim with his arms folded. He had a big grey moustache, and he wore this kind of stupid beanie hat that made him look even meaner and stupider than he was. And believe me that was stupid. The rumour was he ate frill-neck lizards on toast for breakfast.

Old Sid watched as my dad got down on all fours and leant over the hole of Old Sid’s mine shaft and called out, “Pobby and Dingan! You down there?” Sid couldn’t make head or tail of what was going on. He thought my dad was ratting his claim and stealing all his opal. He shouted out: “Hey! You! Rex Williamson! What the hell you doin’ on my claim?”

My dad turned around, startled. He was totally off his guard. He began to go red and get all embarrassed and then he started trying to make up some sort of story about looking for his watch, but then he changed it halfway into a lost-cat story — but he stuttered over that too and so he got back down on his knees and started spinning some yarn about looking for one of his contact lenses. It all went a bit wrong. My dad wasn’t much good at lying.

“You been drinking, Rex?”

I walked up to Sid to put things straight.

“My dad ain’t been drinking nothing, Mr. Sid,” I said. “You see, my sister’s got two imaginary friends called Pobby and Dingan — maybe you’ve heard of them — and she thinks my dad lost them out on the claim. And we’re here looking for them. Sounds strange, I know — but there you go, that’s the truth of it.”

Sid looked totally baffled and pretty angry. He said: “Now, don’t you go making excuses for your old man, Ashmol Williamson! You may be a clever kid, but your daddy’s been ratting my claim, ain’t he? Some of us miners have been suspecting him for some time. But now here’s the proof of it! And you’re just trying to stick up for him, ain’t you?”

My dad stumbled over to Old Sid with his fists clenched. He said, “Now, look here, Sid. I ain’t been ratting nothing. I ain’t no thief. I’m looking for my daughter’s imaginary friends and you’d better bloody well believe it, mate!”

But Sid wasn’t having any of it. “You can talk about invisible people as much as you like, Rex Williamson,” he said. “But I’ve had my doubts about you. A lot of us have. I’ve already reported you to the mining authority, and as soon as I saw you on my claim this evening, snuffling around for my opal, the first thing I did was radio the police, and, as a matter of fact, here they are right now!”

The noise of a car drove into our ears and a four-wheel-drive police jeep came wobbling down the creamy red track that leads to our claim. It pulled over by our old Millard caravan and out came two policemen. Bulky fellas with hats and badges and shit. I was getting a bit worried. Kellyanne was still looking around the claim for Pobby and Dingan, and Dad had started shouting about how dare Old Sid call him a ratter, he who’d worked honestly for God knows how long, and been a pretty good sort of bloke all round. And then I went up to one of the police blokes and told him the truth of the matter about Pobby and Dingan and what my dad was doing on Old Sid’s claim. But I hadn’t got too far when there was this noise of scuffling and a grunt and I turned around to see that my dad had lost his cool and snotted Old Sid one in the nose. Well, after that the police were on my dad in a flash, and they had him in handcuffs and everything. Kellyanne came running over in a panic, saying, “Leave my dad alone! Leave him alone!” But Dad was bundled into the car and driven away in a flash. And it was us who were left alone. And then Kellyanne sat down on a mullock heap and broke down in sobs, for I reckon it was a bit too much to cope with, losing two imaginary friends and one real dad in an afternoon.

For a while I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there watching one of those fluffy roly-poly things go cartwheeling over the claim on a breath of wind. And I thought about my dad and what a tangle he’d got himself into. And then I said: “Kellyanne, come on, we’d better get home. Pobby and Dingan will come back tonight on their own and Dad will be fine as soon as this is sorted out and the police realize what he was doing on Sid’s land. Come on, we’ll walk back and tell Mum, and get the bad bits over and done with.”

But Kellyanne didn’t stop looking worried. She legged it over to the mine shaft and stepped over the tape which was around the top of the hole to stop people entering. She got down on all fours and peeked over the edge. And she called out Pobby and Dingan’s names down the mine shaft. There was no reply, of course. She stayed there on all fours looking down that shaft for half an hour.

“This just isn’t like them,” she said. “This is not like them at all.”

While Kellyanne was doing this I walked over to Old Sid the Grouch, who was still watery-eyed with pain and holding on to his nose and mooching around his claim checking to see if all his opal dirt was still there. I said: “You’ve made a big mistake here, Mr. Sid. We Williamsons were just looking for my sister’s imaginary friends. We ain’t no ratters.”

Old Sid spat on the ground and said something about our family needing our heads inspected, and how my poor mother was too much of a pom for this place, and how he felt sorry for us that our dad was a ratter, and how the rumour was my dad had come to the Ridge in the first place to hide away from the law. And I felt so angry I walked right away, pulled Kellyanne up by the arm and marched her home. It took an hour and a half, and all the way Kellyanne was whining about how she’d lost Pobby and Dingan, and how she wouldn’t be able to sleep or eat until she found them, and how if they’d been there then they could have saved Dad and none of this would have happened. Her worried little face was covered in white dust so she looked like a little ghost.

Well, it was dark when we got back to our home, and my mum had already heard what had happened from the police and she sent us to bed and said not to worry because everything would be sorted out soon. But I never saw her looking so angry and panicky and unsorted-out in her life. And her bedroom light stayed on all night, I swear.

And that night at around twelve was when Kellyanne crawled into my bedroom through the Dodge door which I’d got Dad to fix up to make going to bed more interesting. And my sister looked at me all pale and fuzzy-faced and said: “Ashmol, Pobby and Dingan are maybe-dead.” And she just sat there in her pyjamas all nervous and hurt. But I was half thinking of Dad and if he was in prison and how the whole thing was Pobby and Dingan’s fault. And then I tried to get my head round how it could be their fault if they didn’t even exist.

And I fell asleep thinking about that.

When I woke up the next day, Mum told me how Dad had been in prison overnight but he was being released and sent home until there was a trial or something which would prove that Dad hadn’t been ratting Old Sid’s claim. Mum was pretty frantic with worry, though, and she said Dad would have to keep a low profile in the Ridge and stay at home a while, until the whole thing had blown over and he’d got his respect back amongst all the miners and stuff. Ratting, you see, is the same thing as murder in Lightning Ridge — only a bit worse.