Ben Rice - Pobby and Dingan

I stayed out till dark explaining to all these Lightning Ridge families how they had to make a big show of looking for Pobby and Dingan so that Kellyanne could see that people really cared about them. And I did some explaining about what had happened to my dad and what a mix-up there had been. And how Pobby and Dingan weren’t real but Kellyanne thought they were and that’s what counts, and how my dad wasn’t a ratter but people thought he was and that’s what counts too. Some of the people were real nice about it and gave me some bags of Twisties, and I went around munching them and putting up signs I had made saying:

LOST! HELP!

KELLYANNE WILLIAMSON’S FRIENDS POBBY AND

DINGAN. DESCRIPTION: IMAGINARY. QUIET.

REWARD IF FOUND

And I put on the address of our house and tacked the notices up on telephone poles and walls and machinery and shit. When I cycled home I watched people looking at the notices, and I saw that some of them had been graffitied-over with the word “Ratter,” but I also noticed that a lot of them hadn’t been. Well, that was a good sign. And a lot of folks were smiling and laughing. I went to bed that night pretty full of myself for having had a go at least at clearing my family name and standing up for everybody. And I hadn’t got beaten up or anything, either — which was cool.

Well, Kellyanne wasn’t getting any better and she wasn’t saying anything except muttering the names of Pobby and Dingan, and Mum and Dad were spending all their time by her bedside taking her temperature and telling her everything was going to be all right and making her soup which she never ate. And Dad was still pacing up and down clutching at this letter from the hospital which said that Kellyanne had to go there immediately, and that they needed to do some tests. My folks, I reckon, were beginning to think hospital was the only way out.

When the blanket everybody calls night was tucked in all snugly over Lightning Ridge I stayed in my room and hung my head out of the window and said a sort-of-a-prayer. I said something like: “Please let people go looking for Pobby and Dingan!” And I squeezed my hands together. When I’d finished the prayer, I realized I hadn’t put no address on it, and I was just whispering, “P.S. This prayer is for God or anyone powerful who can hear me,” and wondering if it wouldn’t be better to pray to someone cooler like James Blond, when I was distracted by the sound of Mum and Dad shouting at each other in their bedroom. And I only caught a few words, because it sounded muffled, like they was shouting with bits of cake in their mouths. But I heard Mum say she was tired a lot and homesick for England and Granny Pom and fed up of working at the checkout at Khan’s and not being able to look after her family for herself. And then I heard my dad shouting something about Her Royal Highness, and he kept repeating a man’s name, but I can’t remember what it was exactly. Probably some bloke who’d called Dad a ratter again and got him all upset and irritable.

The next day I got up early, gobbled my breakfast, attached bits of cardboard to my spokes with clothes-pegs and rode into town in fourth gear, sounding like a motorbike. There was no streams of trucks driving out early in the morning, and no sounds of the drilling rigs going at all. It seemed like the whole town had stopped mining or something. Then, just as I was going down Opal Street, I saw that there was a bunch of people crouched down on the roadside looking under bushes and cars and over fences and everything. When they saw me riding by on my souped-up Chopper, some of the people saluted me like I was some sort of general and shouted out: “Young Ashmol! Go tell Kellyanne we’re searching as hard as we can!” I almost fell off my bike with surprise. The first part of my plan had worked. People were actually looking for Pobby and Dingan, they really were! I pedalled home like a maniac to tell my family.

When Dad heard what I’d gone and done he patted me on the head and said: “Good thinking, son.” I told him it was important that Kellyanne saw what was taking place and Dad managed to persuade her to get out of bed. He lifted Kellyanne up in her sheet and took her out to the ute. Mum drove, because Dad wasn’t comfortable about going out and being seen by people yet.

I sat in the back watching everything, and when I got into town I made Mum pull over so Kellyanne could see the special notices I had put up on the fences and gates and trees. She smiled a little when she saw them. I said, “Sorry, Kellyanne. I didn’t know how to describe them proper. I mean, what do they look like?” And Kellyanne whispered that they didn’t look like anything in particular, but Dingan had a lovely opal in her bellybutton, only you had to be a certain kind of person to see it. And Pobby had a limp in his right leg.

There were now lines of people all over the dirt roads, and people out with their dogs, and we pulled up alongside them and waved out of the windows. They came up to the ute and said: “Hey, Kellyanne, we’ve been looking for six hours now and we’re not giving up until we find Pobby and Dingan. So don’t worry your head about it.” My sis smiled weakly. One boy asked her: “Do Dobby and Pingan speak Australian?”

“No,” said my sis, “they speak English quietly. And they likes to whistle. But you have to be a certain kind of person to hear them.” It was the first time Kellyanne had done this much speaking for a long while and it brought a look of hope to my mum’s face.

Well, everywhere we drove we saw little groups of people out and about hunting or pretending to hunt around the trees. I saw some of the line-dancers had a banner saying Pobby and Dingan Search Party. One big black bloke was standing on a mullock heap looking through a pair of binoculars. I recognized he was the man who brought Kellyanne home one time when his son kicked her in the shin and pulled her long hair when they were playing out behind the service station. Dad called him “the good coon” because he was dead-crazy about opals, and one time I’d seen him doing a traditional mating dance at the wet — T-shirt competition. When we drove up in the ute he came over and poked his head through the window on Kellyanne’s side and did a big grin and said: “Don’ worry, girl. I’ll find Pobby and Dingan in a flash for ya. I ain’t Lightning Dreaming for nothing. I’m gonna go walkabout ’til I find them.” And then he walked off into the bush. After that I didn’t see him again for weeks, but.

Well, I think Kellyanne was pretty amazed by all this, because her eyes were wide open. She turned and whispered to me: “Are all these people looking for Pobby and Dingan?”

“That’s right,” I said. “Even the abos.”

Kellyanne didn’t say anything after that. We took her back home and she went to sleep a little more peacefully. But when Jack the Quack came around later in the evening my mum was in floods of tears. I knew then that he must have told her that my little sis was really very ill and that my plan to make her feel better had failed. I went and hid in my room, feeling like there was a rock in my throat.

My dad went walkabout that night. I heard him leaving. He was sniffing and sobbing and breathing heavy like a kettle.

I woke up in the middle of the night all restless. I got out of bed, pulled open my car door and slid out of the room. A light was on in the living room and my mum was sitting on the floor with her back towards me and her chin resting on her knee. I tiptoed up to her and saw she had something rectangleish in her hand. “What you looking at, Mum?” I asked.

My mum almost blasted off like a rocket. She jumped up onto her feet and turned around to face me all in one move. She was holding her hands out in a weird kind of karate chop. But when she saw it was me she calmed down and stopped trembling. She said: “Hey, Ashmol! It’s you! Not sleepy?” I noticed she had put the thing she was holding behind her back.