Keith grabbed it and hurried out into the diggings.
It wasn’t easy moving fast. The rough ground was strewn with loose rocks and pitted with tyre tracks and fossickers’ trenches.
He stumbled and if it hadn’t been for Tracy hurrying behind him with the torch he’d have fallen down a shaft. She helped him up.
Which is the least she can do, thought Keith bitterly, after the damage she’s done.
Then he saw it.
Keep Out.
Curly’s mine.
He turned to Tracy, put his finger to his lips, crept up to the old caravan and listened.
Nothing.
He dropped the pickaxe into the dark shaft and uncoiled the wire from the winch. Tracy shone the torch on him while he slithered down, then threw it down to him.
He turned towards the tunnel.
‘What about me?’ hissed Tracy down the shaft.
Keith gave a long-suffering sigh and shone the torch up on her while she came down.
He had to admit, even though he didn’t want to, that she was a good climber.
They went along the tunnel, the torch beam making the coloured bands of rock stand out like veins. The rusty metal poles holding the roof up threw eerie crisscross patterns ahead of them.
Keith stopped and peered at a patch of rock.
He was sure he’d seen it glitter.
‘If there was opal here,’ said Tracy, ‘they wouldn’t have continued the tunnel on,’
That’s just what he’d been thinking. Even though she didn’t deserve it, he had to admit she was pretty smart.
Eventually they came to the end of the tunnel. The roof had gradually got lower and now they both had to crouch.
This is it, thought Keith, as he ran his hand over the different layers of rock.
They’re in here somewhere.
He wished he’d asked Curly if the opals were in the smooth, hard rock or the rough, crumbly stuff.
Oh well, he’d soon find out.
He handed the torch to Tracy and gripped the pickaxe in both hands. Then he swung it as hard as he could. The metal point smashed into a layer of hard rock. Pain shot up Keith’s arms and made his head ring.
He aimed the next swing at a crumbly layer. A shower of fragments sprayed over him but the pain in his arms was only half as bad.
He decided to concentrate on the crumbly layer.
Keith kept swinging until he couldn’t feel the pick handle in his hands any more.
Then he stopped, gasping for breath, and looked closely at the rock wall. Nothing shimmered in the torchlight. No flashes of colour. No opals. Yet.
He flexed his shoulders to try to get rid of the ache, and got ready to swing the pickaxe again.
‘Shall I have a go?’ asked Tracy.
Keith opened his mouth to say yes, but that’s not what came out.
‘This isn’t a tourist attraction,’ he heard himself saying.
Half of him felt bad he was saying it and half of him felt good.
‘That’s why you’re here, isn’t it,’ he went on, ‘cause you want to travel and see the world, starting with a tour of the opal fields and a bit of opal mining?’
Tracy stared at him.
She looked even more hurt than before.
Then suddenly her eyes flashed angrily in the torchlight.
‘The reason I’m here,’ she said, ‘is because after you nicked off, your mum and dad were in such a hysterical mess they weren’t thinking straight. They were gunna try and get here inland from Orchid Cove, down the stock route. People have died trying to drive down there in Corollas.’
Keith had a sudden vision of Mum and Dad sitting in their broken-down car on the stock route, hungry lizards circling closer and closer.
‘My dad was off working and my mum had Mrs Newman’s daughter Gail’s kids,’ Tracy was saying, ‘so I was the only one around to navigate. It’s not easy, navigating for someone who gets the trots as often as your old man. We spent half our time looking for thick scrub.’
Keith almost grinned, until he remembered that wasn’t what he was meant to be feeling.
‘You still didn’t have to blab about what I was doing in the first place,’ he said.
Tracy’s shoulders slumped.
‘I didn’t want to,’ she said, ‘but when your mum and dad found you weren’t at my place they went hysterical. They were gunna call the cops. There’d have been a nationwide search. Helicopters. Tracker dogs. TV. Reporters. You could have been shot or chewed up or featured on TV while you were crying or something.’
Keith looked at the concerned frown creasing her freckled forehead and suddenly he felt like swinging the pickaxe at his own bum.
How could he have been so scungy to the best mate he’d ever had?
‘Sorry I’ve been carrying on like a wally,’ he said.
‘You mean a prawn,’ she grinned.
‘Yeah,’ he said.
He told her he’d have another bash with the pickaxe, then she could have a go.
His second swing dislodged a rock the size of the big opal in Curly’s store. He broke it in half with the pick, but it was just rock all the way through.
‘Keith,’ said Tracy softly, ‘do you think this is gunna work?’
‘It’s got to,’ he said, ‘cause we haven’t got any dynamite and Curly keeps his rock drill under the tinned fish.’
‘No,’ said Tracy, ‘I mean even when we strike opal. Do you think the money’s gunna make your mum and dad want to stay together?’
It’s the fatigue, thought Keith, as he swung the pickaxe into the rock wall. She’s been on the road for two days with Mum and Dad arguing all the time. No wonder she’s overtired and being a worry wart.
‘My Auntie Fran and Uncle Leo split up,’ said Tracy, ‘and they were loaded. From Uncle Leo’s mega insurance payout when he fell into the combine harvester.’ ‘
Don’t listen to her, Keith told himself, or she’ll have you being a worry wart too.
He moved his feet further apart and swung the pickaxe back as far as he could and smashed it into the rock.
Still no opals.
He swung it back again.
It hit something with a loud clang.
Tracy screamed.
Keith turned, and saw that the rusty iron roof-support behind him was buckling in the middle. A gash of raw new metal was opening up as the support bent more and more out of shape.
Keith flung himself at it and tried to push it straight again.
Dust and small rocks showered onto him from the tunnel roof.
‘Run,’ he yelled at Tracy.
He could feel tremors and shudders running through the rock above his head. He pushed at the support with all his strength but even as he did he could feel that the force pressing down from above was a million times stronger than him.
The metal bent under his hands like a soggy chip and the last thing he saw, after Tracy had disappeared in a cloud of dust and falling rock, was a brief vision of Mum and Dad standing up on the surface, their weight added to the mass that was crushing him.
13
It was black with flashing colours.
Good grief, thought Keith, I’m looking at the biggest opal in the world.
Then he realised his eyes were closed.
He opened them.
Everything looked just as black, but without the colours.
He blinked a few times.
Still black.
For a moment he thought he was having the dream he’d once had where Elvis Presley crept into his bedroom and tried to smother him with a giant potato scallop.
But that couldn’t be right because nobody was singing ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’
Then he remembered where he was.
Lying in a mine with sharp rocks sticking into his back.
Perhaps they were opals.
He didn’t give a stuff, they were still sharp.
He experimented with moving his arms and legs.
They all moved.
Several of them hurt, but not in a major way, not like when he’d fallen off his bike when he was seven and had ended up with eleven stitches in his leg and forty-seven in his trousers.
He groped around for any big rocks that might be lying on his chest which he hadn’t felt yet on account of shock and having two T-shirts on.
There weren’t any.
He sat up.
Colours exploded in front of his eyes as his head came into contact with something hard which felt like Col’s truck reversing into him but which, Keith decided as he lay back down, was just a rock.
Best not to move.
Any number of giant slabs could be balanced on each other, just waiting for a nudge to come crashing down on him.
Then he remembered Tracy.
‘Tracy!’ he shouted.
He held his breath and listened.
Nothing.
Just the pounding of the veins in his head.
He remembered the last moment he’d seen her, standing as the dust came down, torn between getting away and staying to help.
He seemed to remember that she’d started to run.
Towards him.
Then nothing.
‘Tracy!’ he yelled.
He strained to hear a reply.
Even one muffled by tonnes of fallen rocks and opals.
Nothing.
He tried again.
He kept on trying till his voice was cracked and sobbing.
Then he stopped because he knew it was useless.
She couldn’t hear him.
A long time later, when he’d finished crying, he hoped she hadn’t felt any pain.
They’d talked about dying once, on the jetty near the fish co-op. Tracy had told him her approach was to stay cheerful because any day could be your last, specially if it was a day when the tuck shop had Mrs Reece’s curry turnovers.
Keith wondered if he’d be able to stay cheerful now, trapped down here.
He wondered if he’d feel any pain, apart from the rocks sticking into his back.
He wondered how long it took twelve-year-old boys who were normally pretty healthy but who’d been under a lot of stress lately to starve to death.
Then he made himself stop wondering.
Six months ago, on a drizzly street in South London, he’d decided he wasn’t going to spend the rest of his life being a misery guts and a worry wart.
Think positive.
When I get out of this, Keith thought, I’m going to put a brass plate on Curly’s store dedicating the paint job to Tracy. And I’m going to write to Col and get him to put one on his truck painting.
Then he had an even better idea.
He’d do a special painting, just for Tracy. A huge painting, on hundreds of pieces of plywood stuck together, of her in all the places in the world she’d wanted to visit.
Tracy admiring the view at a campsite in Alaska. Tracy waterskiing in Venice. Tracy climbing a mountain range in Egypt. Tracy checking out all the flat but interesting places in Peru. Tracy visiting all the traditional villages in remote valleys untouched by the modern world around Melbourne.
It would be the most fabulous painting anyone had ever painted.
Keith lay there in the dark and he could see every detail, even though his eyes had filled with tears again.
Because she’d still be dead.
A painting wouldn’t bring her back.
He couldn’t bring her back any more than he could make Mum and Dad fall in love again.
He let the hot tears run down his cheeks even though he knew he’d regret it later when he was suffering from dehydration.
After a while he knew something else.
If it’d bring Tracy back to life, he’d help Mum and Dad pack their bags so they could split up tomorrow.
Even if it meant Dad going to live in an Alaskan campsite and only seeing him every other weekend when the ice thawed. Or Mum going to live up an Egyptian mountain and only seeing her every other weekend when the camels were running.
Suddenly Keith heard himself shouting it, screaming it at the top of his voice, so they’d know.
‘Split up! Split up! SPLIT UP!’
He kept on shouting it until his throat was raw and he’d run out of tears.
And until something had happened that made him suddenly go silent and strain every muscle in his body to hear better.
A familiar voice, faint and grumpy, coming from somewhere close.
‘Keep the noise down, you daft bugger.’
14
Keith sat up and banged his head again.
‘Tracy,’ he screamed, hoarse with delight as well as all the shouting he’d just done.
‘I’m over here,’ she mumbled. ‘Put a sock in it, I’ve got a headache.’
Keith felt himself go weak with relief. Before he could move towards her voice, a blinding light smacked him in the eyes.
It was so bright that at first Keith thought it was a rescue light attached to a giant drill that had drilled through the rock to them without him noticing because he’d been so busy yelling.
But when he peeped through his ringers he saw it was just the torch.
Holding it, sprawled on the ground nearby, one hand over her eyes, was Tracy.
‘Are you OK?’ he croaked.
She was covered in dust, and the rip in the knee of her jeans that she’d been carefully cultivating was about three times as long as it had been, and she had a big bruise over one eye.
‘I think I was knocked out,’ said Tracy. ‘In fact I’m sure I was cause it happened to me once in softball and I dreamed about Peru that time as well. What about you?’
‘I wasn’t too good a minute ago,’ said Keith, ‘but now I’m great.’
They compared bruises and Keith told her he’d thought she’d been killed and she said it’d take more than a softball bat or sixty thousand tonnes of rock to do that.
She told him she’d thought he’d been a goner too, for about four seconds until he’d started making more noise than Ryan Garner’s brother’s garage band.
They grinned and hugged each other.
Then they realised what they were doing and both gave into a sudden urge to study their surroundings.
It took Keith a few moments to realise that the space they were in, which was about the size of the average storeroom in the average fish-and-chip shop but with a lower ceiling, was actually the end of the tunnel.
Blocking the way out was a wall of fallen rocks.
‘Let’s see if we can get through,’ said Tracy.
They hurled themselves at the rocks and clawed and dug with their hands until they were exhausted.
They moved three small ones.
Which allowed them to see even bigger ones behind.
This is hopeless, thought Keith. Half the tunnel could be collapsed.
He didn’t say anything because he didn’t want to depress Tracy.
‘Half the tunnel’s probably collapsed,’ said Tracy.
Keith said it probably wasn’t quite that bad.
‘What’s the time?’ asked Tracy.
Keith looked at his watch.
All he could see was Mongolian Beige.
‘They must have noticed we’re missing by now,’ he said. ‘Let’s try shouting in case they’re up top.’
He took a deep breath.
‘Help!’ he yelled as loudly as he could, hoping his lungs didn’t rupture with the effort. ‘Help!’
Tracy put her hand on his arm and told him how her Uncle Wal had told her that people always took more notice if you shouted ‘Fire’.
‘Fire!’ they yelled. ‘Fire!’
Then Tracy remembered that Aunty Cath had pointed out that in their neck of the woods there was one word that always turned people’s heads more than Fire.
‘Rain!’ shouted Tracy. ‘Rain!’
Keith joined in and they shouted it till he thought his throat was bleeding.
Then they listened.
/>
Nothing.
‘They can’t hear us,’ croaked Keith. ‘Must be cause they’re making so much racket up top getting all the rescue equipment into position.’
Tracy agreed that must be the reason.
They sat and stared at the pattern the torch beam made on the wall of fallen rocks. On the ground Keith noticed a flat piece of metal about as big as a pizza box that had been wedged between the top of the support and the roof of the tunnel.
He caught himself wondering if he’d ever have another pizza.
Think positive.
He wished he felt as confident about the rescue equipment as he’d sounded.
Think positive.
He glanced at Tracy.
Good old Tracy, he said to himself, she hasn’t had a negative thought in her whole life.
‘If they don’t find us,’ said Tracy quietly, ‘in two hundred years we’ll be dust and nobody’ll ever know we were here.’
Keith stared at her, shocked.
What we need, he thought, is something to take our minds off things.
Then he had an idea.
‘Do you remember what Mr Gerlach said once, about what people do when they want to live forever? They have their portraits painted.’
Now it was Tracy’s turn to stare at him.
Keith picked up the piece of metal and dusted it off.
‘This’ll do for a canvas,’ he said, ‘now all I need is some paint.’
He remembered they were down a mine.
I’m going stupid, he thought. The oxygen down here must be running out and starving my brain.
Then he saw what Tracy was doing and decided her brain must be short of oxygen too.
She was on her knees, scooping dust into a pile.
When she’d finished she crouched by the opposite wall.
‘OK,’ she said, turning away and putting one hand over her eyes and pointing to the pile of dust with the other, ‘pee on it.’
‘Don’t move,’ said Keith, ‘I’ve only got the freckles to do.’
He dabbed on some freckles as lightly as he could.
It wasn’t bad, this dust paint, even if it did pong a bit. It was very similar to the dull red anti-rust paint, only grittier.
And even though he hadn’t done finger painting since he was three, the result wasn’t looking too bad at all.
‘Finished,’ he said.