Later, after Mum had whispered to Dad that Keith probably wanted to be by himself for a bit and they’d both hugged him and gone back to the caravan, Keith saw a torch beam moving towards him through the darkness.
For a moment Keith thought it was Mum come back to tell him they’d changed their minds.
It was Tracy.
‘You OK?’ she asked as she got nearer.
Keith turned and stared at the mullock heaps.
He’d never felt less OK in his life.
‘Have they decided to do it?’ Tracy asked softly. ‘They were yakking on about it for hours in the car when they thought I was asleep. Are they gunna split up?’
Keith bit his lower lip hard so the pain was all he’d have to think about.
It didn’t work.
He turned and glared at Tracy.
‘One more day, that’s all I needed,’ he said bitterly. ‘If you hadn’t stuck your mug in I’d have been OK.’
In the glow from the torch he could see how much he’d hurt her.
Tough.
He didn’t have time to worry about that.
He stared up at the black sky.
The stars glittered like a schoolbag full of opals emptied out onto a bank manager’s desk.
It wasn’t too late.
He turned and ran into the darkness.
The pickaxe he’d spotted while he was painting the store was still there, lying half under the verandah.
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.