Page 3 of Down the Track
Like with Luke.
Like with people, generally.
Snapping the visor up so she couldn’t see her cowardice, Jo slowed to a crawl so she could reacquaint herself with the short strip of buildings—some lovely, some not—that made up the heart of Yindi Creek. Dust hung in the heat haze shrouding the town. A scrawny old bloke in a navy singlet was eating a pie at a plastic table out the front of the bakery, and the biggest shop in town, Leggett’s Drapers and Opal Emporium, had a CLOSED: BACK INFEBRUARYsign slung over the brass handles of its double glass doors.
Jo pulled into a carpark outside the pub but for some reason her hands were refusing to ungrip the steering wheel. Come on, she willed them. This is it: crunch time. Get out, get inside, get cracking.
The broad vowels of the country radio host who’d kept her company for the last two plus hours had finished with the stock and station reports and moved on to local news: ‘Police are appealing for public assistance to locate the pilot and/or plane involved in an aborted landing at Karumba Airfield in Carpentaria Shire, Qld, at/around six o’clock Saturday morning involving a near miss with a Royal Flying Doctor Service plane. The plane is believed to be an older model Cessna single-prop aircraft, possibly a 210R.’
Karumba. Where even was that? She closed her eyes and pictured a map of Queensland; she let the facts the radio host was listing fill her mind. Facts were soothing. Facts didn’t expect things from you. Facts didn’t have subtext.
‘CCTV footage of the plane, which is predominantly white with stripes from nose to tail in a dark colour, possibly green, brown or maroon, has been released. Initial investigations indicate the plane’s identification markings may have been partially covered or altered and may include the string XC-AH4 or XC-AH7.
‘Anyone who was in the vicinity of Karumba Airfield at the time or who has knowledge of the plane or pilot that could assist police with their enquiries is urged to get on the blower to Police Watch.’
Jo took a breath.You’re going to be okay, Dr Tan, she told herself. Even if this trip is a bust (it better not be) and the bank takes your home and you have to crawl over broken glass to get Luke to love you again,you will still be okay. Forcing her fingers off the wheel, she cracked open the door.
Heat—a whole kiln of it—roared into the airconned interior as she pushed the door wide. Lucky for her, she was good at coping with heat; practice made perfect, after all, and she’d done time on digs in tougher climates than this. A while ago, sure. Before the fails started adding up. Before stretch marks and tuckshop rosters and the scrabble to secure a new contract with the museum. Before the modern-day ice age began between her and her son, and before four-hundred-dollar-an-hour divorce lawyer bills started clogging up her inbox.
But back when her career had been good, it had been awesome; vindication, finally, of the dogged, head-down, sheer bloody work it had taken to become a palaeontologist. Leaving the Winton dig when she’d been invited to intern on a dig in Argentina had been the turning point. Six months on her hands and knees chipping away at rock in the remote south of Patagonia had resulted in her being there, on the team, whenEoabelisaurus mefiwas discovered. She placed a hand over her heart. Never would she forget the moment they’d unearthed the cranium of that 170-million-year-old beast. Acceptance into a PhD scholarship had been a doddle after that: three intense years of study and travel and excitement? That had felt like she’d won at life. Meeting Craig and getting married in her final year had felt like cake. Accepting a job as one of the conservators of the dinosaur fossil remains stowed in the laboratory facility of Queensland’s Museum of Natural History at the age of twenty-six? Icing.
She’d been invited to important digs all over the world. She’d been on the team who’d chipped away and airbrushed and scratched their heads over a lump of rock that had been in storage in the museum since 1914 that turned out to be a sixty-million-year-old crocodylomorph cranium. She’d felt like she’d broken through the glass ceiling of misogyny that she’d been warned about by older female mentors:Watch out for the decision makers in this field. They’ll be older. They’ll be male. They’ll be incapable of approving any exciting fieldwork to anyone who doesn’t pee standing up.
Pity they didn’t give her the other warning she’d needed:Watch out for a husband who deems motherhood and fieldwork incompatible.
Discovering that the stomach flu she’d been struggling with midway through her first year at the museum was actually a baby growing in her womb had been like hauling up a handbrake and listening to her career screech to a brutal, final stop. She’d have called her bosses (and husband) dinosaurs, but that would have been an insult to the species she loved and adored and had devoted years of study to.
And there had been exceptions to the misogyny norm. Also to the decision-makers-are-all-male norm; Dr Jedda Irwin being the most notable. In fact, it was at Jedda’s prompting that Jo had come out here to Yindi Creek.
The way Jedda had described it from her hospital bed was that a promise had been made to the Dirt Girls a long time ago, and Jedda felt bad for never acting on it; she was 99.99% sure that there was something Very Exciting Indeed to be found and Jo was the only person in the world she would trust with the opportunity. It would be a turning point in Jo’s life and Jedda was just pissed off that a dicky heart was preventing her grabbing a shovel and heading outback herself.
A turning point. Exactly what Jo needed. And she’d worked this trip around Luke’s water polo camp, hadn’t she? Which meant the not-such-a-crap-mother-after-all box on her list was ticked. And she’d had paid leave accrued from the museum, so that was the good-employee box on her other list ticked. She’d done as much research and forward planning as she could, she’d looked up current dig site protocols to see what had changed in the years since she’d been in the field, she’d packed snake kits and blister packs and water … Well-prepared-scientist box also ticked.
Although … she slumped against the burning metal body of the hired four-wheel drive. Even organised, still-employed, trying-to-be-doting single mothers of wounded ten-year-old boys needed a moment to acclimatise to change, didn’t they? To opportunity?
Maybe the publican could rustle her up a beer while she checked in. She could press the ice-cold glass to her face while her room key was found. Convince herself she was up to this.
CHAPTER
2
REVISIONS: THECLUELESSJONESSERIES
Episode 1: Deadset Legend
[GGH to initial each page to signify agreement.]
FADE IN:
EXT: LORIKEET HOTEL MOTEL—NIGHT
On a dusty street in the small town of Chinchilla, in southwest Queensland, a neon VACANCY sign is blinking above a parked police car.
DISSOLVE TO:
INT: LORIKEET HOTEL MOTEL—ROOM 8—DIMLY LIT
Police officers and a forensic evidence collection team are gathered around the bed, on which lies a body with a gunshot wound to the chest. A man stands, cuffed, by the door.
