Page 93 of Down the Track
Jo burst into tears. She actually felt her face crumple and watery stuff leak from her eyes and her nose and her mouth and she didn’t even care.
‘Mum?’ Luke was beside her, his hand on her back, and that was enough to bring on a fresh wave of tears. That hand felt like a glimpse into a future where her son was a man and he was a wonderful man. A caring man. A man who knew what a gesture of love and support might mean to a person.
She was trying to talk but it was hard to talk when you were crying and wanting to laugh and wanting to thank luck and fate and whatever else governed life and happenstance.
‘It’s a sheep head, isn’t it,’ Luke said. ‘We can come back tomorrow and dig in the next quadrant and maybe find something.’
‘It’s not a sheep’s head,’ she managed to say.
She flung one arm around her son’s shoulders and hugged him, since her other hand had fused itself to the ‘chunk’ in front of her and probably wouldn’t be letting go of it any time soon.
‘It’s a fossil. It’s a prehistoric fossil. And I think—in fact I’m pretty sure—what we can see here in amongst all this matrix is the forward jawbone and snout of that old man croc I was telling you about.’
‘The crocodylomorph?’
She laughed. ‘Luke, you make an excellent apprentice palaeontologist.’
CHAPTER
36
The kitchenette at the back of the library was the size of a linen closet and bristled with little Dymo tape signs stuck to benchtop and walls and appliances. EMPTY DISHWASHER DAILY,TURN SANDWICH MAKER OFF AT WALL,COVER FOOD IN MICROWAVE. It reminded her of the kitchenette back in the basement of the Museum of Natural History.
She pulled cling wrap off another tray of sandwiches and listened to the eddy and flow of applause and excited talk in the room behind her.
Luke had been having the time of his life when she’d checked on him. The copy ofClueless Jones:Shooting the Lights Outhe’d been reading this week at their campsite had been signed, he was smack bang centre of the front row, between two older kids who had lanyards round their necks sayingStudent Journalists. Luke had been given the job of minding Possum the dog.
‘I’m running to the pub for a couple rolls of loo paper,’ said a voice behind her. ‘We’re nearly out and Bernice is fretting. I’ll be two ticks.’
Jo turned. Maggie had fancied herself up with coral lipstick and some wild work with a hairdryer that had turned her usually neat crop of silver grey hair into something that wouldn’t have been out of place on a stage fronting an eighties band. Bernice was the librarian, and she definitely did seem the type to fret. In fact, Bernice was probably the person who had typed out all the little kitchenette reminders.
‘Okay. Do we need more sandwiches out there? This is the last tray, and then we’re down to fudge squares and the scrappy bits of broken lamington I didn’t put out earlier.’
‘Just pass around what we’ve got and don’t worry when it runs out. They’ve all got homes to go to and the pub kitchen will be open as soon as I get back there. We can give them another thirty minutes, I reckon, then push them out the door.’
The little library was one of the few modern buildings on the Yindi Creek main street, although only modern when compared to the weatherboard or Federation stucco fronts of the other buildings. The exterior (and interior) was red brick, and the roof was one of those sloping jobs that had been popular in the seventies. A counter at the front held two computers—one for the librarian and one as a self-checkout station—the carpet was a flat, dull blue that reminded Jo of the old snooker table over at the hotel, and the book racks were made of some utilitarian powder-coated metal rather than timber, but the place had a nice feel. Kids’ drawings covered the wall in Kids’ & YA, although Maggie had stuffed the beanbags and mini chairs away when she’d arrived to inspect the preparations for the talk. Plastic chairs had materialised from somewhere and been set out in rows, which were now filled with people.
The Yindi Creek locals weren’t difficult to spot. They bore the look of sun—lots of sun—and more than one of the old timers wore the scars of invasive skin cancer surgery: a missing upper rim of an ear; a graft on nose or forehead to cover a divot of missing skin. The country clothing Jo loved to see was also out in force tonight. Shirts in plaid and every variation of blue, the occasional floral shirt tailored like a work shirt only way prettier, ironed jeans, fabulously designed leather belts, and a distinct aroma of Cussons soap. Tonight’s event was clearly An Occasion.
To the sides of the room were the late arrivals who hadn’t scored a chair and included a number of people with hefty-looking cameras, one with a smart-looking video camera. She couldn’t quite read the embroidery on the woman’s shirt, but it looked like some TV station was here collecting footage. Quite a lot of media, but then, Gavin Gunn was quite famous. She was having a hard time reconciling the two Gavins in her mind: the one a country pilot who was her polar opposite in many ways: easygoing whereas she was a total over thinker; sociable and kind whereas she was socially awkward. And at the front of the room, of course, was the other Gavin.
Gavin Gunn.
She couldn’t quite stop announcing the name in her head like she was a movie voiceover guy, filling the three syllables with drama and gravitas.
He was wearing a hat, the dull grey felt one she’d seen when Luke showed her his website. He had it low over his face and she could see immediately what Luke had meant when he’d said the hat was part of the author’s image.
The hat changed him. For starters, it covered his red-brown hair. It also shadowed his face a little, so he became all jawbone and stubble shadow. He looked like a character out of a movie rather than the man she knew. Or, she corrected herself, had known.
His friend and coworker, Charlie, was seated beside him on a stool, uncomfortable in a maroon-striped tie and a white work shirt. He looked more like an overgrown schoolboy than a muster pilot, one who’d been dragged in front of the class and been forced to give a public speech on some topic for which he hadn’t prepared.
She smiled. The poor bloke. The Charlie she barely remembered from years ago had been a quietly spoken, shy sort of person and that didn’t look like it had changed.
‘Does anyone have any questions?’ Hux said.
About thirty hands shot up, but the woman on the side with the video camera called out over the top of the babble.
‘How’s your investigation going into the man who went missing, Gavin? Are the police sharing any information with you?’
