Chapter 35
CRANE COUNT
Friday night the South Cairns Cutters Women’s team battled it out in their finals round one match against the Manunda Hawks for a place in the semi-finals. Nev watched the match on telly at the pub in the Lionheart Hotel with owner Peggy.
It was Debbie’s night off and her nephew hadn’t arrived so Nev was bartending.
The camera crew and whoever was editing in the booth that night had a bit of a spank on Ron; the camera loved her.
It kept catching her at just the right moment, sliding a daisy cutter to steal the ball, running backwards or sideways, winning a ruck by slapping down the ball over her opponent’s head.
Ron looked good in a uniform, but she looked especially good in her footy uniform because it showed off her knees.
Nev was not disappointed when the Cutters lost, because now Ron would have free time again.
As usual, eighty-year-old Peggy wore a sleeveless purple batik sundress down to her calves. Nev refilled Peggy’s plastic cup with the cheap rosé they sold at the pub. “On the house, engaged lady.”
“Cheers.”
“Have you an idea what song you want us to play when you walk down the aisle?” The Wild Drovers had volunteered to play her wedding for free as a present to her and her fiancé, Tom.
Peggy’s eyes got a misty look in them, and she touched the back of Nev’s hand. “Do you know the Scottish folk song, ‘Mairi’s Wedding’? My parents walked down the aisle to it eighty-four years ago.”
“Of course.”
“They were a beautiful couple. He was a pilot, you know, died in the war. RAAF. Such a shame. It’s always the good ones. My mum never remarried. Mother-in-law planned my first wedding sixty years ago. I always said if I married again, I’d have that song.”
“You got it, sweetheart. You’ll have a gorgeous day.” Peggy deserved a perfect wedding. She deserved a good man like Tom, the retired corporate man who now painted ceramic figurines of mice for a hobby, after her first husband brought an explosive temper back from Korea.
The next evening, a warm breeze stirring the new grass in the pasture, Nev walked down from the lower paddock through waist-high sedge until she reached the edge of the lake.
Reg’s annual Crane Count team stood gathered in one of Johnson’s cattle pastures.
Towering over the others, Ron was impossible to miss.
This was not their first time counting for the conservation survey, but it was the first time they had invited her to join them.
Luckily, she had remembered binoculars, and to jump over the barbed wire fence.
Lake Tinaroo looked odd—as the manmade product of a dam it wasn’t strictly speaking supposed to be there—but what the human eye found strange about it was that it was young.
Sixty years hadn't been long enough for erosion to shape the banks, so where the field met the water flowed as seamlessly as a dream.
There were no real edges to this lake. It looked, Nev decided, like lowland that had been flooded.
It looked temporary. Perhaps that was why it was so beautiful.
Climate change made storms stronger and more unpredictable, floods in Queensland bigger and more destructive every decade. It was dangerous to live near the Barron River, which flooded December to March.
Ron and Rainbow sat on either side of her in the tall grass. Rainbow clutched the binoculars Ron had given her for Christmas. The four of them waited statue-like for sunset to fall over the western mountains, forced by the covert nature of their mission to admire the scenery in silence.
Cloud-split rays moved across the valley until grass warmed like glowing blond hair.
In 1959 the Queensland State government completed construction of a forty-five-meter concrete dam on the Barron River, raising water levels forty-two meters.
Water inundated the valley so rapidly that the flood swallowed heavy construction equipment, including trucks.
In the center of it all, the small township of Kulara disappeared under the surface of the lake.
A few hundred villagers had relocated to the nearby town of Lionheart.
Tinaroo lay bright and still as a mirror. Like the wreckage of some sunken fleet, the gum trees of Kulara broke the water's golden surface with hundreds of crooked black arms. Kulara's underwater forest would be rotting and reaching for the sky as long as Nev was alive.
The hillside leading down to the lake felt like a graveyard—not a crypt, but a cool breeze and a final resting place, no souls in sight save Johnson’s cattle and a lone pelican on a dead tree.
Suddenly the valley became dark and cold.
Sunset. A line of solid-looking grey clouds rose behind black mountains like a higher horizon.
In some places Nev saw four, five horizons, and in those places clouds and mountains became indistinguishable.
Above the fierce yellow cloud-outline the sky glowed orange.
She stared through binoculars at the ribbon of light where warm wet currents met cold dry air, blinking and breathing for the Sarus she hoped to see fly into breeding grounds for the night.
When they pierced the clouds they were so small she barely recognized them.
Standing six feet tall, the world's largest flying bird emerged delicately through marsh grasses, blood-orange red crown leading a graceful straight neck, light grey body and cautious pink legs.
With its rope-thin white neck and sleek teardrop body, it looked like something the Queen of Hearts would have used as a mallet in a deadly croquet match.
The whoop whoop sounded like what would happen if you cut an old tire into a thin strip and then spun it around above your head as fast as you could like a helicopter.
Rainbow said it sounded like the lake was laughing.
“More cranes than last year,” Reg said, smiling, visibly relieved.
Rainbow snuggled in her mother’s oversized sweatshirt on her mother’s lap. Ron looked like she didn’t feel the cold.
Nev’s phone vibrated. New voicemail. Missed call from an unknown number. Most likely spam. She got up and walked to the top of a low hill where she wouldn’t disturb the Madonnas.
The voicemail was soft and breathy, high-pitched.
“The background check came back. Call me.”
Nev swore.
How had that woman gotten her phone number?
Was it still on the farm website? She thought she had taken it off.
Ron wouldn’t have given it to Maude, neither would the lawyer.
The fact that Ron’s ex had a direct line to her pocket made her squirm.
This didn’t feel like the kind of call she could put off until the lawyer’s office reopened on Monday.
She pressed call.
Maude answered. “You’re an alcoholic.”
She couldn’t let Maude use her as an excuse to sabotage the custody hearing in three days. If it fell through, Ron would be devastated.
“Nah, yeah. That was a long time ago. I assume you’re talking about those DUIs.”
“You lost your license.”
“I got it back.”
“Some of these are from twenty years ago and others are from ten years ago.”
None after the night Ron appeared. She had been better since then. She had to watch what she said. A little flame burned in her chest, warming her cheeks. She wasn’t drunk, but she wasn’t sober, either.
“Every ten years is a pattern. You’re due.”
Nev swallowed.
“Does Ronnie know you’re an alcoholic?”
The silence lengthened. She didn’t trust herself to speak.
“She deserves to know,” Maude said. “If you’re in recovery, you shouldn’t have enough liquor in the kitchen to open your own pub.
Your recycling bin had too many bottles in it, even with two people.
Ronnie doesn’t drink. She doesn’t like the taste.
I’m not trying to scare you. I’m not threatening to blackmail you.
She’s not observant enough to notice. How do I say this?
She’s the moth to every flame. She doesn’t know when to stay and when to run.
She stays when she should run and runs when she should stay. You’re enabling each other.”
“Maybe.”
“If you’ve got a dark side, she’ll strap a turbo engine to it. She’s an adrenaline junkie. I can’t believe I’m about to say this… She can’t you-know-what unless someone hits her. Mentally, she’s still in the van, waiting for MJ.”
Nausea in the pit of Nev’s stomach. “Is that all?”
“I take back what I said about you.”
Nev covered her eyes with her hand. “What was that?”
“You are her type.”
Nev hung up, then blocked Maude’s number.
Heart racing, face hot, hands cold, she wondered if she was having a heart attack. Get yourself under control…
Not good. She recognized the feeling of being caught. Dull panic. The game was up. She could deny it, but no one would believe her. She rubbed her jaw. She turned and walked uphill toward Stone House, lawn dead from the drought.