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When Ellen and Bill had a kid, everyone loved Jo. Every battle-hardened hunter and every alcoholic crazy, they loved her. You couldn't not love Jo, when she was all pudgy hands and a sweet face, cooing and garbling nonsense.
Jo grew up among the hunters, among the talk of guns and the monsters that aren't supposed to be real. She remembers holding a round of rock salt and asking one of the regulars what it was for, why not use normal rounds. She grew up to old rock and and booze and violence, and it was home.
All the hunters, especially, doted on Jo. She was a sort of mascot, even if she wasn't an actual hunter herself. Ellen grumbled about it, about her daughter not being a damned show pony, but Bill grinned proudly and told Jo stories. Overall, Jo was happy with her life at the Roadhouse. She was all the world's child, she called everyone Uncle and she was everyone's niece, though she was Bill's kid first and foremost.
When Jo was a child, her favorite Uncle was Uncle John. He used to come in, and talk to William and Jo would sit in her father's lap and listen to John's story, which was directed at her as much as at Bill.
"I've been to Maryland," he'd say. "It's named after my wife, you know." (and for the longest time, Jo believed that, too.) And he'd tell them about a monster he killed there, and Jo would hang onto his every word, and then he'd pull a poster out of his bag, which showed the landscape of the state, and Jo would look at it in awe. She never wanted to go there, though, because she loved the Roadhouse far too much. "For you," John would say, because he was like every hunter and always bought her gifts.
And then, one day, Uncle John came back from his and Bill's first hunt together, and he was alone. He stepped into the Roadhouse, expression sad and apologetic, footsteps slow and when Ellen, who was never quick to cry, saw him she held a hand to her mouth and made a sort of noise. She recovered quickly, of course, and told Jo in a rough voice to go to her room.
"Ellen–" John said, trying to argue with Ellen which was stupid, because no one argued with Ellen, ever.
"No, no arguing, go to your room Jo," Ellen said and her voice was stronger, now, so with a wary questioning look at Uncle John, Jo headed to her room. A few moments later, John's voice sounded, too quiet for Jo to make out the words but then her mother started raging at John, telling him to get out. Jo felt sorry for him, because he'd looked so wretched and Jo liked John, but Ellen didn't get mad over nothing, so Jo just sat by her window and watched John drive away. Even the Impala seemed to go slower, drive sadder.
Later that evening, Jo padded down the stairs to look at Ellen and found her behind the bar, staring at the wall and a still full bottle in her hand. Jo promptly left, because she knew how much Ellen hated people seeing her upset. That night, though, she couldn't sleep because she could not stop wondering what it was that John had told Ellen.
Over breakfast the next day, Ellen was perfectly calm when she spoke. "Your father's dead."
Jo ran upstairs and locked herself into her room.
And then the world came crashing down around her and Jo was sad. Okay, so there are probably more eloquent ways to put that, but it's what Jo wrote when she was ten years old and was told her dad was dead. "My Daddy's dead. I'm too sad to write anything else."
After that, she relied on the hunters even more. She loved it when they stopped by, with stories of all sorts of places, just like Dad used to. They'd bring her books and cards and figurines and shirts and maps and posters, and lots of postcards, all from places far outside of Nebraska, far away from the Roadhouse and school.
But then Jo grew up, and the Roadhouse didn't cut it anymore. The hunters weren't enough, their tall tales of heroic hunts and their battle wounds, they weren't enough anymore. Jo wanted to be like them, like Dad and John and Shawn and Jake and Gordon and Rick and Bobby and everyone else who saved lives on a daily basis. Jo wanted to hunt.
So she learned: Gordon taught her, Gordon Walker. Scary motherfucker who was afraid of nothing, and for the first time in her life she was seen as an adult. To Gordon Walker, Jo wasn't some teenage rebel, she was a hunter. She was an equal.
Dean said she was crazy for wanting to be a hunter, said you only become one when you're to screwed up for everything else. He didn't get that Jo's wanting to be a hunter, that was her being screwed up. He didn't get that Jo's wanting was the same as his incapability to live a normal life, because her wanting made her incapable of living a normal life. He thought Jo just wanted to be a hero, but he was wrong. Jo wanted to hunt for all the right reasons: not vengeance, not the incapability of living a normal life (though it was part of the problem) but to help people.
And there's a difference between wanting to help people and wanting to be a hero. (Maybe that's what makes a real hero, someone who saves people without asking to be noticed.)
It didn't matter anyway. Jo wasn't a hero, didn't want to be a hero. She wanted to be a hunter, and it took her a while, a few scars and aches and kills, but she became one.
She knows what people say about the lifestyle, and now she knows what's true about it. Jo knows, for instance, that she won't get much older than thirty, fourty because in the end there will be something, a creature, a >person, a twig lying there just wrong when Jo's running from something, a gun that jams when she's face-to-face with a demon, anything, and it will get her killed.
Jo's okay with that. Jo's okay with dying, if it means she gets to save even one person from an early grave. When she first started, she didn't get that but now Jo knows to be calm, and she's fine with waking up in the morning and watching the sunrise, knowing she might not see it set. It's fine, so when Jo wakes up in the morning in some unknown motel, she looks out of the window and watches the people and takes a long pull of her beer.
And she smiles; it's all okay.
Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel
Yeah, we're goin' to the Roadhouse
We're gonna have a real good time
Save our city, save our city
Right now
Well, I woke up this morning, and I got myself a beer
The future's uncertain, and the end is always near...