Wrong Side of the Briar Patch 4/27
Title: Wrong Side of the Briar Patch
Author: NDF/TS Blue
Fandom: Dukes
Rating: PG, maybe. It's not quite all sunshine and roses, anyway.
Summary: It's a summer of freedom and hardship, of love and calamities. Daisy and Bo have just graduated into adulthood and Luke is back from war. It ought to be the best time of their lives, but one disaster follows another. Who would want the Dukes hurt? Prequel, gen.
Someday I really do need to write chapter 27 for this thing. Someday.
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Four: The Morning After the Night Before
July 3, 1974
Bears roused from hibernation in mid-winter were easier to deal with than Jesse Duke retrieving his boys from jail the morning after the night before. Announcing that it wasn't their faults and they hadn't done anything wrong (not really) wasn't going to help anything, but Bo always was a fool for hope, so he tried anyway. Luke just kept his quiet and waited for the lecture.
Or the lecture after the lecture, part two or maybe even part three in the lecture series. Because the first one took place in the sheriff's office, in front of Rosco Coltrane and it only contained half the words. The ones about how Jesse wasn't as young as he used to be, how none of them were. The old-timer just didn't have the energy for wrangling naughty boys anymore and they were supposed to have outgrown this sort of thing by now. Jesse had been in his share of fights once (though precisely when that might have happened was anybody's guess; even Rosco looked dubious as that part went by) but he'd learned to keep his temper, to talk things out because fists never did solve anything-
Bo just looked at his hands and said yes, sir. They'd been freed from the chill of the cell that had smelled like a cross between mold and wet dog. Where Bo hadn't slept much and Luke had slept less, but that was the point. A night to look at bars and the shadows that the moon threw through that one high window, and think about things. What they should have done and shouldn't, to give the guilt time to marinate in their guts until it was a sour stew of sorrow.
(But it really hadn't been their faults. Not much. Bo had jumped into the fight with both feet, and there wasn't a soul in Hazzard that would have expected him to do differently.)
Jesse left out a lot of things in the preview lecture. Because, sure, he wanted Rosco to see him scolding his boys. To have the awkward experience of watching them get berated so he'd know, maybe, that Jesse was taking everything very seriously. That this wasn't just going to be swept under the rug. (Or it might just have been fun to make Rosco squirm uncomfortably as he witnessed it. If so, some part of Luke could appreciate that.) But Rosco was still the sheriff, and there were things you just didn't go announcing out loud in front of a lawman.
Part two of the lecture would be more private, probably on the way home. In the tight confines of the pickup truck where the smell of dried sweat and old beer in their clothes and hair would be ripe as they just about sat on each other's laps. Jesse's red-hot anger would be conducted from one of them to the next as it was loudly explained that the family couldn't afford for them to be damn fools right now. Not when they hadn't been paid for their work recently, not when their work, such as it was, was still floating through the slow currents of the swamp thanks a pair of bungling boys who hadn't been able to outdrive a few competitors. And Bo would probably dip his head all over again, and be deeply sorrowful on behalf of the both of them.
But the third lecture, that would wait. Twelve hours, maybe fifteen. Even more if it had to, until Bo was asleep and Luke was smart enough to head out to the porch. To take that third lecture in private. The one about how he had to be better than that. Had to be careful, had to be vigilant with Bo. Had to set an example every minute of every day, because he was the oldest and Bo would follow him anywhere. Would do anything he thought Luke would appreciate, because Bo looked up to him. Idolized him and in Bo's eyes he was perfect. So he had to be smarter, had to know better. For both their sakes.
And Luke didn't want lectures two and three, wasn't looking forward to them a bit as he and Bo stumbled out of the administration building into the morning, squinting against the sun like a pair of vampires.
Then again, there were fates worse than Jesse's tongue-lashings (and even worse than whippings, though Bo would swear it wasn't so). Or fate, maybe there was only one, but it was waddling up the steps all the same. Reflecting more of the sun than a pair of jailbirds could stand and reeking of the cologne that was supposed to hide a multitude of sins, but never quite managed the task. Mint juleps, cigars and something a little bit rotten - those smells lingered underneath the artificial sweetness.
"Well, well, well and well. Jesse Duke, imagine seeing you here."
Bo sneered, pulling one side of his face out of shape. "How surprising," was full of sarcasm, which wasn't really Bo's forte. Still he was managing it well enough this morning. "That you'd find our uncle here getting us out of jail when you're the one who put us there."
J.D. let his hand, heavy with a pinky ring that was big enough to double as a billiard ball, come up to rest on his double breasted chest. Like he was having a heart-flutter at the suggestion that he was anything but an honest, respectable citizen out for his morning stroll. Except Luke was pretty sure that the man couldn't feel his own heartbeat through all the layers of white cloth and fat. And that assumed that he had a heart to begin with.
Still, getting snide wasn't helping anything. It was just providing old J.D. with the excuse to get dramatic.
"What did you want, Mr. Hogg?" Luke asked, with chilly politeness. "Since you happened to find us here?"
"Want? Want, want, want?" Hogg echoed. "Why, I don't want a thing, young man," matched Luke's politeness with simpering obsequiousness. "I reckon it's enough for me to know that you boys are all right. That was a heck of a fight you started last night."
"We didn't start nothing," Bo jumped in, leaning forward.
Hogg had the audacity to cower. "No, of course not," he said stepping back. "Not you all. Why you're as gentle as kittens."
Jesse rolled his eyes, whether at Bo or at J.D. was anyone's guess, and stepped between the two of them. Shaking his head like they were a pair of fools. "Good morning, Mr. Hogg," he said, but it wasn't a greeting, it was dismissal. Like they could really just walk past the man and back to their truck without any further interruption.
"Now, Jesse," yeah, it would have required a good bit of luck to get them away from J.D. so easily. That or a whole fried chicken, hidden in one of their pockets and conveniently proffered for the devouring. "Since you are here, maybe we should talk a bit." Luck, a whole fried chicken and an uncle that hadn't been raised on politeness and good manners, and they could have been gone from this place.
"What did you want, J.D.?" was as much a sigh as anything. Even Jesse was probably wishing he could get away with being rude. If he wasn't so afraid of his mother turning over in her grave.
"Well, as I said before, Jesse," Hogg said, bringing his hand up to his mouth and only then seeming to realize that he didn't have a cigar in it. He tried to play it off by rubbing his face, them smoothing his hand down the pristine white of his jacket. "I know it can't be easy on you, trying to make a living out of that hardscrabble farm of yours. And raising them kids of yours, too-"
"He ain't got to raise us no more," might not have been the very best argument Bo had ever made. Not when they were covered in jailhouse dust and Jesse's hundred dollar bail was fresh in Sheriff Rosco Coltrane's hands. "We're fully grown." Besides, Bo's baby face was right out there for everyone to see.
J.D. tsked. Almost managed to look sad about what Bo had said, shook his head. "Raising them kids of yours on your own," he said again. "I always said it was too much to ask of you and you done your best I'm sure."
Luke's hand was up, pinky resting against Bo's chest. Not so much holding him back as just being there. Staying whatever was going to come next, because some flames just shouldn't be fanned. Speechmaking had always been one of J.D. Hogg's favorite activities; all the better if he could build it to a crescendo and throw in some broken-hearted, wobbling vibrato over a trio of orphans raised by a dirt-poor farmer. Except the Duke kids had shared a largely happy childhood, and there'd always been enough money for whatever they needed. Old J.D. Hogg needed to take his pity somewhere else.
And anyway, Jesse's eyes were already rolling. "Get to the point, J.D."
"Point? Point?" Sorrow had turned to protest, to nursing the great wound that Jesse had inflicted upon him by insinuating that he was up to anything at all other than generosity from the goodness of his Hogg heart. "All right, here's my point. You got far too much to worry about, Jesse Duke. If you wasn't so busy growing weeds and rocks, you'd have time to properly discipline them boys of yours so they wouldn't go tearing apart a fine establishment and center of culture like my Boar's Nest."
"Center of culture?" Even Bo's temper couldn't sustain itself after that. "Luke, did you know that the Boar's Nest was a fine establishment and center of culture?"
"Of course it is, Bo. There's some fine drawing in there," Luke said. Bo's eyebrows lifted, inviting him to go on. "On the bathroom wall. And some excellent literature scribbled in that second stall. So it probably counts as a library, too."
"Boys," Jesse interrupted. Serious in that way that was all for show. "Best you apologize to J.D. for what you done." To make an outsider like J.D. Hogg think that they were actually being disciplined. (Oh, but they would be. Just not here or now.)
"Sorry we defended our friend in a fight," Bo offered.
"And that a chair got broken," Luke added. Which wouldn't be enough to satisfy Jesse most days. But here, now, in the presence of a toad that thought he could condescend to the frogs, it'd do.
"See, there, J.D.? They're sorry. Now if you don't mind-"
"I'm just saying," Hogg butted in, quick as his tongue could work (which was frighteningly quick if the way he went through hog jowls at the Boar's Nest was any indication), "that I could help you with your little problem. By taking that land off your hands."
"I reckon we already said everything we have to say on that subject."
"Maybe," J.D. said, little smile at the corner of his mouth like he was relishing whatever came next. "We talked about the farm, but that ain't the only land I'm talking about. I reckon I could take that other little piece off your hands, too. I'd make it worth your while."
"I don't know what you're talking about, Mr. Hogg."
There were rules to being raised a Duke, to living in the farmhouse that had been in the family for generations. And one of those was that you did not lie.
Then again, there were shades of the truth, and what was white wouldn't throw a shadow over the clan. There was only one thing J.D. Hogg could be talking about, but Jesse couldn't know for sure unless the words got articulated clearly.
Luke knew, and the way Bo's eyes darted over to their corner to try to catch his went to prove that he did, too, that J.D. Hogg was after Lavinia's land.
She'd been the last of the Baldridge clan, and the deed had come to her hands somewhere around the time Luke was born. Then ten years after that she was gone, too, and the deed was stuffed away in some box somewhere, but there weren't any Baldridges left, so the land fell to Jesse.
It was unimproved land, in the middle of nowhere important. Sloped from hollow up to highland and once there had been a cabin about three-quarters the way to the top. Lavinia had been raised there, but now it was more ruin than house. Of course, hidden in the trees along a spring that led down to the creek in the hollow, there was a still. But no one other than the Dukes knew about that. (Unless, somehow, J.D. Hogg did.)
Luke tried to hold his face steady, to give away nothing. But he could feel the muscles in his shoulders tense, and then there was the way Bo was looking at him, and both of them had closed ranks around their uncle.
"I ain't got no land," Jesse said with finality, "that's for sale to you or anyone else. Now if you'll excuse us, me and my boys got work to do that didn't get done this morning." Jesse started to shuffle his way down the cement stairs of the courthouse. "Since they was in jail and all."
Oh, and that look on his face - there were lectures to be doled out and time spent chatting with J.D. Hogg on the courthouse steps wasn't going to make those lectures any more pleasant.
"Sheriff Coltrane."
There were advantages, Rosco figured, to the fact that Commissioner Chadwick had bungled the county budget. Had made such a mess of things that the sheriff's department had spent more than had been budgeted for the entire year before May was even done. By the time Rosco got a chance to see what the real budget was, instead of the provisional numbers he'd been working with, well, there was nothing to do but let his deputies go. He had even taken a pay cut, though he'd only allowed that much to happen in exchange for keeping his pension. Peanut butter and jelly would feed him for now, so long as there was money waiting for him when he retired. (And as long as he could keep paying the rent on Mama and Lulu's place, because he figured half his sanity came from living separate from them.)
The county finances were a disaster and his department had been decimated, but there were advantages and one of those was quiet. Most days he could sit in his office or patrol the roads and unless some fool had driven their car into a pond or let their cows wander off, it was quiet enough that he could just about hear his hair growing.
"I come to sign that complaint," the voice persisted. Oh, and though he hadn't turned toward it just yet, he knew the sound of that voice. Smug, proud, almost sugary like a peach cobbler that could rot the teeth right out of your head. "Against them Dukes for what they done last night."
Quiet, it grew on a man. Those first weeks of June without any deputies bustling around the place had been weird. Disconcerting, and he'd spent a lot of time out on the roads, just to hear the rumble of his engine and feel the bump of tires running over rutted dirt roads, to smell his own exhaust.
Because the silence left too many gaps, too much space to think. About who he'd been and what he'd done and why. The future he'd tried to build.
He'd been a solid lawman for twenty years. Oh, tiddly-tuddly, he'd been more than solid, he'd been a good lawman, chasing down criminals and protecting his people. Spending night after day in the service of his county, and there wasn't a danger he hadn't faced down and conquered. Twenty years of dedication.
Then Bessie Mae had moved from Auburn to Hazzard and opened herself a little sewing shop. Alterations and repairs and sure, he'd kept his uniforms a bit too long. Had let them get worn so thin that she'd had to pull off a few miracles to resuscitate them, but she'd done it. And then he'd gone searching through his drawers for other clothes that needed mending - his flannel shirts, his church trousers. The one nice shirt he had, his leather vest, his socks and somewhere around Christmas he'd considered rooting through his underwear drawer just for something else to bring her, when she'd showed up at the Busy Bee Café. He was in his usual back booth having his usual hotdog slathered in chili and topped with mustard (with onion rings on the side) when she slid in beside him, held a suspicious sprig over his head and kissed him. He'd sputtered and choked on his hotdog, and a few solid thuds on his back and threats of the Heimlich maneuver later, she'd explained it was mistletoe and that she figured if she didn't move first this here relationship would never get off the ground.
She'd known, of course, what she was getting into. Had to, when most everything she'd ever mended of his was in shades of blue. And even if she hadn't known all the details at first, he'd told her. How a lawman's life wasn't really his own.
Maybe he was the one who should have known better, but he'd let himself dream, anyway. About a lifetime with Bessie Mae, who was pretty enough, in her slightly wrinkled and rumpled way. Picket fences and flower beds in the front of his dream life, a couple of kids in the backyard. Girls, he figured, sweet and well-mannered. Not like those rough and wild Duke boys. Then again girls would end up attracting the next generation of Duke boys and that would be bad, too.
But there had been no point in dwelling on what his kids would be like, because spring came and she was gone. After a few too many cold dinners and nights spent dressed in her finest, sitting by her window, waiting for a date that never came, Bessie Mae had said she'd thank him not to call on her anymore. Then she'd started seeing Johnny McClellan, the high school football coach, who got off work at the same time every night and had his summers pretty much to himself.
And before Rosco could even start to let those dreams fade away to the nothing that they'd always been, the county funds had crumbled underneath him, he'd had to let go of his deputies, and the silence had come.
He'd run from it at first, driving endless loops around his county, looking for any excuse to get involved with anything at all. But it had been planting season, which meant everyone was too busy to cause trouble. So eventually he'd settled with the silence. Worked through what he had to in his mind, about how he was never meant to get married anyway. How he was like a Wild West hero lawman, who would attract his share of the ladies, but be too busy saving the day to settle down. And after that he'd grown to like the quiet, to feel it settle around him like peace after a long and pointless war.
Then last night he'd had to listen to those Duke boys go at it all night long. First it was about how they hadn't done anything wrong and that Rosco really shouldn't have arrested them in the first place. Then it was about the smell of mold, and didn't Rosco ever clean this place? (No, he didn't. That was a deputy's job and funny thing if he didn't have any deputies to spare to the task anymore.) Apparently jail food didn't suit them either, and it was cold. Which was silly, it was July. Then they started in on each other, Luke saying it was Bo's fault they were locked up and Bo saying Luke would have done the same thing before he got too old to fight properly and it hadn't been anything but a nonstop racket. Rosco told them he wasn't going to babysit them anymore and went back upstairs to his office to sleep in his chair. Which wasn't anything fine, but it was softer than what was down with the jail cells and more than that, it was quiet. Nice.
Then the sun had risen and old Jesse had come. Things had gotten loud again and he'd thought he was happy to see all those irritating Dukes getting out of his office and heading back to the wrong side of the briar patch, out there in the sticks where they could make us much noise as they wanted and no one would hear them. He'd settled back into his chair and stretched. It was plenty warm now and last night hadn't been very restful. Seemed like as good a time as any to find his lost sleep.
And then that other voice had invaded. "You already wrote up the report, I take it." Jefferson Davis Hogg, somehow scolding and shaming him, as though he had a right to tell Rosco how and when to do his job.
"No, I ain't written it up yet," he answered. Tried to sound tough and sure of himself. Like writing reports was something he could get around to when he darn well pleased and-"I was too busy looking after them Duke boys." Made an excuse all the same, because there were big, brown eyes staring at him. Half squinted down in something like annoyance and dismissal all at once.
"Well," J.D. said, and he must have settled on condescending. "I suggest you do write that report. And further, I suggest you keep a close eye on those moonshining Dukes. They're up to no good and if you ain't willing to arrest them, I reckon I'll have to take care of them myself."
Rosco let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding and hauled his body to its feet. Headed over to the nearest typewriter to do as he was asked. Figured J.D. Hogg would get bored soon enough and leave him be.
"Exactly how do you plan to take care of them?" he asked because he didn't like the Dukes, most days. They were pains in parts of his body that he'd rather not think about, and then again, they were mostly good people, who helped their neighbors and kept their trouble-making to something of a minimum. And he didn't figure he could overlook J.D. Hogg's threats if he meant them any real harm.
"You ain't got to worry about that," J.D. informed him. "So long as you do your job. And if you do, you won't have to worry about your mama and sister, either."
Which was also a threat, but one that didn't allow for a legal recourse. So Rosco scrolled a piece of paper into the typewriter and started asking the man in front of him all those questions that went into filling out a report. Typing his answers with one finger at a time and he was right-J.D. was fidgeting, then fussing, then mumbling something about a cigar and how had he managed to make it all the way into the sheriff's office without one? Rosco didn't know and just kept pecking at the keys in front of him. Finally, J.D. asked if he could manage the rest of the report on his own, and Rosco looked up at him. Pretended he hadn't realized just how slow he was going, and said he thought maybe he could.
J.D. took his leave, promising to be back sometime in the afternoon to sign the complaint. Rosco waited for the swinging doors to swoosh shut, then got up and left the desk, his report still half typed. Figured he had plenty of time for a nap and maybe even lunch before he had to finish writing what he started and he'd still have it ready for the fat man to sign when he got back.
Author: NDF/TS Blue
Fandom: Dukes
Rating: PG, maybe. It's not quite all sunshine and roses, anyway.
Summary: It's a summer of freedom and hardship, of love and calamities. Daisy and Bo have just graduated into adulthood and Luke is back from war. It ought to be the best time of their lives, but one disaster follows another. Who would want the Dukes hurt? Prequel, gen.
Someday I really do need to write chapter 27 for this thing. Someday.
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Four: The Morning After the Night Before
July 3, 1974
Bears roused from hibernation in mid-winter were easier to deal with than Jesse Duke retrieving his boys from jail the morning after the night before. Announcing that it wasn't their faults and they hadn't done anything wrong (not really) wasn't going to help anything, but Bo always was a fool for hope, so he tried anyway. Luke just kept his quiet and waited for the lecture.
Or the lecture after the lecture, part two or maybe even part three in the lecture series. Because the first one took place in the sheriff's office, in front of Rosco Coltrane and it only contained half the words. The ones about how Jesse wasn't as young as he used to be, how none of them were. The old-timer just didn't have the energy for wrangling naughty boys anymore and they were supposed to have outgrown this sort of thing by now. Jesse had been in his share of fights once (though precisely when that might have happened was anybody's guess; even Rosco looked dubious as that part went by) but he'd learned to keep his temper, to talk things out because fists never did solve anything-
Bo just looked at his hands and said yes, sir. They'd been freed from the chill of the cell that had smelled like a cross between mold and wet dog. Where Bo hadn't slept much and Luke had slept less, but that was the point. A night to look at bars and the shadows that the moon threw through that one high window, and think about things. What they should have done and shouldn't, to give the guilt time to marinate in their guts until it was a sour stew of sorrow.
(But it really hadn't been their faults. Not much. Bo had jumped into the fight with both feet, and there wasn't a soul in Hazzard that would have expected him to do differently.)
Jesse left out a lot of things in the preview lecture. Because, sure, he wanted Rosco to see him scolding his boys. To have the awkward experience of watching them get berated so he'd know, maybe, that Jesse was taking everything very seriously. That this wasn't just going to be swept under the rug. (Or it might just have been fun to make Rosco squirm uncomfortably as he witnessed it. If so, some part of Luke could appreciate that.) But Rosco was still the sheriff, and there were things you just didn't go announcing out loud in front of a lawman.
Part two of the lecture would be more private, probably on the way home. In the tight confines of the pickup truck where the smell of dried sweat and old beer in their clothes and hair would be ripe as they just about sat on each other's laps. Jesse's red-hot anger would be conducted from one of them to the next as it was loudly explained that the family couldn't afford for them to be damn fools right now. Not when they hadn't been paid for their work recently, not when their work, such as it was, was still floating through the slow currents of the swamp thanks a pair of bungling boys who hadn't been able to outdrive a few competitors. And Bo would probably dip his head all over again, and be deeply sorrowful on behalf of the both of them.
But the third lecture, that would wait. Twelve hours, maybe fifteen. Even more if it had to, until Bo was asleep and Luke was smart enough to head out to the porch. To take that third lecture in private. The one about how he had to be better than that. Had to be careful, had to be vigilant with Bo. Had to set an example every minute of every day, because he was the oldest and Bo would follow him anywhere. Would do anything he thought Luke would appreciate, because Bo looked up to him. Idolized him and in Bo's eyes he was perfect. So he had to be smarter, had to know better. For both their sakes.
And Luke didn't want lectures two and three, wasn't looking forward to them a bit as he and Bo stumbled out of the administration building into the morning, squinting against the sun like a pair of vampires.
Then again, there were fates worse than Jesse's tongue-lashings (and even worse than whippings, though Bo would swear it wasn't so). Or fate, maybe there was only one, but it was waddling up the steps all the same. Reflecting more of the sun than a pair of jailbirds could stand and reeking of the cologne that was supposed to hide a multitude of sins, but never quite managed the task. Mint juleps, cigars and something a little bit rotten - those smells lingered underneath the artificial sweetness.
"Well, well, well and well. Jesse Duke, imagine seeing you here."
Bo sneered, pulling one side of his face out of shape. "How surprising," was full of sarcasm, which wasn't really Bo's forte. Still he was managing it well enough this morning. "That you'd find our uncle here getting us out of jail when you're the one who put us there."
J.D. let his hand, heavy with a pinky ring that was big enough to double as a billiard ball, come up to rest on his double breasted chest. Like he was having a heart-flutter at the suggestion that he was anything but an honest, respectable citizen out for his morning stroll. Except Luke was pretty sure that the man couldn't feel his own heartbeat through all the layers of white cloth and fat. And that assumed that he had a heart to begin with.
Still, getting snide wasn't helping anything. It was just providing old J.D. with the excuse to get dramatic.
"What did you want, Mr. Hogg?" Luke asked, with chilly politeness. "Since you happened to find us here?"
"Want? Want, want, want?" Hogg echoed. "Why, I don't want a thing, young man," matched Luke's politeness with simpering obsequiousness. "I reckon it's enough for me to know that you boys are all right. That was a heck of a fight you started last night."
"We didn't start nothing," Bo jumped in, leaning forward.
Hogg had the audacity to cower. "No, of course not," he said stepping back. "Not you all. Why you're as gentle as kittens."
Jesse rolled his eyes, whether at Bo or at J.D. was anyone's guess, and stepped between the two of them. Shaking his head like they were a pair of fools. "Good morning, Mr. Hogg," he said, but it wasn't a greeting, it was dismissal. Like they could really just walk past the man and back to their truck without any further interruption.
"Now, Jesse," yeah, it would have required a good bit of luck to get them away from J.D. so easily. That or a whole fried chicken, hidden in one of their pockets and conveniently proffered for the devouring. "Since you are here, maybe we should talk a bit." Luck, a whole fried chicken and an uncle that hadn't been raised on politeness and good manners, and they could have been gone from this place.
"What did you want, J.D.?" was as much a sigh as anything. Even Jesse was probably wishing he could get away with being rude. If he wasn't so afraid of his mother turning over in her grave.
"Well, as I said before, Jesse," Hogg said, bringing his hand up to his mouth and only then seeming to realize that he didn't have a cigar in it. He tried to play it off by rubbing his face, them smoothing his hand down the pristine white of his jacket. "I know it can't be easy on you, trying to make a living out of that hardscrabble farm of yours. And raising them kids of yours, too-"
"He ain't got to raise us no more," might not have been the very best argument Bo had ever made. Not when they were covered in jailhouse dust and Jesse's hundred dollar bail was fresh in Sheriff Rosco Coltrane's hands. "We're fully grown." Besides, Bo's baby face was right out there for everyone to see.
J.D. tsked. Almost managed to look sad about what Bo had said, shook his head. "Raising them kids of yours on your own," he said again. "I always said it was too much to ask of you and you done your best I'm sure."
Luke's hand was up, pinky resting against Bo's chest. Not so much holding him back as just being there. Staying whatever was going to come next, because some flames just shouldn't be fanned. Speechmaking had always been one of J.D. Hogg's favorite activities; all the better if he could build it to a crescendo and throw in some broken-hearted, wobbling vibrato over a trio of orphans raised by a dirt-poor farmer. Except the Duke kids had shared a largely happy childhood, and there'd always been enough money for whatever they needed. Old J.D. Hogg needed to take his pity somewhere else.
And anyway, Jesse's eyes were already rolling. "Get to the point, J.D."
"Point? Point?" Sorrow had turned to protest, to nursing the great wound that Jesse had inflicted upon him by insinuating that he was up to anything at all other than generosity from the goodness of his Hogg heart. "All right, here's my point. You got far too much to worry about, Jesse Duke. If you wasn't so busy growing weeds and rocks, you'd have time to properly discipline them boys of yours so they wouldn't go tearing apart a fine establishment and center of culture like my Boar's Nest."
"Center of culture?" Even Bo's temper couldn't sustain itself after that. "Luke, did you know that the Boar's Nest was a fine establishment and center of culture?"
"Of course it is, Bo. There's some fine drawing in there," Luke said. Bo's eyebrows lifted, inviting him to go on. "On the bathroom wall. And some excellent literature scribbled in that second stall. So it probably counts as a library, too."
"Boys," Jesse interrupted. Serious in that way that was all for show. "Best you apologize to J.D. for what you done." To make an outsider like J.D. Hogg think that they were actually being disciplined. (Oh, but they would be. Just not here or now.)
"Sorry we defended our friend in a fight," Bo offered.
"And that a chair got broken," Luke added. Which wouldn't be enough to satisfy Jesse most days. But here, now, in the presence of a toad that thought he could condescend to the frogs, it'd do.
"See, there, J.D.? They're sorry. Now if you don't mind-"
"I'm just saying," Hogg butted in, quick as his tongue could work (which was frighteningly quick if the way he went through hog jowls at the Boar's Nest was any indication), "that I could help you with your little problem. By taking that land off your hands."
"I reckon we already said everything we have to say on that subject."
"Maybe," J.D. said, little smile at the corner of his mouth like he was relishing whatever came next. "We talked about the farm, but that ain't the only land I'm talking about. I reckon I could take that other little piece off your hands, too. I'd make it worth your while."
"I don't know what you're talking about, Mr. Hogg."
There were rules to being raised a Duke, to living in the farmhouse that had been in the family for generations. And one of those was that you did not lie.
Then again, there were shades of the truth, and what was white wouldn't throw a shadow over the clan. There was only one thing J.D. Hogg could be talking about, but Jesse couldn't know for sure unless the words got articulated clearly.
Luke knew, and the way Bo's eyes darted over to their corner to try to catch his went to prove that he did, too, that J.D. Hogg was after Lavinia's land.
She'd been the last of the Baldridge clan, and the deed had come to her hands somewhere around the time Luke was born. Then ten years after that she was gone, too, and the deed was stuffed away in some box somewhere, but there weren't any Baldridges left, so the land fell to Jesse.
It was unimproved land, in the middle of nowhere important. Sloped from hollow up to highland and once there had been a cabin about three-quarters the way to the top. Lavinia had been raised there, but now it was more ruin than house. Of course, hidden in the trees along a spring that led down to the creek in the hollow, there was a still. But no one other than the Dukes knew about that. (Unless, somehow, J.D. Hogg did.)
Luke tried to hold his face steady, to give away nothing. But he could feel the muscles in his shoulders tense, and then there was the way Bo was looking at him, and both of them had closed ranks around their uncle.
"I ain't got no land," Jesse said with finality, "that's for sale to you or anyone else. Now if you'll excuse us, me and my boys got work to do that didn't get done this morning." Jesse started to shuffle his way down the cement stairs of the courthouse. "Since they was in jail and all."
Oh, and that look on his face - there were lectures to be doled out and time spent chatting with J.D. Hogg on the courthouse steps wasn't going to make those lectures any more pleasant.
"Sheriff Coltrane."
There were advantages, Rosco figured, to the fact that Commissioner Chadwick had bungled the county budget. Had made such a mess of things that the sheriff's department had spent more than had been budgeted for the entire year before May was even done. By the time Rosco got a chance to see what the real budget was, instead of the provisional numbers he'd been working with, well, there was nothing to do but let his deputies go. He had even taken a pay cut, though he'd only allowed that much to happen in exchange for keeping his pension. Peanut butter and jelly would feed him for now, so long as there was money waiting for him when he retired. (And as long as he could keep paying the rent on Mama and Lulu's place, because he figured half his sanity came from living separate from them.)
The county finances were a disaster and his department had been decimated, but there were advantages and one of those was quiet. Most days he could sit in his office or patrol the roads and unless some fool had driven their car into a pond or let their cows wander off, it was quiet enough that he could just about hear his hair growing.
"I come to sign that complaint," the voice persisted. Oh, and though he hadn't turned toward it just yet, he knew the sound of that voice. Smug, proud, almost sugary like a peach cobbler that could rot the teeth right out of your head. "Against them Dukes for what they done last night."
Quiet, it grew on a man. Those first weeks of June without any deputies bustling around the place had been weird. Disconcerting, and he'd spent a lot of time out on the roads, just to hear the rumble of his engine and feel the bump of tires running over rutted dirt roads, to smell his own exhaust.
Because the silence left too many gaps, too much space to think. About who he'd been and what he'd done and why. The future he'd tried to build.
He'd been a solid lawman for twenty years. Oh, tiddly-tuddly, he'd been more than solid, he'd been a good lawman, chasing down criminals and protecting his people. Spending night after day in the service of his county, and there wasn't a danger he hadn't faced down and conquered. Twenty years of dedication.
Then Bessie Mae had moved from Auburn to Hazzard and opened herself a little sewing shop. Alterations and repairs and sure, he'd kept his uniforms a bit too long. Had let them get worn so thin that she'd had to pull off a few miracles to resuscitate them, but she'd done it. And then he'd gone searching through his drawers for other clothes that needed mending - his flannel shirts, his church trousers. The one nice shirt he had, his leather vest, his socks and somewhere around Christmas he'd considered rooting through his underwear drawer just for something else to bring her, when she'd showed up at the Busy Bee Café. He was in his usual back booth having his usual hotdog slathered in chili and topped with mustard (with onion rings on the side) when she slid in beside him, held a suspicious sprig over his head and kissed him. He'd sputtered and choked on his hotdog, and a few solid thuds on his back and threats of the Heimlich maneuver later, she'd explained it was mistletoe and that she figured if she didn't move first this here relationship would never get off the ground.
She'd known, of course, what she was getting into. Had to, when most everything she'd ever mended of his was in shades of blue. And even if she hadn't known all the details at first, he'd told her. How a lawman's life wasn't really his own.
Maybe he was the one who should have known better, but he'd let himself dream, anyway. About a lifetime with Bessie Mae, who was pretty enough, in her slightly wrinkled and rumpled way. Picket fences and flower beds in the front of his dream life, a couple of kids in the backyard. Girls, he figured, sweet and well-mannered. Not like those rough and wild Duke boys. Then again girls would end up attracting the next generation of Duke boys and that would be bad, too.
But there had been no point in dwelling on what his kids would be like, because spring came and she was gone. After a few too many cold dinners and nights spent dressed in her finest, sitting by her window, waiting for a date that never came, Bessie Mae had said she'd thank him not to call on her anymore. Then she'd started seeing Johnny McClellan, the high school football coach, who got off work at the same time every night and had his summers pretty much to himself.
And before Rosco could even start to let those dreams fade away to the nothing that they'd always been, the county funds had crumbled underneath him, he'd had to let go of his deputies, and the silence had come.
He'd run from it at first, driving endless loops around his county, looking for any excuse to get involved with anything at all. But it had been planting season, which meant everyone was too busy to cause trouble. So eventually he'd settled with the silence. Worked through what he had to in his mind, about how he was never meant to get married anyway. How he was like a Wild West hero lawman, who would attract his share of the ladies, but be too busy saving the day to settle down. And after that he'd grown to like the quiet, to feel it settle around him like peace after a long and pointless war.
Then last night he'd had to listen to those Duke boys go at it all night long. First it was about how they hadn't done anything wrong and that Rosco really shouldn't have arrested them in the first place. Then it was about the smell of mold, and didn't Rosco ever clean this place? (No, he didn't. That was a deputy's job and funny thing if he didn't have any deputies to spare to the task anymore.) Apparently jail food didn't suit them either, and it was cold. Which was silly, it was July. Then they started in on each other, Luke saying it was Bo's fault they were locked up and Bo saying Luke would have done the same thing before he got too old to fight properly and it hadn't been anything but a nonstop racket. Rosco told them he wasn't going to babysit them anymore and went back upstairs to his office to sleep in his chair. Which wasn't anything fine, but it was softer than what was down with the jail cells and more than that, it was quiet. Nice.
Then the sun had risen and old Jesse had come. Things had gotten loud again and he'd thought he was happy to see all those irritating Dukes getting out of his office and heading back to the wrong side of the briar patch, out there in the sticks where they could make us much noise as they wanted and no one would hear them. He'd settled back into his chair and stretched. It was plenty warm now and last night hadn't been very restful. Seemed like as good a time as any to find his lost sleep.
And then that other voice had invaded. "You already wrote up the report, I take it." Jefferson Davis Hogg, somehow scolding and shaming him, as though he had a right to tell Rosco how and when to do his job.
"No, I ain't written it up yet," he answered. Tried to sound tough and sure of himself. Like writing reports was something he could get around to when he darn well pleased and-"I was too busy looking after them Duke boys." Made an excuse all the same, because there were big, brown eyes staring at him. Half squinted down in something like annoyance and dismissal all at once.
"Well," J.D. said, and he must have settled on condescending. "I suggest you do write that report. And further, I suggest you keep a close eye on those moonshining Dukes. They're up to no good and if you ain't willing to arrest them, I reckon I'll have to take care of them myself."
Rosco let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding and hauled his body to its feet. Headed over to the nearest typewriter to do as he was asked. Figured J.D. Hogg would get bored soon enough and leave him be.
"Exactly how do you plan to take care of them?" he asked because he didn't like the Dukes, most days. They were pains in parts of his body that he'd rather not think about, and then again, they were mostly good people, who helped their neighbors and kept their trouble-making to something of a minimum. And he didn't figure he could overlook J.D. Hogg's threats if he meant them any real harm.
"You ain't got to worry about that," J.D. informed him. "So long as you do your job. And if you do, you won't have to worry about your mama and sister, either."
Which was also a threat, but one that didn't allow for a legal recourse. So Rosco scrolled a piece of paper into the typewriter and started asking the man in front of him all those questions that went into filling out a report. Typing his answers with one finger at a time and he was right-J.D. was fidgeting, then fussing, then mumbling something about a cigar and how had he managed to make it all the way into the sheriff's office without one? Rosco didn't know and just kept pecking at the keys in front of him. Finally, J.D. asked if he could manage the rest of the report on his own, and Rosco looked up at him. Pretended he hadn't realized just how slow he was going, and said he thought maybe he could.
J.D. took his leave, promising to be back sometime in the afternoon to sign the complaint. Rosco waited for the swinging doors to swoosh shut, then got up and left the desk, his report still half typed. Figured he had plenty of time for a nap and maybe even lunch before he had to finish writing what he started and he'd still have it ready for the fat man to sign when he got back.