Wrong Side of the Briar Patch 18/27
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.
___________________
Eighteen: Three Squares and a Cot
July 31, 2015
He had, it occurred to him somewhere between the first nerve-jangling ring of the phone and the second, grown entirely too used to sleeping through the night. After Bessie Mae had left him, after he'd given up on catching every criminal and protecting every constituent, he'd taken to going home. Or going to his mother and sister's place, and either way, he'd get in bed - or take up space on his mother's couch - somewhere around midnight and not move until seven in the morning. He'd been a good and dedicated cop for years and at first he hadn't known how to let go. But once he'd figured it out, he'd embraced it fully and gotten used to it in no time at all.
Which was why he'd yelled at Gussie first and Enos second when he answered the phone. Which he'd only done to keep his mother and sister from being roused by the infernal noise. Enos was just an overanxious youngster who was too eager and earnest to make it through one night of babysitting fairly tame criminals (if Rosco was honest with himself) without having to rouse his superior officer. What had he hired the fool boy for in the first place?
(But Enos had caught the Duke boys doing something genuinely illegal. Rosco had to give him that.)
Rosco finally reassured a nearly frantic Enos that he would take care of whatever had happened at the Duke farm, and that yes, the boy had done good. And reminded him to stay put no matter what, because Enos was young and inexperienced and easily swayed by other youngsters that had been his childhood friends. Tricked, almost without effort.
And that's all this was: a trick. The entire Duke family creating distractions and wild goose chases. So Rosco took his sweet time getting to his feet, hunting up his button-down shirt to go over his white undershirt, pulling his pants up over his shorts. Sitting on the edge of his mother's couch figuring out if he really was as awake as he needed to be when the phone started its confounded shrieking again. He hustled to get it before the second ring, and there was Gussie, telling him that it was the Duke farm calling. He sighed, looked down at his socked feet, and told her to go ahead and put them through. Heard the click and the hiss of an open line, and-
"All right you Dukes," he started, figured he'd do best to take control right here and now. To tell them he'd respond when he darn well felt like it and not before. "I know what you're up to."
"Up to?" And there was sweet Daisy Duke's voice coming back at him in all manner of confusion. Nervous and upset and worried. Then again, she was an actress. At least, he figured she was. They all were, those Dukes. You had to be if you were going to run moonshine in northern Georgia. If you were going to talk nonsense to revenuers, and maybe Daisy hadn't ever had cause to do that. But she was from Duke stock and they were, all of them from as far back as Rosco could remember, actors and schemers.
"No good, that's what you're up to." Important to say that, to let her know that even if she was playing at innocent and scared, he knew it was all a ruse. A game that he didn't intend to lose.
"Sheriff," wasn't a rebuke. She didn't scold him outright, and maybe that was worse than if she had. "We've been robbed."
"Tiddly-tuddly." That was something his mother used to say to him when back when he was walking around in short pants and wiping his nose on his sleeve. Complaining of being too sick to go to school, and she'd stick her hand on his forehead. If it didn't meet her standards of undue warmth, she'd say her tiddly-tuddlies and send him off anyway. No fever meant nothing worth complaining about, and Rosco couldn't touch her from here, but he'd bet his entire paycheck (which wasn't what it used to be) that Daisy Duke didn't exactly have a fever right now. What she had was instructions to do whatever it took to get the law away from the courthouse. (But he was already away from the courthouse, and he was getting ready to head out to the Duke farm anyway, so why was she calling now? To slow him down? Why would she need to do that? What were those Dukes up to?)
It was somewhere in the middle of that long train of thought that Jesse Duke must have taken the phone from his niece, because suddenly there was a gruff, agitated voice, barking in his ear. Telling him to quit stalling, to get on his feet (when he already was, so there was no reason to yell at him about that) and get over there, now. They had a crime to report, and they needed a lawman to take their complaint.
He hung up the phone, picked up his boots on the way out the door, got all the way downstairs and next to his mother's car before he even thought to put them on. Got in, flipped down the sun visor so the keys would fall into his hand. Dumb as it was to leave the keys in the car, his mother always did it anyway, mewling something about how no one would dare steal her car when she was the mother of the town's most powerful man. (Powerful, indeed. If he'd been powerful, he'd still have a passel of experienced deputies instead of one damn fool who (had caught the Duke boys) could hardly be trusted to do one simple thing.) He considered going to town first to trade in his mother's car for the cruiser, figured it was just the Dukes, and they didn't need formalities.
Figured he didn't need an earache from getting yelled at by Jesse Duke for how long it had taken him to get there.
His mama's car wasn't fast, but it wasn't slow, it was just a plain old jalopy without a siren or flashing lights. Hardly worth driving much of anywhere, but it got him to the Duke farm just fine, got him into their driveway and from there it was just a few steps to their lit-up house. Glowing from the inside like some kind of broken down jack-o-lantern in the middle of summer. Knocking on the door was less than pointless when he could hear voices coming from inside, sounding busy, sounding urgent, so he let himself in. Found the whole bunch of them - Jesse, Daisy and Molly Snodgrass - huddled around the Dukes' living room couch. Molly was shouting and Jesse was grumbling. Daisy was squatting in front of the couch, her head cranking back and forth. Just watching the argument like it was a tennis match, and every last one of them was wearing far too few clothes. And completely ignoring the duly constituted law of the land.
Which left him wondering why they'd bothered getting him up off his mother's couch, if they were just going to stand around and yell at their own.
Smell of pork chops still lingering around the house from whenever dinner was, and Rosco figured that if they were going to ignore him, maybe he'd hunt up whatever leftovers there might have been. It would be a fitting payment for his troubles. Especially since there hadn't been a morsel of chocolate cake left when he got back to his mothers' house after jailing those other Dukes.
"There you are," the senior Duke snapped when he finally realized that there was a sheriff in his kitchen. He came stalking across the floor in a fast waddle, finger pointing like he had the same right scold Rosco as the unruly brood of kids he'd raised.
"What's that?" Rosco asked him, head tilting back toward where Jesse had come from. Where now was visible, between Molly at one end of the couch and Daisy at the other, a lumpy something or other that looked an awful lot like a body. "You shoot the intruder?"
"I didn't shoot nobody," Jesse shot back at him, as though he should have known better. And he did, he knew that Dukes were scammers, but they weren't killers. Still, the accusation slowed the man down, made him stop coming at Rosco like he meant to give him all kinds of trouble. "That's just Alice."
"Alice?" Rosco looked back over there to see that Molly was down on a knee now, talking softly to the lump on the couch, while Daisy patted at it with a cloth. "She get hurt in the robbery?" Or whatever shenanigans the Dukes had pulled here tonight.
"No," Jesse answered, with a roll of his eyes that was utterly befitting a frustrated four-year-old. "She keeps fainting. Daisy and Molly," he said a little louder, with a firm look at the two women in question, "can see to her."
Daisy, at least, glanced up at him and nodded at the obvious instructions to stay put. Rosco noticed no similar agreement to behave was forthcoming from Molly Snodgrass.
He got led back through the fine-smelling kitchen all the same (pork chops mixed with gunpowder, when Rosco sniffed more closely), then out to the porch that faced back toward the Dukes' growing-fields. It was more enclosed than not, and even at closing in on four in the morning, it was sweaty out here. (But then it was July in Georgia - it was sweaty any and everywhere.)
"What took you so dang long, Rosco?" Jesse griped, his hands digging at his nightshirt like he was looking for pockets to dig into and pull out a watch or a hankie.
"All right, Jesse Duke." It was important to remind the man who was in charge here. "What are you Dukes up to this time?"
For a moment, and only that long, Jesse resembled his older nephew. Mad as hell and on the edge of lashing out with a fist or a razor-sharp tongue. Ready to state his angry little case with fingers pointing and voice rising, but he didn't. Held himself still long enough to count to ten forwards and back again, then he opened his mouth.
"I ain't sure who it was," he started, indignant as anything, but controlled. That was the benefit of age, maybe. "But there was at least three men in here. Come right in the house in the middle of the night, and they was messing around in the kitchen." Well, of course they were. It smelled good in there. "They ain't got nothing but-" hesitation there so short that a less astute man might not have noticed, but Rosco was a highly trained law-enforcement officer. "They ain't got nothing of value, but they got into things. Like, important papers."
"In your kitchen?" That was as preposterous as the rest of it. The Dukes were schemers and liars. (Except that he couldn't remember a single time that Jesse Duke had ever lied to him outright.) Rosco went to rest his hands on his revolvers and remembered that he was in civilian clothes. Off duty, standing around on a man's porch, smelling the remnants of his dinner and not even getting offered a morsel.
"We got places in there where we hide things," Jesse growled back at him. "And don't you ask me exactly where, because I don't reckon you need to know exactly where they was, just that the thieves," imaginary as they might have been. "Got into them. And then there's that other thing."
"Other thing?" Imaginary murderers, no doubt. Because that was the only thing worse that imaginary thieves.
"Bo and Luke ain't home. They went out last night and Luke knows I ain't waiting up for him, but that I expect him home before midnight. He's good about that, especially when he's got Bo with him. But they ain't never made it home."
Oh, that was priceless. Not imaginary murderers, imaginary kidnappers! Leave it to Jesse Duke to concoct a story like that when he knew full well where his nephews were.
"But they called a little while ago," Jesse continued. "Daisy told them they needed to come home, that the house had been broken into. And all they said was that they couldn't come home right now. She hung up too fast to find out why, and they ain't called back. Can't raise them on the CB, neither."
Rosco laughed. Or meant to, but it came out higher than he might have intended, a little closer to a titter.
"Something funny?" Jesse asked him, and there it was again. Shades of Luke Duke and his half-dangerous temper.
"Them boys of yours are fine, Jesse," he answered, a few more wanton sounds (giggles, if he was being honest) escaped the warmth of his mouth along with the words. "They're being well taken care of. Three squares and a cot."
"Jail?" Jesse roared. Interesting how quickly he jumped to exactly the right conclusion. Didn't even sound exactly surprised about it, either. Just incensed. "You arrested my boys?"
"Yep," Rosco said, not bothering to correct Jesse's mistake about who had done the arresting. Practice for talking J.D. Hogg tomorrow. (Later today, he mentally corrected.) "Because while you was here staging this here 'robbery,' them boys was pulling the real thing at the courthouse. And funny thing if they didn't get caught. I reckon that what Daisy hung up on was their one phone call."
Jesse started hollering and blustering at him. Words and more words that were too loud and came too fast to make complete sense of, but it all came down to how Rosco wasn't welcome in the Dukes' home anymore.
Which was fine with him. He took his leave and figured that if he hadn't gotten any pork chops, at least he'd get a few hours of sleep before his work shift in the morning.
Hell had no fury like a woman… well, a furious woman.
Things were about to get ugly. Or they'd been ugly for hours now - it had been a long night after all, without sleep and with plenty of discomfort - and now things were about to get hostile.
Ugly was Luke pacing around after they'd made that call to Daisy and learned that the family home had been - what? Robbed? Or just invaded? They didn't know which and they didn't know whether anyone had been hurt, and why had she hung up on him?
Ugly was Bo begging Enos to let them out, over and over again, even though it wasn't getting him anywhere. Trying to wear him down, maybe, and it hadn't worked because Enos wasn't a girl, and it was only the girls that couldn't resist Bo's begging.
Ugly was Bo's head dipping in defeat when he sat down next to Luke on the cot after pestering Enos for far too long. Ugly was how, when Luke put an arm around his cousin, it didn't change his resigned posture one bit. Ugly was Luke half wishing Enos was in there with them so he could put his other arm around their old friend. If it was possible, Enos looked more miserable than Bo. Ugly was watching Enos pull at his fingers, then when that got to be too much (or not enough) pulling off his silly deputy hat and fiddling with the tassels.
Ugly was the way Bo stayed quiet and still for far too long, then started to shift a little on the cot. Ugly was how he started in on Enos again, this time asking to be taken to the bathroom. Ugly was realizing that Bo was quite serious - he needed the bathroom, and he wasn't willing to use the urinal in the cell, not in front of Enos. And Enos was under instructions to watch them every second. Not so ugly was realizing that part of what made Bo so particular about the situation was that he had never been in the military and hadn't had to get over that sort of squeamishness. Ugly was trying to figure out a way to let Bo have imagined privacy while Enos kept his word to Rosco about watching them at all times. (The solution was for Luke to stand there and block most of Enos' view, and for Bo to hold his left hand out to the side so Enos could watch that it never tried, even once, to escape all on its own.)
Ugly was spending the rest of the night staring at Enos as Enos stared at them, and waiting for any word at all from Rosco. Ugly was the still air of the jail cell and the heat of Bo leaning up against his side. Resting his head on Luke's shoulder and getting a few fitful winks of sleep here and there.
Ugly was when Luke's stomach started to growl, which meant the sun had to be coming up. Should be smelling grits and bacon, should be shoving Bo past the kitchen and out to the livestock. Chores before breakfast, and who was doing them back at the farm? Were they getting done at all?
Ugly was the shortness of his breath when the door got pounded on somewhere soon after that, Jesse growling that it was late enough that the building should be open to the public. (There was relief in there, somewhere, that his uncle was alive and well enough to whip him later, once the oldster realized that not only was Luke guilty as charged, but he'd brought Bo along with him on this illegal little escapade.) Ugly was knowing that the simmering Jesse was doing out there would have time to build to a full out boil. Enos wasn't about to let their uncle in, because Rosco had told him to stay put and watch the Duke boys every minute.
Ugly was Rosco arriving, the rattle of the key in the door, the ijjes and gyus in between telling Jesse just to hold his horses. Ugly was the tension in Bo's body, the way he was pretending to be too grown up to be scared, but his eyes were big and round anyway. Same as they ever had been when he'd been caught sneaking a cookie before dinner, and it must have taken every ounce of his willpower not to grab Luke's hand like he used to when they were kids. Nothing more than a deep swallow to reveal his fear.
Ugly was the way Jesse marched in, the way he was demanding the release of his boys. The way he looked at them with eyes full of questions, but didn't ask any, not then. Just wanted to know what it would take to get them free.
Ugly was the way Daisy followed him in, full of righteous indignation at how her kin were being held prisoner. Ugly was her realizing that while her cousins were on one side of the bars, her beau was on the other, guarding them.
Ugly was Enos apologizing before she could even ask what was going on, then volunteering that he'd been the one who had caught them burglarizing the records office downstairs. (Ugly was the way Jesse's eyebrows dipped at that word. Burglary. It was an ugly enough word, Luke could admit.)
Ugly wasn't pretty, it was awful enough, but it was manageable. Like a storm that might blow down a few limbs, but then it would move on. Hostile was more like a wildfire, set on burning everything in its path until there wasn't a house or a tree or even a flower left to remind you of what had been there before.
And hostile was just getting started. It was somewhere in the way Daisy's voice rose, the way her fists curled up. Hostile was her sharp words aiming themselves right at Enos' soft heart, things like: traitor, trusted you, can't believe you would do this, you know my cousins as well as I do and you know they're not criminals.
(Guilt was what made him want to defend Enos, intelligence was what made him keep his mouth shut.)
Ugly was Jesse peeling off bills from a roll and handing them to Rosco - some amount of bail must have been named - while Enos' head dipped at Daisy's volatility. Ugly was the way Daisy's face was red, the way the hostility was maybe the only thing that was keeping her from crying.
Ugly was Rosco coming over to the cell with keys in hand, opening the door to let them out. Ugly was the way that not a one of them could take their eyes off of what was happening between Daisy and Enos, how none of them even tried to get involved or make it stop.
Ugly was Luke's stomach twisting - Daisy shouldn't even have been dating a lawman, it was true, but Luke always figured it would be moonshining that would cause the rift between them - at the recognition that it was his fool plan that had turned his female cousin into a fiery, screeching harpy.
Ugly was the way Jesse put an arm around her and how she almost shrugged him off. Turned like she was going to unleash her hostility on him next, but one good look reminded her of who he was and why he was there. Reminded her that even in times as ugly as this, Dukes weren't supposed to be openly antagonistic.
Ugly was the way her head dipped. She didn't cry, not then. Just let Jesse usher her toward the swinging doors and the outside, where his pickup presumably waited.
Ugly was the way Luke and Bo followed, tails tucked like naughty dogs.
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.
___________________
Eighteen: Three Squares and a Cot
July 31, 2015
He had, it occurred to him somewhere between the first nerve-jangling ring of the phone and the second, grown entirely too used to sleeping through the night. After Bessie Mae had left him, after he'd given up on catching every criminal and protecting every constituent, he'd taken to going home. Or going to his mother and sister's place, and either way, he'd get in bed - or take up space on his mother's couch - somewhere around midnight and not move until seven in the morning. He'd been a good and dedicated cop for years and at first he hadn't known how to let go. But once he'd figured it out, he'd embraced it fully and gotten used to it in no time at all.
Which was why he'd yelled at Gussie first and Enos second when he answered the phone. Which he'd only done to keep his mother and sister from being roused by the infernal noise. Enos was just an overanxious youngster who was too eager and earnest to make it through one night of babysitting fairly tame criminals (if Rosco was honest with himself) without having to rouse his superior officer. What had he hired the fool boy for in the first place?
(But Enos had caught the Duke boys doing something genuinely illegal. Rosco had to give him that.)
Rosco finally reassured a nearly frantic Enos that he would take care of whatever had happened at the Duke farm, and that yes, the boy had done good. And reminded him to stay put no matter what, because Enos was young and inexperienced and easily swayed by other youngsters that had been his childhood friends. Tricked, almost without effort.
And that's all this was: a trick. The entire Duke family creating distractions and wild goose chases. So Rosco took his sweet time getting to his feet, hunting up his button-down shirt to go over his white undershirt, pulling his pants up over his shorts. Sitting on the edge of his mother's couch figuring out if he really was as awake as he needed to be when the phone started its confounded shrieking again. He hustled to get it before the second ring, and there was Gussie, telling him that it was the Duke farm calling. He sighed, looked down at his socked feet, and told her to go ahead and put them through. Heard the click and the hiss of an open line, and-
"All right you Dukes," he started, figured he'd do best to take control right here and now. To tell them he'd respond when he darn well felt like it and not before. "I know what you're up to."
"Up to?" And there was sweet Daisy Duke's voice coming back at him in all manner of confusion. Nervous and upset and worried. Then again, she was an actress. At least, he figured she was. They all were, those Dukes. You had to be if you were going to run moonshine in northern Georgia. If you were going to talk nonsense to revenuers, and maybe Daisy hadn't ever had cause to do that. But she was from Duke stock and they were, all of them from as far back as Rosco could remember, actors and schemers.
"No good, that's what you're up to." Important to say that, to let her know that even if she was playing at innocent and scared, he knew it was all a ruse. A game that he didn't intend to lose.
"Sheriff," wasn't a rebuke. She didn't scold him outright, and maybe that was worse than if she had. "We've been robbed."
"Tiddly-tuddly." That was something his mother used to say to him when back when he was walking around in short pants and wiping his nose on his sleeve. Complaining of being too sick to go to school, and she'd stick her hand on his forehead. If it didn't meet her standards of undue warmth, she'd say her tiddly-tuddlies and send him off anyway. No fever meant nothing worth complaining about, and Rosco couldn't touch her from here, but he'd bet his entire paycheck (which wasn't what it used to be) that Daisy Duke didn't exactly have a fever right now. What she had was instructions to do whatever it took to get the law away from the courthouse. (But he was already away from the courthouse, and he was getting ready to head out to the Duke farm anyway, so why was she calling now? To slow him down? Why would she need to do that? What were those Dukes up to?)
It was somewhere in the middle of that long train of thought that Jesse Duke must have taken the phone from his niece, because suddenly there was a gruff, agitated voice, barking in his ear. Telling him to quit stalling, to get on his feet (when he already was, so there was no reason to yell at him about that) and get over there, now. They had a crime to report, and they needed a lawman to take their complaint.
He hung up the phone, picked up his boots on the way out the door, got all the way downstairs and next to his mother's car before he even thought to put them on. Got in, flipped down the sun visor so the keys would fall into his hand. Dumb as it was to leave the keys in the car, his mother always did it anyway, mewling something about how no one would dare steal her car when she was the mother of the town's most powerful man. (Powerful, indeed. If he'd been powerful, he'd still have a passel of experienced deputies instead of one damn fool who (had caught the Duke boys) could hardly be trusted to do one simple thing.) He considered going to town first to trade in his mother's car for the cruiser, figured it was just the Dukes, and they didn't need formalities.
Figured he didn't need an earache from getting yelled at by Jesse Duke for how long it had taken him to get there.
His mama's car wasn't fast, but it wasn't slow, it was just a plain old jalopy without a siren or flashing lights. Hardly worth driving much of anywhere, but it got him to the Duke farm just fine, got him into their driveway and from there it was just a few steps to their lit-up house. Glowing from the inside like some kind of broken down jack-o-lantern in the middle of summer. Knocking on the door was less than pointless when he could hear voices coming from inside, sounding busy, sounding urgent, so he let himself in. Found the whole bunch of them - Jesse, Daisy and Molly Snodgrass - huddled around the Dukes' living room couch. Molly was shouting and Jesse was grumbling. Daisy was squatting in front of the couch, her head cranking back and forth. Just watching the argument like it was a tennis match, and every last one of them was wearing far too few clothes. And completely ignoring the duly constituted law of the land.
Which left him wondering why they'd bothered getting him up off his mother's couch, if they were just going to stand around and yell at their own.
Smell of pork chops still lingering around the house from whenever dinner was, and Rosco figured that if they were going to ignore him, maybe he'd hunt up whatever leftovers there might have been. It would be a fitting payment for his troubles. Especially since there hadn't been a morsel of chocolate cake left when he got back to his mothers' house after jailing those other Dukes.
"There you are," the senior Duke snapped when he finally realized that there was a sheriff in his kitchen. He came stalking across the floor in a fast waddle, finger pointing like he had the same right scold Rosco as the unruly brood of kids he'd raised.
"What's that?" Rosco asked him, head tilting back toward where Jesse had come from. Where now was visible, between Molly at one end of the couch and Daisy at the other, a lumpy something or other that looked an awful lot like a body. "You shoot the intruder?"
"I didn't shoot nobody," Jesse shot back at him, as though he should have known better. And he did, he knew that Dukes were scammers, but they weren't killers. Still, the accusation slowed the man down, made him stop coming at Rosco like he meant to give him all kinds of trouble. "That's just Alice."
"Alice?" Rosco looked back over there to see that Molly was down on a knee now, talking softly to the lump on the couch, while Daisy patted at it with a cloth. "She get hurt in the robbery?" Or whatever shenanigans the Dukes had pulled here tonight.
"No," Jesse answered, with a roll of his eyes that was utterly befitting a frustrated four-year-old. "She keeps fainting. Daisy and Molly," he said a little louder, with a firm look at the two women in question, "can see to her."
Daisy, at least, glanced up at him and nodded at the obvious instructions to stay put. Rosco noticed no similar agreement to behave was forthcoming from Molly Snodgrass.
He got led back through the fine-smelling kitchen all the same (pork chops mixed with gunpowder, when Rosco sniffed more closely), then out to the porch that faced back toward the Dukes' growing-fields. It was more enclosed than not, and even at closing in on four in the morning, it was sweaty out here. (But then it was July in Georgia - it was sweaty any and everywhere.)
"What took you so dang long, Rosco?" Jesse griped, his hands digging at his nightshirt like he was looking for pockets to dig into and pull out a watch or a hankie.
"All right, Jesse Duke." It was important to remind the man who was in charge here. "What are you Dukes up to this time?"
For a moment, and only that long, Jesse resembled his older nephew. Mad as hell and on the edge of lashing out with a fist or a razor-sharp tongue. Ready to state his angry little case with fingers pointing and voice rising, but he didn't. Held himself still long enough to count to ten forwards and back again, then he opened his mouth.
"I ain't sure who it was," he started, indignant as anything, but controlled. That was the benefit of age, maybe. "But there was at least three men in here. Come right in the house in the middle of the night, and they was messing around in the kitchen." Well, of course they were. It smelled good in there. "They ain't got nothing but-" hesitation there so short that a less astute man might not have noticed, but Rosco was a highly trained law-enforcement officer. "They ain't got nothing of value, but they got into things. Like, important papers."
"In your kitchen?" That was as preposterous as the rest of it. The Dukes were schemers and liars. (Except that he couldn't remember a single time that Jesse Duke had ever lied to him outright.) Rosco went to rest his hands on his revolvers and remembered that he was in civilian clothes. Off duty, standing around on a man's porch, smelling the remnants of his dinner and not even getting offered a morsel.
"We got places in there where we hide things," Jesse growled back at him. "And don't you ask me exactly where, because I don't reckon you need to know exactly where they was, just that the thieves," imaginary as they might have been. "Got into them. And then there's that other thing."
"Other thing?" Imaginary murderers, no doubt. Because that was the only thing worse that imaginary thieves.
"Bo and Luke ain't home. They went out last night and Luke knows I ain't waiting up for him, but that I expect him home before midnight. He's good about that, especially when he's got Bo with him. But they ain't never made it home."
Oh, that was priceless. Not imaginary murderers, imaginary kidnappers! Leave it to Jesse Duke to concoct a story like that when he knew full well where his nephews were.
"But they called a little while ago," Jesse continued. "Daisy told them they needed to come home, that the house had been broken into. And all they said was that they couldn't come home right now. She hung up too fast to find out why, and they ain't called back. Can't raise them on the CB, neither."
Rosco laughed. Or meant to, but it came out higher than he might have intended, a little closer to a titter.
"Something funny?" Jesse asked him, and there it was again. Shades of Luke Duke and his half-dangerous temper.
"Them boys of yours are fine, Jesse," he answered, a few more wanton sounds (giggles, if he was being honest) escaped the warmth of his mouth along with the words. "They're being well taken care of. Three squares and a cot."
"Jail?" Jesse roared. Interesting how quickly he jumped to exactly the right conclusion. Didn't even sound exactly surprised about it, either. Just incensed. "You arrested my boys?"
"Yep," Rosco said, not bothering to correct Jesse's mistake about who had done the arresting. Practice for talking J.D. Hogg tomorrow. (Later today, he mentally corrected.) "Because while you was here staging this here 'robbery,' them boys was pulling the real thing at the courthouse. And funny thing if they didn't get caught. I reckon that what Daisy hung up on was their one phone call."
Jesse started hollering and blustering at him. Words and more words that were too loud and came too fast to make complete sense of, but it all came down to how Rosco wasn't welcome in the Dukes' home anymore.
Which was fine with him. He took his leave and figured that if he hadn't gotten any pork chops, at least he'd get a few hours of sleep before his work shift in the morning.
Hell had no fury like a woman… well, a furious woman.
Things were about to get ugly. Or they'd been ugly for hours now - it had been a long night after all, without sleep and with plenty of discomfort - and now things were about to get hostile.
Ugly was Luke pacing around after they'd made that call to Daisy and learned that the family home had been - what? Robbed? Or just invaded? They didn't know which and they didn't know whether anyone had been hurt, and why had she hung up on him?
Ugly was Bo begging Enos to let them out, over and over again, even though it wasn't getting him anywhere. Trying to wear him down, maybe, and it hadn't worked because Enos wasn't a girl, and it was only the girls that couldn't resist Bo's begging.
Ugly was Bo's head dipping in defeat when he sat down next to Luke on the cot after pestering Enos for far too long. Ugly was how, when Luke put an arm around his cousin, it didn't change his resigned posture one bit. Ugly was Luke half wishing Enos was in there with them so he could put his other arm around their old friend. If it was possible, Enos looked more miserable than Bo. Ugly was watching Enos pull at his fingers, then when that got to be too much (or not enough) pulling off his silly deputy hat and fiddling with the tassels.
Ugly was the way Bo stayed quiet and still for far too long, then started to shift a little on the cot. Ugly was how he started in on Enos again, this time asking to be taken to the bathroom. Ugly was realizing that Bo was quite serious - he needed the bathroom, and he wasn't willing to use the urinal in the cell, not in front of Enos. And Enos was under instructions to watch them every second. Not so ugly was realizing that part of what made Bo so particular about the situation was that he had never been in the military and hadn't had to get over that sort of squeamishness. Ugly was trying to figure out a way to let Bo have imagined privacy while Enos kept his word to Rosco about watching them at all times. (The solution was for Luke to stand there and block most of Enos' view, and for Bo to hold his left hand out to the side so Enos could watch that it never tried, even once, to escape all on its own.)
Ugly was spending the rest of the night staring at Enos as Enos stared at them, and waiting for any word at all from Rosco. Ugly was the still air of the jail cell and the heat of Bo leaning up against his side. Resting his head on Luke's shoulder and getting a few fitful winks of sleep here and there.
Ugly was when Luke's stomach started to growl, which meant the sun had to be coming up. Should be smelling grits and bacon, should be shoving Bo past the kitchen and out to the livestock. Chores before breakfast, and who was doing them back at the farm? Were they getting done at all?
Ugly was the shortness of his breath when the door got pounded on somewhere soon after that, Jesse growling that it was late enough that the building should be open to the public. (There was relief in there, somewhere, that his uncle was alive and well enough to whip him later, once the oldster realized that not only was Luke guilty as charged, but he'd brought Bo along with him on this illegal little escapade.) Ugly was knowing that the simmering Jesse was doing out there would have time to build to a full out boil. Enos wasn't about to let their uncle in, because Rosco had told him to stay put and watch the Duke boys every minute.
Ugly was Rosco arriving, the rattle of the key in the door, the ijjes and gyus in between telling Jesse just to hold his horses. Ugly was the tension in Bo's body, the way he was pretending to be too grown up to be scared, but his eyes were big and round anyway. Same as they ever had been when he'd been caught sneaking a cookie before dinner, and it must have taken every ounce of his willpower not to grab Luke's hand like he used to when they were kids. Nothing more than a deep swallow to reveal his fear.
Ugly was the way Jesse marched in, the way he was demanding the release of his boys. The way he looked at them with eyes full of questions, but didn't ask any, not then. Just wanted to know what it would take to get them free.
Ugly was the way Daisy followed him in, full of righteous indignation at how her kin were being held prisoner. Ugly was her realizing that while her cousins were on one side of the bars, her beau was on the other, guarding them.
Ugly was Enos apologizing before she could even ask what was going on, then volunteering that he'd been the one who had caught them burglarizing the records office downstairs. (Ugly was the way Jesse's eyebrows dipped at that word. Burglary. It was an ugly enough word, Luke could admit.)
Ugly wasn't pretty, it was awful enough, but it was manageable. Like a storm that might blow down a few limbs, but then it would move on. Hostile was more like a wildfire, set on burning everything in its path until there wasn't a house or a tree or even a flower left to remind you of what had been there before.
And hostile was just getting started. It was somewhere in the way Daisy's voice rose, the way her fists curled up. Hostile was her sharp words aiming themselves right at Enos' soft heart, things like: traitor, trusted you, can't believe you would do this, you know my cousins as well as I do and you know they're not criminals.
(Guilt was what made him want to defend Enos, intelligence was what made him keep his mouth shut.)
Ugly was Jesse peeling off bills from a roll and handing them to Rosco - some amount of bail must have been named - while Enos' head dipped at Daisy's volatility. Ugly was the way Daisy's face was red, the way the hostility was maybe the only thing that was keeping her from crying.
Ugly was Rosco coming over to the cell with keys in hand, opening the door to let them out. Ugly was the way that not a one of them could take their eyes off of what was happening between Daisy and Enos, how none of them even tried to get involved or make it stop.
Ugly was Luke's stomach twisting - Daisy shouldn't even have been dating a lawman, it was true, but Luke always figured it would be moonshining that would cause the rift between them - at the recognition that it was his fool plan that had turned his female cousin into a fiery, screeching harpy.
Ugly was the way Jesse put an arm around her and how she almost shrugged him off. Turned like she was going to unleash her hostility on him next, but one good look reminded her of who he was and why he was there. Reminded her that even in times as ugly as this, Dukes weren't supposed to be openly antagonistic.
Ugly was the way her head dipped. She didn't cry, not then. Just let Jesse usher her toward the swinging doors and the outside, where his pickup presumably waited.
Ugly was the way Luke and Bo followed, tails tucked like naughty dogs.