Wrong Side of the Briar Patch 26/27
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.
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Twenty-six: Relative Normal (Amongst Abnormal Relatives)
August 3, 1974
It had to have been the most ridiculous rescue ever. Nothing like the movies, where the good guys showed up with their white hats and the might of right on their sides, and just plain decimated the black hats. What happened at the shack up on Black Ridge was a mess, just three inches short of disaster.
Not that Bo wasn't happy to be rescued. At least mostly, though he pretty well figured he could have handled things himself. He was just about untied and had the feeling back in most of his extremities by the time Aunt Ivy spotted Luke and sent her nephews out to capture themselves a second Duke.
Later, when the entire rescue party was perched in odd places around the Duke family farmyard, devouring Daisy's special fried chicken and taking turns telling Bo that he looked puny, Luke had been forced to admit that everything hadn't turned out exactly like it was supposed to. There had been some damn fool scheme that had Luke coming in through the hole in the roof over that side room. Which was dumb, because if the roof was already damaged, what made Luke think it would hold his weight? But there was no telling his cousin that - he would have said that he could have handled whatever happened.
That much was true. Luke was a Duke, and well practiced at improvising. Which was what they'd all had to do when the plan had crumbled to the ground faster than a pup tent in a windstorm.
Maybe it helped that what went on outside the cabin was sorely out of control. When Velma's husband, Bob - who might just have been the coward of the bunch - got sent outside to help Jeremy and Kevin, both the women spent more time hovering at the edges of the windows than they did watching Bo.
That had made it easy for him to throw the ropes off his hands and shoulders, to stand (to notice that the outside had gone from a whole lot of noise to a troubling near-silence) and to waddle over to where his knife had been unceremoniously dropped on the pitiful table. Intent only on cutting his feet free of the last bit of rope, but his movement caught Velma's eye. She turned to see him armed (with what was probably the dullest knife in three counties, by that point) and let out one hell of a scream. Bloodcurdling and loud, made Ivy duck low like she was avoiding a swarm of bats, and changed the dynamic outside the cabin, too.
Turned out he didn't need to saw through the ropes, anyway - they'd dropped off of their own accord as he'd shuffled along. By that time, Velma had scurried over to a brown, boxy case that was bigger than a briefcase but smaller than a suitcase, and had been stashed in a corner of the shack where Bo hadn't seen it until now. Velma caught it by the handle and started for the door. Ivy came partway out of her crouch and scuttled toward Velma. Tried to grab for the case, but Velma yanked it up in the air and held it over her head. Same trick Bo could pull on Luke, now that he was the taller one. Ivy was shameless, though - Luke would have stood there with his arms across his chest and glowered his distaste, but Ivy hopped up and down, grabbing at the air, as much as her older-lady legs would let her. Didn't work, made Velma smirk, so Ivy just grabbed onto one of her daughter's arms and pulled on it.
Velma - charming young lady that she was, planted a knee in her mother's solar plexus. Ivy's face collapsed with the desperate urge to breathe as she doubled over. Meanwhile, Velma turned, ran, then used that same knee to kick the door open, and sprinted through.
Ivy might have been his kidnapper, might have given the orders all down the line for every bad thing that had befallen the Dukes this summer, might have had it in for Jesse one way or another, and might even have been perfectly willing to kill Bo, but she was still a woman, and an older one at that. So he sheathed his knife, strode over to Ivy, grabbed hold of her bony arm and helped her find her feet. Patted her back until her mouth stopped gulping like a goldfish's and she sucked in a deep breath of air. After that, it didn't take a whole lot of effort to keep hold of her and escort her out of the shack.
And right into the middle of Luke's lame-brained rescue, which had degenerated into a melee. Rosco was babbling at a man that Bo had never seen before and Daisy was in the dust with Velma, money floating around her head as if her world had been tipped like one of those snow-globes. J.D. Hogg was a stuck pig, squealing about the dollar bills flying in the breeze, and Luke was at the bottom of a pushing, shoving, punching dogpile that included Kevin, Jeremy and Cooter. Jesse was there with his shotgun in hand, right on the verge of yelling at someone or everyone all at once. Probably getting ready to threaten whippings for the whole bunch.
But the Dukes and their friends had won this thing, and it wasn't too long before the ridiculous rescue turned into an even more ridiculous arrest scene. More suspects than handcuffs, Rosco spitting and sputtering, Enos squeaking and J.D. Hogg blustering while the bad guys blamed each other for their current predicament, and somewhere in there, Luke had made his way across the dusty clearing. He'd grabbed Bo by the shoulders and stared at him, too hard and too long until the blue of his eyes shimmered wetly. It was almost more than Bo could stand to look back into, and then he'd been pulled into a hug. Bone and muscle, rough, because despite all of Jesse's efforts, Luke never had quite figured out how to be gentle. But it was warm and welcome all the same. Even if, when it was done, blood from Luke's split lip had left an ugly blood stain on Bo's already filthy shirt.
One cousin moved away, and the other filled the space, offering up a squeeze that was only half of what she was capable of. Maybe Daisy was taking it easy on him. Didn't matter, because Jesse was there to encircle him in a bear hug that would have broken a weaker man's bones.
And then the oldster set to lecturing Aunt Ivy - who was also Poison Ivy from Jesse's old-time moonshining stories, as well as being I. Young, the librarian (and that was a lot of things to be all at once) - about just how disappointed he was in her. Here she'd had a second chance at living a good, respectable life and she'd thrown it all away, and for what? Ivy didn't have any answers, didn't even look at Jesse. Just spent all her time glowering at Molly, whose hands were on her hips, elbows jutted proudly out to the side.
The rope that had bound Bo's wrists and ankles for the better part of a day got re-purposed to turn the whole mess of crooks into a makeshift chain gang with the two sets of handcuffs shared amongst the four men. The cash that hadn't blown off to parts unknown was collected out of the soft dirt - J.D. Hogg squirmed to get involved in that, but Jesse held him back - and Ivy's family and friends were herded slowly down a steep path to the bottom of the hill, with Rosco pointing his service revolver at them all the way. The bed of the Duke patriarch's pickup was deemed the best means to get the crooks back to town, so Jesse drove and Rosco and Enos rode in the back with the prisoners.
That left the rest of them to get the fleet of cars that had been driven up here out of the slender pull-off they'd been parked in, but Bo was forbidden from driving any of them. Which had left him riding back down into Hazzard in Tilly, with Luke behind the wheel.
The two of them had somewhere verging on a million questions to ask each other, but then again, Bo fell asleep before the first one could even get out of his mouth. By the time he woke up again, Tilly was parked in the farmyard, and Luke was shaking his shoulder with all the regret in the world.
"Come on, cousin, get up. You're too heavy to carry."
His pride was glad to hear that, because Daisy and Alice and Molly and Cooter were piling out of cars all around them (including Enos' daddy's sedan and Rosco's mama's heavy old beast, which meant the law would have to come back here before the day was through) and there would have been no living it down if any of them had seen Luke hauling him out of the car like an oversized child. Bo gave his head a quick shake and shoved against the dead weight of Tilly's door to join everyone else in the farmyard.
Molly was a black spot in an otherwise beautiful afternoon, sulking loudly over how Jesse could ever suspect her of wrongdoing. Daisy fixed that like only a woman would: she said she felt like cooking. Not just cooking, but cooking. Molly asked what they had at the house and it turned into a discussion of what a shame, no crawdads for bisque, but we've got chicken. That was enough to get the whole gang inside the house, in the kitchen and conspiring together, Cooter licking his chops at the prospect of food that didn't come out of a can. Alice settled in with Daisy and Molly, but only because she couldn't follow Bo and Luke into their bedroom. Jesse had rules about that, even if he wasn't here to enforce them.
Behind closed doors, Luke checked him over carefully, assessing injuries, tsking over rope burns and bruises, especially the one on his hand. Wasn't too thrilled over the bump and cut on Bo's head from where he'd been knocked cold with a branch or a rock. Bo wasn't exactly happy about Luke's bloodied nose and split lip, either, but his worries got lost in another hug, then Luke sent him off for a shower.
"Happy birthday," followed him down the hall, and even if he was tired and sore and maybe just a little sick of Luke's overprotective ways, he smiled.
And figured he might as well use up all the hot water in the house because no one would deny him the opportunity to spend as long as he wanted washing away the filth of the last twenty-four hours. Not today.
His feet were dragging when he made it back to the kitchen, cleaner and achingly aware of all the ways his body had been abused. He had every intention of insisting that he wanted to go out with Luke and Daisy tonight to celebrate his birthday at the Boar's Nest all the same, but got distracted by the smell of fried chicken. Daisy said that most of the food was ready enough to eat, so he helped carry it outside, where far too many people were crowded around the picnic table. Jesse had returned from town with Rosco and Enos in tow. Someone was clever enough to have gotten paper plates and plastic cups from somewhere; must have known that the Dukes didn't have enough dishes to serve this many people. (Heck, they'd been stretching it to have Alice and Molly at their table the last few weeks. Someone had to use the chipped plate at every meal.) There was chicken and potato salad and some kind of noodle thing, corn on the cob and somehow a watermelon had showed up - "Just to tide you over until the cobbler is ready," Daisy said - and lemonade that would be too sour once they got to dessert.
They settled around the farmyard as best they could - Jesse, Molly and Rosco Coltrane at the picnic table, because they were older or just plain fussier, Daisy sitting low on the porch steps with Cooter close by. Enos was a notable distance away, leaning against a post and balancing his meal in one hand while eating with the other. Bo and Luke pulled down the tailgate of Jesse pickup, and Alice joined them in sitting there. On the far side of Luke, because Bo wasn't anyone's fool. He'd sat at one of the ends.
"What I want to know," Luke was saying, but his mouth was half full, and he got one chubby, rheumatic finger pointed across the farmyard at him for the infraction. Swallowed, and picked up right where he'd left off. "Is what J.D. Hogg had to do with all of this."
"He says he didn't know what was going to happen," Rosco jumped in.
"I know what he says, but what did he do?"
"That guy, the one who had him at gunpoint, that was Clem Clemmons. Maybe you heard of him." That was Enos, who'd been mostly quiet. Now he was talking fast and gesturing with his plastic fork, which was sending bits of potato in a small radius around him. Apparently Clem Clemmons was important, somehow. To Enos, anyway. "He's-"
"Hush, Enos," Rosco scolded. "That's an ongoing investigation. These here civilians don't need to hear about it."
"I reckon they're more than just civilians," Enos countered bravely, but in that unfailingly polite and almost apologetic way only he could pull off. "They're victims. At least the Dukes are. And the rest of them are witnesses. Besides, wouldn't none of you go repeating nothing I say in public, would you?"
They offered up their assurances, and Rosco gestured his permission, or maybe just his disavowal of all knowledge of whatever followed.
"Clem Clemmons is a big-time counterfeiter from over in Hatchapee," Enos explained. Rosco mumbled something that disputed exactly how big time Clemmons really was. "And he was also in love with Ivy Young. Now, when she got out of prison a bunch of months back, she figured she would get revenge on you Dukes - and Molly there, too - for how you got her arrested back when you all was competitors. She wanted to put y'all out of business,"
"What does this have to do with J.D. Hogg?" Luke demanded. Old grumpy hadn't gotten any sleep at all last night. Which was his own scheming fault.
"Well, Ivy wanted y'all out of business and J.D. Hogg did, too. He swears up and down that all he had in mind was to scare y'all a bit. He didn't want nothing bad to happen to you, Bo."
"So basically, this Clemmons guy helped Ivy, what? Burn down our barn? Try to run us off the road at night?" While they were on a moonshine delivery, but Luke would never say that part out loud. "And that money in that suitcase thing, it wasn't real?"
"Oh, it was real," Rosco answered with a hard edged chuckle. "And now it's evidence."
"But we ain't sure what it was used for," Enos said. "All them people from Ivy's gang, they're on their way to Atlanta. The state police got a few questions for them."
"What about J.D. Hogg?" Bo asked, snatching a wing off Luke's plate. Got a mean little look in return. That'd teach Luke about priorities when it came to food and interrogating the law. Poor wing had been sadly neglected and now it was justifiably Bo's. That, or Luke wasn't going to fight him for it when he knew Bo had gone without food for far too long. "Don't they got a few questions for him?"
"No they ain't," Rosco said with a strange little giggle. One that didn't sound stupid or happy or like his usual nonsense. It was almost smug, with a dash of bitterness. "Not since he let them take all that money as evidence instead of trying to keep it for himself."
"Clem Clemmons, he was more into forging bonds and stocks and stuff," Enos said. "Not actual cash money. But he was wanted and I knew who he was right away when he showed up at Miss Ivy's cabin." Proud little smile that elicited something close to a harrumph from Rosco. "Because he was on a bunch of wanted posters back at the office. And I studied those real good, just like the sheriff told me."
"That's right!" A smirk bloomed up on Rosco's face. Like he really planned to take credit, but that was fine. Enos' echoing grin showed that he was perfectly willing to give it to him. "I did! I really trained that boy right."
Cooter reached around Daisy - who was doing a real good job of picking her chicken apart, studying every piece and not really eating anything at all - to give Enos a congratulatory slap on the ankle. Since that was as far as his arm would reach and all.
"So Ivy wanted us out of business," Luke recounted. "And she had a whole mess of mostly family helping her. They infiltrated all these businesses in Hazzard to watch us so they knew when they could get to us. And at the same time, J.D. wanted our land so, what? He paid Ivy to do what she already wanted to do anyway?"
"Now, Luke, we don't know that for sure," Jesse interrupted, pointing his plastic fork in their direction.
"Of course you don't," Rosco jumped in. "Especially since he let the money go as evidence."
"And then," Luke said, ignoring both objections as if they were silly. (And they were, except for how it wasn't smart to dismiss Jesse or Rosco like that.) "When we tried to catch them in the act, the kidnapped Bo. But why?"
Blank looks all around, until Bo filled it in for them.
"Even they didn't know that. Seems like them two boys thought it was a good idea at the time, but Ivy, she didn't want nothing to do with me. Back when we was up on that hill, she yelled 'Get 'im,' but she didn't mean she wanted me caught. Just beat up or something. Once they got me down that hill, I guess she figured they couldn't just leave me there, so they took me up to her shack." She'd wanted something to do with Uncle Jesse though, and it wasn't just to put him out of business. Clem Clemmons may have been in love with Ivy, but Ivy was carrying some kind of a warped torch for Jesse. "And once they had me, they figured they'd have to kill me. Which was why I had to get out of them ropes."
Luke put his plate down on the tailgate, then shuffled a bit until he was close enough that his shoulder rubbed against Bo's. It was just about as close to admitting that he was upset by the news as Luke would get.
"Anyway," Jesse said, dropping his fork and having a quick little fight with the picnic table until he could get to his feet. Wiping his hands on his overalls and waddling over to the tail of the truck. "We're all together again. In one piece and no real harm come to any of us." One of his meaty hands came up to rest on Bo's shoulder. A deep look into his eyes, and quick pat. "And I reckon the main thing is that we're all thankful for that."
Amen.
"I'm thankful that them boys didn't hurt you none," Cooter piped up while Jesse made his way back toward the table. "I don't reckon my daddy would have hired them if he'd had the first idea what kind of trouble they were."
"I'm just thankful you wasn't hurt, Bo," Alice added and tried to shuffle closer to both him and Luke, but mostly she just succeeded in making the truck rock back and forth a lot.
Luke smirked and mumbled, "I'm just thankful that Molly and Alice can go home now." Low enough that no one else could make out the words. Might have been fine, except for how Bo laughed.
Daisy's eyebrow went up in confusion, Cooter laughed too, even if he didn't know why. Enos looked down at Daisy, Rosco made some fool noise, Luke snorted and Jesse looked murderous.
In all, everything was pretty much normal.
September 18, 1974
But normal was relative. The barn still had to be rebuilt, the whiskey business jumpstarted and set back on track. Meanwhile there were police statements to be made for Rosco and later for the state police, who had a few questions of their own. Jesse and J.D. Hogg had to make some kind of peace between them. And then there was Molly and Alice to consider.
But first, before any of that, there was Bo's belated birthday to celebrate. It waited a day because Bo could smile, he could picnic with family and friends and talk about what had happened like it was nothing at all, but he was tired. Exhausted and hurt, even if he didn't want to say much about that part. His hand was bruised and swollen, he had cuts and welts on his arms, legs and torso from fighting and falling, he had an ugly bump on his head and rope burns on his wrists and ankles. All the protests in the world didn't add up to a hill of beans when Luke prodded him to bed before sunset, and he fell asleep mid-complaint.
And it wasn't any surprise that he didn't make it out for chores the next morning, either, especially since Luke decided against waking him. Then he missed church, but all of the Dukes did. Alice and Molly went, though, at Jesse's insistence.
But Bo wasn't about to take wait-until-you're-fully-healed (with-no-ugly-reminders-of-how-I-failed-to-keep-you-safe) for an answer, so come the night after his birthday, Luke agreed to take him out for a legal beer or two. Daisy tried to stay behind, on the excuse of leaving them to their celebrating, but Bo pouted until she relented.
Daisy sat mostly quietly to one side and watched the people come and go through the main door. Luke sat less quietly on the other side and watched Bo for any signs of fatigue. Bo smiled and drank and got fawned over by one girl after another until finally one of them dragged him out into the middle of the floor to dance. He stayed out there long enough to spend a little time with every girl that wanted him to. He was, despite all that had happened and what he'd been through, fine.
The next day, Molly said it was time she and Alice got back to the swamp. They'd been gone for nearly a month, so they weren't sure what kind of condition they'd find the old house in. Maybe one of Molly's nephews would have kept an eye on it and maybe not - which was why she prevailed upon Jesse to go back with them. Plus, there was Jesse's abiding guilt over briefly suspecting Molly of dishonesty. Yeah, Molly would milk that cow for another twenty years, at least.
Daisy went along to the swamp, too. Luke mumbled to Bo that she was going because she'd miss her roommates when they were gone, and the look that came back at him accused him of being crazy or sick or both. Bo said it had nothing to do with Alice and Molly and everything to do with needing to get away for a while. Luke just shrugged, because it didn't matter why Daisy was going with the rest of them. The only important thing was that Jesse said they'd be staying out in the swamp for a few days to get Molly settled. And that he'd call them every day, just so they'd know he hadn't been swallowed whole by an alligator or taken permanent prisoner by Molly.
Which left Luke and Bo to a few days of laziness. Until the third morning after Jesse left, when Bo got tired of being shooed away from the chores and being watched for signs that he was hurt worse than he was letting on, and tackled Luke to the hard ground of the farmyard. The wrestling match that followed left their clothes exactly the kind of disaster that would give Daisy weeks of nagging rights. Luke let Bo win the wrestling match out of the goodness of his heart. That was his story and he was sticking to it.
When Jesse and Daisy got back, the real work began. Bo and Luke knocked together a frame, and the word went out in church about a barn raising at the Duke farm. By Monday night the new barn stood next to the old farmhouse, and by Wednesday afternoon, the whole farm smelled of sawdust and fresh paint. Most of what had been stored in the old barn was long turned to ash, but folks brought by what they could. Heavily worn tools, threadbare horse blankets, buckets with welded patches, because that was what they could spare and it was fine. None of it was any worse off than what the Dukes had before the fire, anyway.
No one could replace what was really lost, the deeds and artifacts of Aunt Lavinia's heritage, mainly because no one other than the Dukes knew they were missing. And that was the way the family wanted to keep it. After all, guilty feelings and J.D. Hogg weren't exactly long-term friends and eventually he'd be trying to buy or steal Duke land again. No telling why he'd been poking around for information about the parcels on Bald Hill, whether it was part of his partnership with Ivy or just coincidence. But since the land had never been on the tax rolls, it was for the best that no one could prove the Dukes' ownership one way or the other. A new still site was selected in a hidden cove around the Chattahoochee Creek, and the works was moved under the cover of darkness, one heavy piece at a time. Lavinia's land was left to grow over as wild as it wanted to.
In the meantime, old J.D. had become twice as dangerous. The frantic electioneering for County Commissioner had started within days of Bo's rescue, and funny if old J.D. didn't tell the story in a very interesting way that left him looking awfully heroic. Efforts to correct his story only led to him talking louder, faster, spinning ever bigger yarns. Jesse said it didn't matter, that the county wouldn't believe such wild tales anyway. That everyone in Hazzard knew better.
Jesse was wrong. When the votes had been counted, J.D. Hogg had been elected the new Commissioner of Hazzard by a landslide. In other news, while there would now be money to pay both Rosco and Enos a reasonably fair wage, the sheriff's pension had been deemed more expense than the financially strapped county was willing to bear. And both of these changes would take effect on October first.
That left Rosco with the decision about whether to retire right now and take whatever was in his pension fund as consolation, or hang on and hope that the money would be reinstated one day. He announced his choice to stay put, claiming it was because he couldn't unleash a half-trained Enos on the county. Jesse said Rosco was staying because being a lawman was the only thing in his life that he had ever truly loved, Bessie Mae Wilkins aside. Luke figured Rosco kept the job because he'd taken a shine to the man who would be his new boss. It was almost cute how he followed the Commissioner-elect around like a hungry puppy after a meatless, pitiful bone.
The sheriff thought he had himself a little feather in his cap when it came time to officially arraign those dastardly Duke boys for spending a particular sweltering, July night wandering around the Courthouse. Judge Druten showed some leniency when he learned that Bo was technically a minor at the time of the incident, and that entry to the building had been gained through an unlocked window of the sheriff's office. There was a small fine and a couple of days of community service spent rebuilding the staircase at the orphanage (and playing with the kids when the work got tedious). And, one moonless night, there was a delivery of some of Jesse's finest 'shine to the home address of the circuit judge. It wasn't a bribe, or even thanks. It was just the same delivery that had been made regularly for eighteen years.
Meanwhile, the state police went through Poison Ivy's half-decrepit moonshining shack on Black Ridge in search of more evidence. When they didn't find much of anything, they moved on to Ivy's home, down in the Chickasaw Valley. It was there, in the narrow confines of a cobwebby ranch house that had been in the Culpepper family for generations, that they came upon a few interesting items. Maps with parcels marked out, some roads highlighted and marks made where no official roads had ever been built. A crumbling, sepia photo of the Duke family of old, with dark-haired Jesse surrounded by his brothers. Newer pictures, in color but out of focus, of the present day Dukes, working their farm. Nothing any of them could remember having seen before or known were being taken.
In the shed off the back of the house, amongst scattered junk and the skeletal remains of at least one deceased automobile, there was a late-model motorcycle. Funny thing if it didn't have a few corn husks caught in its spokes. There was also plenty of kerosene and more than a few boxes of matches, but no proof that any of it was used on the Duke barn.
Then there was that last thing, found on a shelf thick with old relics of a time gone by: a small, lopsided and mostly-ugly box, overflowing with index cards of fading recipes from past generations of Dukes. Maybe the Cupepppers had stolen it with the faulty belief that one of the recipes would tell them how to make Duke moonshine.
Crying was one of those things Luke had never really understood. Last time he'd done it himself was soon after his folks died. Bo did it every now and then, when he got really frustrated and angry. Daisy did it a lot, but she was a girl and that made it okay. But seeing Jesse cry (and pretend he wasn't) after that recipe box got returned - well, that didn't make sense. Luke reckoned the best thing he could do was the same as Jesse: act like nothing of the sort had ever happened.
There was no way to understand the Culpepper family. They were dumb, they were vengeful, they were criminals who used what little resources they could pull together to steal from others, rather than scratching out any kind of living of their own. But their biggest problem, Luke figured, was that they weren't committed to anything at all, not even each other. A family that couldn't rely on its own was doomed from the start, and prison might just be the best place to keep them locked away from the rest of the world.
After all the finishing touches on the barn had been completed, the hound dogs retrieved and the livestock resettled (and then resettled again after Maudine broke through her stall door the first morning in her new digs), there was harvest of what little corn had survived the neglectful season. Bo had worked as hard as ever (which wasn't all that hard at all) and that went to prove that whatever injuries he'd sustained from the fire and the kidnapping were fully healed.
That was why, when the worst of the summer steam had finally left the air, Luke had proposed a long hunting trip. Bo was ready to handle it, and Luke figured it would do them both a bit of good to get away for a few days. To go off into the wilderness on their own and prove to themselves that the long summer hadn't done them any permanent harm. Ivy's trial, and that of the rest of her gang members, would likely take place in the fall and there'd be plenty of time for reliving bad memories then. For now, he and Bo needed to get away from it all, to go off into the woods where they could forget their manners and their careful upbringing and just be boys.
Which meant that, overall, things were relatively normal. Everything and everyone was fine. Everyone, that was, except for Daisy.
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.
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Twenty-six: Relative Normal (Amongst Abnormal Relatives)
August 3, 1974
It had to have been the most ridiculous rescue ever. Nothing like the movies, where the good guys showed up with their white hats and the might of right on their sides, and just plain decimated the black hats. What happened at the shack up on Black Ridge was a mess, just three inches short of disaster.
Not that Bo wasn't happy to be rescued. At least mostly, though he pretty well figured he could have handled things himself. He was just about untied and had the feeling back in most of his extremities by the time Aunt Ivy spotted Luke and sent her nephews out to capture themselves a second Duke.
Later, when the entire rescue party was perched in odd places around the Duke family farmyard, devouring Daisy's special fried chicken and taking turns telling Bo that he looked puny, Luke had been forced to admit that everything hadn't turned out exactly like it was supposed to. There had been some damn fool scheme that had Luke coming in through the hole in the roof over that side room. Which was dumb, because if the roof was already damaged, what made Luke think it would hold his weight? But there was no telling his cousin that - he would have said that he could have handled whatever happened.
That much was true. Luke was a Duke, and well practiced at improvising. Which was what they'd all had to do when the plan had crumbled to the ground faster than a pup tent in a windstorm.
Maybe it helped that what went on outside the cabin was sorely out of control. When Velma's husband, Bob - who might just have been the coward of the bunch - got sent outside to help Jeremy and Kevin, both the women spent more time hovering at the edges of the windows than they did watching Bo.
That had made it easy for him to throw the ropes off his hands and shoulders, to stand (to notice that the outside had gone from a whole lot of noise to a troubling near-silence) and to waddle over to where his knife had been unceremoniously dropped on the pitiful table. Intent only on cutting his feet free of the last bit of rope, but his movement caught Velma's eye. She turned to see him armed (with what was probably the dullest knife in three counties, by that point) and let out one hell of a scream. Bloodcurdling and loud, made Ivy duck low like she was avoiding a swarm of bats, and changed the dynamic outside the cabin, too.
Turned out he didn't need to saw through the ropes, anyway - they'd dropped off of their own accord as he'd shuffled along. By that time, Velma had scurried over to a brown, boxy case that was bigger than a briefcase but smaller than a suitcase, and had been stashed in a corner of the shack where Bo hadn't seen it until now. Velma caught it by the handle and started for the door. Ivy came partway out of her crouch and scuttled toward Velma. Tried to grab for the case, but Velma yanked it up in the air and held it over her head. Same trick Bo could pull on Luke, now that he was the taller one. Ivy was shameless, though - Luke would have stood there with his arms across his chest and glowered his distaste, but Ivy hopped up and down, grabbing at the air, as much as her older-lady legs would let her. Didn't work, made Velma smirk, so Ivy just grabbed onto one of her daughter's arms and pulled on it.
Velma - charming young lady that she was, planted a knee in her mother's solar plexus. Ivy's face collapsed with the desperate urge to breathe as she doubled over. Meanwhile, Velma turned, ran, then used that same knee to kick the door open, and sprinted through.
Ivy might have been his kidnapper, might have given the orders all down the line for every bad thing that had befallen the Dukes this summer, might have had it in for Jesse one way or another, and might even have been perfectly willing to kill Bo, but she was still a woman, and an older one at that. So he sheathed his knife, strode over to Ivy, grabbed hold of her bony arm and helped her find her feet. Patted her back until her mouth stopped gulping like a goldfish's and she sucked in a deep breath of air. After that, it didn't take a whole lot of effort to keep hold of her and escort her out of the shack.
And right into the middle of Luke's lame-brained rescue, which had degenerated into a melee. Rosco was babbling at a man that Bo had never seen before and Daisy was in the dust with Velma, money floating around her head as if her world had been tipped like one of those snow-globes. J.D. Hogg was a stuck pig, squealing about the dollar bills flying in the breeze, and Luke was at the bottom of a pushing, shoving, punching dogpile that included Kevin, Jeremy and Cooter. Jesse was there with his shotgun in hand, right on the verge of yelling at someone or everyone all at once. Probably getting ready to threaten whippings for the whole bunch.
But the Dukes and their friends had won this thing, and it wasn't too long before the ridiculous rescue turned into an even more ridiculous arrest scene. More suspects than handcuffs, Rosco spitting and sputtering, Enos squeaking and J.D. Hogg blustering while the bad guys blamed each other for their current predicament, and somewhere in there, Luke had made his way across the dusty clearing. He'd grabbed Bo by the shoulders and stared at him, too hard and too long until the blue of his eyes shimmered wetly. It was almost more than Bo could stand to look back into, and then he'd been pulled into a hug. Bone and muscle, rough, because despite all of Jesse's efforts, Luke never had quite figured out how to be gentle. But it was warm and welcome all the same. Even if, when it was done, blood from Luke's split lip had left an ugly blood stain on Bo's already filthy shirt.
One cousin moved away, and the other filled the space, offering up a squeeze that was only half of what she was capable of. Maybe Daisy was taking it easy on him. Didn't matter, because Jesse was there to encircle him in a bear hug that would have broken a weaker man's bones.
And then the oldster set to lecturing Aunt Ivy - who was also Poison Ivy from Jesse's old-time moonshining stories, as well as being I. Young, the librarian (and that was a lot of things to be all at once) - about just how disappointed he was in her. Here she'd had a second chance at living a good, respectable life and she'd thrown it all away, and for what? Ivy didn't have any answers, didn't even look at Jesse. Just spent all her time glowering at Molly, whose hands were on her hips, elbows jutted proudly out to the side.
The rope that had bound Bo's wrists and ankles for the better part of a day got re-purposed to turn the whole mess of crooks into a makeshift chain gang with the two sets of handcuffs shared amongst the four men. The cash that hadn't blown off to parts unknown was collected out of the soft dirt - J.D. Hogg squirmed to get involved in that, but Jesse held him back - and Ivy's family and friends were herded slowly down a steep path to the bottom of the hill, with Rosco pointing his service revolver at them all the way. The bed of the Duke patriarch's pickup was deemed the best means to get the crooks back to town, so Jesse drove and Rosco and Enos rode in the back with the prisoners.
That left the rest of them to get the fleet of cars that had been driven up here out of the slender pull-off they'd been parked in, but Bo was forbidden from driving any of them. Which had left him riding back down into Hazzard in Tilly, with Luke behind the wheel.
The two of them had somewhere verging on a million questions to ask each other, but then again, Bo fell asleep before the first one could even get out of his mouth. By the time he woke up again, Tilly was parked in the farmyard, and Luke was shaking his shoulder with all the regret in the world.
"Come on, cousin, get up. You're too heavy to carry."
His pride was glad to hear that, because Daisy and Alice and Molly and Cooter were piling out of cars all around them (including Enos' daddy's sedan and Rosco's mama's heavy old beast, which meant the law would have to come back here before the day was through) and there would have been no living it down if any of them had seen Luke hauling him out of the car like an oversized child. Bo gave his head a quick shake and shoved against the dead weight of Tilly's door to join everyone else in the farmyard.
Molly was a black spot in an otherwise beautiful afternoon, sulking loudly over how Jesse could ever suspect her of wrongdoing. Daisy fixed that like only a woman would: she said she felt like cooking. Not just cooking, but cooking. Molly asked what they had at the house and it turned into a discussion of what a shame, no crawdads for bisque, but we've got chicken. That was enough to get the whole gang inside the house, in the kitchen and conspiring together, Cooter licking his chops at the prospect of food that didn't come out of a can. Alice settled in with Daisy and Molly, but only because she couldn't follow Bo and Luke into their bedroom. Jesse had rules about that, even if he wasn't here to enforce them.
Behind closed doors, Luke checked him over carefully, assessing injuries, tsking over rope burns and bruises, especially the one on his hand. Wasn't too thrilled over the bump and cut on Bo's head from where he'd been knocked cold with a branch or a rock. Bo wasn't exactly happy about Luke's bloodied nose and split lip, either, but his worries got lost in another hug, then Luke sent him off for a shower.
"Happy birthday," followed him down the hall, and even if he was tired and sore and maybe just a little sick of Luke's overprotective ways, he smiled.
And figured he might as well use up all the hot water in the house because no one would deny him the opportunity to spend as long as he wanted washing away the filth of the last twenty-four hours. Not today.
His feet were dragging when he made it back to the kitchen, cleaner and achingly aware of all the ways his body had been abused. He had every intention of insisting that he wanted to go out with Luke and Daisy tonight to celebrate his birthday at the Boar's Nest all the same, but got distracted by the smell of fried chicken. Daisy said that most of the food was ready enough to eat, so he helped carry it outside, where far too many people were crowded around the picnic table. Jesse had returned from town with Rosco and Enos in tow. Someone was clever enough to have gotten paper plates and plastic cups from somewhere; must have known that the Dukes didn't have enough dishes to serve this many people. (Heck, they'd been stretching it to have Alice and Molly at their table the last few weeks. Someone had to use the chipped plate at every meal.) There was chicken and potato salad and some kind of noodle thing, corn on the cob and somehow a watermelon had showed up - "Just to tide you over until the cobbler is ready," Daisy said - and lemonade that would be too sour once they got to dessert.
They settled around the farmyard as best they could - Jesse, Molly and Rosco Coltrane at the picnic table, because they were older or just plain fussier, Daisy sitting low on the porch steps with Cooter close by. Enos was a notable distance away, leaning against a post and balancing his meal in one hand while eating with the other. Bo and Luke pulled down the tailgate of Jesse pickup, and Alice joined them in sitting there. On the far side of Luke, because Bo wasn't anyone's fool. He'd sat at one of the ends.
"What I want to know," Luke was saying, but his mouth was half full, and he got one chubby, rheumatic finger pointed across the farmyard at him for the infraction. Swallowed, and picked up right where he'd left off. "Is what J.D. Hogg had to do with all of this."
"He says he didn't know what was going to happen," Rosco jumped in.
"I know what he says, but what did he do?"
"That guy, the one who had him at gunpoint, that was Clem Clemmons. Maybe you heard of him." That was Enos, who'd been mostly quiet. Now he was talking fast and gesturing with his plastic fork, which was sending bits of potato in a small radius around him. Apparently Clem Clemmons was important, somehow. To Enos, anyway. "He's-"
"Hush, Enos," Rosco scolded. "That's an ongoing investigation. These here civilians don't need to hear about it."
"I reckon they're more than just civilians," Enos countered bravely, but in that unfailingly polite and almost apologetic way only he could pull off. "They're victims. At least the Dukes are. And the rest of them are witnesses. Besides, wouldn't none of you go repeating nothing I say in public, would you?"
They offered up their assurances, and Rosco gestured his permission, or maybe just his disavowal of all knowledge of whatever followed.
"Clem Clemmons is a big-time counterfeiter from over in Hatchapee," Enos explained. Rosco mumbled something that disputed exactly how big time Clemmons really was. "And he was also in love with Ivy Young. Now, when she got out of prison a bunch of months back, she figured she would get revenge on you Dukes - and Molly there, too - for how you got her arrested back when you all was competitors. She wanted to put y'all out of business,"
"What does this have to do with J.D. Hogg?" Luke demanded. Old grumpy hadn't gotten any sleep at all last night. Which was his own scheming fault.
"Well, Ivy wanted y'all out of business and J.D. Hogg did, too. He swears up and down that all he had in mind was to scare y'all a bit. He didn't want nothing bad to happen to you, Bo."
"So basically, this Clemmons guy helped Ivy, what? Burn down our barn? Try to run us off the road at night?" While they were on a moonshine delivery, but Luke would never say that part out loud. "And that money in that suitcase thing, it wasn't real?"
"Oh, it was real," Rosco answered with a hard edged chuckle. "And now it's evidence."
"But we ain't sure what it was used for," Enos said. "All them people from Ivy's gang, they're on their way to Atlanta. The state police got a few questions for them."
"What about J.D. Hogg?" Bo asked, snatching a wing off Luke's plate. Got a mean little look in return. That'd teach Luke about priorities when it came to food and interrogating the law. Poor wing had been sadly neglected and now it was justifiably Bo's. That, or Luke wasn't going to fight him for it when he knew Bo had gone without food for far too long. "Don't they got a few questions for him?"
"No they ain't," Rosco said with a strange little giggle. One that didn't sound stupid or happy or like his usual nonsense. It was almost smug, with a dash of bitterness. "Not since he let them take all that money as evidence instead of trying to keep it for himself."
"Clem Clemmons, he was more into forging bonds and stocks and stuff," Enos said. "Not actual cash money. But he was wanted and I knew who he was right away when he showed up at Miss Ivy's cabin." Proud little smile that elicited something close to a harrumph from Rosco. "Because he was on a bunch of wanted posters back at the office. And I studied those real good, just like the sheriff told me."
"That's right!" A smirk bloomed up on Rosco's face. Like he really planned to take credit, but that was fine. Enos' echoing grin showed that he was perfectly willing to give it to him. "I did! I really trained that boy right."
Cooter reached around Daisy - who was doing a real good job of picking her chicken apart, studying every piece and not really eating anything at all - to give Enos a congratulatory slap on the ankle. Since that was as far as his arm would reach and all.
"So Ivy wanted us out of business," Luke recounted. "And she had a whole mess of mostly family helping her. They infiltrated all these businesses in Hazzard to watch us so they knew when they could get to us. And at the same time, J.D. wanted our land so, what? He paid Ivy to do what she already wanted to do anyway?"
"Now, Luke, we don't know that for sure," Jesse interrupted, pointing his plastic fork in their direction.
"Of course you don't," Rosco jumped in. "Especially since he let the money go as evidence."
"And then," Luke said, ignoring both objections as if they were silly. (And they were, except for how it wasn't smart to dismiss Jesse or Rosco like that.) "When we tried to catch them in the act, the kidnapped Bo. But why?"
Blank looks all around, until Bo filled it in for them.
"Even they didn't know that. Seems like them two boys thought it was a good idea at the time, but Ivy, she didn't want nothing to do with me. Back when we was up on that hill, she yelled 'Get 'im,' but she didn't mean she wanted me caught. Just beat up or something. Once they got me down that hill, I guess she figured they couldn't just leave me there, so they took me up to her shack." She'd wanted something to do with Uncle Jesse though, and it wasn't just to put him out of business. Clem Clemmons may have been in love with Ivy, but Ivy was carrying some kind of a warped torch for Jesse. "And once they had me, they figured they'd have to kill me. Which was why I had to get out of them ropes."
Luke put his plate down on the tailgate, then shuffled a bit until he was close enough that his shoulder rubbed against Bo's. It was just about as close to admitting that he was upset by the news as Luke would get.
"Anyway," Jesse said, dropping his fork and having a quick little fight with the picnic table until he could get to his feet. Wiping his hands on his overalls and waddling over to the tail of the truck. "We're all together again. In one piece and no real harm come to any of us." One of his meaty hands came up to rest on Bo's shoulder. A deep look into his eyes, and quick pat. "And I reckon the main thing is that we're all thankful for that."
Amen.
"I'm thankful that them boys didn't hurt you none," Cooter piped up while Jesse made his way back toward the table. "I don't reckon my daddy would have hired them if he'd had the first idea what kind of trouble they were."
"I'm just thankful you wasn't hurt, Bo," Alice added and tried to shuffle closer to both him and Luke, but mostly she just succeeded in making the truck rock back and forth a lot.
Luke smirked and mumbled, "I'm just thankful that Molly and Alice can go home now." Low enough that no one else could make out the words. Might have been fine, except for how Bo laughed.
Daisy's eyebrow went up in confusion, Cooter laughed too, even if he didn't know why. Enos looked down at Daisy, Rosco made some fool noise, Luke snorted and Jesse looked murderous.
In all, everything was pretty much normal.
September 18, 1974
But normal was relative. The barn still had to be rebuilt, the whiskey business jumpstarted and set back on track. Meanwhile there were police statements to be made for Rosco and later for the state police, who had a few questions of their own. Jesse and J.D. Hogg had to make some kind of peace between them. And then there was Molly and Alice to consider.
But first, before any of that, there was Bo's belated birthday to celebrate. It waited a day because Bo could smile, he could picnic with family and friends and talk about what had happened like it was nothing at all, but he was tired. Exhausted and hurt, even if he didn't want to say much about that part. His hand was bruised and swollen, he had cuts and welts on his arms, legs and torso from fighting and falling, he had an ugly bump on his head and rope burns on his wrists and ankles. All the protests in the world didn't add up to a hill of beans when Luke prodded him to bed before sunset, and he fell asleep mid-complaint.
And it wasn't any surprise that he didn't make it out for chores the next morning, either, especially since Luke decided against waking him. Then he missed church, but all of the Dukes did. Alice and Molly went, though, at Jesse's insistence.
But Bo wasn't about to take wait-until-you're-fully-healed (with-no-ugly-reminders-of-how-I-failed-to-keep-you-safe) for an answer, so come the night after his birthday, Luke agreed to take him out for a legal beer or two. Daisy tried to stay behind, on the excuse of leaving them to their celebrating, but Bo pouted until she relented.
Daisy sat mostly quietly to one side and watched the people come and go through the main door. Luke sat less quietly on the other side and watched Bo for any signs of fatigue. Bo smiled and drank and got fawned over by one girl after another until finally one of them dragged him out into the middle of the floor to dance. He stayed out there long enough to spend a little time with every girl that wanted him to. He was, despite all that had happened and what he'd been through, fine.
The next day, Molly said it was time she and Alice got back to the swamp. They'd been gone for nearly a month, so they weren't sure what kind of condition they'd find the old house in. Maybe one of Molly's nephews would have kept an eye on it and maybe not - which was why she prevailed upon Jesse to go back with them. Plus, there was Jesse's abiding guilt over briefly suspecting Molly of dishonesty. Yeah, Molly would milk that cow for another twenty years, at least.
Daisy went along to the swamp, too. Luke mumbled to Bo that she was going because she'd miss her roommates when they were gone, and the look that came back at him accused him of being crazy or sick or both. Bo said it had nothing to do with Alice and Molly and everything to do with needing to get away for a while. Luke just shrugged, because it didn't matter why Daisy was going with the rest of them. The only important thing was that Jesse said they'd be staying out in the swamp for a few days to get Molly settled. And that he'd call them every day, just so they'd know he hadn't been swallowed whole by an alligator or taken permanent prisoner by Molly.
Which left Luke and Bo to a few days of laziness. Until the third morning after Jesse left, when Bo got tired of being shooed away from the chores and being watched for signs that he was hurt worse than he was letting on, and tackled Luke to the hard ground of the farmyard. The wrestling match that followed left their clothes exactly the kind of disaster that would give Daisy weeks of nagging rights. Luke let Bo win the wrestling match out of the goodness of his heart. That was his story and he was sticking to it.
When Jesse and Daisy got back, the real work began. Bo and Luke knocked together a frame, and the word went out in church about a barn raising at the Duke farm. By Monday night the new barn stood next to the old farmhouse, and by Wednesday afternoon, the whole farm smelled of sawdust and fresh paint. Most of what had been stored in the old barn was long turned to ash, but folks brought by what they could. Heavily worn tools, threadbare horse blankets, buckets with welded patches, because that was what they could spare and it was fine. None of it was any worse off than what the Dukes had before the fire, anyway.
No one could replace what was really lost, the deeds and artifacts of Aunt Lavinia's heritage, mainly because no one other than the Dukes knew they were missing. And that was the way the family wanted to keep it. After all, guilty feelings and J.D. Hogg weren't exactly long-term friends and eventually he'd be trying to buy or steal Duke land again. No telling why he'd been poking around for information about the parcels on Bald Hill, whether it was part of his partnership with Ivy or just coincidence. But since the land had never been on the tax rolls, it was for the best that no one could prove the Dukes' ownership one way or the other. A new still site was selected in a hidden cove around the Chattahoochee Creek, and the works was moved under the cover of darkness, one heavy piece at a time. Lavinia's land was left to grow over as wild as it wanted to.
In the meantime, old J.D. had become twice as dangerous. The frantic electioneering for County Commissioner had started within days of Bo's rescue, and funny if old J.D. didn't tell the story in a very interesting way that left him looking awfully heroic. Efforts to correct his story only led to him talking louder, faster, spinning ever bigger yarns. Jesse said it didn't matter, that the county wouldn't believe such wild tales anyway. That everyone in Hazzard knew better.
Jesse was wrong. When the votes had been counted, J.D. Hogg had been elected the new Commissioner of Hazzard by a landslide. In other news, while there would now be money to pay both Rosco and Enos a reasonably fair wage, the sheriff's pension had been deemed more expense than the financially strapped county was willing to bear. And both of these changes would take effect on October first.
That left Rosco with the decision about whether to retire right now and take whatever was in his pension fund as consolation, or hang on and hope that the money would be reinstated one day. He announced his choice to stay put, claiming it was because he couldn't unleash a half-trained Enos on the county. Jesse said Rosco was staying because being a lawman was the only thing in his life that he had ever truly loved, Bessie Mae Wilkins aside. Luke figured Rosco kept the job because he'd taken a shine to the man who would be his new boss. It was almost cute how he followed the Commissioner-elect around like a hungry puppy after a meatless, pitiful bone.
The sheriff thought he had himself a little feather in his cap when it came time to officially arraign those dastardly Duke boys for spending a particular sweltering, July night wandering around the Courthouse. Judge Druten showed some leniency when he learned that Bo was technically a minor at the time of the incident, and that entry to the building had been gained through an unlocked window of the sheriff's office. There was a small fine and a couple of days of community service spent rebuilding the staircase at the orphanage (and playing with the kids when the work got tedious). And, one moonless night, there was a delivery of some of Jesse's finest 'shine to the home address of the circuit judge. It wasn't a bribe, or even thanks. It was just the same delivery that had been made regularly for eighteen years.
Meanwhile, the state police went through Poison Ivy's half-decrepit moonshining shack on Black Ridge in search of more evidence. When they didn't find much of anything, they moved on to Ivy's home, down in the Chickasaw Valley. It was there, in the narrow confines of a cobwebby ranch house that had been in the Culpepper family for generations, that they came upon a few interesting items. Maps with parcels marked out, some roads highlighted and marks made where no official roads had ever been built. A crumbling, sepia photo of the Duke family of old, with dark-haired Jesse surrounded by his brothers. Newer pictures, in color but out of focus, of the present day Dukes, working their farm. Nothing any of them could remember having seen before or known were being taken.
In the shed off the back of the house, amongst scattered junk and the skeletal remains of at least one deceased automobile, there was a late-model motorcycle. Funny thing if it didn't have a few corn husks caught in its spokes. There was also plenty of kerosene and more than a few boxes of matches, but no proof that any of it was used on the Duke barn.
Then there was that last thing, found on a shelf thick with old relics of a time gone by: a small, lopsided and mostly-ugly box, overflowing with index cards of fading recipes from past generations of Dukes. Maybe the Cupepppers had stolen it with the faulty belief that one of the recipes would tell them how to make Duke moonshine.
Crying was one of those things Luke had never really understood. Last time he'd done it himself was soon after his folks died. Bo did it every now and then, when he got really frustrated and angry. Daisy did it a lot, but she was a girl and that made it okay. But seeing Jesse cry (and pretend he wasn't) after that recipe box got returned - well, that didn't make sense. Luke reckoned the best thing he could do was the same as Jesse: act like nothing of the sort had ever happened.
There was no way to understand the Culpepper family. They were dumb, they were vengeful, they were criminals who used what little resources they could pull together to steal from others, rather than scratching out any kind of living of their own. But their biggest problem, Luke figured, was that they weren't committed to anything at all, not even each other. A family that couldn't rely on its own was doomed from the start, and prison might just be the best place to keep them locked away from the rest of the world.
After all the finishing touches on the barn had been completed, the hound dogs retrieved and the livestock resettled (and then resettled again after Maudine broke through her stall door the first morning in her new digs), there was harvest of what little corn had survived the neglectful season. Bo had worked as hard as ever (which wasn't all that hard at all) and that went to prove that whatever injuries he'd sustained from the fire and the kidnapping were fully healed.
That was why, when the worst of the summer steam had finally left the air, Luke had proposed a long hunting trip. Bo was ready to handle it, and Luke figured it would do them both a bit of good to get away for a few days. To go off into the wilderness on their own and prove to themselves that the long summer hadn't done them any permanent harm. Ivy's trial, and that of the rest of her gang members, would likely take place in the fall and there'd be plenty of time for reliving bad memories then. For now, he and Bo needed to get away from it all, to go off into the woods where they could forget their manners and their careful upbringing and just be boys.
Which meant that, overall, things were relatively normal. Everything and everyone was fine. Everyone, that was, except for Daisy.