Author's note: Hi all! I haven't had much time for writing, what with relocating and the changes it brings. But I did manage to squeeze off this one-shot on my lunch hours. I hope you enjoy it. It'll be awhile before I can write anything substantial again.

Disclaimer: I do not own the Dukes or Boss Hogg, the settings, or the even mortgage (and if they can never pay it off, I sure as heck can't!). Japheth Flynn, however, is mine. Please ask if you ever want to borrow him.

"Bo! You can just slow down now," his uncle scolded from the shotgun seat. "We ain't in such a hurry.

"Aw, Uncle Jesse, it ain't like we're near a speed trap or nothin'. An' anyways, we know Rosco's in town keepin' the peace at the 4-H Club Fair."

"Yeah, Jesse," Luke piped up from the back seat where he and Daisy were enjoying a rather bumpy ride. It was a game that all three cousins had played since childhood: bouncing around in the back seat, intentionally bumping and squeezing one another in the process. "Wouldn't it be nice to get the mortgage payment to the bank early for a change?"

"Nope," Jesse answered, without elaborating in the least.

Bo regarded his uncle with surprise, staring until the older man snapped at him to watch the road.

The boys both knew from experience that if they questioned their uncle, things would go sour very quickly, so Luke elbowed Daisy, silently prompting his female cousin. If anyone could discover Jesse's motivations, it would be her.

"Uncle Jesse," his niece began sweetly, while she glared at her oldest cousin. Luke was always amazed that she could do that: charm one person while simultaneously shaming another. "Why wouldn't we want to get the mortgage money in early? I mean, it ain't like we'd be gettin' it there a week in advance or nothin'. Maybe more like an hour."

"It don't matter if it's an hour or a day, we don't need to get that mortgage money in even a second early."

In the face of such unexplained logic, Bo just couldn't hold his tongue any longer. "But why, Uncle Jesse? It just don't make no sense!"

"Well, now, not everything you boys do makes sense to me neither," Jesse's voice rose in annoyance. "But you do it anyway, an' then you call me and say, 'Uncle Jesse, come to town and bring bail money.'"

Bo caught Luke's eye in the rearview mirror. His elder cousin smirked, but Bo, being so close to the Duke patriarch, didn't dare.

"You boys go lookin' for Rosco all the time, just to rile him up and get him to chase you. Then you dump him in the drink somewheres or lose him in a ditch, and sometimes, fools that you are, you actually get caught. An' later I'll ask you boys, 'Why did you do that?' And you'll say, 'Oh, Uncle Jesse, it's just Rosco,' or some such fool thing. And do I ask you to explain yourselves any more than that?"

"Well, yeah, Jesse, you do," Luke answered without thinking, though he didn't regret it. It was true, and honesty was something his uncle had always been strict about. Besides, Bo immediately backed him up with a "Yeah, Jesse," of his own.

Daisy, now curious in her own right, tried her charms again. "Uncle Jesse, every month we wait until the last minute, then we all pile into one car or another and we race like crazy to get the mortgage payment in at 2:59 PM on the last day of the month. We barely make it before the bank closes, an' Boss is always sittin' there trying to say it's already too late. So it we could avoid all that an' get the money in a little early, why wouldn't we?"

The minute it became clear that Jesse had no intention of answering the question, Luke began his own analysis. "I think you're onto somethin' there, Daisy. It's got somethin' to do with J. D. Hogg, don't it, Jesse." It wasn't a question.

The old man's eyes twinkled. He supposed he'd teased his kids long enough. They were old enough to understand his motivations now, and odds were, they'd agree with his logic. But even if they didn't, the tradition would continue. His charges knew better than to try to change his mind.

"Well, you know that J. D. and me wasn't always at odds. In fact, we was friends once."

Bo, Luke and Daisy all got as comfortable as they could within the confines of the General Lee. When their uncle warmed up to telling a story, they knew to expect a veritable tome of information. Besides, although they'd heard some of this history before, none of them could imagine their uncle and the county commissioner on the same side of anything.

"Well, me and J. D., we used to run moonshine together for awhile. We each brewed our own, but when the time came to deliver it, we'd work together, each in our own cars – run interference for each other, you know. An' ol' J. D., he was a good partner for that. Brazen as the day is long. He'd even challenge Sheriff Loomis over in Hatchapee to a game of chicken so's I could slide by on the side. Then I'd swing back and play a little bit of bumper tag so's J. D. could shake loose. An' between the two of us, we'd drive that poor old sheriff clean off the road." Jesse laughed, lost in his memories. "We didn't have CB's in them days, you know. You kids don't know how good you got it."

Once again, Bo caught his cousins' eyes in the rearview mirror, and just like last time, he found himself unable to return their mirthful looks. Sometimes he resented the fact that Luke didn't insist on driving more. With Jesse riding shotgun, the blonde couldn't have any fun.

"Anyway, this one time, ol' Loomis was right up on J. D.'s tail, ridin' him somethin' fierce. This was up on Cedar Cliff Road, you know, where there's all them boulders, so you can't just go cross-country when you're in trouble. J. D. had no choice but to try and outrun him. An' he didn't know where I was, or that I had pulled off into a little clearing ahead. He went flyin' by me, his mouth workin' like crazy. I couldn't hear what he's sayin', but I could tell he was a-cussin' me up an' down.

"Anyway, after J. D. passed me, I cut off Sheriff Loomis and sent him into the ditch. J. D. made that delivery just fine. But after that, he started referrin' to me as 'the late Jesse Duke,' all the time, claimin' he did so because I was late in bailin' him out up there on High Ridge Road."

"The late Jesse Duke?" Bo said quietly, finding that the words actually hurt his tongue on the way out.

"Well, I didn't like it neither, but I didn't let on. Ol' J. D., if he knows somethin' bothers you, he'll keep on doin' it. An' he said it was just a joke, so I tried to treat it like one. An' some of the other Ridge Runners liked the name, so they started callin' me that, too.

"Then one day I went out to visit one of my regular customers who hadn't ordered from me in a while. Old Japheth Flynn had been gettin' Duke 'shine since my granddaddy's time, and suddenly it seemed like too long since I'd heard from him. So I went to see him and make sure he was well. When I turned into the drive I could see that J. D.'s old car, the Grey Ghost, was already there. So I pulled off into some bushes and walked towards the house to see if I could find out what J. D. was up to.

"I found J. D. talkin' to Japheth in the back yard, his hat over his heart an' askin' if the old man had heard the sad news about the poor late Jesse Duke, an' offerin' to service ol' Japheth now that Jesse Duke was… late."

"That Boss Hogg! What a rat!" Daisy exclaimed.

"I hope you beat the tar out of him, Uncle Jesse," Bo snarled, his flashing eyes indicating that he'd really like to be doing such a thing right now himself.

"Oh, I went you one better'n that, Bo."

"Better than decking him? How could you beat that, Jesse?" Luke asked.

"Well, now, he was flattened, just not by my fist. You see, I figured that if I was 'late' then I was capable of haunting J. D. So I hit behind an old live oak and started whistling, real quiet and eerie." Jesse demonstrated with a low wavering tone that set all three of his kids' teeth on edge. "Ol' Japheth, he was half deaf, so he didn't know what J. D. was talking about when he asked about the noise.

" 'What noise? I don't hear no noise, Jefferson.'

" 'That infernal whistling sound. Can't you hear it?'

" 'Ain't nothin' whistlin', Jefferson.'

"Ol' J. D., he just kept lookin' around for that noise. So then I started moanin', you know, like an old tree in the winter wind. An' ol' J. D., he starts lookin' around every which way to see what's makin' that noise. Japheth, he still don't hear it, so he snaps at J. D.:

" 'Jefferson, stand still. Didn't your momma teach you no manners at all?'

"Now, J. D. was very attached to his momma, and we Ridge Runners used to tease him about that, so he was kinda sensitive, you know. Well, he stands still like ol' Japheth told him to. So I hadda change the moan to sort of sound like it was the wind callin' him: 'J… D… Hogg…'

"Now J. D. was always a schemer, but he wasn't always crooked. In fact, when he's a kid, he's more like Luke there…"

Finally it was Bo's turn to laugh, and he did so loudly and without any thought of sparing his cousin the totality of his amusement.

"Whaddya mean, Jesse?" Luke snapped as Daisy joined in the general merriment.

"Don't get your back up, now, Luke. Whether you like it or not, you and J. D. have a lot in common. You're both always plottin' somethin'. It's just that you're always helpin' others while J. D. is just helpin' hisself."

Luke didn't seem mollified in the least, but Jesse went on with his story anyway. He couldn't help it if the boy was going to sulk. In fact, that behavior was just something else that his oldest nephew and his one-time friend had in common.

"Anyway, J. D. wasn't always so crooked. Oh, he was never completely straight, mind you, but when he's younger, there was one man that kept him behavin' and that was his grandpappy. And J. D.'s grandpappy had died the year before this whole thing with ol' Japheth Flynn.

"So I moaned, 'J… D… Hogg… I'm… ashamed… of… you…' in my best imitation of J. D.'s grandpappy's voice, which weren't very good, but that didn't matter none. By that time ol' J. D. was so spooked he's ready to believe anything. He starts lookin' around and up and down, tryin' to figure out what's goin' on. An' Japheth, he don't like younguns all that much to begin with, much less ones that don't seem to have any manners. The only reason he tolerated me was that my daddy had always served him before and my momma brought me up right," Jesse paused to give each of his nephews a stern glance. He'd raised them well, but with those boys, constant reminders were always in order. Daisy didn't need quite so much attention in that regard.

"We know, Uncle Jesse, and you passed everything she taught you on to us," Bo assured him. Luke was still stewing and didn't say a word.

"Right. Well, ol' Japheth, he'd had enough of J. D.'s fidgeting, so he stepped up to his porch and got out his shotgun. We used to have a sayin' back then: 'The only thing ornerier than a revenuer is a customer,' and that was definitely the case with Japheth Flynn.

" 'Jefferson Davis Hogg,' he said, pointin' the gun at ol' J. D., 'you get out of here right now before I fix it so you never leave.' And for good measure, he pointed the butt of the gun towards the Flynn family cemetery, just up the hill from where he and J. D. was standin'. Between that an' the 'ghost' of his grandpappy, J. D. figured he'd better get out of there right quick.

"Well, even then J. D. weren't no track star, if you know what I mean," Jesse paused while his kids chuckled, even Luke. Jesse had known his oldest wouldn't stay upset for long; that boy had long since outgrown the worst of his temper. "Oh, J. D. was motivated, but he just wasn't capable. Seemed like he couldn't get all of his body movin' in the same direction. Add to that the fact that it had rained the night before, turnin' ol' Japheth's yard into a mud slick, and you can just imagine how fast J. D.'s white suit turned brown after his feet went out from under him and he landed flat on his back. I laughed so hard that even ol' Japheth could hear me, so I came out from behind that tree an' explained to him that despite what J. D. had told him, I sure wasn't late, at least not in the sense that he'd been led to think. Good thing he had a strong heart; until he saw me, I think he really believed the part about me havin' gone to the great beyond. Right then, Japheth Flynn swore that he'd never drink a drop of 'shine that Jefferson Davis Hogg had run, an' he never did, 'til he died some ten years later."

Jesse sat back in his seat, blue eyes glowing with the memory. It had all been so funny that he hadn't even stayed mad at Hogg for very long. He knew he should have learned his lesson from that betrayal by his old friend, but he was raised to be a forgiving man. It would be a number of years later before he and the man in white would part ways on a permanent basis.

The old man was brought back to the present by the voice of his blonde nephew.

"Uh, Uncle Jesse? That was a good story and all, but what does it have to do with the mortgage?"

"Don't rush me now, I's just gettin' to that part," Jesse blustered, hiding the fact that he'd become so engrossed in his own story that he'd forgotten why he was telling it.

"I didn't like bein' called 'the late Jesse Duke' none, but those Ridge Runners, well, they's like you boys. If'n they found a way to annoy you, they just kept at it an' never quit. So they just kept on callin' me that, an' I told ol' J. D. that I was never gonna be on time for nothin' to do with him again. If I was stuck bein' the late Jesse Duke, I'd be late for everythin'. Now, we can't be late with the mortgage payment, but we can keep him waitin' to the last second."

"But Jesse, if he knows we're not comin' until 2:59 on the last day of the month, he can try to keep us from payin," Luke reasoned.

"Oh, I know that, son. An' that's part of the fun – watchin' to see what wild scheme J. D. will come up with next, and then foilin' it. He never gets us, but he never stops tryin' neither."

"But it means that Rosco's always sittin' up there somewheres along Old Mill Road, waitin' to trap me and Luke on some trumped up charge, just so's we can't get to the bank on time," Bo complained.

Jesse grinned. "That's the best part of all," he said. He watched his boys catch one another's eyes in the mirror, trying to decide whether to be angry at their uncle for knowingly sending them into the lion's den each month. Just as Luke opened his mouth to protest, Jesse finished his thought.

"I'm an old man now, an' I ain't got much to look forward to anymore. Except once a month I can count on the two of you makin' mincemeat out of another sheriff's car. You wouldn't begrudge an old man his one pleasure in life, would you?"

While Luke and Daisy laughed in the back, Bo put his foot down on the accelerator and aimed for the slight rise on the bank of Hazzard Creek. He figured he owed his uncle a thrill to go with that monthly pleasure.

"Bo!"