Three: Swords in his Gizzard

July 1, 1974

"Daisy? Daisy Duke, what a surprise. What are you doing here?" Too loud, too excited. But then again, it was just about everything she wanted to hear as she walked through the musty stacks of the Hazzard Free Library.

"Hi, Enos!" she greeted, her excitement breaking out like a spontaneous case of measles on her flushed face.

The echo of a cleared throat made its way through high shelves of old books.

She lowered her voice. "How are you?"

"Oh, I'm just fine," he offered back, with those perfect manners she so admired (and figured her cousins would never learn). "You sure do look cute in that little dress." And then lost her appreciation with nine short words.

Or maybe only three. Cute; little dress. As though she were eight and playing dress up in Aunt Lavinia's too-long frocks and clunky shoes. Outdated and loose in all the wrong places. Maybe that was what she looked like to him, and maybe it made sense. She'd worn this same dress through most of high school, and it had been her best, but she wasn't a schoolgirl anymore.

"I came to inquire about a job," she explained, standing up taller. Using words from her schooling, spoken by English teachers who no one ever mistook for being cute or little. "Here in the library. After all, I am through with school now." And the family could use her help, she figured. What with the lost income from her cousins' failed moonshine run earlier in the week, and how Jesse said it sounded like competitors, not revenuers, that had been chasing the boys. Which meant that they'd have to figure out a few things, maybe change their running route and switch up nights, maybe use another car and run a decoy and—

All of that would take time. Days or maybe weeks unpaid and she had ambitions, anyway. To do more than run moonshine, to write poetry and music and stories and a library would be a perfect place to work. To watch people come and go and to read when there was no one around.

"That's great, Daisy! You graduated?" All grins and happier for her than she could even manage to be for herself. How could she stay mad at him? Besides, it wasn't his fault that she wasn't anything more than cute. "Congratulations! I hope you get the job."

Yeah, well. The librarian, who was a different one than the lady that ran the place a few months back during term paper season, had been very nice. Quite friendly and almost maternal. Had been encouraging in a general sort of way, but had informed her that there were no county funds for any new library staff. It was just her (I. Young, the nameplate on her desk said, though she was anything but young) on weekdays and Maybelle Tillingham on Saturdays, and there just wasn't a penny to be spared for another person to work there. She'd tsked about things she couldn't change, then asked if Daisy was related to Jesse Duke. Got that dreamy look that all the widows in Hazzard always had when she learned that he was Daisy's uncle. Told her to give him her best, then sent Daisy on her way.

And it was the urge to look at the stacks of newspapers for any help-wanted ads that had led Daisy to finding Enos at one of the big tables, thick, mildew-smelling books with serious gray covers opened here and there around him.

"What are you doing here?" she finally recovered herself enough to ask. There she was, taking insult at what were at worst fumbled compliments, and she'd totally forgotten to even be halfway friendly back to him.

"Studying." But somehow, this new, grown up Enos Strate could do that to her. Could make her feel one way and act another, could excite her and anger her and confuse her—

Studying? "You ain't in school no more, neither," she asked, all those English classes with their proper grammar fading away from her memory again. "Are you?"

Something close to a full out cough sounded from the front desk.

"No, I'm studying the law." But clearly Enos hadn't heard the cough or hadn't understood what it meant, because he was still speaking at full volume in that quick, excited way he had. Eyebrows up and just as thrilled as could be to tell her all about it.

Daisy started to pull out a chair, figuring that maybe if she sat they'd be a little closer. He could talk quieter and she could get a better look at his eyes. And his shoulders under the brown checks of his shirt, and the muscles where his forearms stuck out of the rolled-up sleeves. But the chair was heavy and scraped loudly on the linoleum flooring. Enos hopped up—

"Allow me," he said in full voice, and a tapping came from the front of the library, like a judge with a gavel.

It was all ridiculous from there on, how Enos stepped heavily onto the big toe that stuck out of her sandals, eliciting her involuntary yelp. How his alarmed, "I'm real sorry, Daisy," carried far enough that it was probably heard in Chickasaw, how the chair tipped and teetered and hit the floor with a cheerful thump. How she tried to reassure Enos, but there was the click-click-click of heels coming at them all the same, and half of her wanted to run like a naughty girl caught with dirty knees in church. How they got startled by the librarian's sudden appearance when she told them to clean up their mess and take their leave, please, in clipped tomes that brooked no sassing.

How the library had been empty all along, except for them and I. Young, so there wasn't anyone that their clatter could have disturbed.

But they left like the scolded children that they had once been and found themselves out on the snug front porch. With the wide, round columns in front of them and the solid oak door at their backs, and their giggles echoing loudly off the high arch above.

And then they sat on the concrete steps that were a poor imitation of marble, worn mostly smooth by the passage of feet, but chipped and pocked in places where spring hailstones had smashed against them. Talked about the things they hadn't had time to say before – Daisy's high school career and ambitions, what Enos had been up to lately.

Seemed he'd spent a year and a half shadowing his mother's cousin, who was a sheriff down somewhere around Savannah. Because despite the fact that he could have inherited his father's still and earned enough making and selling moonshine to own a hot-rod car and take out five different girls a week – which was all the ambition most guys in Hazzard displayed – he wanted to do something more, he said. Wanted to help folks, to rescue them from gators and quicksand and crooks in the night.

Though he said mostly what he'd been able to do in Savannah was to chase after wayward lost pets and escort older ladies across the street.

Somewhere minutes to hours of telling tales and sharing dreams, she figured that the three years difference in their ages fell away. He stopped making her nervous and she stopped being "cute" (she hoped) and they just became another couple (or at least a pair on the way to becoming a couple), halfway courting on the library steps.

July 2, 1974

It probably wasn't the best night for them to go riling Rosco Coltrane. Then again, it probably wasn't a good night for just about anything, and riling Rosco was just the by-product of the bad night that it already was.

Besides, it was his and Luke's bad night first.

Starting in the afternoon, with Luke and Jesse going at it like they hadn't in years. Still tense after the moonshine run gone bad, and it hadn't sat well when Jesse said it was more likely competing moonshiners trying to weasel in on Duke territory than lawmen that had been chasing them. No revenuer could drive half as good as any Duke ever had, and Luke had jumped in right about there with the complete conviction that the whole mess had been some kind of scheme brewed up by J.D. Hogg.

"He wants the land," Luke had asserted, "and what better way to get it—cheap—than to try to put us out of business?"

But Jesse had insisted that Hogg wasn't that evil. He was a greedy fool, sure, selfish and crafty when he wanted to be, but he was also an old friend. And former business partner and there was an honor code between them that J.D. wouldn't break. Luke said it had been shattered to smithereens years ago and all but called Jesse blind to the truth. It had been one of those epic battles, the likes of which hadn't happened since Luke was a teenager. When Jesse'd had enough of the fighting, he'd agreed to disagree with Luke, then sent his two boys out for the evening.

I love you, but I don't want to see you for a few hours. The old-timer hadn't said it, but it was there in the way he'd told them that they didn't need to hurry home.

Luke had been irritable the whole drive to the Boar's Nest and his mood wasn't improved when the pickup blew a tire just outside of town. When they'd finally made it to the county's best (and best primarily because it was the only) watering hole, with their jeans filthy and their hands smelling of rubber and dust, there hadn't been anywhere to park except around back where a number of junkers had been abandoned years ago.

By the time they made it inside, there'd been no tables available, and Cooter Davenport, who was usually good enough to save a few chairs in his usual corner, had a full table with some guys that the Dukes didn't know. To make matters worse, J.D. Hogg, who owned the place, was taking up an entire booth, a plate of food in front of him that would have fed an entire den of wolves, and a cigar wedged tightly between his fat fingers. Beady eyes rolling around and watching, just watching.

All of which meant that he and Luke already had dibs on grumpy, tense, miserable and mean long before they ran into Rosco in the first place, so the sheriff could just go out and get his own damn mood.

Funny if the mood Rosco chose didn't turn out to be almost the same and Bo and Luke's, though. At least, it ended up that way. No telling how it started.

There was no band that night, no hope for one in sight. The platform along the far wall was empty and dark, just taking up space that could otherwise be used for dancing. The jukebox was playing but ever since it had been lugged in the door two years back by a couple of burly truckers, there had only ever been about three different albums in there: one Willie, one Waylon and one Johnny. Oh well, at least everyone knew the songs by heart and could dance to them.

Bo left Luke at the bar – his cousin was old enough to order a beer and Bo still had a month before he could do the same – and went over to where the girls were. Clumped, as usual, around the edge of the open space, between the pay phone and the door to the private rooms at the back. Hidden spaces that used to be a place to hold parties or maybe play a game of pool, but that was back a bunch of years ago now. When the roadhouse was called Hazzard's Hijinks and was owned by Hiram Murphy. It was more of a restaurant back in those days.

Then J.D. Hogg had snatched the place up in a bankruptcy sale back in 1970 and turned it into a roadside truck stop, and those rooms in back had never been seen again. Not by regular people, anyway. J.D. Hogg had turned them into some sort of an office, but it was also a space for his rendezvous. Which no one really wanted to think too hard about, especially since everyone in town – save Rosco Coltrane – knew that J.D. had taken a shine to the sheriff's sister Lulu. Whatever was going on in that back room could just stay there.

But in front of the door that night was one of the prettiest lineups Bo had ever seen. Of course, he thought that every time he came here. Most of the girls were older than him but that didn't matter when he'd crested six feet a couple of years ago, and then grown some more after that. He looked man enough to get most of them out on the dance floor and the dim lights mostly hid what Luke always called his baby face.

In short order, he was dancing and Luke was drinking over at the bar, smirking at something Dobro Doolin had said. Watching Bo dance, because he always did – whether to make sure no one offered him any real alcohol in a public setting or to make his private judgements about the girls that Bo chose, no one knew – and then it started. Just some indecipherable hollering at first, then the crowd rolling back, toes getting stepped on and what the hell! getting shouted by long-haulers and other uninitiated patrons. The ones who hadn't yet turned their heads toward the noise and set their feet, because they didn't know any better.

Most of the clueless ones were out of the way before the mess came tumbling out of the middle of the floor. Mostly it was a blur of different colored shirts, torn open and flying in the breeze caused by swinging arms and cocked fists. But somewhere in thick of the muddle, Bo caught a quick glimpse of Cooter's face, those focused eyes that his aimless friend only got when he was picking a target for his fist. Hair flying as the momentum of the pushing, shoving knot of fighters forced him toward the bar. Then the image was gone as the ranks closed in. A typical night for Hazzard's finest (only) drinking establishment.

"Cooter!"

The man might have been a drunken fool half the time and a hungover fool the rest. Might have been supposed to have become an adult somewhere close to a decade ago and it might just be that his reluctance to do so was the only reason his aging father hadn't yet retired and left him the Hazzard Garage to manage. He might have been spoiling for a fight – any fight – since before Bo and Luke were even born, but he was their friend. He was in the middle of a brawl, most likely about to get punched harder than he was expecting (Cooter always did manage to get surprised all over again that fighting hurt) and Bo wasn't about to leave him in there to duke it out on his own. He deposited the girl he'd been dancing with – the one in the blue tank top with white shorts underneath (Mary, maybe?) – safely on the sidelines and dove into the ruckus.

"Bo!"

The up and down of the growl meant that Luke was annoyed at his recklessness. Which was silly, because Luke liked a bar fight as much as the next guy, maybe even more. He just had unspoken rules about waiting until someone had the gall (or the idiocy) to hit a Duke first. Himself, Bo, Daisy – didn't matter who or how hard, and Luke would be in there teaching a hard-hitting lesson to the fool. But he wouldn't jump in of his own accord.

Bo figured it was just a matter of time before Luke would have been in the fray anyway, so what was he complaining about?

And then all those thoughts had to stop, because his ear was ringing and his cheek burning as red-hot as a fireplace coal. He turned toward the hit and couldn't quite figure where it had come from. The only guy in front of him was one of the guys that had been sitting with Cooter. Couldn't have been that guy that hit him—

Didn't matter, next thing he knew he was on the floor, smelling beer and tasting blood from his split lip. He saw the guy that hit him that time, big and hairy and not a local man. Watched the guy's face go from triumphant to surprised when Luke grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled him away. Then shock flashed over to pale fear, which was a smart thing to feel when Luke's fist was cocking back.

The stranger's head twisted to the side with the blow – a pulled punch if ever Bo saw one – and he stumbled off a few steps. Then Luke was offering a hand down, getting a solid hold on Bo's wrist and yanking him up. Looking at his face and tsking over whatever he saw there when the next wave of the fight caught up with them.

Bo didn't see Luke again for a while after that. Heard him, once or twice, that unmistakable growl he let out when he took a blow to the gut. Took a few more whacks himself, traded swipes with a different stranger. This guy was almost as tall as him and heavier, but wasn't very coordinated. It was easy enough to duck under or to the side of his attempts, and then it was even easier. Too easy, because the crowd had parted and about all that was left moving was his fight and Luke's, Cooter over by the bar and maybe Dobro was still caught up with some guy. Then his ears were ringing all over again.

Gunshot; took him too long to figure that out. He whirled toward the sound, dizzying when the whole room did the same, and there at the center was Sheriff Coltrane, having his own bad night. Gun pointing at the ceiling and his lips moving, though Bo couldn't pick out what he was saying over the cottony thickness of his half-deaf ears.

"That's them," came to him more clearly, and he turned his head toward the sound though he knew perfectly well whose voice it was, even before the smell of cigar caught up with him. "Those two right there." J.D. Hogg, jabbing his fingers (still stretched around the offending cigar) first at him, then at Luke. "Those Duke boys, they're the ones that started it."

"What?" His voice cracked in protest and Luke came to stand at his side. Whether to get him to hush or to support him, he didn't know and it didn't matter. "We didn't have nothing to do with—"

"And just look at what they done to my beautiful establishment! All them broken chairs—" There could have been a grand total of two, Bo couldn't swear. One of them might just have been knocked on its side. The other was definitely short one leg, but it wasn't anywhere near him and Luke. Besides, the Boar's Nest hadn't been anything other than a disaster, even on its best day.

"We ain't done nothing!" It might not have been his best defense ever. They had clearly done something, just not what Hogg was insisting they'd done.

Luke's arm was hard across his chest then, holding him back like they'd been going a hundred miles an hour and he'd had to slam on the brakes. "What Bo means is, we didn't start the fight and we was only defending ourselves – and our friends," because Duke boys might have been poor and wild, but they were raised to be strictly honest. "And we didn't break nothing."

Funny, the whole bar seemed a lot emptier. There weren't nearly as many strangers in here as there had been, and a lot of the girls were gone, too. Must have taken advantage of the noisy distraction in white suit to make their escape out the front door. Away from the man with the gun and the badge and the handcuffs.

"Sheriff Coltrane," J.D. Hogg went right on with his tirade, ignoring the objections. "Are you going to arrest these two for vandalism and destruction of property, or aren't you?"

"Well," the sheriff said, finally getting around to holstering his gun. Since the ceiling had already bled out and most of his suspects had run off, anyway. "I can't say that I saw them vandalizing or destroying anything." And furthermore, it was late in the evening and Rosco would probably be content to go back to quietly watching the crowd from his corner. Odds were, he really had no interest at all in going over to his office to file a report.

"I saw them do it, and if I saw them do it, it would be in your best interest," was a threat. Bo wasn't sure what J.D. Hogg had on poor Rosco, but he did know that tone. It was the one that got used to lean on folks who'd fallen on hard times, those that were ripe for being swindled out of their ancestors' land. "To arrest them. For fist fighting, vandalism, destruction of property and," Hogg simpered, "creating a nuisance."

Rosco took off his hat and scratched his head. Looked at him and Luke, then back at J.D. Hogg. Looked at the door like it was him that was about to get arrested and he was considering an escape. Looked back at him and Luke, and sighed. "You'll have to sign a complaint," he said.

"Now just wait a minute!" Luke generally considered himself far too mature to set up a fuss. But this time he was right there with Bo, protesting the ridiculous. "We wasn't anywhere near what got broke, we didn't start the fight and—"

"And that's the truth, Rosco," Cooter butted in. Which was kind of him, but it wasn't like his reputation with the sheriff was exactly stellar. Cooter had spent his share of still-drunk-and-well-nigh-onto-hungover, black-and-blue-in-the-face nights behind bars.

"Rosco," J.D. said, darkly. "I strongly recommend that you arrest these menaces to society, immediately."

Which was how he and Luke came to be handcuffed to one another, riding on the lumpy back seat of the county's lone, decrepit police vehicle, sitting carefully to avoid those tricky springs that could poke a man where it hurt. Trying to reason, and it was a fool's errand.

"Aw, come on, Rosco. You don't really want to do this," Luke offered.

"You'd be smart to call me Sheriff Coltrane," was a silly objection, when they'd been calling him Rosco since they were twelve. "And to hush."

"But we ain't done nothing!"

"That's 'we haven't done anything'," Rosco corrected, like he was some kind of schoolmarm in a knit shawl with his hair in a bun, lecturing third graders on proper English. "And you have, you've been thorns in my side since you was tykes." And then Rosco mumbled to himself a bit about whether they were thorns or knives or swords in his gizzard and just settled on how they'd been pains since the day they were born.

Then the brakes' squeal covered whatever other insults he might be throwing at them, and there they were, coming to a stop in front of the county administration building. The one with the jail and sheriff's office at one end, and the courthouse conveniently at the other.

"Get out of there," Rosco was growling at them from just outside the cruiser's open door. "Come on," with real anger when it took a few seconds to coordinate themselves and move in the right direction. Out onto the abandoned sidewalk under the moonlight and it was late. Too late, he figured, because just like he had been a thorn in Rosco's side a few times before, and so had Luke before him. They knew how this went. Booking, fingerprints, their one phone call. Jesse grumbling that it was late at night and since he had chores to do early in the morning – and since he'd be doing them alone, thanks to the reckless ways of his fool nephews – the two of them could just spend the night in jail. He'd be by in the morning, or afternoon, whichever suited him more, to get them out. (And then the real lecturing would begin.)

"Sheriff," Luke said, his hands coming up like he needed to surrender now, when he was already in cuffs, shuffling up the concrete stairs to the administration building, with its jail cells getting ready to welcome a pair of Duke boys.

"Just don't," Rosco said, and the overhead lights from the lobby shined through the dusty glass doors to illuminate his face as he led them in. Hard look, meaner than Bo had ever seen before. Something old in there, too. Tired. Lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth, all pointing down. Bo hadn't thought about it much before, because half the time the sheriff acted like a gleeful kid, but Rosco had to be somewhere near Jesse's age. "And don't you start in either," he added to Bo. "Now get in there and don't give me no trouble. And you'd best keep a wide berth around me from now on, or you might find yourself in here for more than a night."

"Is that a threat?" Luke always was the quick one. Or defiant, whatever – Bo didn't like it. Clearly Rosco was annoyed with them and it didn't do any good to antagonize him further.

"No," the sheriff informed them as he pulled out his ring of keys and let them into the suite occupied by the sheriff's station. Pointed over toward the high desk where he always took their fingerprints. No one knew what Rosco did with those prints after he got them – it wasn't like most offenses in Hazzard were serious, but the fingerprints got taken every time. Even if Rosco must have had a dozen sets each of his and Luke's by now. Maybe he kept himself a scrapbook in one of the storage closets around here. "It's just fair warning. If I catch you boys doing anything at all," he unhooked the cuff from Luke's arm, which meant Bo could finally straighten his shoulders instead of stooping. Funny how his arms had grown longer than Luke's. "I ain't gonna look the other way."

"You ain't never looked the other way," Bo informed him and maybe it was the bad night talking. And the memory of other bad nights spent in a jail cell.

"Boy, you don't know where I've been looking. And what I've been overlooking, but I can't do it no more, do you understand me?"

Yep, they understood. Perfectly. Which made it a worse than bad night.