Author's Note: Happy New Year, all! Now that the holidays are done I should be a bit more reliable out here, both reading and posting.

Thanks to those who read what I post, and I'm always particularly thrilled to hear from y'all! I'll hush up now, because these chapters are loooong enough without my lead in blabbering.

Chapter Three

March 1971

There's a wild exuberance, not entirely sane and not even slightly mature, with which Bo attacks the world. Punctuated by a sunshine-silly grin, the kind of irresistible attitude that stops cold anything vaguely resembling a reprimand. Good natured, all in fun, no harm meant to anyone.

Just try telling that to the fish.

Then again, maybe it's his fault for bringing the ball of energy out first thing after Saturday morning chores and family breakfast, to a place where success relies upon silence. Especially when the boy has spent eight hours a day from Monday to Friday sitting still through classes that he hates.

"You got him, Luke, you got him!" Glee bubbling over, and a bit prematurely, too. All Luke's got is a line that's drifting downstream in the Chattahoochee River, dead weight caught on his hook. "Come on!" Encouragement, but it's not enough. The boy drops his own weightless fishing pole, reaches out like he's going to grab onto the bend in Luke's.

"Bo," he growls before things can get that far. The last thing they need is four hands on one thin rod, yanking against the tension there and threatening to snap the metal in half.

"Right," his cousin answers, good sense taking over where impulsivity leaves off. Or not.

Bo's hands find the taut fishing line instead, feet marching into the water without concern for how much he's splashing, without thought about how it's barely spring and the water's got to be mostly made up of scarcely melted snow. Moving along pretty well, too, like it does this time of year, burbling over stones, aiding and abetting whatever's on his hook in its progress downstream.

"Bo," he tries again, because the pull on his rod is too steady, not the yank and tug of a good fight. There are ways the boy could help him, and he's pretty sure that chasing through the water isn't the best one. An old shoe, a branch, some detritus from a picnic basket full of hope for a young couple – whatever's on the end of his line, he doesn't reckon it's worth snapping his old pole and—

Jump and splash, and flotsam has never done that, not in all his life of fishing.

"Wow! He's big!" comes out of Bo, followed by more words that get lost in the splatter of the chase, because the boy is in love.

And since what's on the other end of the line is worth catching, Luke starts to reel in earnest. Feels the drag and lug, the zigzag motion, but he can't see much of anything for all the droplets and foam, not to mention the width of his cousin between him and his quarry.

There's a sudden release that makes him stumble back half a step, and then there's his cousin, knee deep in the water, turning toward him and holding up a still wriggling catfish, front of his shirt clinging tight to his skin and dark with water, his bangs dripping into his eyes. Boy must've halfway dived for Luke's prize, but his grin shows no concern for the ridiculousness of his current situation. He just marches himself back toward the bank to hand over tonight's dinner for unhooking and storage in their bucket. Stays there, water rushing by his ankles, until he gets looked at again, followed by a smirk.

"Come on," the fool says before Luke can get around to pointing out what a mess he is. "Let's go swimming."

Makes him chuckle at the absurdity. "It ain't nowhere near warm enough, cuz."

Shrug. "I'm already wet," and therefore you should be too, is the sort of logic that can only make sense in that blonde brain of his cousin's. It's a fool's argument, reinforced by a silly grin surrounded by droplets running out of plastered-down curls.

Luke shakes his head at the ridiculousness, then sits down in the grass to remove his boots and shirt. At least, he thinks as he follows his moron of a cousin into the breath-stealing cold of snowmelt rushes, he'll have dry feet when they get to the far side of this particular patch of foolishness.

Today isn't really about fishing anyway, or it doesn't have to be. It's more of a chance to reward his cousin for making it through another week of school when he hates it so much, it's about days growing longer while time together grows short, it's about wasting hours with the boy his cousin will outgrow being – someday. And he reckons he might miss some of that growing, but he doesn't have to miss a silly, spur-of-the-moment swim, not today.

Wrestling and dunking where the river runs deep and still, met with high pitched giggles and blustering threats, and when that gets old, Luke picks himself a flat boulder to stretch out on and invite the sun to warm and dry him. Bo stays in the water, swimming with a fluidity that Luke's never had, his farm-strengthened arms churning smoothly through the water and his slender body gliding behind. There might be any number of things that the older Duke could proclaim himself to be better at – including fishing, considering how it wouldn't have been his idea to go crashing into the water and scaring them all away – but when it comes to sinuous activities like driving and swimming, Bo's got grace and beauty that his cousin can't touch.

"Come on, Bo," he hollers when the sun starts to arc to the west, and the boy comes out, shaking himself off like a dog. "Don't make a mess in my car," he mumbles as they collect their gear and their lone catch. And since there's little chance that the Falcon's bench seat will be anything but a soggy mess anyway, he gestures Bo toward the driver's seat and gives him no particular direction in which to drive.

A couple of windblown hours later, they pull into the dark farmyard with their clothes and hair air dried into a ragged mess, Bo barefoot while his soggy boots sit on the floorboards of Luke's back seat. Every bit the epitome of the country boys that they were raised to be as they stumble, with their single fish, into the kitchen. Daisy's nose wrinkles, and Jesse's finger points Bo off to the shower and directs Luke back toward the porch to clean and bone the catfish out there.

He's just running his knife the length from head to tail when there are heavy footsteps on the splintered boards behind him.

"Luke," the old man says.

"Yeah?" he asks, but doesn't look up; he's a mite busy handling a sharp object right now.

"Son," comes at him again, sounds vaguely serious. Like a lecture in waiting, for being gone too long or for walking into the kitchen dirty enough to be Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer after a month on the run, and he reckons his full attention is required for that. So he turns his head, craning his neck to look up and over his own shoulder at the man who raised him.

He's getting handed an envelope. "Mail for you," Jesse informs him, in case he couldn't tell.

Thumb and forefinger only, he gingerly takes hold of it. His hands are filthy and it's too dingy out here to read much of anything right now, but this letter doesn't require opening anyway. He sets it on the stoop beside him and turns back to the project that just got interrupted.

Warmth on his shoulder, weight of an old man's hand. Part of him wants to shrug out from under it, and the rest of him would like nothing more than to take to his feet and run as far from here as he can. But neither gesture would do any good, so he sighs and pretends to give a damn about the catfish in his hands.

And all the while there's that envelope by his knee with the round seal up where the return address belongs. Selective Service System, it announces. Jesse pats his shoulder and leaves him to his own thoughts on the matter.

"Ah-ah, boy!" greets him before he's even fully into the kitchen. "You just turn back around and leave them shoes on the porch before you come in here."

His sneakers, covered in red clay from the infield dirt of the baseball field. Call it shortstop's syndrome, at least in Hazzard where the dirt has to be sprayed down before any game or it would get kicked up as dust and make the umpire's job next to impossible. "Yes sir," he calls; should have thought about getting his shoes off before he even opened the door.

But a win on the field always takes away his better judgment, and today's included a couple of neatly turned double plays by one Bo Duke.

"That's better," his uncle says when he enters again, this time in sock feet. "You have a good game?" The old man tosses him an apple, underhand. A snack for a starving boy because there are afternoon chores to be done and a crop line to be walked before dinner.

"Best one of the season," he manages to say before taking a huge bite out of the apple. "We won." These last words get him scowled at, not for their content but for the fact that he says them with a mouthful. But he's out of the kitchen and halfway to his bedroom before the scolding can start – if it even does. He's reasonably sure he can get away with dicey manners on an afternoon when he's celebrating a winning game and, as far as he can tell, his female cousin isn't even in the house. Seems like she's the key to proper etiquette, at least as pertains to minor infractions.

He makes quick work of the apple, taking huge bites as he changes out of the sweat pants that pass for a baseball uniform, and into jeans and an old t-shirt. Back into the kitchen to throw the core into the slop bucket for the goats and he's digging around for his boots when Jesse tells him he can skip most of the barn chores and head out to the crops.

"Luke done already took care of feeding the livestock for the day," their uncle informs him, peering over the top of the newspaper that he's reading at the kitchen table. Mug by his right hand and it's awfully late in the day for his uncle to be drinking coffee. But apparently that's what he's doing, so maybe he had a rough time sleeping last night. "Best you see to bedding them down, then head out to check the corn. Don't be dallying, neither; I reckon you still got homework to do." And dinner to eat, because that apple hardly made a dent in his hunger.

"Where is old Luke, anyways?"

His cousin's blue car sits under the old oak, still dusty from Sunday afternoon's romping around the grapevine, but the pickup's missing. Most likely means a supply run to town or maybe even Capitol City, and if he's really lucky, Luke will bring back a car magazine or two from the newsstand.

"He had to run down to Atlanta," Jesse says without dropping the newspaper down from where it covers most of his face. "I reckon he'll be late tonight, so you best get to work, because he ain't gonna be here to help you."

"Atlanta?" comes out as half a whine, because trips to the big city are few and far between, and always more fun if the Duke boys go on them together. "What's he doing there?" (That couldn't wait until the weekend when I could go too? But there's no way to say that last part without sounding like a disappointed brat.)

Paper comes down an inch then; dark blue eyes scolding him even before the words come. "He had some things to tend to," comes out in that high pitched voice that warns him not to ask follow-up questions. "Now you just get out there."

"Yes sir," he huffs. Because he has to do what his uncle says, but he doesn't have to like it.

The beer – though it stands ready to take the blame the same as it ever has and that's a loyalty not found in humans – is not at fault for the way he's stuck to the barstool, slowly nursing just one draft. Still a relatively long drive ahead, and it's the slow passage of time that's got him pinned here. The evening is shy in its approach, creeping into corners and testing them out for safety and security before daring to show itself in the open. Pink-tinged twilight but nothing spectacular, at least not as far as he can see from his vantage point behind the window of the Peachtree Pub. Doesn't matter, sunset could be fluorescent and he'd still be sitting precisely where he is, killing time while waiting for the darkness.

And beyond, because the sun going down is not enough. He needs quiet to descend over the land, to set the birds to tucking their heads under their wings while livestock settles and the lights switch off in one room and then another in the farmhouses that ring the region. And when he reckons that most of the world has gone into dormancy, he gets up off the barstool that's got to have the imprint of his backside on it by now, then into the family pickup to travel streets as familiar to him as the lines on his own hands. Trees loom on either side of the road, black goblins that reach out to grab at him as he passes, but turn to shadows before they can make their catch. Aside from the maples and oaks that dominate the landscape, no one pays him a lick of mind.

Which is precisely what he wanted; just seems strange to be hurtling toward home in the dark, unmolested. Of course, that's why he brought the pickup in the first place, because he figured that for once he'd like to drive over the back roads of his own county without the relentless pursuit of the law, who have become all the more dogged in their attempts to catch the Dukes over the past few months. Made perfect sense less than sixteen hours ago: a bit of privacy, just him and his thoughts for this drive, and there's no accounting for how he wishes for Tilly and a long string of patrol cars on his tail.

Clock's ticking death-quick toward midnight by the time he reaches his own driveway, killing the headlights before they can hit any of the darkened windows. No signs of life as the pickup's engine shudders and dies, but he knows, even as he takes those extra seconds, forearms crossed over the steering wheel and head down to gather his thoughts or his strength or maybe just his nerve, that he is not alone. Out of the truck and across the farmyard to the lowest step on the porch. He waits there, fingers tucked into his back pockets, chin tipped down as his eyes vaguely focus on the glow of moonlight off the old floorboards in front of him.

"Well?" his uncle finally asks from the dark corner of the porch where he likes to sit on the rickety swing that's been there as long as Luke can remember, and probably for a few decades before that.

"Well," he answers back, blowing all the air out of his lungs before breathing more in. He lifts his head and turns in the general direction of where the older man sits. "I'm healthy."

Even he is not sure whether or not it's meant to be a joke, but neither of them laughs. Or speaks, and the only sound for a few seconds that stretch on to eternity and back again is his boot sole scraping restlessly on the stair above where he stands. Feels like a decision when he stops fidgeting and steps up onto the porch.

"I'm I-A all the way, Jesse." As if there was any other possible outcome from his day spent moving from one station to the next in the Summit Federal Building. Table to table, coughing for the stethoscope, reading eye charts, presenting his tongue, teeth and gums for the inspection – and answering questions. His best hope might have lain right there, if only he could have said that yes, he did have a felony conviction for the distillation and transportation illegal liquor. But he's never been caught.

Standing on the porch now, and he can just about see the curve of his uncle's cheek, his salt and pepper beard below. Sucks in a breath and waits for it: the pointless and unanswerable question that always manages to get asked at times when big things happen. Like when he came to the farm in the first place, screaming for his mama, and some years later when Lavinia first got sick. How do you feel about that, Luke? As if there's anything to feel, other than angry that his life's been yanked out of his control again, as if it matters one damn whit how he feels. As if—

"So what's next?"

It's not the question that he's been waiting so hard for that the back of his neck aches from the tension in his shoulders. But it's equally ridiculous.

"I get inducted." There is a better tone of voice he could have said it in, the sort that doesn't halfway call the man an idiot for asking. But then again, he's had better days.

His uncle, it seems, knows that. Or simply refuses to respond in kind. Slight movement, creak of old wood; Jesse rocking slightly in the swing. Silence until Luke's eyes fall back to the floorboards beneath him.

"Ain't there no other possibilities?" It's the kind of question that makes perfect sense in negotiable circumstances. Like dealing with Doc Petticord and paying in chickens instead of cash, or haggling Harvey Essex down to a fine instead of jail time when evidence of their illegal income makes its way into the revenuer's hands. But this isn't like that, it's not some homegrown Hazzard adventure that's akin to playing an adult version of let's pretend; the world he's poised on the rim of is not subject to the shifting ethics of an aging sheriff and a corrupt county commissioner.

"I could enlist." Not as crazy as it sounds, at least that's what he's been telling himself in the last few hours since the idea first occurred to him. It could actually give him some measure of control over when he serves, and what does when he gets there. Definitely over which branch of the service he winds up in. He's a Duke, a natural flier, and maybe the Air Force—

"Luke." One word, a single syllable, but that's all his uncle needs in order to scold him. "That'd be like taking 'shine to Harvey Essex's office and handing yourself over for a prison sentence." Agitated, lecturing; Jesse's so upset that he forgets that it's the middle of the night and that there are a pair of youngsters who have school tomorrow sleeping a just few thin walls away. On the edge of yelling, but he takes a deep breath and calms himself down. "There's some time now before they induct you, right?"

"A few months," he confirms. His voice sounds deep in his own ears, kind of hollow, but maybe that's just because his throat is so tight that it's hard to push the words through it.

"Them few months is your best hope then. Maybe—maybe there won't be any need for new soldiers by then. Maybe both sides will work out their differences." And maybe Maudine is actually a unicorn in disguise, but Luke's not holding his breath in hope. "Son," the man sighs, sounding old, tired. Resigned, because Jesse always wishes for the best, but he's not capable of holding onto faith that is false. "If you want to serve your country, you know I ain't gonna stand in your way. I'd just as soon you didn't get killed, is all." Well, that makes two of them. "Ain't there no other way?"

He's exhausted, suddenly. Or maybe it's been building all day, but he forgot to notice because he was too busy getting ordered to sit, to stand and move, to present parts of himself for inspection. Either way, he's wrung out and there's a porch railing just a few steps away. One that's solid when he sits on it, even if the paint has long since chipped off, one with a post that he can lean his shoulder against and know that it will hold his weight, because he replaced it himself not three years back. The beam it's affixed to is one that runs the width of the kitchen of the house he grew up in, on the most beautiful parcel of land in Hazzard County.

"Jesse," he asks, letting his legs dangle and swing like he hasn't since they grew long enough to reach the floor, even when sitting in the tallest of the kitchen chairs. "Would you be all right here without me? Running the farm and the business with just Bo and Daisy?" His uncle doesn't like the question; it's there in how he snorts like a bear that missed the trout and got a snout full of water for his efforts. Like a man who lost his brothers and then his wife, and maybe he figures it's not fair for him to be asked to give up even one more thing. "Tell the truth, now."

But those last words are unnecessary. Whether it's thin air or Bibles stacked ten high that he's swearing on, Jesse is compelled to honesty. Even if he'd prefer not to answer at all.

"It wouldn't be easy. But we'd survive." Empty, resigned voice.

It would be easier on the two of them, Luke reckons, if he'd pulled some fool stunt that nearly got him and his cousins killed, and Jesse could take him out to the barn and holler at him at full volume before pulling out the whip. This low toned conversation is taking its toll on them both.

"What about without both me and Bo?"

"Luke," comes out like a rebuke or a lecture, like his uncle suspects him of planning to run away with his cousin in tow. "You know there ain't no way for me and Daisy to run this place. You remember how when you was little tykes I used to have to let J.D. Hogg do my delivering for me. And that man, he ain't lived an honest day in his whole life." His uncle's voice raises into that wheedle that normally grates against his nerves, rife with ire as it is. But tonight it's as sweet as a lullaby, familiar in a world that's been turned on its head. "He was overcharging my customers and keeping the profit for himself, and that was before he started swapping out my 'shine for his. Why, he'd sell my customers his rotgut, and save what I'd brewed up to sell to his regulars, passing it off as his own. I was never so happy as when you'd growed up enough to help me and your aunt in the fields, and then Daisy and Bo got older and…" the little tale-telling session fades out. Which is just as well, because the next major event in their lives was, to his memory, Aunt Lavinia's passing. "I ain't as young as I was back then, and now that he's the commissioner, J.D. would as soon arrest me as breathe if'n I asked him to run my 'shine for me. No, there ain't no way that I can manage without you both."

"Then there ain't no other options," Luke informs him. "Oh, I could try to get a II-C deferment, and it might even work. But I'd have to say that you couldn't manage the farm without me." Which would be a lie. "But," more importantly, "if I let them induct me as I-A, then there ain't no way that Bo can get drafted. Because I'll already be in the service, and you really can't run the farm with both of us gone."

"Luke," tries to scold again, but—

"Jesse, I'm going into the service, one way or another. Either I enlist or I let them induct me. If one of us Dukes is going, it's gonna be me. This here decision's been made." And he doesn't want to argue over it, doesn't want to justify or even think about it for even one more minute. So he juts his chin and gets to his feet. "Good night." He's got a hot date with his pillow; tomorrow starts as early as any day, no matter how long today has been.

There's a sudden, warm grip around his wrist that he doesn't really want there, but it gets followed by a tug. It's got a clear meaning, one that can't be ignored. Come to me, boy. So he does, he lets himself be pulled right down onto the swing next to his uncle, feels it sway under their combined weight as broad arms wrap themselves around him. He tells himself that he's too old for this, but finds his head resting on that familiar, soft shoulder anyway. "I love you, son," gets mumbled in his hair, and Luke closes his eyes, because surely that'll prevent any tears from slipping out. The swing rocks underneath him and he's just a kid again, with Aunt Lavinia singing soothing songs in his ears to help him settle down after a bad day that ended in a whipping.

"Your cousins has been asking about you." Of course they have, he's been missing for the better part of the day. "I done like you asked, I ain't told them where you was. But come tomorrow, you're going to have to tell them yourself… unless you want me to." But Luke shakes his head and bites his lip against making any sound. It would probably only come out as a childish squeak anyway. "All right," Jesse answers what he hasn't said out loud, rheumatic fingers tangling in Luke's hair. "It's all right."

Eventually, somehow, he manages to disentangle himself from the arms of the man who raised him, to say good night again and mean it this time, and to make his way through the house to his own bedroom.

His cousin is lying perfectly still in the bed next to his, but he's not fooling anyone.

"Go to sleep Bo," is his whispered command. It might be after midnight, technically tomorrow already. But he's got no plans to talk to another person until he's had a few hours of peace and quiet, maybe even some sleep.

"You shouldn't have stayed up so late," his cousin scolds when he's slow-moving through the barn, enough so that a goat gets under his feet without him really noticing. Makes him stumble a few steps until Luke reaches out a hand to catch him. He stays upright, but a couple of the eggs that were poised at the top of the basket roll out to crack against the hay-strewn floor. Mere hairline fractures, but they won't pass the Daisy test, so he puts the basket down on a bale of hay long enough to pick them up and throw them as far as he can through the open doors at the end of the barn. If there's a little extra spin on them, well, that's not his fault.

"Look who's talking," he snarls back. All day and half the night, Luke was out. Down in Atlanta, and no matter how Bo phrased the question, he couldn't get Jesse to tell him what Luke went for. In fact, all he really got for his efforts was the threat of a tanned hide.

Trips to Atlanta are infrequent and just about sacred. A chance to get away from the same old routines of school and farm work, to see a landscape of buildings instead of trees and fields and emptiness. To prowl the bevy of used car lots and dream of owning something they'll never be able to afford, and maybe, if they can talk their way into it, test drive one or two of them. Or sometimes those trips are a chance to see a movie when it comes out, instead of having to wait six months for it to make to the Hazzard Theater. And every now and then, he and Luke simply find themselves a corner, lean up against the cool concrete of whatever building happens to be there, and watch the girls go by. In skirts that barely graze the tops of their thighs, or jeans tight over their hind ends and most of the way to their knees, where they flare out to almost the width of a skirt. Smart ones wear decorations on their back pockets to draw the eyes there, but then again, most of the girls look best from the front. Thin blouses that reveal more than any Hazzard girl would dare, and the truly brave ones walk around in halter tops.

Doesn't matter what they do, the Duke boys in Atlanta means a good time, and going down there without Bo is one of the low-downest things his cousin has ever done. All day and most of the night he was out having fun without Bo, and injury got followed by insult when Luke came into their bedroom somewhere after midnight and told him to go to sleep. As if his kid cousin had nothing better to do than force himself to stay awake for hours just so he could find out what on earth Luke had gotten up to all day. (All right, so he had fought sleep for just that very purpose. But Luke had no right to know that, not without being told.)

And to cap off a perfectly lousy twenty-four hours, it was Jesse's hand shaking his shoulder at dawn, telling him to get up and get after the chores. "Leave him to sleep a bit," their uncle had said, looking over at where Luke was stretched out on his side, right arm under his head, and showing no signs of waking up any time soon. Which was fine, it was just great really. How Luke didn't have to go to school, could run off to Atlanta at will and stay out carousing half the night, and didn't have to get up for chores.

"I ain't the one that was out half the night, doing who knows what." Even if it was Jesse's intention to let the oldest of his kids sleep in, Luke had only been a few minutes behind him in getting up and out here. But his eyes are red-rimmed, his hair is a mess, and his disposition is downright surly.

"I know," Luke's mouth agrees, even if his body is tensed for a fight. "We got to talk about that, Bo." Serious, dark and oozing with regret or apology and Bo doesn't want to hear it. Not when at the end, no matter how much of an adventure Luke describes, whatever kind of fun he got up to without having to drag his little cousin along, there's going to have to be forgiveness and a handshake.

"Ain't nothing to talk about." But as much as he wants to, he doesn't mean it. Even if his forgiving nature isn't due to make an appearance until after breakfast at the earliest, he doesn't like not knowing things. Maybe his words are more of a challenge than anything: convince me you had a good reason to leave me behind.

Mumblings from his cousin, a hand running through those uncombed brown curls, making a complete disaster of what was simply a mess before. Those bright blue eyes meeting his like second thoughts and regrets, then they're gone, looking out into the grass where the broken eggs got tossed a minute ago. "Ain't no way around it," seems to be a decision, some kind of an answer to those inaudible words. "Sit." Luke points to a hay bale, but Bo's not interested in getting ordered around right now. He stands his ground, hands on hips, glowering at the boy who is not quite meeting his eyes. A sigh. "Suit yourself," Luke says. "I had to go into Atlanta to keep an appointment, cuz. A medical exam, by the Selective Service." Words are coming out like buckshot, staccato, rapid-fire, no room for interruption. "I'm going to get drafted."

Too fast, even, for Bo to get a grip on them. His mouth is open, but no words are coming out.

"Bo," and there's a warm hand on his shoulder, a gentle squeeze. "We talked about this."

Well, yeah. Sort of, in the abstract. Or at least it seemed a pretty danged remote possibility at the time.

Because their lives are predictable, they have a rhythm. He wouldn't go so far as to say that moonshine running is routine, but it has firm boundaries. Things move fast, teeter on the edge of danger without ever tipping over. No one gets hurt or goes to prison, no one has died since Aunt Lavinia did, and no one leaves home. So it's not his fault that conversations about lottery numbers and the odds of getting conscripted held no meaning for him until now.

"You ain't," is about all he can manage to say, his voice high and cracking like it only does when he's trying to talk some pretty little cheerleader into a double Duke date.

Hand tightening down on his shoulder, then Luke's voice in that same tone he uses to convince Sheriff Coltrane that there's not now, nor has there ever been, any moonshine in the trunk of their car. "It ain't gonna be so awful, cuz." Or maybe it's that timbre that urges Bo to breathe after he's taken a hard hit to the solar plexus in a pick-up game of football. Soothing, slow talking, calm, and he doesn't want any part of it. Not when he's being told that it'll only be a handful of years that Luke'll be gone – as if days don't already stretch out into forever without Luke in school with him – and not when his cousin's talking about the money he'll earn in the service going toward the two of them buying themselves a real race car.

"Bo!" gets hollered after him, and it's only then that he realizes that he is running away.