Chapter Six - Sheriffs are Meant to be Seen and not Heard
Hushes and hisses like radiator steam, steady tone, so he knows it's just the same assortment of bodies coming and going with barely a whisper. Silent deputy, offering nothing more than food and the brief respite of a stroll down the cinderblock hall to the pungent, unclean restroom. Back to his cell where yellow day fades to pink evening and black night. Somewhere after the point where his hand's not visible, even when it's directly in front of his face, and he's sure that everyone else that might be occupying this building has gone home, he starts to sing. Quietly, because it serves a singular purpose – proof, more than anything, that he's not losing his hearing. (His mind, however – that might just be gone.)
Whispers begin a new day after a night in which he's not completely sure that ever he slept. Same steamy sounds, sibilance and susurration, nothing solid enough to grab hold of. Until, quite suddenly, there are words. Clear sentences being spoken, but not to him. A conversation between cohorts, deputies discussing their duties for the day. Debating who is going to get stuck here with the prisoner while the rest of the staff goes off on an unspecified errand. No resolution is reached before the voices die back into the hissing steam of the day.
He may have been driven halfway around the bend, but he's nobody's fool. Luke Duke knows when he's been handed information as if it were candy on Halloween and he was nothing more than a kid peering through the eye holes of a sheet draped over his head. He reckons he's meant to make a break for it in that hour between noon and one that's been mentioned oh so audibly. And though he knows it's a set up, he reckons the only thing he can do to thank those helpful voices is to go ahead and comply.
"Much obliged," he mutters as he starts to plan.
There are whole months (or at least days, and if not that long, there are many hours in any given day) when all Rosco wants is for Boss to leave him alone. To stop shoving at him, cornering him; to take his hollering, smoking, gorging mouth and go somewhere else. To give him room to be the stalwart, sturdy, strong sheriff that he is, that he's always been, whenever there isn't a marshmallow of a meadow muffin standing over him (which is really quite the feat, considering how Boss is at least half a foot shorter than him) and hollering in his ear. And when he's not pitching a fit he's pinching his pennies behind closed doors, but even in those moments, he never leaves Rosco alone, oh no. It's then that he's most likely to bellow, berating his lawmen for not knowing he's hungry or thirsty or just plain ornery.
"Ijit!" All those times he's wanted Boss to leave him alone, and the first time his wish comes true, he's backed into a corner by J.W. Hickman. Who is, so far as Rosco knows, supposed to be over in Claridge County, babysitting one Luke Duke. Heck, Hazzard's done enough of that unpleasant detail; he and Enos have lost more hours to jailing Duke boys – and trying to keep them there – than he likes to think about. Old Hickman can just go on back home and—"All right, Hickman. Just what do you think you're doing here in my squad room?" His shoulders shove back against the wall he got prodded into, and he takes a step forward. Teeny, tiny step, because Hickman gives no ground. "You just git, now, you just—now I'm mad."
Not half as mad, it turns out, as Hickman.
"Pipe down, pipsqueak," gets punctuated by the jab of a cigar. It's not the first time he's come close to getting singed that way. Then again, when Boss Hogg does it, it's almost an afterthought, ash trailing on blunt fingers. This right here looks like a deliberate attempt to burn one Hazzard County Sheriff.
"Jit!" he protests.
Hickman's unimpressed.
"I've only got one use for you," he gets informed. And that's good news, good news; it means this little encounter should be brief. Because there's alone, and then there's alone with Hickman, and in all the stupidest wishes of his lifetime, he never asked for the latter. Even that dipstick deputy Enos would be a sight for sore eyes right about now. Oh, he'd be a useless, twitching mess (except sometimes that boy gets his head all twisted up in right and wrong, and while that's his biggest flaw, there are moments when that kind of thing can be useful) but another target, a witness, someone to explain to the coroner what happened, any of those things would be welcome right now.
"One—one," he agrees. Or means to, but Hickman doesn't seem to want or need his affirmations the way Boss does. "One." Still, he can't stop himself from showing off exactly how much he understands what's been said to him, even if his voice does drop off at the end in deference to the disgusted look on Hickman's face.
"Knock it off, Coltrane." This is serious. Hairy eyebrows, mean like those caterpillars that eat little green leaves right down to the nubs, meeting up at the middle of an ugly twist of a face. Fist clenched, all rings and knuckle, and even if Rosco's got guns at his hips, that hand looks like it could cause more pain than a bullet. Besides, Hickman's already showed off the weaponry strapped to his chest – a sheriff's pea-shooter's no match for that.
"Gyu." Whatever the man's got to say, he's listening.
"Here's what you're going to do for me." Straight to the point, Rosco likes that in a man. Even one as repugnant as the foul-breathed beast in front of him. Toothpaste would certainly help the condition. Perhaps Hickman has never heard of the stuff. "You're going to go talk to your fat brother-in-law." So far, so good. He does that every day without some threatening creep cornering him into it.
"I don't know where he is," comes flying out of his mouth anyway. Maybe, just possibly, Boss has a point when he suggests that sheriffs are meant to be seen and not heard. Because even if what he's just said is true, it doesn't help his cause any, just brings that horrendous-smelling breath that much closer to attack position. "Gyu," he repeats.
"Then you'll find him. And when you do, you'll suggest to him that thirty percent of his take on this county needs to be deposited in my personal account—"
"No, see," and there goes his mouth again. Running off and telling tales no one's asked it to tell, not even him. "The Boss ain't gonna do that, see, because he don't give me but twenty-five percent of twenty-five percent, which ain't quite thirty percent." Then again, it might be. Seems to him the way Boss explained it, it was an awful lot of money for his little buddy to be giving up. "And he only does that because I'm the best sheriff money can buy." At least that's what Boss always says, and it ought to be a compliment, but somehow when it comes out of that fat little mouth it gets all twisted up into something a lot more snide.
"Deposited," Hickman interrupts, rude man. "Into my account, or he'll never see Luke Duke again." Finger poking into Rosco's gut and if he were a smart man he'd nod his head and trot right off in search of his brother-in-law before there's something a lot colder and harder pointing into his belly. But that finger seems to poke a few more words loose from where they ought to stay put.
"No, see, there's a flaw in that slaw." A giant, white-clad flaw. "Because see, Boss, he ain't never lost no love on Luke Duke." It's nothing Luke ought to take personally, though. Hazzard's Commissioner has never liked anyone named Duke.
"It doesn't matter," comes out low and menacing. It's that sound Boss Hogg always goes for, but somehow can't maintain. Those little, fat lips can't seem to help themselves; they just start yelling. "Whether he loves Luke Duke or not. The rest of the county loves Luke Duke." Naughty, naughty, that's a lie. Rosco doesn't love Luke Duke, any more than Boss does. Oh, he might like the boy a little bit sometimes, when he's being still and quiet, when he's behaving himself. But the sheriff can count the number of times that's happened on one hand. "And they won't stand for him getting a life sentence in prison."
"Life? Ji-What in billy blue blazes are you taking about? A man can't get life for transporting whiskey." Even if his uncle did promise the U.S. of A. government that he'd never do it again. "Or for stealing a truck."
"Well, then," and finally, thankfully, the man takes a step back. "I'm just going to have to come up with some better charges, ain't I?" Another step away, but that finger's still pointing, so Rosco stays where he is. Seems like the sweat that's been oozing down his back probably has him permanently glued to the wall, anyway. "You just tell fatso," which isn't particularly nice, not when Hickman probably tips the scale at a good twenty-five pounds over Boss, "what I said. He'll come around. And if he doesn't," Hickman's just about to the swinging doors out of the squad room now. Just one more step and Rosco hopes the door doesn't hit him on the—"it'll be his hide," fanny on the way out.
But somehow the man manages to walk right through those doors without any troublesome incidents. Finally, Rosco lets himself slide away from the wall, then slump into the nearest chair. It's a good thing it was him that Hickman cornered. That kind of an encounter would have killed ten ordinary sheriffs.
Stink of beer on her shirt where it spilled, more on her hands. She ought to have cleaned up before coming out here. Then again, it would have been wise to have finished her shift, but she didn't. She just hollered for Jerry to cover her (which is going to bring him out from behind the bar to serve those few customers foolish enough to eat Boar's Nest roast beef, but she reckons he'll survive the effort) and sprinted out the door. Lost a shoe in the parking lot, seriously considered leaving it right where it lay, but it was only a split second delay to go back for it. Finding clean clothes, that would have taken a whole minute, and that much time she couldn't spare.
Besides, all that clean would have been wasted in the fifteen minute, clay-kicking drive back to the farm, or this last dusty loop around the edges of the Duke south forty, in search of the remote corner where Jesse has taken Bo, setting him to work to distract him from pulling fool stunts in the name of rescuing Luke. The old man is like as not to yell at her for bringing her car out onto these old wagon ruts where only a tractor was meant to go, but though it's lower slung than the General, lacks a fancy coat of paint and even a name, she knows how to handle her car every bit as well as her cousins know how to handle theirs. And if that's an extra little creak that her suspension has just picked up, Cooter will be glad to fix it for her in exchange for a gooseberry pie and a kiss on the cheek. The softer touch, which has served her so well, and which her clodhopping cousins will never learn to accomplish.
"Girl," that's Bo, playing at being Luke. Darker, less sweet, and that's not at all who her blonde cousin was meant to be. Behavior altered by the older boy's absence – she's seen it before, wonders sometimes whether she toughens up a bit in that same way when Luke's missing. "What are you doing out here in the middle of the day?"
"Cars wasn't made for plowing fields," her uncle concurs, shouting over the hum of her engine, but the old-timer knows better than that. If there's a crazy thing that can be done with a car, Jesse invented it. Bo and Luke might have cranked each maneuver up a notch, turning one-eighties into three-sixties and elevating hops into jumps, but the moves themselves were all born right there under their uncle's fingertips and the weight of his right foot. Cars may not be made for plowing fields, but Daisy is by far not the first Duke to use a car to get out into the middle of one.
"Enos," she says as she's shutting down the engine and opening her door. Dumb way to start the story, the two fool men in front of her are already smirking at what they think they know. Getting pictures in their heads of a blushing lawman stumbling over his two feet and asking her on a date, and they'd be only half right. Enos may have been flushed, and his ability to walk never has been exactly smooth or fluid. But he wasn't carrying flowers when he came to see her. He was carrying this—"Came by the Boar's Nest to tell me that Claridge County done put out a bulletin. There's been a jailbreak,"—bad news, enough that she hasn't had a clear thought since. Came home filthy, one shoe still sitting on her passenger seat where she dropped it when she got into her car. Now she's trying to stand, one-footed, and she's dizzy. From the heat out here, the dust, the stench of beer on her clothes, from the worries that haven't gotten any better, even now that she's begun to share them. "In Claridge County. Escaped prisoner, presumed armed and dangerous."
Alarm, worry, and a hand reaching out for her. She's of half a mind to bat it away, she's not done talking yet. But it comes too fast or she moves too slow. Thick thoughts, sloshing and slopping around in her brain, but the air is thin, not enough of it to get all the way down into her lungs where she needs it to be if she's going to finish this story.
The memory of Enos' face flashes hazily in front of her, she can hear his hesitant words. Not wanting to tell her, but he had no time (and no excuse) to come all the way out to the farm and tell the menfolk. So he'd been forced to whisper it across the bar at her, fingers fiddling with an empty beer mug they'd picked up all on their own, dirty, leftover thing she'd wanted to take away from him, but holding onto it seemed to help him to talk. So she'd left him to it, ear tipped to hear his quiet words over the chattering buzz of the rest of the place.
"They reckon he's on his way to Hazzard," the escaped prisoner, that is. Confirmation, if they needed it, of the identity of the roving criminal.
Words surrounding her, not quite shouts, but they're loud enough to disrupt her thoughts. Frustrating when she's trying to remember the exact terminology Enos used.
"They're coming," she says, and there's not enough time to say all of it, not with those other words crowding close to her, not when she has to concentrate around that grip on her arm, so tight. "Claridge is coming here. To search. Eminent domain or something. Hot pursuit?" Anyway, the Claridge law had declared its intentions to march right into Hazzard and take over the courthouse, armed and with order to kill their escaped prisoner. All in the name of protecting Hazzard's innocent citizens against the dangers posed by the wanted man. "Martial law," she mutters, though Enos never said exactly that – those words are surely what he meant.
"Daisy!" she hears, the first clear word since the moment she found her feet. Smell of stale beer, feel of her shirt clinging too close to her skin, heat and spots, and then there's nothing but the safety of Bo's arms around her, and darkness.