Author's note: These next couple of chapters are a little rough for Hazzard standards. Which is part of why they don't take place in Hazzard. Anyway, you might not like some of the things that happen here, but they were necessary in their own way.

The only ones I own are the ones you're going to want to kill by the end of this sequence (and that's okay, I'm on your side). I don't earn anything for what I post here.

Thanks for sticking with me so far!


Chapter 7 – More Than He or Luke Bargained For

Things weren't going well. On the surface maybe it would seem that they were, but here underneath, in that place you could drown, things just weren't going well at all.

He'd gotten himself arrested, but before that twisted little victory could be celebrated, he'd won another one. Sort of. Because he was supposed to try to see Daisy, and he was seeing her. And what he was seeing was more than he or Luke bargained for.

Kalb had welcomed Bo in his own strange little way.

"Another Duke," he'd greeted with a hacking cough, when a steaming mad Bo had stormed into his office in a completely unscripted rage. Yeah, there was a plan behind his actions, but his emotions were exactly what they'd always been: uncontrolled. "How unexpected."

Kalb wasn't a tall man, nor a very dangerous-looking one. He was meaty, maybe, in a lazy sort of way. Like if he'd spent any time behind a plow he might have had some muscle, but the solidness of his shape had more to do with being well fed than anything else. Under a different set of circumstances, Bo could easily have leveled the man, who appeared to be pushing sixty and had the chronic cough of a lifetime smoker. In fact, forgetting for a moment that the cards were stacked against him, Bo leaned his entire frame forward, over Kalb's desk and nearly into his face.

"You oughtta be expecting me, Kalb, because we Dukes, we don't let no one mess with our family," he blurted, even if somewhere at the back of his head he could imagine Luke wincing at him. It's called sarcasm, Bo. He's just using it to get a rise out of you. Yeah, well, it was working, and so what if Luke would have kept cool and quiet. This Kalb fella, he needed to learn exactly why you didn't separate Dukes from one another. "I'm here to see Daisy and I dang well mean to see her!" Bo was so close to the Sequatchie County Sheriff that the man had to back up a bit just to breathe.

Or maybe it was just to signal his deputies, men that Bo hadn't seen but suddenly felt yanking him backwards, turning him and shoving him against the metal wall on the side of the simple, unfinished trailer that served as the Sequatchie sheriff's office. These men, the deputies, were every bit as young and strong as Kalb wasn't, and it was probably overkill to sic all three of them on Bo at once. Then again, he was mad enough that he might have been able to throw off two. As it was he probably accomplished Luke's worst nightmare, because he resisted enough to get himself slammed a couple of extra times against the wall, hitting exactly on that little spot where his hair had been shaved and his scalp stitched, only a couple of days ago. He was likely bleeding, and definitely hurting.

Before he could even put his hands up to signal surrender, one of the deputies (or maybe all of them) swung him around and grabbed his arms, and he was cuffed. Seemed like he and his throbbing head were busted. Luke would be so proud.

"You hear that?" Kalb was asking, and Bo couldn't hear much of anything over the way his head was pounding. Didn't seem to matter, because Kalb apparently wasn't talking to him. "He requested to see one of the prisoners. Duke, I believe, first initial D. Deputy Johnson, you want to bring him your favorite prisoner?"

The sly smiles that slid across all four men's faces made Bo struggle against the cuffs and the hands that were pushing him into the cheap plastic chair facing Kalb and his oversized desk. Looked just as flimsy as the chairs in the room and as ugly as the carpet on the floor. Somewhere on the way down he felt a hand in his back pocket and then a sudden looseness there. His wallet got tossed onto the desk in front of Kalb, but he couldn't have cared less about that, not when they were still smirking over Daisy that way.

"Hey!" Bo hollered, because there wasn't anything more he could really do, couldn't swing a fist, couldn't hardly move. "That's my cousin you're…" He planned more words, but couldn't say them around the fist that landed across his mouth. It was a glancing blow as much as anything. Nothing like a real hit, not half as hard as Luke had hit him back when they'd fought about that carnival (and Luke always pulled his punches against Bo) jump he'd planned to do. But the taste of blood was there anyway, and it was enough to make him stop yelling, at least for now.

"Sit down," Kalb advised through a coughing fit, as if Bo wasn't already pinned into a chair. "Stay with us awhile," he muttered as he poked through the nearly nothing that Bo had in his wallet. It wasn't like Dukes had much of anything to carry in a wallet to begin with, and he'd removed all the photos and trinkets that were precious to him and handed them over to Luke for safekeeping about an hour ago. Kalb couldn't be looking at much more than his driver's license and two dollars.

"This is Beauregard Duke," Kalb introduced, like Bo had stopped over for some sweet tea and to sit a spell on the porch of Kalb's home. "He's come to stay with us for a bit. Let's make him feel at home, shall we?" Bo had a powerful feeling that this home had more than a passing acquaintance with violence. He braced himself for another hit, but it didn't come. "Johnson, he's come to visit his kin. Bring her here, directly, would you?"

And that was too easy, Luke was saying in the dark corners of his brain. His cousin always expected the worst out of everyone, but this time Bo thought Luke's point of view probably had merit. They weren't going to bring him Daisy, it would be…

Slithering (oh, Johnson, he didn't move like a human, he slid kind of low and sideways, one eye looking right and the other left, and Bo would have bet the whole two dollars in his wallet, if he could have, that Johnson's tongue was forked) through an archway that Bo hadn't paid any attention to when he'd come in, Johnson slipped out through a door on the far end of the trailer. Bo couldn't see the detail of what lay beyond that door, but it was on the side of the tin can of a sheriff's office, which abutted the old courthouse building. The prison was that way, and that wasn't really news. Jesse's lecture of the morning had told him that much. Kalb was using the building from which his own grandfather had ruled a now nonexistent county in order to house the current county's prisoners.

"So, Duke, first initial B.," and Bo was already annoyed by that particular habit of Kalb's. "You came to see your cousin, eh?"

"Yes, sir," because manners applied, even when the other guy was a jerk. Aunt Lavinia and Luke, they were maybe the only two people whose advice he could remember around the ringing in his head.

"Just you, huh?"

"Huh?" Bo echoed, because he didn't quite understand the question or because he just couldn't think straight.

"Just you, not your other cousin, Duke, first initial L. Not your Uncle," and here Kalb paused for a moment, wrinkles on his already wrinkled forehead getting just that much wrinklier, "Jesse Duke."

"No sir," Bo answered, relieved to have grasped what was being asked of him, because the two deputies whose names he didn't know yet, they still had an ungentle hold of his shoulders. "Luke ain't with me, nor Jesse neither." Which was true in an obvious sort of way. Bo was, after all, the only one in the room (and in Ooltewah, at the moment. That would change, but not right away).

"I imagine they'll be along…" Kalb answered, and those words in that tone, Bo could have heard them even if he'd been unconscious. His stomach turned to mush and he wished he'd skipped the BLT back at the diner. "But first, let's you and me get acquainted, shall we?" It was odd, how this man could genuinely sound like they were sitting on the back porch of an old cabin overlooking fields and mountains, and maybe any minute now his wife would bring out cookies to go with that tea.

Meanwhile, Bo was anything but sitting back, relaxed and cross-legged, expecting a tasty treat. Though they were pinned behind him and handcuffed, Bo's fists were clenched and aching to make contact with Kalb or either of the two deputies whose nametags he still hadn't seen enough of to read. He was held down, quite firmly and uncomfortably, by the shoulders.

"I'd shake your hand and say how-de-do, but as you can see, I'm kind of busy over here," Bo advised him, leaving out the 'sir' and the civility. Don't go swinging at the wrong guy, Luke reminded him from somewhere in the back of his head, but it was useless, honestly. Luke wasn't here, and Bo's jaw ached from the way he was trying to clench it shut, not to mention the way the rest of his body hurt. He was even kind of nauseous and then there was the fact that he was maybe bluffing just a little bit.

Hang in there until six, had been Luke's final quiet reminder to him before Bo had revved up the General's engine to head here. Six in the morning – that might just be too long.

Then again, about the time he was thinking that, Johnson returned with a woman that was about the same height and weight as Daisy Duke, but otherwise barely resembled her. It wasn't just the shapeless and ugly brown jumpsuit, or the greasy and uncombed look to her hair. It wasn't even entirely in her face, the hollow-eyed look, the knuckle sized bruises (oh, he struggled against the handcuffs on seeing that. Didn't do anything except cut up his wrists, but he struggled) on her cheek. It was the way she walked, like old Miz Thomas whose body was wracked with arthritis. It was the way she didn't look at him, the way she didn't have any fight in her at all. It was in the way she let Johnson push her into another of cheap, plastic chairs in the room, and didn't even flinch when those knuckles (knuckles as white as her face was, knuckles exactly the size and distance apart as the bruises in the middle of all that white) dug into her shoulder as a reminder about sitting still.

"Daisy," he said, not even meaning to, not wanting Kalb or any of the men in the room see exactly how Daisy's demeanor had cut him to the quick.

Her head came up and she looked at him then, like she was just realizing that he was in the room. The wideness of her eyes, suddenly, that hollow no-one's-home look gone, caught him off guard. Horror, that was the look in her eyes, a kind of fear that he'd only ever seen on her face when they were kids and it became obvious that Aunt Lavinia was going to pass away within the week.

"Bo," she said, and that horror from her eyes was in her voice, too. "Don't…" and Johnson hit her, backhand. If this was Hazzard, Johnson would be wearing a pitcher of beer, he'd be ducking under Bo's fist only to be hit by Luke's, he'd be… a dead man. But this wasn't Hazzard, and Bo's attempts to get up and do something about what Johnson had just done only led to him being shoved back into his chair, cuffs cutting deeper into his wrists.

"Just a dang minute," he was hollering and then he was seeing stars.


"Settle down, boy." The words were at the periphery of his consciousness, just like the whole of Jesse and Cooter's conversation had been.

Luke picked up another napkin, started at the top left corner. Tore himself a strip like he was ripping bandages from sheets to help his uncle with the birthing of a cow.

He was stupid, he shouldn't have let Bo go, shouldn't have sent his cousin off to that kind of a place. Bo could handle himself most days and in some pretty crazy situations. But this was different, this was a place where strong, healthy men went in and never came out. Bo knew jail like he knew farming (probably better than he knew farming, actually, he always seemed to have more fun in jail than out in the fields) but this wasn't jail, this was likely everything the Osage Road Gang had been, except Luke wasn't there to keep an eye on his cousin. Who had a concussion, and who was young, would always be young, no matter how many years he lived. Bo was immortal, or thought he was, anyway. He hadn't ever really been in any kind of danger that Luke couldn't handle, knew nothing, really, of being alone, or outnumbered. Bo hadn't faced war, had never jumped without a working parachute, didn't have any idea of what it would mean if Luke couldn't catch him this time. Bo walked into all situations with the knowledge that he would walk right back out the exact same man that he'd always been. And Luke had sent his overgrown kid of a cousin right into the middle of the one thing he couldn't be sure that Bo would neatly walk away from. He was a fool.

Bo had never faced anything on his own, or nothing worse than Diane Benson and her carnival, anyway.

Somewhere in the corners of his vision, the waitress came by their table for the hundredth time, topping off Cooter's coffee. He probably ought to put a stop to all that coffee drinking that Cooter was doing. The last thing he'd need would be a jumpy mechanic, but then again, it was hours and hours and hours before they'd be breaking in there to rescue Bo – and Daisy, who was in there, too, and that was as much Luke's fault as Bo being in there. The only difference was, he hadn't chosen to send Daisy in there like he'd done with Bo. Luke put a hand over his own cup to indicate that he didn't want a refill, and the waitress walked away tsking, either at his refusal to let her serve him or at the mess of shredded napkins spread all over the table. Pretty soon he was going to have emptied that whole metal thingamajig of them, and then he had no idea what he'd do with his hands.

What were 32 parked cars and a half-crazy, fuel line-cutting ex-boyfriend in comparison to this place he'd sent Bo? What kind of experience did kissing the wrong girl give Bo that would help him handle the violence of prison? Diane had been good at mind games, but she'd had no stomach for actually hurting Bo. Kalb, he was a lot more ruthless than the near-broke, barely keeping-things-together carnival owner was, even on Diane's most manipulative day.

There were facts here and they added up to disaster. A corrupt and unchecked system of government, running its own prison. His cousins in there, one with all the vulnerability in the world, just by virtue of her own beauty, the other with a concussion. And all they had on their side was a plan, a stupid plan, a lousy half-baked plan that was—

Jesse grabbed his right hand in one of his meaty, old-man's paws. All attempts to shake him off weren't working and this was just a dangerous thing for Jesse to do, trying to hold Luke still right now. Luke wanted to push him away, fight him if he had to, whatever it took to make Jesse let him go, and… he sighed, instead, loud, explosive, the kind of thing that would have gotten him sent away from the dinner table if Aunt Lavinia had been here to see it.

"Luke," Jesse was saying. "You need to settle down."

"Sure, I do," he snapped. "I need to settle down while Bo's in there… and he's… and Daisy's…" he used his left hand to finish each of those thoughts. Had to use his weaker hand to try to convey everything he couldn't say, because Jesse still had ahold of his stronger one.

"Luke," and there was that patient sound, the one that usually came just before the high-pitched I'm-obviously-talking-to-an-idiot tone. "Bo is stronger than you give him credit for."

Luke let loose with another sigh, this one creeping around the edges of becoming a bitter laugh.

"Luke," and this time the tone was much more of a warning. "Your cousins – both of them – are capable of a lot more than you seem to realize. You need to let them take care of themselves for now. They can do it, trust me."

Luke didn't say anything of how many times he'd had to carry Bo home with what amounted to a scratch on his knee, because his kid cousin couldn't tolerate pain. Didn't say it, but thought of all the times he and Bo had taken down the guys that wanted Daisy in all the wrong ways.

"What you got to do, Luke, is settle down enough to do your part right." Oh, of course, that was the problem. It wasn't that Bo and Daisy were in the middle of who-knew-what without Luke there to protect them. It was that Luke wouldn't be able to carry out his own mission. As if Luke hadn't executed hundreds upon hundred of plans (most of which Jesse didn't even know about) and come out the other side just fine.

But this was Jesse, the man who had raised him, and who he respected above anyone else he'd ever known. So he didn't say anything stronger than, "Yes, sir."

And went right on back to believing that he'd done the stupidest thing possible, sending Bo off to Ooltewah alone.