Author's Note: Each time I give a chapter its final proof-read before posting, I am amazed at how dark this story is. Funny, when I was writing it, it didn't seem this gloomy. Thanks for sticking with it, even though it's easily the least fun thing I've ever written. (For what it's worth, what I am working on now is more of an action/adventure kind of a story. Back to my roots.)
I don't own any Duke-stuffs, nor make any money for writing Duke-things.
Chapter Seven -- Toast Together, Eggs Alone
February 1985
"Now wait just a dang minute." He stopped, had to pause there to get a breath, frustrating how it hemmed and hawed its way past his throat, came into his lungs all wet and heavy and didn't soothe the burning there one bit.
"Bo," Luke was saying but it was so far away, outside of this bubble Bo was trapped in. Hot place, seething against the winter wind at his back, heat boiling up in waves between him and Luke. Somewhere along the line this thing had turned around so that now it was Luke with his back against the house, pinned there by the tip of Bo's finger in his rib cage. He jabbed at his cousin once more, maybe because Luke was the only solid thing he could reach.
"Jesse knew this all our lives," or since it had happened anyway. Luke was a toddler at the time, and Bo an infant, but that was just a technicality. "And you've known it since—when did he tell you, Luke?"
"Before we left," came at him from that same distance. Interesting how he could feel Luke's heartbeat and still the man was outside of the rage Bo felt. He was going through hell standing on the porch of his childhood home; Luke ought to be right there, suffering along with him.
"Ten years," he said, then it was less a bubble that Bo was trapped in, more like a plastic bag, sticking in close to his face, and no more oxygen inside. "Ten years, and you never once thought to tell me that it was your father that killed our parents?"
That, right there, might be the part he regrets most. Confirming what Luke's been thinking ever since Jesse told it to him, that they'd still have parents if Luke's father hadn't been so rash, selfish, competitive.
Sitting on the ground with the blood of a murdered bush on his hands, killed in the name of getting Luke to listen to him, Bo has all kinds of remorse.
"You're a mess," he comments because it is true. Only Luke would be sweating before dawn on a February morning, hair plastered to his skin where it's not frizzed away from his head. Out here in shirt sleeves, and even those are rolled up to reveal raw looking abrasions up and down his arms, and a good sized couple of slices in his palms.
He finds himself wanting to grab hold of Luke's wrists and get a better look at the damage there, but it's not the kind of thing his cousin's about to allow at the moment. He's only got the barest pretense of calm painted across his face right now, and that's solely for the purpose of placating Bo. Ten years of holding onto a bitter secret has taken a toll on his cousin, but the man held it together until he finally retold it last night. As of this morning, Luke is a complete and utter mess.
Bo drops the sacrificial bush out of his own hands, which are a perfectly healthy – if slightly dusty – pink, with no nicks or cuts, primarily because Luke did most of the work. Used to be his cousin's biggest complaint, that he had to do more than his share of chores because Bo was too young or small to properly contribute. Maybe he had a point; looking back it seems like Luke's had to carry the lion's share of any burden. Lavinia would say it was the mountain lion's share.
Luke didn't accompany him to NASCAR, he ran away from home. Away from the county where he had an uncle who'd told him the story of their parents, coloring it in such a way as to ensure that Luke would go. His uncle's intentions were honorable, had to have been. There wasn't a thing Jesse Duke did that was morally ambiguous. Breaking the law was a matter of habit; breaking his word was forbidden. But somewhere in his need to protect his boys from a lifetime of moonshining, Jesse broke Luke's heart, and maybe his spirit. Bo's going to have to try to set that right.
"Come on," he says, finally. "I'll distract Daisy so you can get cleaned up."
Luke nods, might be a substitute for saying thanks. Gets his feet under him in record time, then offers a hand back down to Bo. Maybe it's an automatic gesture, probably is. Bo doesn't care; it's a reason to touch Luke, to make contact. So he grabs on lightly and mostly lifts himself under his own power. No need to go yanking on those raw hands.
Used to be he'd let Luke haul him up, then he'd hook and arm around his cousin's neck. Had a good feel to it; Luke made an excellent leaning post, built solid and standing firm. Now Bo's not sure what to do with that left arm of his, itching like it is to find its natural resting point across Luke's back. It settles for a light hold on Luke's shoulder, just fingers spread across the muscles there, and no weight behind them. His thumb hangs in the sweat at the nape of Luke's neck, but that's all right, he doesn't get shrugged off.
They make it to the porch, the scene of last night's crime, which never amounted to more than a couple of shoves and a few bitter words, before Bo says, "You go get a shower, cuz. Coffee'll be waiting when you get done." Because Luke would tolerate Daisy pouring peroxide straight into open wounds, so long as it meant he could have his morning sludge. And if it were just blood that needed to be cleaned up, Bo would reckon Daisy was the best one for the job. But she'd never do it without asking how it happened and what Luke thought he was doing out there clearing the land without tools or gloves, in the dead of winter and without a coat on. And the answer is too complex for the bride-to-be to handle right now.
Because Daisy's in a whorl about her wedding anyway and won't tolerate someone else's drama to interfere, not when it's this close. She's got a whole formal affair planned, the likes of which she never would have bothered with for L.D. It'll be beautiful, he's sure, once they get past all these last minute details that have his female cousin in a tizzy. Like tonight's rehearsal dinner. He can't swear he understands the necessity of such a thing, but he knows for sure that if him and Luke aren't there and on their best behavior, they'll wind up with frying pan dings in their skulls.
"Bo, I can—"
Yeah, Luke can slay a dragon or brutally murder an unsuspecting bush, left-handed. But this time he's not going to get the chance.
"Just do it, Luke. And after, you go get some shuteye. I'll come get you up in plenty of time for Daisy's daily form of torture."
It's a dangerous game, ordering Luke Duke around like this. Could turn ugly in a heartbeat, but Luke's too tired to fight. "Thanks, cousin," is all he says.
January 1976
It was betrayal, was what it was. It was something to get stuffed in the back of his sock drawer. And then it turned into a loud-voiced bastard, calling to him as he went about his daily routine. I'm right here, Luke. Come and look at me, do some serious thinking about what you can get out of me.
A future of his own, mostly. A position he'd earn on the merits of his skills, not his blood (or someone else's). A way out of a life that had grown as boring as hell.
Or maybe that wasn't fair, could be it had just gotten to be routine. Same strategy every time, at least as far as his job went. Keep an eye on Bo, then tell him things he could figure out on his own, if he tried. In fact, if Luke wasn't there, Bo would probably improve as a driver from the simple necessity of looking after himself.
That last part could well have been that thing in the back of his drawer talking, justifying itself. All the same, it seemed like maybe the thing had itself a point.
After about two days of being harassed by a stupid piece of mail – an opportunity he only thought of because back on one sweaty jungle day, PFC Peters had mentioned how he'd been drafted out of one service and into another – Luke went and dug it out of his bureau. Ignoring it was an impossibility.
For all that it had commanded his thoughts for forty-eight hours, it was an unimpressive two-page application. Name, address, have you ever been convicted of any crime? (Convicted no. Committed, well that was up to interpretation, wasn't it?) Height, weight, last year of school completed; the same kind of thing he'd had to reveal to the government when he'd reported for that physical exam in October of 1971. Nothing that was any sort of a secret, nothing that would hurt anyone if he told.
All he really needed was a pen.
Bo was a pimply wreck with big feet and bad posture back when Luke got drafted. He'd played at being brave for the interim between Luke's physical exam and his induction, but in the end he'd cried and clung and made Luke loathe to leave him. Jesse'd had a hand in raising the kid, mostly a firm one. Daisy made for a fine friend to his kid cousin. But neither of them knew him like Luke did, or had the slightest clue when it came to dealing with Bo on a day to day basis. Somehow he didn't reckon the Marine Corps would give him a deferral to raise his baby cousin, not when his uncle was legally the boy's guardian, so he'd had to go. Seemed like as disastrous idea.
What he came back to was a six-foot-plus young man, handsome and confident. At least that described the exterior package; underneath it all, Bo was still Bo. All the same, he'd managed without Luke. Maybe he was better for that bravado he'd developed in those years, veneer though it was.
And then there was the fact that Luke was restless and itchy and… He'd tried to remind himself that he didn't have the luxury of ambition. He stayed out of race cars and mostly left Bo to the girls. If his cousin wanted something, Luke did his best to convince himself that Bo should have it and Luke didn't need anything close to it. He didn't compete over anything, avoided stepping on anyone's toes. And, yeah, he was about to have to go and tempt the local law into a pointless chase, just for something to do, because subverting his own aspirations for the sake of Bo was about to bore him out of his mind.
Dukes don't fight Dukes, Jesse always said, and now that he knew what was there for the reading in between those lines, Luke finally got it. When Dukes fought Dukes, Dukes wound up dead. Bo was safer on the track, even locked in a duel with a dirty driver, than he was with Luke – unless any competition between them could be squashed.
The forestry service wasn't anything Bo would want to follow him into. The land around him was nothing more than scenery in that blonde head. It was appreciated in the same way Bo appreciated lunch: it should be there when desired, have a pleasant aroma, be plentiful and convenient, and never make him work too hard at getting it. Luke understood that approach, really. He'd had it too, had figured the world was a never-ending stretch of oaks and maples interrupted by evergreens. Mountains were like the little freckles on his arms: plenty of them there, unremarkable and not going anywhere anytime soon. Cold air in winter, warm in summer, all of these things Luke took for granted until he lost them. Or misplaced them, really. Got sent over to a country that was flat (oh, it had mountains, apparently, just not in the part where Luke wound up), where a man was lucky to find the scant shade of a palm tree when the heat was unrelenting. It was right about then that Luke started loving Appalachia for real.
Bo would never love the Southeastern United States the way Luke did, because he'd never leave it, not for more than the week here and there that the team traveled to the Midwest. Luke could join the forestry service and protect the land he'd learned to appreciate without ever having to worry about becoming competitive with Bo over it.
He was still sitting at the kitchen table, staring at the application, when Bo stumbled his half-dressed, gaping-mouthed self into the kitchen in search of breakfast.
January 1976
Luke was reading again, and Bo reckoned that soon enough he'd go gray and need glasses, just like their uncle did. Then that pot belly would set in, and that would be a tragedy. Used to be Luke hardly sat still, and now Bo even found him reclined from time to time, book or newspaper just about perched on his nose.
"We need a cow," Bo decided. "So you got something to do with your mornings besides reading. And so's I can have some fresh milk for my breakfast."
"Fine idea," Luke agreed, "I'll milk it, you clean up after it." Funny guy.
"What's for breakfast?" he yawned. Luke gave him that flat-lipped look that might have been a suggestion that he cover his mouth. Interesting development, now that they weren't living under the same roof as Daisy, that it was Luke who'd turned into the woman of the house.
"Whatever you want," Luke answered, shaking his head. "I already ate."
And that was another thing Bo wasn't real happy about. Used to be the two of them shared all of their meals. When it came to breakfast, Luke got him up. On purpose or by mistake, it didn't matter. Nothing got eaten until they were both at the table. But with them in separate bedrooms, it got too easy for him to lose track of his cousin.
"You say grace?" was just a jibe, a reminder that they were raised better than that. Meals only got eaten after important things got done. The chores. Waking up the rest of the family. Thanking the Lord.
"Bo," might have been the start of an argument, once upon a time. Today it's just a sigh. "I had toast. I would have made you some, but I didn't expect it would be any good cold. Besides, there was only two eggs left and I figured you'd want those." Luke's eyebrows scrunched down and he looked off to the furthest corner of the room, like his patience had been tried to its limits and those numbers he counted to were printed on the wallpaper there.
"Well what if I don't want eggs?" Because maybe toast with his cousin would have tasted better and been more satisfying than eggs by himself, but of course Luke hadn't thought about that. He was too busy trying to turn into their uncle and female cousin, all rolled into one boring little ball. Maybe he missed the rest of their family, and maybe he reckoned Bo did. And maybe he was even right about that, but that didn't mean he wanted Luke to become them. Shoot, could be it was Luke that he missed most of all, even living right here under the same roof.
"Bo," and there was that exhausted headshake, like talking to Bo required more effort than Luke wanted to put in. "I ain't gonna argue with you. There's eggs if you want them or toast if you don't. Anything else we're gonna have to go out and get, which means you gotta be dressed." Luke thought he knew everything, but he didn't understand the simplest of courtesies.
"What you been reading there that was more important than waking me up?" A man just ought to remember he had family, was all. "Or waiting on me for breakfast?"
Another sigh on top of two headshakes, and clearly Luke was suffering from miseries that no mortal man could understand. "It ain't more important and I ain't reading it. There's coffee on the stove if you want some."
Coffee, which Bo only drank when he'd been playing too hard the night before to handle the day in front of him without some liquid energy. It was Saturday, he didn't need that bitter sludge. So he went to the refrigerator instead, started getting out the ingredients for a decent breakfast, and only just barely stopped himself from slamming the eggs down on the counter. In their stupid cardboard cartons, the likes of which Dukes never had in their fridge, and who knew whether they might have survived his anger. "What ain't you reading then, that's got you so fascinated?" Stupid shiny, new refrigerator, annoying hard plastic counters that Luke complained would get scratched up if he didn't use a damned cutting board.
"It's an application," Luke answered.
An application, they didn't have to fill those out anymore. Dirt track races at home, those a driver had to apply to enter. Here on the circuit, if there was any paperwork, it got filed by Dave's office.
"For the Forestry Service," was the clarification from over there at the table. Not that it helped. Even if Luke was thinking of racing the General in some local derby, it wasn't very likely that the Forestry Service cared. Not that Bo knew for sure; maybe in North Carolina the Forestry Service was the rough equivalent to Boss Hogg, running everything worth doing in exchange for a cut of the take. "For a job with the Forestry Service."
Bo laughed. "What, Johnson's trying to convince you to leave again?" Because Johnson became the gasser when Luke got moved up to pit crew chief, and he'd been on something of a crusade to annoy both Dukes ever since. Bo reckoned it was lucky for him that he wasn't a Hazzard boy messing with Luke at the Boar's Nest, or he might find himself minus a few teeth. Funny how his cousin didn't seem like the fighting kind these days.
"No," Luke answered, and Bo didn't like how hollow it sounded. Like his cousin had absented himself from this whole conversation because just maybe… was Luke nervous?
"You ain't applying, are you?" Almost made him laugh again. A Duke boy applying for a job. All of Hazzard would be in stitches over that notion.
"Thinking about it." And the way Luke was looking up at him, those blue eyes fixed steady like they had always been at those times when he had to cop to unpleasant things with Jesse, there was no doubt. Thinking was the wrong word for what Luke was doing, it was more like confessing.
Eggs didn't matter and breakfast wasn't the only thing Luke was leaving him alone to get for himself.
"You got a job, Luke," he advanced on his ungrateful cousin to remind him. "After I worked so hard to get you promoted to pit crew chief—"
"Bo." It was calm, so reasonable. Like Luke was already gone and the actual leaving was just a formality. "Being your pit crew chief is—"
"What Luke, it's what? Not good enough? You got to drive against me, you think you're better than me? Fine. We ask Dave, I'm sure we can get you into Sully's car. Then we'll find out whether you're man enough—"
"Bo!" It might have been progress; Luke's voice was raised at least, in some acknowledgement that what they were talking about here was more than toast, coffee and eggs. He even stood up, trying to see eye to eye, but he couldn't – not when Bo got right up into his face. "The last thing I want to do is race against you. I'm just done with racing all together, maybe." What? That wasn't possible. Before they could drive, the only thing they could talk about was getting behind the wheel. Which they did, long before they were technically of legal age, and that didn't satiate them. From there it was all about racing, with 'shine running as a training ground. So far as Bo knew, Luke had never wanted to do anything else.
The application just sat there on the table, silently menacing everything they'd ever wanted, and Bo had a pretty good feeling it hadn't walked into the house all on its own. "So you just today decided to apply to the Forestry Service? When was you planning to tell me, Luke? 'Hey Bo, Charles is gonna be your chief again starting today.' Is that how you figured to do it, Luke?"
Clenched teeth, Luke's controlled façade was finally cracking. "I figured to tell you now, Bo. I only been thinking about it for a few days." Luke shook his head at that, reset his brain and maybe finally got honest. "Or maybe I been thinking about it for years. One of my friends over in Vietnam—"
He shoved Luke, couldn't help it. Heard the chair clatter to the floor behind his cousin's stumbling feet, but of course Luke didn't go down. Reflexes of a cat, gained from experience riding on the roof of a car while Bo drove. "Some guy you knew for – what, two years at most – is more important than me? Is that what you're saying, Luke?"
"No! I ain't saying nothing like that." Temper, temper, and Bo expected Luke to lose his any second now. Braced himself for the punch that was bound to hurt like hell. "Bo, would you shut up and listen to me? I ain't talked to Peters in years. I don't know whether he went back to it or not. I guess I just got the idea from remembering him talk about it, is all."
"You ain't applying, Luke, you ain't!" Oops. It wasn't Luke's control that cracked first, it was Bo's. His control and his voice went at the same time. He wasn't crying, he was just – anger did this to him, was all.
"Bo." When Luke's hands finally came, they didn't hit, more like squeezed. His shoulders and upper arms, and that wasn't fair. Because what hadn't been tears seconds ago was about to become them right now. "I ain't leaving you. There's placements available as close as Uwharrie." Wherever that was. A state park and not all that far, he didn't think. Seemed like Luke had mentioned going there some weekend when they weren't traveling, but it had never happened.
Those hands were moving on his shoulders again, encouraging him closer until Luke had him in his arms. "I ain't leaving you, Bo. I'm just leaving NASCAR."
Like it wasn't the same damned thing.
