Thanks to everyone who has been reading, and special thanks to those who have been reviewing. The good news is, I've finished this thing! I warn you now, it's longer than I thought it would be.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Dukes of Hazzard, any of the characters from the series, or the settings for this story. Although it contains some real events, it does not involve any real people, either living or dead.


Chapter 7 – Planting Seeds

There was nothing, really, that she could do. Daisy had played her part in Luke's plan to get out of the state last night, and now all she and her uncle could do was wait. Still, patience was not a dominant characteristic in the Dukes' genetic makeup, and the beautiful young woman had become almost instantly restless. A nearly sleepless night was followed by an excruciatingly long morning, as she, Jesse and Cooter did their best to maintain the farm.

The mechanic had prevailed upon his father to resume opening the garage and staying for what were generally the very slow morning hours. Jerome Davenport had been agreeable; after being sworn to secrecy, then told the complete story of why his son's assistance was required, he'd given up his lazy mornings without a second thought.

Working alongside Cooter was a different kind of adventure than working with Bo and Luke, no question about that. Daisy could count on one hand the number of times that the Duke cousins had laughed through the entirety of morning chores, but with the mechanic, there was nothing else you could do. What Cooter could do to a car was almost musical in it's beauty; what he did to a cow derived a dissonant bovine protest like none Daisy had heard in her entire life on the farm. The chickens, as well, had complaints about the intruder, and Maudine, as always, made herself known. There was no way the mule would allow anything as filthy as the town's mechanic clean her stall, not on your life! Between the braying, mooing, clucks and laughter, the Duke farm was a noisy place that morning. Everything took at least twice as long to do, too, what with two men missing and some inexpert hands in the mix.

Finally, though, chores had been done and Cooter had escaped to the garage where he knew what he was doing. The cow and mule had been placated, and though the chickens were still fussy, Daisy couldn't remember a time when they hadn't been.

There were still several hours until her shift at work, and with only herself and Jesse to feed and clean up after, Daisy found herself with idle time at a point when she needed and wanted it least. Last summer she might have picked up one of the boys' guitars or Jesse's old mandolin and begun writing a song, but with all that had happened over the last 7 months, and more importantly the last couple of days, music was the last thing on Daisy's mind.

Determining that sitting at the kitchen table and fidgeting was not really doing anything for her mood, the young woman decided to find the one person who was probably feeling exactly the same way she was.


Tennessee was a blur to Luke. He knew the southern mountains almost as well as the lines and planes of his own face. For the beginning of his journey he'd chosen the most familiar route along winding back roads that no one except locals and moonshine runners would take. It was the closest thing to a direct course to the interstate, but it still took hours. There was something comforting about the curves, though; the last time he'd been up here, Bo had been in a passenger seat and they'd enjoyed the trip. Luke had always thought they'd take longer journeys together at some point, but their probation had put an end to that idea.

Somewhere in the early morning hours he'd hit the interstate and from there the ride had been uninteresting. First light of this morning had found him at the Kentucky border, and also at a complete loss. It was one thing to look at the state on a map and try to divide it up into likely locations, and quite another to look around at hills, trees and houses and wonder where in the 40,000 square miles of this place would you find one man?

There wasn't a lot of money to spare, but Daisy had forced her tip jar on him before she'd headed off to work yesterday afternoon, so Luke did have plenty of small change. He got off the interstate in Williamsburg and found a street corner with a newspaper box on it. Digging out a dime, he went and got himself a paper. Sliding it onto the passenger seat next to him, Luke went in search of a local route that would take him into the mountains. Though it was now full light, the Duke boy needed to find himself a place to catch a few hours of sleep, and he knew that location would be somewhere off the beaten path.


Wisdom was not something that Jesse Duke had always possessed. He'd once been young, too, like his kids were now. He'd been wild, just like his boys; more like Bo than Luke. The thrill of a chase with a revenuer breathing down his tailpipes had brought him a lot more pleasure than planning a strategy for avoiding the federal agents in the first place would have.

But he couldn't keep running that way all of his life. Some of the reason for his changing ways had been the kids themselves, and the way they'd affected their new guardians. They'd been a handful from the beginning, and had required a steadiness that Jesse had never really shown before. Oh, he'd had a hand in raising some of his younger brothers, but what he'd taught them was more along the lines of how to get into trouble, not how to stay out. His brothers' kids, though, had enough trouble already, what with all that they had lost before coming to him. They didn't need any more problems than they already had, though they were pretty intent on experiencing danger all the same.

After Lavinia passed, Jesse'd matured that much more, realizing that he needed to be a mother to these kids, as well as their father, uncle and guardian. And, in these last few years, age had played its part. He couldn't run at full speed the same way he used to, and so he didn't. Instead, he considered a thing from all angles before deciding the best way to use his fading energies.

Years ago he would have been so consumed with worry about Bo that he wouldn't have been able to accomplish anything until his youngest was safe, back under his roof. Now he recognized that there was more than one problem affecting his family, and while he had to trust Luke to solve one thing, the other was within his power to try to change.

And so the white-haired man found himself standing in the office of Ridge Owens, a man he'd known all his life, and yet hardly spoken more than a few words of greeting to in years. One glance into the tired brown eyes of the balding man whose beard had gone salt and pepper at some point when no one was paying attention, was enough to tell Jesse that he wasn't the first to drop by this place, unannounced.

"Jesse, long time no see," Ridge greeted cautiously. The Dukes had never worked at the mill, other than as occasional day labor, but the owner knew what they'd been growing on their back forty, and why. He'd been looking forward to their partnership, knowing that with Jesse Duke he'd get not only the best product, but honesty, as well. It was the way the man had distilled his liquor, and it would be the way he dealt with this new endeavor; Ridge never doubted that. How the government felt about homemade liquor products notwithstanding, the Dukes were honest, good, strong, and law abiding citizens. But it seemed that the owner of the mill would not get to work directly with the family after all.

"Ridge," Jesse nodded, and, shifting the red cap he'd taken off upon entering the building to his left hand, shook Owens' hand. Normally Jesse would ask after the man's family, but today he decided that he did not need to stick to small town pleasantries. It was obvious that Ridge knew why he was here, and was simply eager for the conversation to be over. Jesse obliged by getting it started.

"So, is it true, then Ridge? Is this place closin'?"

"Now Jesse, I don't want you to go jumpin' the gun too much with the workers out there," he gestured towards the production floor, "by tellin' 'em that. They know they're gettin' laid off, an' maybe that's all they need to know right now."

The Duke patriarch bristled, but remained civil. "All right, Ridge, I ain't askin' on their behalf. I need to know if I'm growin' somethin' that'll sell, or if we've just sowed us some real expensive dandelions to blow away in the fall wind."

The other man looked at his feet for a moment. Jesse Duke had that affect on people, and although Ridge Owens had owned and run his own business for a good twenty years, he was no exception.

"All right, Jesse, listen, I don't want to do it, but I gotta. I'll be selling the mill come summer."

"Sellin' it to someone that's gonna re-open it, or to someone that's gonna turn it into a tobacco factory?"

Tobacco was, along with moonshine, the backbone of Appalachian farming. So far Hazzard had depended on one product and not the other, and Jesse hoped it would stay that way. He was in no position to make moral judgments, and his reasoning had nothing to do with the relative health of smokers. He simply objected to the fact that "curing barns" had a habit of accidentally causing wildfires. Jesse had seen enough wildfires in his life, including one that had endangered the old Duke homestead; he certainly didn't need to experience another.

Sadness etched itself in the lines of Ridge's face. "Neither, I'm afraid. The mill's going to be razed, and there's been plans drawn up to put a mall and some condominiums on the land."

Jesse's eyes softened as he realized what must have happened. "How much are you into him for?"

"More than you can give me, but not so much that I didn't really think I could pay him back. I just didn't know we's gonna have such a tough winter, Jesse," the mill owner justified.

"He ain't never been one to go easy on nobody. How come he ain't already took possession?"

"He can't, I ain't defaulted yet. I will though, come August. An' he knows it, too. He's already after me to get out now, before it happens. There's days when I think about doin' that, Jesse."

Jesse's sympathy changed to anger in an instant, surprising both men in the room with its vehemence.

"If you ain't defaulted yet, then you need to quit feeling sorry for yourself and start figuring out what you're gonna do. Now, Ridge," Jesse's face made it quite clear that interrupting just now would be very unwise, "Don't give me no sad stories. If it ain't happened yet, we can still fix this. But you gotta stop acting like the world's comin' to an end, an' start actin' like a man that's got somethin' worth holdin' onto here. And you do," Jesse reminded him. "You're holdin' up the whole economy of Hazzard County, right here on this property. It ain't just you that you're supportin'," Jesse pointed to the men and women on the production floor. "It's them."

Once again, looking at his feet, Ridge Owens nodded. Then he looked up and actually smiled.

"You are somethin' Jesse Duke. The way you talk – it gives a man hope."

"You got to find that in yourself, Ridge. It's in there, and you're sure gonna need it."


Things hadn't exactly gone as planned, and the newlyweds were quiet this afternoon. Robby had hoped that they'd at least get a lead on jobs today, by talking to the men in the mining towns. So far they'd learned that no one was hiring, and in fact, some were looking to lay men off. They'd already learned that many of the mines were slowly switching over to a supposedly safer and more efficient way of getting the coal from the Earth: strip mining.

Bo knew a little on the subject, at least theoretically. They'd learned something about it in school, and despite how his cousins teased him, he had picked quite a lot in classes, even if he'd complained bitterly about having to go. He'd never seen the results of this type of mining in real life, though, at least not until now. As they talked to some of the families that had lived and worked in this part of the country their whole lives, Bo discovered that the landslides, lack of trees and dearth of animals in the hills they'd come through was not due to any natural ill health of this area. Instead, the process of strip mining, or essentially removing the tops from the mountains, had caused all of these problems, and more. Landslides led to sudden deposits of silt into the rivers, which flooded back up into the lowlands. No one knew how it affected the drinking water, but it was visibly dirtier than it had once been.

Aside from suddenly being very grateful the mines in Hazzard had long since closed, despite his wishes of the night before, Bo understood that this meant the chances of him and Robby getting jobs had diminished. They'd have to search further and wider for what they sought, because it was clear, as they looked into one another's eyes, that neither one would be giving up on this endeavor. They each felt that they had too much to lose if they walked away.

Once again the threesome planned to spend the night in a hotel. Bo had suggested camping, but they were without even rudimentary supplies, and Katie Jane was not in the least amused by the concept of sleeping under the stars. Bo was a fan of the practice, as he and Luke had done it since childhood, but it was clear that neither one of the young couple ever had. Besides, the weather up here was cooler than it had been in Georgia, especially in the mountains.

A compromise was struck. Bo, not wishing to be the third wheel on this new marriage any longer, would go his own way that night. After a quick, inexpensive, fast-food meal that had left the unaccustomed Duke boy a little sick to his stomach, Robby and Katie Jane were deposited at a hotel for the night. Bo would pick them up in the morning, and what he did in between, they wouldn't ask.

Driving Robby's old Chevy Chevelle much more carefully than he would one of his own family's vehicles, Bo headed for the hills, seeking a secluded location to make camp.


Cooter had been humbled by his morning at the Duke farm. Though he technically lived on one himself, it was more the remnants of a farm, something his ancestors had worked long before he was born. When the first automobile had driven into Hazzard back in 1917, Cooter's grandfather had walked away from his plow and never gone back. From then on, Davenports were mechanics.

Still, Cooter decided, there was planting seeds and then there was planting seeds. And he was uniquely qualified for the particular type he was about to do. When some of the local boys showed up at the garage in the evening, as he knew they would, the town mechanic began his own brand of sowing.

Waiting for the right break in the conversation, Cooter seized it when it came.

"Man, it's been so hot these past few days. Wish I was out with them Duke boys."

"Why, where are they?" Dobro asked, not so much caring about the Duke boys as where else Cooter might actually long to be. As far as anyone knew, his favorite place was right here, in the garage, half stooped over a car.

"They're out on a boar hunting trip in the hills, won't be back for a week, maybe two. Don't that sound like fun?"

Most of the young men in the garage agreed it did, if only they could get away from whatever it was that held each of them at home.

"Man, how are they getting away for so long? You know they always have to leave this here garage to get back to the farm and help Jesse. If they can't stay at the garage for even a whole afternoon, how can they stay out hunting for a couple of weeks?"

Cooter would have liked to kill Dobro for that one, but of course, it was a reasonable question, spoken in utter jealousy. The mechanic berated himself for not having anticipated it, even as he thought quickly to answer it.

"I don't know much about farming," Cooter grinned, realizing that this was the one bit of truth he was telling tonight, "but I guess now that they've planted the cotton, it don't need any more attention?"

This started the group into a discussion of farming practices, whose family grew which crops and in what amounts, and ultimately, who owned the best tractor. This led back, full circle, to a discussion of cars, and the grubby mechanic congratulated himself. He'd sowed the seeds, and now he just had to sit back and watch them grow. He knew that eventually they'd flower over in the county courthouse, and that was his goal.