Author's note: Hey there! A little housekeeping. There are a couple of canon references I should mention: Back a couple of chapters ago, there was a brief mention of Black Jack Bender, who is from season two's The Meeting. And below you will see a slightly longer reference to Duke vs. Duke from season three. These references are just memories to the boys at this point, since we're in post-season four right now.

And that's it, along with the standard don't own/don't earn disclaimer on all of these characters. And just to say - this one's different from my usual, kind of quiet and domestic, but it was in my head for years and needed to come out. Thanks for sticking with me through another one.


Week Six: Fighting Stupid

June 6-12, 1982

Them Duke boys is like a pair of mules, out there working the fields again. Though it looks like they're managing a mite better this time, strutting up and down the field and tossing hay bales into that old work truck of Jesse's. I reckon someone must be getting close to sleeping through the night these days. Maybe all three someones, and that's a good thing. Bo's always much happier when he gets his beauty sleep and I've got it on good authority that all the girls in Hazzard appreciate it, too. 'Course, they're also partial to hot days like this one when them boys work without shirts.

"All right, you Dukes."

For once, Rosco had managed to sneak up on them. No sirens or lights, which left Luke wondering whether Boss had taken away the sheriff's cruiser again and left him with a pogo stick to hop around on, instead.

"Hey, Rosco," Bo greeted, sunnily. The man was, after all, a guest until proven otherwise. Besides, it never failed to stump Rosco when someone acted happy to see him.

Even if he was technically trespassing. On the Dukes' south forty where almost nothing ever happened, other than high grasses growing and songbirds twittering. And Duke boys sweating in the afternoon sun while their Uncle Jesse sat under a tree, supervising their work, mostly through closed eyelids.

"Boys," Rosco said and it sounded serious this time. There was probably a shame-shame somewhere in their near futures. And there was no doubt everyone knew their names.

"Hold this for me, Rosco?" Bo asked, still just as cheerful as a cat with a barn full of mice.

"Uh," the sheriff said, sticking out his hands like an obedient fool, even if his brain hadn't made up its mind that this was a good idea. Bo settled the freshly baled hay, which he'd been planning to toss onto the bed of the ancient work truck, into Rosco's arms. Watched the man's face turn red with the effort to hold it.

"Now, what can we do for you, sheriff?"

The man in question grunted something, sweat forming at his temples. Poor Rosco hadn't so much as smelled hay during his growing up years, much less harvested any. He'd seen bales stacked throughout the county, heck, he'd seen the Duke boys jump their car over more than a few of them. But Luke would bet every penny of the thirteen cents in his pocket that Rosco had never lifted a single one.

"Here, let me help you with that," he offered. Took the five steps over to where Rosco stood like the leaning tower of Pisa, tipping and ready to come down at any moment. Grabbed the bale with fingers under the twine, set his feet, (watched Bo step back out of instinct), and tossed it at the bed of the truck. Saw it bounce over the other bales that had been set in there nicely, heard the truck respond with a crotchety creak. He and Bo needed to replace the shocks on the poor thing, which was older than both of them. If they could ever find the time around changing and feeding and cleaning and soothing and singing lullabies.

"Don't mind him," Bo advised the sheriff, who was shaking out his sore arms and huffing a heavy breath as if he'd done a lick of work. "He's just showing off."

"Gyu," Rosco agreed, but it wasn't showing off, it was strictly practical. The truck sucked down gas like a drunk with a jug Jesse's moonshine, so they didn't run it from one end of the field to the other, picking up hay bales as they went. They parked it up the middle, then ran around collecting the bales, and chucking them into the flatbed of the truck from as far away as they dared. Jesse watched from the sidelines, claiming that someone had to be out there in case his fool nephews hurt themselves and needed to be taken to the hospital.

"Where's your car, Rosco?" Because the man smelled about as pleasant as a goat, when it came right down to it. Some of that sweat had been settling under his arms and collar for a bit too long.

"It's back at the…" The lawman didn't bother to finish the sentence, just pointed loosely toward the house. Which was just a hop, skip and a jump away, really. At least if you had legs and energy like Bo's. For a sedentary guy like Rosco, whose greatest expenditure of effort came from dragging his waterlogged dog out of the pond while listening to his cruiser gurgle under the surface, getting out here from the house was quite a hike. "Ijit!" Rosco recovered himself. Mostly, anyway. He was still breathing a bit too heavily. "That ain't none of your business."

"All right," Bo agreed readily. "Thanks for helping us with the baling. See you later, Rosco."

"See you…" Rosco started, then caught himself. "I will not see you later, Bo Duke, I'll see you now. You're under arrest."

Out of the corner of his eye, Luke watched Jesse moving. Up like a fox startled from its den, instantly ready to lead a crazy chase in wide circles. The white hair was just a ruse; the old man could move surprisingly quickly when the law was after his boys.

"Under arrest?" And there went Bo's temper flaring up like a barn fire. Boy never had learned that you couldn't fight stupid with your fists. "Rosco, what kind of—"

"What's the charge?" Luke asked smoothly, hands on his hips, head slightly tilted to the side. Just curious, that was all. One of his elbows lightly tapped against Bo's arm, a reminder for the boy to keep his cool.

Rosco reached for his own waist, putting them both on alert. Guns and handcuffs were kept down there. But then again, so were pockets, and inside of one of those, a yellowed handkerchief. Rosco mopped his forehead in a way that announced that if he could charge the Duke boys with risking a sheriff's life by haying in June (and making him walk out to the fields to find them) he'd do it. Luke propped his elbow up onto Bo's sun-browned shoulder to wait for the fountain of brilliance that was sure to drip from Rosco's lips. They hadn't done anything illegal – heck they hadn't even done anything more interesting than buying baby booties in Rhuebottom's General Store in over a month. Jesse sidled up to stand at Bo's other shoulder; a line of Duke men that a sheriff would be a fool to try and cross.

"Baby, oo," but Rosco's mother hadn't birthed any smart boys. "Baby-napping."

"Baby-napping? Have you lost your mind?" There went Bo's temper again, crackling and spitting, consuming whatever calm he'd attained. Luke left his cousin to blustering and complaining about how it couldn't be baby-napping when all they'd done was step out onto their own porch, and there the baby was. It gave him a minute to think things through, about how Rosco had known where to find them and the fact that he'd come on foot. How they'd left the baby with Daisy at the house this morning because he'd been fussy and miserable, and she must have answered the door when Rosco came banging. Must have refused him entry then sent him walking up here in all those ways she had of getting men to do what she wanted. Just to buy herself time to pack up the little one and head off somewhere safe from Rosco, in case he had it in his head to take the baby into custody.

Seems to me that girl done the right thing. Most likely old Rosco would interrogate the poor critter, then lock him up in a cell. A bread and water diet, and the poor kid ain't even got any teeth yet.

"Rosco," that was Jesse, butting into the argument. Just as angry as Bo, but far more logical. And stepping right up close to the lawman in question in case his nephews had to make a run for it. "Who exactly said we kidnapped that there baby?"

All told, that was a really good question. If someone had complained, maybe they'd know who the mother was.

"Ijit! Don't you—don't you threaten me, Jesse Duke." The old man's hands went up to show no harm meant. Totally innocent and agreeable, even if the mound of his stomach was right up against Rosco's belly in a way that would make reaching for his gun awkward and difficult. "No one said it, no one had to say it! If you Dukes got a baby, then there ain't no other way you got it other than kidnapping it."

"How do you figure?" Jesse asked, with a funny tip and jerk of his head that suggested that his nephews would do well to start backing away slowly. Which was silly, they could outrun Rosco in about two steps, as long as Jesse kept him from getting to his gun. (And if he did manage to get to his gun, there was no such thing as being far enough away.)

"Daisy's belly wasn't never swollen," the sheriff announced with utter pride in his irrefutable reasoning. "Which means that baby ain't a Duke, and if he ain't a Duke that means he's been kidnapped by you Dukes!" Truly dizzying logic. "And that's why you boys are going to jail," oh, that was a gleeful little grin on Rosco's face. Luke was close enough to feel the way Bo's body tensed with the urge to wipe it off. "And that little baby is going to the orphanage, while Boss figures out who you stole it from. And then he's gonna give it back, and get a reward!" Silly little khee of a giggle at the end of that charming little outburst, one that announced, without words, that Rosco anticipated getting fifty percent of fifty percent of fifty percent of that reward.

"Just because he ain't Daisy's don't mean he ain't a Duke." You couldn't fight stupid with fists, but Bo was on the verge of giving it a try. "He's mine." Or confessing.

"Gij!"

Rosco said it, but the tone of surprise could as easily have come from Luke or Jesse. This, right here, was Bo staking claim to a kid that he'd done nothing but deny responsibility for all along. It was a bluff, it had to be. If it wasn't, Luke was about ready to beat the tar out of Bo for lying to him for this long, never mind that Rosco would haul them both to jail for assault and battery if a fistfight broke out in front of him.

"That ain't your baby," Rosco reasoned, when his wits came back about him. "On account of, you ain't never liked kids a moment in your life." Well, if disliking kids was a method of birth control, there had to be a lot of mamas and daddies out there who would be surprised to hear it. "Besides, he don't even look like you. He's got Luke's eyes." As if that explained anything at all when the two of them were cousins, and it was Grandma Duke's eyes that Jesse always swore Luke had. She was Bo's grandmother every bit as much as she was Luke's and Rosco was old enough to have known the woman. (Just the slightest pang hit Luke at that realization – how well Rosco had known the Dukes that came before, including the parents that Luke could only remember in bits and pieces.)

"He ain't got nobody's eyes," Jesse growled, his face hardened down in a way that Luke hadn't seen since their moonshining days. Protective over family and tradition and barely tolerating Rosco's nonsense. "Every Duke baby in the history of Duke babies started out with light blue eyes. Luke's just the only one who kept them after that first year."

But Rosco was not to be deterred from the keen observation with which his years in law enforcement had provided him. "You ain't fooling me none, Jesse Duke." The kid could not be Bo's because he had Luke's eyes.

Bo turned to catch his attention, looking down at him which was as annoying as the unspoken challenge and the tiniest curl of a smirk at the corner of his lips.

Just how important is your pride and stubbornness when the baby is in danger?

Not important at all.

Luke sighed, not because of what he was going to say next, but because somehow, after all these weeks of raising the kid, Bo had gotten the upper hand on him.

"Then he's mine, Rosco."

"He's—" that stumped the sheriff. Made him mumble meaningless words. "He's yours? But, I thought he was—" pause there, shaky finger coming out to point to Bo's chest. "—Yours? He can't be both of yours," which meant someone must have explained the birds and bees to the fool somewhere in the last couple of weeks. "Unless—are you two married?"

You know, I still ain't decided which of them two boys would look worse in a dress.

The sky was blue with only the lightest of fluffy clouds. Luke was fully aware of that fact, and of the sun's bright rays, because he'd tipped his head back to laugh.

"No, we ain't married," Bo complained right back at Rosco, full of disgusted indignation. "We're cousins!"

You couldn't fight stupid with fists, but then again, Bo was only half adept at fighting it with logic. Rosco was still trying to put together the important facts here. They were both claiming the baby, they shared the name Duke, and though he hadn't been invited to any wedding—

"We ain't married, Rosco," Luke said in an attempt to stop the sheriff's hamster wheel of a brain before it wore itself out completely. "Bo's too tall for a wedding dress anyway. His knees would stick out."

That's true enough, Luke, but then you don't exactly have an hourglass figure and alabaster skin, neither.

"You got a warrant to arrest these here boys?" Jesse put in quickly, before Bo could get around to starting a fight over which of them would be the bride (or before Rosco could get too far in trying to picture Bo all decked out in white lace).

"No," Rosco admitted, which meant it had only been a half-baked plan on Boss's part that had sent him out here. And that was good. It was those plans that had time to get baked to a toasty brown that were truly dangerous.

"And do you have a warrant to search this here farm for a baby?" Jesse's chin was tipped down. If he'd been wearing his reading glasses, he would have been leveling a glare over the rims. As it was, there was nothing there to obstruct the mean look he was giving Rosco.

"Uh, no," the lawman admitted, taking a step back. It was time for him to go now, and he knew it. All Jesse had to do was point in the general direction of the house and the farmyard where Rosco must have left his cruiser, and the sheriff started to slink away, tail tucked. The man had to be getting up there in years now – he wasn't that much younger than Jesse – but then again he'd never looked nearly as old as he did now.

"Hey, Rosco," Bo called after him like an eight-year-old kid looking for a playmate. Rosco turned, even if he should have known better. "Since you're going that way anyway, could you carry this to the barn for me?" Bo's fingers were caught under the twine of another bale of hay, lifting it just far enough off the ground to make it look like he was going to toss it to the sheriff, underhand.

Funny, how that made Rosco mumble and move quicker and with a great deal more determination toward his car.


"What do you mean, he ain't got a birthday?"

See, now, there's old Cooter, come a-visiting. Jesse didn't need to worry none about him, and the boys was wrong, too. Just look at how he sits there on the Dukes' porch and bounces that baby on his knee like an old pro (or like an uncle who don't necessarily have to worry about calming him down after he gets him worked up). Grease stains in the creases of his fingers, despite how Luke made him scrub himself up to the elbows before touching the kid. Yep, those big hands wrapped around that tiny ribcage are made for holding onto carburetors and camshafts, not little babies. Still, he's managing just fine.

"Well, he's got a birthday," Luke reasoned, ever logical. Leaning against the porch railing and sucking down lemonade like it was beer on a Friday night. (And it had been so long since they'd gone juking or just plain carousing that Bo couldn't swear he knew what "Friday night" even meant anymore. He recognized Sunday mornings, because some assembly of Dukes still went to church, but other than that, one day might as well have the same name as the next.) "We just don't know when it is."

The kid wasn't any less fussy than he had been yesterday, but Daisy had to work and there were no clouds on the horizon, so the Duke men had decided to take today off from baling and get back to it tomorrow. It wouldn't dry out that quick. And besides, Jesse needed a rest from all that supervising.

And it was hot. No breeze on the porch and Bo had already had to move up to the very top step when the shade had retreated from the lower ones, leaving his empty lemonade glass at the bottom. He was going to have to retrieve that before Daisy saw where he'd left it and took to lecturing him within inches of his life. Didn't he know they only had five glasses left after he'd chipped that one? Yeah, he knew, he'd been hearing about it for the dozen years or so since the incident in question happened.

"He's somewhere around three-and-a-half months old," Bo clarified. "But since there wasn't no note with him, we don't know the exact day he was born."

Cooter hunched himself down to be eye-to-eye with the drooling mess of a kid that he was holding upright on his knee, like maybe if he stared hard enough, he'd receive telepathic messages explaining anything and everything about where the baby had come from. Bo shrugged and figured that if it somehow worked, at least they'd have answers.

"What's his name?"

Luke shook his head and flattened his lips in that way he always did when someone asked a dumb question. "No note means no note," he explained, hand gesturing out into the air in front of him like that would put an end to this line of discussion.

"We been calling him Bloke," Bo jumped in. Endured a mean glare from Luke that informed him that he had at no time agreed to call the boy that. But that was just too bad. Bo liked it, and Jesse and Daisy seemed to, too.

"And you don't know which of y'all's he is." That part, Cooter's brain had wrapped itself around from the beginning. Two Duke boys stalwartly making their way through all the girls in the Tri-County area, and maybe he figured this particular set of consequences was inevitable.

"Nope," Luke answered.

Bo had tried to figure, as he'd watched their friend make silly noises and otherwise get fully acquainted with the baby and the story behind him being in their lives, what it was that he wanted now. The kid was only a mite easier these days than he had been in those first few weeks. Still crying in the night often enough, stinking up his diapers and making a general nuisance of himself. Still, for all that, he guessed he'd rather be the boy's father than his uncle. Mostly, anyway, though he'd still want Luke to be fully involved in bringing the kid up. Like building the General, it'd be twice the fun and the kid would be all the better for the two of them working together.

But though he mostly wanted to be the daddy, he had no interest at all in getting married. So it would be for the best if the mother never showed up gain. Except he couldn't quite reconcile that to himself, either. Every kid should have a chance to know its mother.

"Shoot," Luke was saying, interrupting Bo's circling thoughts. "If you'd been around once in a while, you would have known all this stuff already."

"Well, buddyroe," came right back at him, in between the sh-sh-sh noises Cooter was making in the same rhythm as his bouncing knee. That old game of this-is-the-way-the-huntsman-walks, just played quietly and carefully because Bloke was too little to understand or try to hold on. Heck, he hadn't entirely mastered holding up his own head when being held like this, so Cooter couldn't jostle him too much. "You ain't been to see me, neither." And that was how it usually worked out. One or the other of the Dukes caused the General some manner of grievous injury and they ended up at the garage, bartering for parts or just making promises about payment that would be deferred until next month and then again to the one after that. "Besides, without you boys coming around every other day," was a gross exaggeration. It wasn't more than twice a week that they made more of a mess than they could fix themselves. And it was usually Luke's fault when they did. "Looking for my help, and without you running Rosco into the drink every day," now that part was absolutely accurate, and that was usually Bo's fault. "I had to figure out some other way of making money."

He'd feel guilty about that if only he wasn't so busy looking across the farmyard at the poor General, who hadn't gotten half the attention he was used to.

Then Bloke's little vocalizations started to sound like a prelude to tears again, so Bo looked back at him. Cooter was still bouncing him to distract him from whatever fussing he wanted to get up to, and the inevitable fit got put off for another couple of minutes.

"But, I wouldn't worry about me none, because y'all gave me a chance to put together another engine like I done before for that Grand Prix driver."

Now, I reckon y'all might remember that one. That was back when Boss Hogg had himself a race and was going to confiscate all the losing cars for himself. Cooter built that fancy engine to sell after the race, but he busted up his ankle, so Luke had to drive for him. And them Duke boys fought like schoolkids over who was gonna win, but they ended up tied in the end, and Cooter sold his engine. So it all worked out just fine, and I reckon that's all that matters.

"Took me the better part of a month to build it, but I just sold it last week," Cooter informed them.

Bloke's noises got a little more insistent then, took on just that much more of an irritated edge. Cooter got to his feet and took to bouncing the kid a little more seriously on one of his flabby arms. Bo was impressed – the little one wasn't as little as he'd once been, and it was kind of like awkwardly hoisting a bag of flour to hold him like Cooter was. There were some muscles hidden in the loose skin of those arms.

"Anyways, next time y'all are in the Boar's Nest, drinks are on me."

"Don't spend it all in one place," Luke advised about whatever money Cooter made on the deal. Had to've been a lot to make him go offering up free drinks like that, but then again, Luke had a point. More than once, Cooter had drunk up a whole month's worth of paid bills in one whiskey-soaked weekend.

"You ain't got to worry about me none," their friend informed them with that lopsided, half-proud-of-things-he'd-do-better-to-be-ashamed-of grin. "I ain't no fool. And I ain't the one who went off and got some girl pregnant. Come on now, which one of you done it?"

Luke shook his head and drained the last of the lemonade in his glass. He always had been a deliberate fool about such things. Dumb, if you asked Bo, to take your time drinking a glass of lemonade when it would only stay cold for so long. Better to gulp it. Even if the flavor that was fresh in Luke's mouth had long since gone bitter in Bo's.

"Cooter," Luke said after he'd swallowed, but he wasn't about to answer their friend's question. Bo could understand that. Saying the kid was his would mean admitting that he'd made one hell of a mistake, and saying it wasn't would be like denying his own flesh and blood. "Maybe you'd better let me take him." Because Bloke's face was scrunching up in that way that either meant a full-out fit was on the way or a desperately dirty diaper was in the making.

"Naw, we're fine, ain't we, Bloke?" Luke pressed his lips together again, but there was nothing wrong with calling the baby that for now, and his cousin was just going to have to get used to it, because everyone else had embraced it.

Bloke didn't entirely agree with Cooter's assessment of exactly how fine they were and started in with that piercing cry he always let out before the worst tantrums started.

"Cooter," Bo warned, but their friend wasn't doing a whole lot of listening. To Luke, to him, to Bloke.

Cooter left off bouncing the kid and lifted him up over his head with both hands. Airplane, the world's oldest trick.

"How's that, little guy?" he asked. "Like that? I ain't never see a Duke boy that didn't like to fly."

"Uh, Cooter," Luke tried. But there was no stopping him, apparently. Poor little Bloke was being flown around over Cooter's head, looking less and less—

Look out, Cooter! Incoming!

And then things started to come out of the baby's mouth, onto Cooter's upturned face and into his hair.

It was a good thing Bo was right there to grab Bloke out of his hands. Otherwise the poor kid might have been dropped in Cooter's shock.

"Sorry, buddy," Bo mumbled.

"We tried to warn you," Luke added. "Come on inside, you can take a shower."

"You know," Cooter said, wiping an arm across his face and eyes. It didn't do much except smear everything around. "Mrs. Grant's oil pan done that very same thing to me just last week."

Luke laughed and held the door open for their friend.


Now, there's a familiar sight. Sort of. It's an orange car, gliding down the road and kicking up dust. Still, something about it just don't look quite right.

"Bo." It was all very normal, like any page out of the book of most of their lives. Him telling his cousin to pay attention, to slow down and look out for what lay ahead, except for that hard plastic cutting into the flesh of his left arm. And the tightness of Bo's posture, how he sat with elbows tucked instead of jutting in all directions.

Plus, there were no sirens echoing off the trees and boulders and bluffs around them.

Sunday driving on a Friday, just about as adventurously as anyone's grandmother. Well, anyone's grandmother but theirs. Jesse's tales about Grandma Duke had her being one of the best moonshine runners of her day. So maybe they were driving around like Rosco's grandmother, as long as she was more capable behind the wheel than her grandson ever had been.

"It's fine, Luke," Bo informed him. But then again, Bo's definition of "fine" always had left a little something to be desired.

The red clay passing underneath their wheels was rutted and cracked where the spring rains had given way to the relentlessly baking sun. Erosion left some pretty impressive gaps and gullies in its wake and the whole point of coming out here was to be soothing. To take Jesse's suggestion about how the baby, whose moods had been about as upbeat as a thunderstorm, might just settle under the rock and sway (but not bump) of a ride in the car.

"He's a Duke, after all," had been the reasoning amongst them, the refrain he and Bo had repeated to each other as they'd settled the kid into his car seat (that he was going to outgrow soon, and where were they going to get money for a bigger one?) and filled Luke's olive green duffel bag with diapers and bottles and wipes and blankets and clothes and quite possibly a dozen bricks, too. Just in case of emergency or disaster or a halfwit sheriff trying to arrest them on baby-napping charges again.

Sure, the baby was a Duke, but then so were they and even if they were driving ten miles an hour under the speed limit – and it was still a bit too fast to be a really good idea – being in the car was like breathing. Something they had to do at least every now and then if they were going to survive.

The General was Bo's choice – "He's a Duke after all," that refrain one more time – and strapping the baby between them in the front seat had been Luke's. Otherwise he would have been relegated to the back like a sack of oats, looking after the baby and leaving Bo to drive any way he pleased. At least this way they were equally frustrated.

"He's sleeping, ain't he?" Bo asked, as if that would prove just how fine everything was.

"For now, but he won't be if you start bumping him around."

Bo let out a little huff, bit his lip and nodded his head. Driving slow wasn't what he wanted, but it was still far better than sitting in the house, taking turns using a foot to jostle the bassinet, and listening to the baby scream about how little that effort was appreciated.

With a motion so smooth it must have just about taken all his self-control to maintain, Bo turned off of Blackberry Lane and onto the paved surface of Riverbend Road. Not as many bumps here and it was still far enough off the main roads that they ought to avoid traffic. Bo let his foot rest a little heavier on the gas pedal; Luke left it alone. Looked out at the scenery passing by and it was almost like coming home from the Marines again. He'd missed seeing the roads and lakes and mountains that much.

"Think it's safe?" Bo asked, pointing around his grip on the steering wheel at a pull off they'd used many dozen times before when they went fishing from the rugged bank of the river. Luke had no idea whether stopping now would wake the little one or not, but he was willing to take the chance. The silver ribbon sliding through the trees to their left looked cool and inviting, and though they couldn't swim or fish today, just being close would be more refreshing than sitting next to open windows and slow-spinning fans.

The tires crunched on loose gravel as Bo pulled into their usual, heavily-shaded spot. Rolled to a stop, turned off the engine and the two of them held their breath and everything else for a few dozen heartbeats, waiting to see if the hollering would start up again.

"Luke," Bo said when he deemed it safe. Seemed pretty risky to start talking in this confined space. Sure, Bo was keeping his voice low for now, but he wouldn't be able to manage that for long. Luke put a finger to his lips and pointed out his own window. Bo got the hint and they both slid out as carefully as they could, watching their knees and feet and everything else that might knock against the car seat and wake the crying machine. Their fishing log, the remnants of an old-growth oak that had fallen in the hurricane of seventy-nine, was just ahead but too far away from their charge, so Luke opted to sit on the engine-warm steel of the General's hood instead. It wasn't very comfortable, but he could see through the windshield and hear through the open side windows if the little guy needed him.

Bo tested the temperature of the hood and seemed to decide that standing was preferable. "Who do you suppose Bloke's mama is?" he said to finish what he'd started in the car.

Luke shrugged – they'd had this conversation before, and maybe it had been in a different tone, been uglier or more accusatory, but it ended the same way. They didn't know.

Besides, opening his mouth might lead to him telling Bo to stop calling the baby by that ridiculous name, and admitting he hated it would only lead to it being said louder and more often.

"I mean, she'd have to be crazy, giving up her own child like this," Bo explained. "And I can't figure either one of us would go out with someone like that."

The best policy, Luke figured, was not to bring up Bo's dalliance with Diane Benson. She wasn't exactly responsible and she definitely had her priorities all wrong, but she was not this baby's mother. The timing didn't work out. And she wasn't worth the time it would take to argue over her.

"I guess," he said instead, "whoever she was, she must have figured we could do better for the kid than she could."

"Still," Bo put in, jamming his hands into his back pockets and kicking a stone from here to there. Head tipped down like that, he looked every bit the little boy, with watermelon lingering on his breath, confessing his naughty deeds to a semi-patient uncle. "She should have stuck around. Didn't she want to see her child grow up? Don't she want him to know her?"

Luke shrugged and leaned back against the windshield. The glass under his back was cooler than the metal under his hind end, but the engine was starting to cool, now. "Probably didn't want to marry you." Bo gave him a hard glance. That wasn't funny, Luke. This was supposed to be a serious conversation. Luke let go of a heavy breath and Bo went back to his deep study of the rocks at his feet. "Maybe she figures he's better off not knowing her."

"Well then, she really is crazy. Ain't no one better off for not knowing their mother."

Bo would say that. He was far too young when his mother passed to retain any memories of her at all. Yellowing photos under plastic in a book kept on a high shelf; that was all he had. And the stories. She could sing, she was runner up for homecoming queen, she was young when she married. She had a sunny personality and a gullible nature that made all the Duke men enjoy teasing her. That was all Bo knew and it bothered him.

And his cousin had absolutely no idea how much worse he'd be bothered if he'd known his mother just a little, only enough to make it hurt worse than any sucker punch ever had that she was gone.

"Could have been worse," Luke offered up. "She could have left him in the orphanage."

The serious frown on Bo's face went to prove that he didn't like that idea one bit. Whether it was because he was opposed to kids growing up in orphanages or maybe thought this particular kid would do better to be raised in one, Luke couldn't tell.

And he couldn't be sure how he felt about it, either. The baby was a Duke and deserved to be raised with his heritage. But almost anybody in Hazzard – Boss and Rosco aside – could raise a child better than he and Bo could.

"He'll be fine," Bo decided, lifting his head and looking straight into Luke's eyes. "Heck, she shouldn't have left him, but she did, and now he's got us. All we had was Uncle Jesse and we turned out all right, right?"

That was debatable. But, sure, he'd let Bo go on believing that. It seemed to make him happy.

"Yeah, he'll be fine. Come on," he said, sitting up and turning sideways on his butt to slide off the edge of the hood. "Let's drive around some more."

Best to get his cousin moving again, before standing around for too long gave him more deep thoughts. Bo was far too pretty to be getting worry lines over things he couldn't change.