Author's Note: Happy Holidays! I've been trying to match up my updates to when some of these episodes have been airing on CMT. That'll stop here, for a couple of reasons, one of which is that I am headed out for the holidays and not sure how often I'll get to update until I am back on home turf. So enjoy the holidays y'all, and catch you on the flip side!
Chapter Ten - One Carnival Does Not Thrill All
Today:
This, then, is what it's like when a man takes leave of his wits but not his senses. Because all five of the latter are crisp and clear as everything else goes fuzzy around the edges. The sight of the young woman's face as it softens, just slightly, at the recognition that she might just get what she wants; the sound of his kin as they utter their disbelief and disapproval. The dizzying smell of pyrotechnics, flames and fireworks that turn an interesting feat into one that is spectacular, mixed and mingled with sweat and perfume. The taste of bitterness on his tongue as he stands up for himself, the contradicting ache in his fingers to feel the smoothness of the freckled skin of her shoulders beneath his hands.
To hold her firm, to kiss her with all the strength and passion in his body until she has no choice but to recognize, to instinctively understand the dangers in mocking him or expressing doubts as to his abilities. To realize all that he is capable of, and to want to hold onto him with both hands.
The rest becomes dim, fading into the background as he imagines the things he wants her to be to him. He's been sleepwalking all his life, in full possession of his wits, but with dulled senses. This, finally, is the freshness of life, revealed to him.
Nothing good had ever happened to them in Cedar City. Other than winning that Derby in the spring, but that had come at the price of Bo's ego getting swelled that much bigger, his stubbornness growing ever more prominent. What little listening he'd once done when it came to both reason and instructions had gotten eroded away from his hard little head.
Worse things had happened to that Bob Dexter guy, who had tried that dare-devil stunt for the Carnival of Thrills. A change in the hum of his engine, a pop, a bang and fire as he crashed downward toward the hardpan of the Cedar City Fairgrounds. But Cedar City hadn't ever been good to the Duke boys and it wasn't about to start now, not when Bo's eyes were big as silver dollars and his jaw set hard against witnessing the disaster. And Luke's arms were full of a shaken Daisy, and he didn't have a free hand to grab hold of the good Samaritan that Bo wanted to be, so he left that to Jesse. Who could do it on the command in his voice alone.
The trip back to Hazzard after their little afternoon excursion (which Luke hadn't much wanted to go out to anyway, and it was him dawdling over the General's engine that had made them late) lacked for fun and laughter. It was that kind of quiet that settles over four people who are working through the realization that the impossible happened, that the stunt was real and not some safe sleight of hand, that it going wrong meant someone got whisked away in an ambulance. Well, three of them were working through it, anyway. Luke already knew things could go wrong and people could get hurt if enough risk got piled up like the thirty-two cars the poor guy had tried to jump over. But he reckoned that no one wanted to hear that he'd always known it could happen, like some five-year-old kid's I told you so, so he it kept to himself.
And by bedtime the images and thoughts had pretty much shaken themselves out of the family's heads anyway. Daisy had been humming over her sewing while Jesse read his Bible and Bo cheated at cards. Not that Luke could point out how he was doing it, just Bo knew a few tricks about shady dealing, and Luke kept losing, so there had to be some manner of cheating going on.
"Let me see your sleeve," he grumbled. Bo grinned and flipped his cuff up to show there were no shenanigans.
"I could take off my shirt," he offered. "If it would help." It wouldn't, it would just give Bo an excuse to puff out his chest in pride and show off the broadness of his shoulders.
"Just give me the deck," Luke countered. "I'm dealing." A little frown about that from Bo, a huff about his affronted pride or his insulted honor, and one hand was still working the buttons on his shirt.
"I reckon," Jesse interrupted, peering at them over the top of his Bible, just about chastising Bo for his striptease act, or maybe it was Luke for goading him to it, "it's time we all went to bed anyway." Which had put an end to the fight before it could get started, leaving Bo grinning over the fact that he had won the last round. Luke left him to it, because it was worth it to see a smile replace that gray cast that his face had taken over when the Leap for Life stunt had ended in a spectacularly ugly way. "Y'all got plenty of work to do tomorrow to make up for all the lollygagging you did today." Jesse words only made Bo that much happier, because Luke had done more than his fair share of the lollygagging, and in his cousin's brilliantly blonde logic, that meant Luke would do more than his fair share of the work tomorrow.
And the smile was still there in the next morning's crisp coolness, as Luke heaved the rails of the new fence they were about to construct along Old Mill Road, and Bo pounded the posts down into their holes. Some smug thought or other running through his brain when Cedar City followed them back to Hazzard. Bo was already drooling from the time he saw the rolling disaster kicking up dust as it pulled up to a stop in front of them; by the time they got up to the vehicle it was hard to tell whether that sheen on the boy's shirtless chest was the sweat of hard work or that glow he took on when he got to daydreaming about girls.
His shoulders hurt, and that was the least of it. But it was noticeable as he pulled himself out of the General, then breathed out a quiet relief that Daisy chose to get out of the passenger side, leaving Luke to strain his own (not sore, not even slightly pulled to hear his cousin tell it, but he wasn't moving with his usual fluidity either, wincing as his hand went back in that automatic gesture to tuck in the back of his shirt as he stepped up to the curb) muscles in helping her out. Building fences with a sort of stoic gusto, because Luke had declared that the little distraction of giving directions to the sweet-looking lady from the Carnival of Thrills had left him a useless daydreamer, and he'd had to prove his cousin wrong.
"Come on," Daisy was saying, leading them towards Rhuebottoms with Luke following along, as if they had any real intentions of helping her with the shopping. That hadn't been the plan, at least not in Bo's mind. Daisy's need for groceries was just the excuse they needed to leave the half-built fence to settle into the ground by itself for a few hours, to let the dirt get used to it being there or something, while his and Luke's (unhurt) arms and shoulders got a little bit of a rest. "I want to get there before—"
But they never did quite learn what the rush was, whether it was before all the canned beans got sold to someone else, or maybe it was so she could catch Enos spending his own pitiful little salary on soups that could be cooked on the little camp stove he kept in what passed for his kitchen. Because – and Daisy spotted it first, which went to prove that in spite of her rush to get to the store, she still knew what real priorities were – there was the most delightful distraction there, pinned on the concrete façade of the dry cleaner's. A hundred dollar prize for a pick-up race the likes of which Duke boys laughed at, right here in Hazzard. A look at Luke—
"It's the easiest hundred bucks we'll ever make," he said with a laugh at the poor Hazzard boys that were likely to show up with impossible dreams and no real hope of winning.
"You got that right," Luke answered and managed not to look like it hurt when he swung his arm out to shake Bo's hand.
—and the icing on the cake was those black-markered words at the bottom line of the poster board: see Carnival of Thrills. Which had, according to the poster above it, managed to rent the Hazzard Fairgrounds from Boss Hogg for a week.
He and Luke set to conspiring about strategy while Daisy walked off in a huff, still wanting to get to Rhuebottoms before whatever it was, which left them to drift where they were naturally going to, anyway: Cooter's. Just about spilling over with all their plans and they didn't even have to say anything specific. Just race, Hazzard Fairgrounds, prize money, and the mechanic was at his wall, doing mental calculations while pulling down this hose and that belt, some hardware and stuffing them all into a box. Because he knew the General and he knew Bo's driving, and between the two, he could reckon out what had gotten singed, dented or worn out to the point of being untrustworthy at high speed.
There was the usual haggling over the cost, Luke shucking and jiving and convincing Cooter that money could wait, wasn't halfway important anyway, and somewhere in the middle of that, the pretty little carnival lady walked in.
Things got fuzzy after that, a little warm and soft around the edges, his head humming and whirring with those daydreams that fence-building was supposed to make him forget. Words were getting spoken, hell, some even came out of his own mouth, but he wasn't sure what they were. He wasn't listening, all his concentration was going to his eyes, watching the sun glint off that golden-blonde hair of hers, that absent minded habit she had of pushing a lock behind her ears, the white of her teeth as she smiled, the way she looked at him even when she was talking to Luke or Cooter, and how she didn't giggle or act silly around the Duke boys the way most Hazzard girls did. He was vaguely aware that she asked Cooter permission to hang posters in his garage and heard the acquiescence all full of whatever charm the mechanic could muster and couldn't help wishing that he had a public wall that he could offer to the lady – Diane Benson, the pictures at the top of her posters announced her name to be – just so she'd favor him with that same sort of gratitude that she was offering Cooter right now. Smart man, old Cooter was, having all these blank walls just begging for her to come happily over and decorate for him.
Some manner of small talk followed, Luke bragging about their chances of winning the little race she'd set up, Diane not quite being snowed by his cousin's confidence (which already made her smarter than the average Hazzard girl, except Luke just happened to be right this time), Cooter backing him up. More forgettable things being said, and then she was walking away. Next thing Bo knew, there was a meaty hand waving in front of his face, and that was a dirty trick, all that filth and grease wiping through the air where the back pockets of Diane's jeans had been filling his vision just seconds before. Luke was snorting and his head shaking at daydreams, but Bo was pretty sure those bright blue eyes had been appreciating her backside as she walked away, too.
Home-turf races were laughable things by now. They hadn't much participated in any since that derby that Luke had both lost and won a couple of winters back. There hadn't been much point, ever since Cooter had deemed himself halfway a grown up, and Enos had spent too much time around Rosco and forgotten how to drive. Amy Creavy hadn't come back to show him up again, so there just wasn't any competition anymore.
But hundred dollar prizes didn't grow on trees and they could make men forget how pointless a hometown race was (and the fact that Cedar City, which had never been good to the Dukes, had followed them right back here to Hazzard).
Bo's silly grin, the one that said this race was won before they'd even heard the rules, was an easy thing to look at, he could admit that. Saw it echoed in Daisy's smile, and then in the carnival-owner's, even as she was shouting out the rules and the prizes. Knew, right then and there, that this race might not be so laughable after all.
(Bo had two ways he could go – spectacular driver or spectacular crasher. He didn't do ordinary, hadn't ever just driven to a place for the sake of getting there in one piece. He went too far, too fast, swung the wheel to hard, steeped on the accelerator with too much firmness. Mostly it worked in his favor until he went sailing off the side of the road to land on his roof. On their roof, because the car was half Luke's and that white helmet that sat in the passenger seat would only protect his head against so much banging.)
"Who knows," Diane Benson finished up her instructions to the drivers. "We might even throw in a full-time job with the show," and while Luke could agree that it was a fine way to motivate some of the marginal contestants to run the race of their life, his stomach sank down a fraction or two. Because Bo's brain was only so malleable. He wasn't sure it could hold both the image of crossing the finish line without causing either of them injury, and the thought of spending day after day working on close proximity to the woman who stood to their right, in those blue jeans that fit tight down over her hips and gave a man like Bo ideas that he couldn't shake.
His stomach dropped another millimeter or two just a few seconds later as he was fiddling with the straps on that white helmet, getting ready to pull it over his head and looking at Bo over there in the blue one, thinking how funny his cousin always looked when those blonde waves got covered up, and Miss Diane took that moment to single him out. Trotting over to the driver's side of the car and offering Bo a kiss and the words, "For good luck," that he didn't much need anyway, and it was clear she'd already picked favorites. Not only amongst the Duke boys (and that was okay with Luke, honestly – aside from happening to notice how well her jeans fit, he didn't really have any interest in her) but amongst all the competitors. And it made him wonder whether a hundred dollars in prize money was worth the risk – of winning or losing.
"Bo," he admonished, or maybe it was more like he was playing the role of human alarm clock. "You'd best make up your mind whether you're driving or courting or this is likely to be embarrassing for the both of us." Didn't work, didn't startle his cousin out of that dream he'd been in since they arrived at this track, just earned him that silly, half-aware grin. She likes me, it said, and right about then Luke figured out that Diane Benson was an apple-bearing snake.
He didn't grow to like her any better after she fired the starting pistol and boys around them started rolling their cars right off the track in an attempt to impress her and sway her away from her already-chosen favorite. Hated her a little bit more when the wall of fire blossomed up on the track in front of them and what had been advertised as a straight race took on stunt-driving qualities at about a hundred miles an hour. Got even less amused than ever when they got to the open-country part and Rosco P. Coltrane joined in, sirens blaring and he figured it was a set up of the nature that got Duke boys busted for speeding when they thought they were involved in a perfectly safe little race.
He didn't care that Bo did seem to be holding to the road, that there had turned out to be room in his brain for driving and courting both. Winning was all well and good and a hundred dollars would come in handy when the time came to pay Cooter for the inner workings under the General's hood. But this Carnival of Thrills – well, he didn't figure that either him or Bo needed to get any more involved in it than they already were.
They won. Of course they won, but still. It was worth celebrating, worth shaking Luke's hand over the top of the car as they climbed out, worth that hug that Daisy gave him when they walked around the ticking and hissing General as he cooled. It was worth the congratulations that Diane offered (it was worth a kiss, a better one than what she had planted on him when he was sitting in the driver's seat waiting for the race to get underway, but she didn't offer him one, even if his lips were all pursed and ready) and worth that glower that he got from the other guys who'd made fools of themselves out there trying to keep up with him.
"Ah, shoot," he offered with all due humility, a verbal wink, because he was too good a sport to give her a real one in front of all these other men who wanted her (but had lost their chance at her) "'Tweren't nothing." Heard the mumbles of the other guys then as they assured each other that it had been a good race and got back into their cars to leave this little embarrassment behind. Daisy's arm was still around his neck or he might have assumed that she and Luke were leaving too. Didn't matter whether they were or weren't, what with every bit of his concentration going to Diane, who smiled so prettily to see that he'd won.
"Now, about that job with the show I mentioned," she said and finally, finally, took a step closer. Like maybe the kiss of congratulations was still coming, like maybe the job she wanted to offer was chief kisser and Bo didn't figure he'd have any problem fulfilling that role. "We need a top stunt car driver to make a thirty-two car jump."
That, on the other hand, he did have a problem with. Small one, really. The fact that it was laughable that he'd do it, was all. Sure he'd jumped things, narrow gaps and wide ones, some empty but for the drop below and others with one thing or another lurking inside them. Like that jump he'd done, mid-race, to get away from Rosco. Over a fallen tree in the ravine that marked off the edge of Jeb Tompkins' land, and sure it hadn't been without risk. He didn't mind risk, heck, his life as a moonshine runner was guaranteed to be full of it. Just, there had to be a purpose behind it. A reason to do it, other than that some crane operator had stacked up cars, and some carpenter had built a ramp, and some lady who ran a carnival thought it was a good idea to put those two things together and have herself a little show.
So he laughed along with Daisy when she told announced what a crazy notion that was. Didn't much care for Luke's utter negativity on the subject, and pointed out that the General (with him behind the wheel) could manage the jump with the right ramp, but was content to leave it at that. That he could, but wouldn't because there was no good reason to.
But Luke had never spent a content day in his life, could never let a single thing go. Drove the point home with the reminder that the last guy who'd tried that little stunt had wound up getting carted off in an ambulance while Bo's heart pounded in his ears as the adrenalin of wanting to go down there to the fairgrounds and help, to somehow fix it charged through his system.
"Do you always let other people do your talking for you?" Diane asked now. Just idle curiosity, a little thing she wanted to know, because if it was Luke's mouth doing all the talking then maybe there wasn't any reason to go kissing Bo's lips.
"No ma'am," he declared, a little extra loud just to banish the thought from her mind.
It was then, finally, that the man that had been standing to Diane's side all along, dark look on his face and a certain sense of ownership about him, spoke up.
"Hey, Bo?" he said, without the benefit of a simple how-de-do. "You really think you're good enough to make that jump?"
It was enough, this stranger calling his skills into question, to bring Bo back to himself. To remember all the times that he and Luke had been called plowboys and hicks, mistaken for rubes when they entered dirt-track circuit races outside the tri-county area. Other drivers and the officials, none of whom had ever heard of Hazzard (and that was just fine with him, he didn't want them in his hometown anyway), making that same old mistake, assuming that because Hazzard's boundaries were small, so were the ambitions and skills of her residents. And though he'd made every one of those fools eat their words, he'd never taken a stupid dare from them, just because they issued it.
So, "With my eyes closed," he asserted with a smile for the bitter little man. "But," he added, arm going around Daisy's back to pat Luke, who was looking a bit sour and possessive himself, "my stunt driving days is gonna end after y'all pay me that money on Saturday."
"I see." Apparently meanness was catching and he ought to have worn a mask or something. Anything to keep the germs away, because Diane had suddenly come down with it, her face turning into a sneer, her eyes losing the twinkle they'd had in them every time she'd looked at him, just as quick as a light bulb getting switched off. "Why wait that long? Carl," and apparently that was the stranger's name. And the way he stepped forward, favoring one leg, indicated that she had him wrapped right around those skinny little fingers of hers, too. "Why don't you pay this chicken off so we can get out of here."
It was like a sucker punch in a barroom brawl. Enough to make him lose his breath and his sense of place, of time, of clarity. To make him gasp for air, then pull out all the stops in defending himself. To hear, and dismiss, the notion getting raised that Luke was his babysitter, to verbally push Daisy out of the discussion, to bore down on Diane and ignore absolutely everything else in the world. Daisy, Luke and Carl disappeared from his conscious mind because the woman in front of him had given him a good reason to go ahead and accept the dare.
He'd do the jump, even if Luke grunted and walked away from his side, and Daisy insisted he couldn't. Because he could, and when he did, "Maybe then me and the little lady here will have something nice to talk about. Bye, now."