Chapter Ten – Equal Justice for All
Loyalty is a notably transient trait in Hazzard's lawmen. Once – and not all that long ago, either – Sheriff Coltrane was a reasonably reliable man. At least that's the story, and there seems to be plenty of supporting evidence in the yellowed police reports slowly rotting away in the basement of the county courthouse. Equal justice for all, which meant equivalent nights in jail for indiscretions from fighting to public drunkenness (though the standard for intoxication was fairly simple – if Rosco said you were drunk, you were and no amount of arguing would convince him otherwise) and no one was innocent. Might not have been ideal, but the sheriff was loyal to the law and the law only.
Word got around in record time when Jefferson Davis Hogg proposed to Lulu Cotrane. Little Hogg's feet were expected to piter-patter some seven months hence; nothing else explained the haste with which the two were wed. Now, three years and one defeated pension later, it's clear that the only thing the Hoggs gave birth to was the corruption of one Hazzard Sheriff. Loyalties switched as easily as an electric light bulb, and it wasn't half the surprise it should have been.
Enos Strate has been the subject of backwoods speculation since school was out at seventeen and he went off to the Police Academy. Moonshining stock, and yet he stumbled over to the other side of the law. Apparently had his affable father's approval, which only intensified the murmurs. Money shifted hands in back rooms and under the shade of live oaks, livestock got wagered and the liquid gold of Hazzard's hills got put up as collateral in bets about which way that boy would swing. Two years on, grumbles persist over who really won and whether the Smiths' goat ought to be gnawing on old Johnson's grass after all. By all appearances the boy is a straight arrow, but is it really possible for a man to mean well and still be so completely accident-prone-bordering-on-incompetent?
Does Hazzard have any real law at all?
Uncle Jesse, when it comes right down to it, is a man. Older, maybe, calmer than her cousins, but no more resourceful, not when it comes to emotions. He stands there and fiddles, first with his watch – but Daisy glowers at him for that because it gives the impression they've got somewhere to be other than here comforting a woman whose husband's been kidnapped and carted off to places unknown – then with the fringed strings that have worn their way loose on the seams of his overalls.
"Aw, Lulu, sugar," Daisy croons, reaching an arm as far around her friend's soft shoulders as it will go. "He'll be all right, I just know he will." Tissues strewn all across her coffee table; the poor woman's been crying for awhile. It's about the only clue they've got to go on so far, what with how everything Lulu tries to say comes out in an unintelligible, distressed screech. It's the main characteristic she's got in common with her little brother, this tendency toward babble when she's upset.
Tentative coughing sounds, and her Uncle's mighty close to digging the toe of his work boots into the deep pile carpet on the Hogg's living room floor. Clueless and squirming with the desire to be anywhere but here. Dang Luke and his hare-brained plans; she can just about hear his thoughts on the matter. And in case she can't, here comes that coarse tongue to say it out loud.
"Now Lulu," isn't exactly what she expected, though the tone is plenty gruff. "You got to pull yourself together."
Men. Just men, with all their insensitive, abrupt ways. Always pushing and shoving for information and they don't have the first idea that the best way to get it is to—
Movement under her arm, and when she tips her head that way she catches Miss Lulu wiping at her eyes.
"All right, Jesse," Lulu answers, her voice has dipping back toward its normal, more matronly range.
"Now, that's more like it," her uncle responds, offering up that squint-eyed smile that's patronizing and reassuring all at once. Takes Daisy back to her scrape-kneed youth, makes her halfway wish she was still naïve enough to believe that whatever the problem is, Jesse's lips contain enough magic to kiss it all better.
Lulu's answering smile wavers, but it's there, because no one would dare to sass Uncle Jesse even if he was being unreasonable. Daisy sighs at the stupidity of it all, how her uncle does all the wrong things but they work anyway. Duke men are ridiculously lucky, because they sure as heck aren't as charming as they think they are. She keeps one arm protectively around Lulu. Even if her uncle's wheedling a smile out of the woman now, there'll be more tears in a few minutes.
"All right now, what did they tell you to do?" The kidnappers, who called her to arrange ransom. This much information got imparted before poor Lulu dissolved into tears.
On those rare slow afternoons at the Boar's Nest, when the heat hangs heavily in the airless bar and hallucinations are just a matter of course, she thinks about it. Love, marriage, children. Lifelong romance, someone to hold onto through thick and thin. Like Lavinia and Jesse, sort of, though most of their days were complicated by raising children that weren't theirs, by running a legal farm and an illegal still. Made them partners, but she wonders sometimes whether they were ever lovers. (And then remembers all over again about how sweet they could be on Sunday evenings, cuddling close on the the porch swing, and sometimes they'd go to bed early so—her thoughts stop there, out of a combination of squeamishness and respect.)
And the better half of the other example of wedded bliss that she's been able to study sits in front of her now, red-eyed with worry. Up until today it's been possible to reduce the Hoggs' marriage to one of convenience. The intermingling of two clans for the sole purpose of complete domination of the law of the land, and to share in the wealth gleaned from that authority. And it doesn't hurt, really, that Lulu is a good cook and Boss a better eater. Apart from those few instances where the couple works cooperatively, there's never been any evidence of harmony or genuine love – more like demands on one another and negotiations of those demands at high volume. Now for the first time, she sees the road signs that have been quietly glowing around her all along, revealing that the relationship must have tender moments that are hidden from the prying eyes of Hazzard.
"They want a quarter of a million dollars," Lulu keens like a widow in mourning. Makes Jesse wince, makes Daisy tighten her hold on those soft shoulders. "A quarter of a million, Jesse! I ain't got that much, and if J.D. does, I ain't got the first idea where he's hiding it." Daisy reckons the number one place to look would be that safe in the Boar's Nest, but she never gets a chance to say so, because Lulu's not done. "And he'd kill me if I paid it to them anyway."
"Well now, Lulu, we'll cross that-there bridge if we come to it," Jesse counsels, which is better than what ran through Daisy's head: they'll kill him if you don't. Must be Luke's influence on her; she's not one to think that way, and besides, she's not sure Boss Hickman is that evil. Oh, rumor suggests that he is, but if he'd ever done half of what people say he did, he'd be in prison. There isn't anyone powerful enough to get away with some of those things. "What did they tell you to do with the money?"
The body under her arm relaxes a little bit. Seems like Lulu's catching a gist of what Jesse's up to, now. "They said to bring it to the old water wheel on Mill Pond Way. Something about putting it into a suitcase and jamming it between two blades of the wheel – I don't know." Of course she doesn't. She didn't grow up playing in and around the ruins of the old gristmill, but Daisy did. A diary, red with gold trim, she used to hide in that wheel, but it has the capacity to take something much bigger. The only people who might ever know it was there would be the one who hid it and the one who ordered it hidden there. And any of the county's children who still play there—oh, no. They can't possibly let this exchange happen, not in a place where innocent kids could get hurt.
"Uncle Jesse," she says, but he waves a hand at her. Not now, girl. She doesn't much care for being shushed, but her mind echoes with a yes, sir, and she bites her tongue.
"At two o'clock tomorrow." That's when Lulu's drop is supposed to take place, apparently. "Where am I going to get a quarter of a million dollars by then?"
Foolish or clever, either way, Hickman has kidnapped the one man who is actually resourceful enough to dig up that kind of money – were he free to do so.
"Tomorrow," Jesse says, pulling that grizzled lower lip into his mouth. "So we got a day," a little less actually, but that only matters if the Claridge County Boss is watching the clock, and Daisy would bet he's as lazy about such things as most folks around Hazzard. Half past a freckle, Aunt Lavinia used to say with a giggle if someone was fool enough to ask her the time. Heck, the Duke kids were raised to recognize sunrise, noon and sundown as meal times (for themselves and the livestock, both), to work diligently and not worry about the exact hour for the rest of the day. Luke surprised them all by coming back from the Marines with a split-second sense of time, which means that when they bring this information back to him, he'll be the one to get nit-picky about how long they really have left. "To find them first."
"No, Jesse," gets shrieked, "please. He said not to try to find them or he'd, he'd—" She can't bring herself repeat the precise words, but by drawing her forefinger across her neck, Miss Lulu makes her meaning clear. Unless she follows the rules, Boss Hogg will come to an untimely end.
"Now, Lulu," Jesse consoles, taking one step closer and patting her hand. A kindly gesture, but he's just as ready as ever to bolt out the door and leave the comforting to Daisy. "Don't you worry. They'll only hurt J.D. if they know we're out there looking for them."
Daisy squeezes Lulu's shoulder and promises to come back to see her real soon, but right now they've got to go. She reckons it would be a very good thing if she and her uncle hustled back to tell Luke what they've learned.
I'll keep you posted. The memory of Bo's words echoes in Luke's head, like one immature brat mocking another, and he reckons that's the refrain of his childhood. Two heads turned toward each other, one blond, one brunette, identical tongues out, and if they were particularly brave (or maybe just wanted their breeches warmed) there'd even be a raspberry to follow. Can't say it's changed a lot now that their legs are long enough to kick each other's shins under the table.
Bo must've grown up some when Luke wasn't looking. That adorable speech about wanting him to stay safe – that's nothing Bo Duke has ever thought to say before. Untouchable, made of steel, boosted by superpowers, Luke's health and well-being have generally been somewhat skewed in his baby cousin's estimation. Until today, when Bo nodded his pretty blond head over the notion that it would be wisest if his oldest cousin and sometime guardian angel stayed behind while he went out in search of kidnappers alone. All right, so Bo's not entirely on his own; Cooter and that pair of dipsticks dressed in blue are out there too, but none of them will know whether he's in trouble if the fool doesn't check in. Too quiet, too quiet, and even if it hasn't been long enough to justify worrying, Luke's going to anyway. Because it's Bo.
Listening to sounds that aren't there seems like Luke's newest hobby, but he doesn't like it, gets to thinking on how little he likes it and somewhere around the time that all of his brain power is going into not liking it, there's an engine outside. Wrong car, not the fierce growl of the General or the gentle hum of Daisy's Plymouth. No, it's the clank and rattle of a wrecker, followed seconds later by the slamming of the back door to this place, and then there's that wild grin. Cooter, the sometime halfwit, half time brilliant mechanic. The fool never did halfway learn how to tell time, but even if he could, he doesn't own a watch.
"Hey, Lukas." Chipper, cheerful, showing no signs of recognizing that his return is fifteen minutes early, or that the whole bunch of them are forty-five minutes late with their promised checking in. Acts like he doesn't realize how danged taxing it's been for Luke to hold himself back from putting out an all-call over the CB. "How's it hanging?"
He smirks at the funny guy, skips over the pleasantries. "You seen Bo out there?" Because everyone else went off in pairs, and he reckons they're fine. Jesse and Daisy got sent on a safe mission anyway, and Rosco and Enos have got to be surrounded by some sort of a magic force-field that makes it impossible for them to detect, or even stumble onto, real criminals. They'll be fine.
"Nope." Casual, relaxed, like the question was about whether he expects rain. Man hops himself up on the Deacon's ancient, ailing Ford in the middle of his garage, stretches out across the hood with obvious intentions of taking himself a nap. "Didn't see nothing else, neither. Except trees and grass and dirt. Went past Hazzard Pond, so I saw water, too. But no strangers."
"You didn't stay out there for a whole hour, neither," Luke informs him.
"Weren't no point. Ain't nothing to see. Quit worrying so much. Whatever they're up to, they're laying low for now. They ain't messing with Bo none." Yawn follows the words, and that does it.
"Cooter," he snaps. "Get up."
He doesn't heed the order, but those slightly bugged, blue eyes roll over to fasten on him. The look is a cross between what? and I'm listening.
"Since you got back early, you just volunteered for the next assignment." Which Luke has only just now made up, but never mind that. He might have spent the last two days with only himself for company, he might be halfway crazy from being stuck in here while everyone else is out and about. But he hardly wants to be around a man that's so laid-back as to almost be asleep. Not when there's work to be done, people to be captured, locked up, sent away. Dang it all, he wants a shower, a good meal, his own bed with Bo snoring not four feet away, and what stands between him and all of that is some kind of a crazy scheme of Claridge County's to take over Hazzard. Meanwhile Cooter would as soon sleep in a puddle of grease or the lumpy hood of a half-dead car instead of helping.
"What?" comes out as a lazy drawl to match the slothful sprawl.
"Get over to the courthouse and find out whether any of Hickman's men have come back yet. See if they've noticed that Bo and Rosco ain't there, and whether they're looking for them, too."
When it comes right down to it, Luke knows the Claridge men aren't really hunting for him – his escape, him being at large, is what gives them a right to occupy this county. He could probably stroll right out into the middle of Hazzard Square and be safe (mostly – there'd be a certain amount of risk if he went thumbing his nose at Hickman and making plain that the manhunt was nothing more than a ruse) but Bo and Rosco might genuinely be wanted men right now. And if that's so, he and his cousin need to switch places whenever the brat manages to get himself back here.
"All right, all right," Cooter answers, peeling himself off the steel of his temporary bed. "I'm going." Up onto his feet, shaking his head and offering that gap-toothed, fool's grin of his. "You need to lighten up, Lukas."
Easy for him to say. Luke offers up smirk and a wave, which the mechanic accepts as some manner of apology. For being on edge, for surliness, for growing up and becoming responsible. Seems that's all Cooter needs to motivate him to get on his way.