10. Over and Out
He stops short – just barely short – of calling Bo a lowly maggot. Not that he really thinks Bo is a maggot or even wants to call him one. It's just that he's running out of clearer thoughts and better ideas.
"Keep that knee straight. Give me more from the hip."
Bo stops giving him anything at all except a dirty look. "It hurts, Luke."
He's tried the tricks he remembers coaches doing back in his little league days. The sort of firm encouragement and gentle instruction. But Bo is more stubborn than any of the young baseball players Luke can remember, and besides, his cousin played little league games for those same coaches. He knows how to avoid falling for anything before Luke can even get around to trying it.
Keep it moving, keep it moving, he thinks. It'll seem to go faster that way.
Luke shrugs. "It's supposed to hurt. That's how you know it's working."
But Bo's opposed to keeping anything at all moving.
"No, it ain't supposed to hurt, Luke. Not like this," Bo snaps. His face is flushed, but it's sure not from exertion. The boy's been downright lazy all morning, barely wanting to complete even the easiest of exercises. "It's my body, I ought to know."
High school basketball coaches were a little rougher, more likely to holler, but what they yelled was almost always a positive message.
"Come on, Bo, you can do this in your sleep." It's just an outer thigh exercise, one that involves Bo trying to push his good leg out to the side while Luke tries to hold it in place. And it's not like Luke's using all his strength or even half. It ought to be easy.
"Well, then, I'll do it tonight in my sleep and you ain't got to worry about it none."
Football coaches would threaten to put lazy players on the bench. Thing is, it won't do Luke any good to tell Bo he's going to sideline him when Bo is perfectly willing to sit out every play.
"Come on, don't you want to get better?" Every coach he ever had, including when Jesse would take him out into the farmyard and toss him grounders, asked him that question in one way or another.
"No matter how many times I lift this leg," Bo says, pointing to his right, "it's not going to make this one get better any faster," pointing to his left.
Of course, his childhood self never had nearly as good a response as that to offer up.
"Not right now, maybe, but when you get on your feet again—"
"When I get on my feet again, I'll be on my feet. Right now I'm on my back and it don't matter none how many times I move my leg or don't."
Drill instructors, they didn't waste their breath with negotiation or encouragement. They just screamed out insults and made everyone in the platoon double up on any exercise that any of the guys wouldn't or couldn't complete.
"How about we do some arm work, then?" Bo's usually up for a good arm wrestling match, even when he doesn't want to do anything else. "Bet I can pin you in under a minute."
"Of course you can, Luke. You're upright and I'm on my back. Only way I can ever win is if you let me," he pouts. "I don't need you to patronize me and I don't need you to exercise my arms for me. I got weights for that." So he does, provided by Doc Petticord himself. Of course, both of them are currently lined up on the cushion of the bigger chair in the room, outside of Bo's reach. Luke would swear that the only time they ever move from there is when Bo gets a visitor that sits in that seat. Then they get set on the floor until some unsuspecting nurse nearly trips over them and lifts them back up into the chair again. At least the hospital staff is getting an upper body workout. They're going to need it, since apparently Bo's going to have to be carried around for the rest of his life.
This is the point at which Luke finds himself wanting to call Bo a lazy maggot, a coddled sweet pea, and half a dozen other nasty names that Marine recruits got called back when he was in basic training.
And then he catches himself. This isn't the military, isn't a football game or even a kids' game of baseball. It's Bo stuck in a bed for more than three weeks now. Which is like trying to chain a coyote to a tree and expecting it to turn into a pleasant house pet. It's no wonder his cousin is testy and resentful.
"How about if I just massage your muscles?"
Bo shrugs, Luke takes that as consent and sets to work on his cousin's right calf.
"Is this helping, sugar?"
No, it's not. It's just a light skritch, skritch, skitch when what he wants is a deep a satisfying scratch. Something that will hurt enough to make him forget every itch he ever had. Drawing blood would be a relief.
But this is Daisy, and she'd never dig her nails in that deep. Not unless he dinged her jeep, anyway. Then she wouldn't stop as his skin, she'd scratch him right down to the bone.
"Can't you do that a little harder?"
Instead of doing as he asks, she bends over and kisses his forehead. He gets a faceful of her fluffy hair, which doesn't make him any less itchy. "It ain't going to help nothing if I do, sugar," she says as he spits errant stands out of his mouth. "Me scratching your shoulder," where there's no plaster covering him in the first place, but she can't scratch him where there is plaster covering him. "Ain't going to do nothing good for you. Casts itch. There ain't nothing you can really do about it."
Daisy would know, or thinks she would. Back when she was a skinny brat who followed him and Luke wherever they went, she insisted on riding her bike to the pond to fish with them. Hers was a bright pink girl's bike with a low bar, a banana seat and little pompom things on the handlebars. Not her fault, really, all the Duke kids' bikes were passed down from surrounding farmers' kids, and then passed down again when the Dukes got too big for them. There are probably some nine-year-olds riding those same bikes along that same dirt trail to the Chattahoochee River today. Hopefully, whoever is riding sturdier bikes, the ones that he and Luke were riding that day, is being nicer than the two of them were to whoever's stuck on that pink bike. Small wheels and a thin frame, it couldn't stand up to much. Not that the young Dukes cared about that – he and Luke were riding as fast as they could to leave Daisy behind and she was peddling hard to keep up. When her front tire hit a boulder in the path, there was no way the bike could get over it, so it threw her over the handlebars instead. Her arms went up in automatic defense of her face, and when she landed hard on the right one, it broke. She screamed the whole way home with Luke carrying her and Bo trotting ahead to get Jesse. For the next six weeks she wore cast from her wrist to her elbow that got signed by every boy from the third to the sixth grades, and Enos Strate signed it twice. And she's resented everything pink and girly ever since.
"You ain't got no idea," Bo informs her. "You ain't never had near as much cast covering you as I got now."
"I know," she agrees, settling back into the cushioned chair that she's pulled up to the left side of his bed and running her fingers through his hair.
"You was back to your normal self the next day," or maybe the one after. She might just have let herself be babied a little bit at first. Luke was feeling guilty as heck and had made Bo promise that they wouldn't do anything so fool stupid as trying to leave her behind again. And their cousin had been unusually patient with anything Daisy asked him to do, at least at first. Seems to Bo's memory like the line got drawn when she asked him to wash her doll's dress. Stupid dolls don't need stupid dresses, are what he remembers as Luke's exact words. "You could run around and do chores and go to school so you'd have half a chance to forget you itched. Me, I'm stuck in this bed all day and night with nothing else to do."
"I'm so sorry, sugar." She sounds almost as miserable as he feels.
"All I want is to get up and do normal things. Have a meal at a table," use the bathroom by himself, "go for a drive, or just take a shower."
There's a quiet click as her tongue comes away from her teeth. The backs of her fingers graze his cheek.
It's been a while since he got to spend time alone with Daisy, without Jesse or Luke or Cletus or Cooter hanging around the edges of his conversations with her. He has looked forward to this, to quiet time with his female cousin, who can be counted on to be sympathetic and gentle, as a contrast to Luke's relentlessness. He thought it would help, maybe, to hear kind words of compassion, to be touched nicely and cooed at.
Shirley's motherly, but she's also efficient and distracted. She only has but so much attention to give before she moves on to the next person. Jesse's paternal, but he frowns when Bo gets to complaining about how long he's been stuck on his back in a hospital bed. Luke's just Luke, telling him what to do without the slightest concern for how he feels about anything at all.
Maybe he thought that with Daisy, he could just say what's bothering him, she'd understand and he would feel better.
"Would you like me to wash your hair for you, sugar?" she offers. It's kind of her, downright sweet. And just like every other word that she's said to him today, it doesn't help one bit.
"Bo, it ain't doing you no good to pout."
"I ain't pouting, Luke." Oh, yes he is. The only thing missing is a protruding lower lip. "I just don't feel like doing any exercises today, is all. My hip is sore."
"That's because you ain't moving it around enough."
"I ain't supposed to move it, that's why it's in a cast. That's why it's wired to the frame." Bo's hands are gesturing in exaggerated frustration. It's a good thing the IV got removed a couple days back, or he'd be ripping it out now. It's also a good sign that the risk of infection has dropped enough that the IV is no longer needed, but somehow Bo's not seeing it that way. Or managing to be positive about anything at all.
"I mean you ain't moving enough to get good blood flow. Doc Petticord said you'd hurt more if you didn't move some, and it would take longer to heal."
"He also said not to overdo it or I could hurt more." Yeah, he did and Luke wasn't too big of a fan of him saying it, either. It's true enough, but Bo's always been a little bit lazy and giving him any excuse to quit is not a good idea. "It's my body, I know when I'm overdoing it."
"Come on, cousin." Though he is standing on the tile floor of Bo's hospital room, looking at the ugly mustard-yellow decor that climbs halfway up the walls, while Bo lies in exactly the same sprawled position he's been in for twenty-two days, Luke would swear that this feels an awful lot like the farmyard after that nasty fistfight over the carnival, when Bo was shutting down on him. Closing him out of everything he planned to do and running off to Diane because she was easier on him. She never asked him to think or to work hard or to do anything he didn't want to do. The girl was the reason to opt out then, and my hip hurts is the excuse now. Except, look where choosing the easy road back then got Bo, and how is taking the easy road now going to help anything?
"You know I'm in a hospital, right?" Yes, he knows that. "With doctors and nurses and oh, yeah, there's some folks here that are trained in physical therapy, too." Yes, there are. Early on, there was talk of setting Bo up to spend a couple of hours a week with one or another of them, but it never happened because there was never a need. Luke was here and he knew Bo better than any therapist ever would. Knew his moods and his quirks, all his tricks for getting out of hard work. "I reckon they'd know better than you do about why my hip hurts and when I should quit."
His cousin turns his head resolutely away from him, like he can ignore him in this small of a space.
Luke reaches for the plastic pitcher that's practically buried in the pile of get well cards that have amassed on the bedside table. The most recent one came all the way from Los Angeles with Enos' carefully printed handwriting on the envelope. Seems like the former Hazzard deputy is mighty busy out there on the west coast, but he did find time to send a greeting back to his injured friend.
"Here," he says, offering Bo the plastic yellow cup that he's filled with tepid water. "Have a drink, let's take a break."
Old cranky huffs a sigh and turns back to him. "Thanks," he says, taking the cup from him and closing his mouth around the bent straw. And this is one of the ways in which Bo has improved since Luke started working with him. Back then he would as soon let someone hold the cup for him as take it himself. Now there's no question about it – Bo feeds himself, drinks by himself, and has even started giving himself his daily sponge bath. At least the parts he can reach. He's made so much progress, and yet he's fighting against any effort to help him make more.
"Listen," Luke reasons, as he finds a seat on the edge of that beside chair. Figures he's being perfectly calm and logical, and Bo will recognize that and listen to him. "Doc says you might be on crutches in as soon as three weeks. Seems to me like you're going to need to strengthen that left arm some, and of course, your right leg—"
"What if I ain't on crutches in three weeks, Luke," Bo answers back, waving the cup in the air so it'll get taken away from him and he can go back to his dramatic gestures. Luke reaches out and takes it from his hand, places it very deliberately on the table. Bo's getting worked up again, which means he has to stay calm. "What if I ain't ever on my feet again?"
"What?" So much for the even tempered approach. It's one thing for Bo to be unreasonable, and another for him to make utterly preposterous (and self-defeating) suggestions. "Why would that happen?"
"I don't know, Luke, maybe because half of all people who break their hips never walk again!"
"I don't know where that number comes from." In fact, he's never heard it until just now. For all he knows, it's been made up by one particularly irritable man's mind. "But you got to realize that most people that break their hips are Jesse's age or older. You're young and strong. You'll be on your feet in no time if you just keep—"
"And what if I'm not?" Bo repeats, like a brat that's so sure he's got a great point.
"What kind of attitude is that?"
"It's mine, all right?"
Luke gets back to his feet, paces across the room and runs his hands through his hair. Bo's being impossible on purpose, just to get a rise out of him, to get him to argue and forget all about getting any work done today.
"Listen, cousin, I only got so much time before I have to head back to the farm and get some repairs done on that barn roof. Let's just—"
"Why don't you just go now then? You got a roof to fix, I got a sore hip and there are physical therapists here that can work with me anyways. You just go on back to the farm and don't worry about coming back here."
(I guess this farm's just gotten a bit too small for both me and Luke.)
"Bo."
"No, I mean it, you should go."
(There's some things a man's gotta learn for himself. I guess this is one of the more important ones.)
"Just get out Luke, just go home and don't worry about me. I'll be fine."
(Uncle Jesse, I reckon it's Luke that's got to do some of the realizing.)
"Is everything all right in here?"
Seems like he and Bo must have gotten loud enough to be heard in the halls. The nurse that's in the doorway checking on them isn't Shirley, the large-boned, maternal woman that would probably give Bo a sarcastic word or two and tell him to just get to work on his rehab already. This one's young, quiet, a little bit nervous. Dark-haired and small, and she fills out her uniform in all the best ways.
"We're fine," Luke announces.
"I was just asking my cousin to leave," Bo informs her. "But he won't go."
"He's just having a bad day," Luke tries to explain, but Bo's shouting over him.
"I want him to leave – this is my room and I don't want him in it."
"Maybe," the nurse says, looking from him to Bo and back. Biting her lip, and if she could get away with it, she'd probably be nibbling her nails now. "You should go."
"He don't mean that, he's—"
"Goodbye, Luke," Bo calls from his bed.
"Sounds like he means it to me," the nurse says, standing up a little taller, her voice a little louder. "I think it's for the best if you went now."
Hell, she might as well be Diane all over again. Giving Bo permission to act like any kind of brat he wants to, regardless of the consequences.
He looks at her, and her upright little stance, then back at Bo and his smug face.
(I ain't got no regrets about nothing. Especially not this.)
Luke turns on his heel to walk up to the bedside table and grab the pickup's key from where he left it, then marches toward the door.
"Fine," he says, and then he's gone.