Chapter Ten

December 1971

He was a fool that had fretted a week away. Though it had seemed justified at the time; there was a lot to fret about and no one else in his family seemed to be doing any of the fretting, so it all fell onto his shoulders. And his oldest cousin always swore that he didn't do his share of the work around here.

But when he got past worrying over Luke's unexpected arrival, his military appearance, his dog tags, his posture, his hair, his voice, and his too-early rising, it was time to go back to wasting days in school when there were better things he and his cousin could be doing, there were evenings which should have been free time, but got lost to homework, there were friends to spend an hour or two with and races to be won. There was a whole town they could go out and conquer and… then Saturday went and proved he'd been fretting his life away when all he needed, really, was to spend time with Luke.

One week, pouted through until it was passed, and now there were only three left. A thirty day leave, which meant that two days before Christmas, Luke would be gone.

"So we'll celebrate on the twenty-second," Jesse had announced, as if the rest of the world were fools for waiting until the twenty-fifth. Luke had smiled at that, lopsided thing that couldn't make up its mind between happy and miserable, but Bo didn't have that same conflict. Moving their celebration of the holiday wouldn't do a damned thing to make it any better that Luke had to leave again.

"Just," his cousin had croaked out, and it sounded like he had a cold, though there hadn't been a single sniffle or cough over the past few days, "don't get me nothing. No presents, because I can't take nothing with me anyway." It had been an awful little request, but—

"Christmas ain't about the presents, anyway," had put a stop to any further discussion, coming out in Jesse's affronted and annoyed voice like it did. "We'll just have us a quiet little family celebration."

Tidy solution, perfect answer if you were a saint, but Bo wasn't and he knew that neither of his cousins was either. Christmas wasn't about presents, it was about excitement, it was about not being able to sleep while he and Luke whispered across their room and wondered what the morning might bring; it was about getting told to hush and just go to sleep now, then sliding out of his own bed and into Luke's so their whispers couldn't be heard beyond the covers that got pulled up over their heads. It was about finally falling into a light sleep, cuddled together and too hot, it was about waking up to Luke pretending to care about chores. It was about his so-cool cousin leading him out to the barn so their whispered conversations could resume where they had left off in the dark of their bedroom, it was about feeding livestock, collecting eggs and milking goats in sloppy record time, then hustling back in to find a smirking Jesse and a mussed-haired Lavinia greeting them with admonishments about how they had better just sit down and eat a good breakfast before they even thought about doing anything else. It was about him and Daisy trying to peek around the edges of the kitchen table to see snatches of color in the living room, it was about Luke acting like he was blocking their view but his own eyes would be fastened on the far side of the archway, too.

The presents would get dived into, opened, and played with for a few minutes before the yawning started up.

"Back to bed with you," Aunt Lavinia would say, because the visiting would begin in a few hours. Some folks stayed home and others roamed from house to house, greeting families they'd known forever, wishing them the best of blessings. It was an unchoreographed mess that somehow or other ended up all right anyway. But before the three Duke kids would be fresh-faced enough to tolerate lipstick-tacky kisses on their cheeks, and bony hands ruffling their hair, they'd need some honest sleep. And if they were really lucky, they'd all three get tucked into Jesse and Lavinia's bed while their guardians went about the business of tidying up the mess that their morning had left behind.

Christmas wasn't about the gifts, it was about excitement and closeness, facilitated by wondering what the day would bring. There would be no wonder in the celebration that his family was planning for this year, no innocence. Sure, he'd muster a grin for it just like every other member of the household would; they'd all pretend to be enjoying themselves for the sake of the others. But there was no way that he'd simply accept the 'no presents' rule. There had to be something he could give Luke.

His cousin's present wasn't going to be, he quickly figured out, a fun and lively moonshine delivery. Good times, those hours spent in Tilly's front seat, hiding in plain sight while it seemed that half the world was out to get them. The yearning to drive, to experience that adrenalin rush from behind the wheel, felt terribly far in his past now. His best memories were of sitting in the passenger seat, clinging to the window frame while wind gusted through his hair and into his mouth, gaping wide with laughter as Luke tricked old Harvey Essex into driving those federal wheels of his right into the thick mud of the swamp. The ground would burp under the weight of the revenuer's car, then there'd be the mad scramble as Harvey pulled himself out to safety, but by that time Luke had the pedal to the floor again, and the darkness would pull them in and cradle them safely in her arms.

Bo had won the right to drive on moonshine runs, and his cousin wasn't in any mood to yank that privilege back from him. Besides Harvey and even good old Rosco Coltrane apparently suffered rheumatism in the chill of December, or simply considered themselves deserving of a month off, because he couldn't for the life of him scare up a tail on any of the moonshine runs where Luke accompanied him.

A race wasn't much of a gift, but his cousin did accept that much, though Bo reckoned he had to credit Dobro with an assist. Friday afternoon and some unrefined mixture of boredom and habit sent two Duke boys angling toward town in a souped-up Ford Falcon. No clear plan, but the garage was there, glowing yellow in the last light of day. Seemed as attractive a destination as any, though it got quite a bit uglier upon closer inspection. Because there were the mugs of some of the guys they'd grown up with, guys that, aside from Cooter, had all but disappeared from Bo's life about the same time that Luke had. Hard to assign blame in that one, so he didn't. Chose not to worry too hard over whether it was because he'd hunkered down to his own world or if it was because these guys were more Luke's friends than his own, chose instead to lose himself to the bickering and banter of the evening.

That started right out with Dobro Doolan pointing at Luke's near-hairless head and laughing. "You are one funny-looking cuss," came rattling out his mouth faster than a runaway freight train.

There was no thought behind the way Bo's shoulders tensed and his fingers curled, his right hand coming up with intent to poke a finger into that smart-mouthed, know-it-all's breastbone and demand apologies or respect. Mouth dry, chin up, and Bo was setting his feet, getting ready to—

And Luke laughed. "Leastways I can blame it on a bad haircut. What's your excuse?"

Cool, unflappable, and maybe the oldest of the Duke cousins had always been that. But he had a temper too, and Bo really would have figured it would rear its ugly head here, yet it didn't. Ripped the rug right out from under Bo's righteous anger and left him a gape-mouthed fool whose fist had no good place to plant itself. Though Dobro appeared ready to accommodate him, sitting up straight from where he'd been leaning awkwardly against the windshield of his Mustang.

"Cool it," Brody mumbled, to no one and everyone at once, and it was over before it could get started.

For all of a few seconds, anyway.

"Hey, Lukas, Bo," was Cooter, throwing gas on a brush fire while locking the sliding doors of his garage for the night. "You boys come to race?"

Maybe they had and maybe they hadn't, but Dobro didn't wait for them to make their intentions known.

"Shoot, soldier-boy there probably don't remember how to drive, he's been so busy playing G.I. Joe." Taunting, same as it ever had been, except it wasn't. Hard to say what had changed, whether it was the squint in their friend's eye that held a little more malice than bravado, or Bo's sudden awareness that not everyone would treat his cousin's military service with respect. Made him want to level a few accusations at the brat in front of them about how, exactly, he had escaped the draft and whether he could have survived boot camp if he'd been sent. Skinny, scrawny mess of a jackass and—

"Don't you worry," delivered just as calmly as it ever had been, and Bo didn't understand how Luke could do it. Could take what amounted to insults over things that weren't his fault, things that he was handling with more grace than any of the rest of the guys here were capable of. "I can still leave pieces of your car trailing from here right on down to the swamp."

"Care to back that up?" Dobro, just this side of a sneer now, jingling keys in his hand.

"You reckon you're man enough?"

And the race was on.

Not yet out of town, and already Dobro was ramming on their bumper. Slight twist of the wheel and the Dukes were out of the line of fire, picking up speed to run parallel to Cooter in his hot little Challenger, leaving nothing but exhaust for their other two friends to ram into. Laughing and hollering insults to the mechanic through their open windows, when the bump from behind came again. Slight swivel in his seat and he glanced out the back window to see the Mustang coming in for another shot at Luke's bumper.

"Dang it, Luke! Why are you letting him do that?" Not even sure what he meant by that, whether it was the bumper tag now or the snotty attitude that his cousin had just about ignored a few minutes ago.

"He ain't hurting me none," came his answer but Bo didn't like it, not one bit. He was still turned around on his seat, trying to think of some way to give Dobro his comeuppance when Luke started talking again. "Bo, you really reckon that pretty little car of his can take all that banging? He's making a mess out of his own front end. If he wants to leave a few dings in my bumper in the process, well, they ain't nothing we can't bang out tomorrow."

Perfectly sound logic, the only kind Luke ever came out with. But it included a touch of generosity, and more magnanimity than Bo reckoned he'd be capable of under the same circumstances.

"Besides," and there was a naughty little grin teasing at the corners of his cousin's mouth, "he's going to wind up in that ditch up there." The Falcon veered left then back to the right, making Cooter reflexively crank his own wheel out of a desire not to get himself sideswiped. "Right," but Luke had got no interest in harming Cooter; his eyes were fastened to the rearview as he swerved again. Cooter was a mess of compensation over there to their right, his eyes popping wide even as his mouth muttered something unflattering on the subject of Luke's driving. "About," another quick crank of the wheel and the mechanic next to them, tired of this crazy carnival ride, slammed on his brakes. Screeching skid and the Challenger stayed on the pavement, even if it did end up sideways, straddling the yellow line and hogging the whole road behind the Dukes. "Now," Luke finished, as Dobro stood on his own brakes and, with nowhere else to go, slammed his car directly into the ditch that lined the side of the road. Behind that, Brody also screamed to a halt, and while their three friends figured out getting their cars disentangled and back onto the road, the Duke boys disappeared into the darkness. "That was a fine piece of driving," Luke informed them over the CB. "We're gone."

It was a good present, nontraditional, and his cousin didn't even know he'd received it, but there was that smile across Luke's face that was undeniable. A few minutes of fun and that might have been about all his cousin would accept by way of Christmas gifts this year. But it wasn't enough, wasn't the half of what Bo wanted him to leave here with.

It was a heart – no, more than that, it was Bo's heart, halfway broken – placed in his hands for repair. Took him awhile to recognize it, busy as he had been in trying to navigate the trappings of Hazzard. Home, where he'd never had to think twice about his demeanor or behavior. Sure, he'd gotten plenty of lectures and licks for the things he'd done as a kid, but both the infractions and their consequences had flowed through his life just as like the Hatchapee River flowed across the land itself. Now he had to think twice about the hair on his head, the clothes on his back, the heaviness of his footfalls, the rigidity of his posture, the tone of his voice. Had to learn, all over again, to accept the kindness of a gentle touch, thoughtful words, and the admiration of his younger cousins.

Hazzard always had ticked to its own sense of time. Half the county didn't own a watch and for those that did, winding it seemed a task too difficult. There was no such thing as being on time or late, only being in the right place at the right (or wrong) time. Summer's sweaty afternoons were endless, but dawn to dusk passed in a wink come spring planting or fall harvest. Thanksgiving to Christmas usually lasted about the same amount of time as a winter's nap, hours lost to the rush of avoiding the need to shop until the bare space under the tree could no longer be ignored.

But time ran syrupy-slow through December of 1971, sticking here and there until it seemed it would stop. And it was something he should have wanted, for the forward march of time to freeze right here before he had to catch that bus up to Camp LeJeune at the crack of dawn on the twenty-third. Except that the trade-off for the hours' stretched-taffy sluggish passage was the way his youngest cousin dragged through it. Chin and shoulders down when he didn't know Luke was looking, when they weren't using the tandem saw on that tree trunk that he and Maudine had hauled out of the drainage ditch, or driving over twisting roads to nowhere, when the distraction of replacing the rotted post at the end of the western fence line was done. Looked the same as the boy always had in the minutes after a whipping, when his pride and his backside still stung. But even on the worst of days of his past, the misery in Bo's heart could only sustain itself for minutes, maybe an hour at most, before glee would break out like a spontaneous case of measles, spreading across his face in a wide grin at some stupid, but entertaining, little event. This, what he was watching his cousin do now as he moped off to school and sulked his way back, languished through chores and brooded over dinner, was something else.

But it wasn't until his last weekend at home that Luke could put name to it. Four days before he was supposed to leave, and he'd made a point to spend a night cooking with Jesse and a day of driving all over creation with Daisy as she shopped for the perfect ingredients for their too-early Christmas dinner, and all that was left was Sunday afternoon with Bo. Warm enough to spend outdoors, so they hiked up out of Black Hollow on the hickory trail, across the ridge of Iron Mountain. Sitting on the stony peak with a view of all of Hazzard, warm enough that Bo slipped his shirt up over his head leaned back against the nearest boulder as if he might get a tan in the middle of winter. His chest was still bony, but those shoulders were just starting to get broad, and somewhere between extra chores and football, the muscles were starting to bulk out on those upper arms that had always been so ropy. Just a pair of boys, sprawled out under the angled rays of the sun, nothing but air between the two of them and heaven, and then Bo cleared his throat.

"Cousin," and it didn't sound like that little cough that preceded the word had helped a bit. "I ain't," because words were getting choked out in little fits. "I reckon things would be better," sounded like a sore throat and sniffles, but they both knew it wasn't. "I wish you could stay." Sitting up now, knees pulled close to his chest, and arms around them, every bit the miserable little boy, and finally Luke could make the four out of all the little twos of hints that the boy had been handing over to him.

Memories were misty things, like the Blue Ridge Mountains in the morning, but there were peaks rising above the fog that tried to obscure them. Things that were so clear and bright, and suddenly he could remember—

Painfully blinding, that was the rage that had twisted at his gut until he screamed. Too old to behave like that, at least that was what he'd been told when he'd thrown those high caliber tantrums, but those were his mother's words. And it was his mother that he was raging against, or for, this time.

His mother was gone, at least that was what he'd been told. So was his father, but that wasn't any big surprise, his father was gone a lot. Overnight, sometimes for a couple of days, and it never meant much of anything, but his mother being gone – that was wrong. Wrong that he was staying with his Uncle Jesse and Aunt Lavinia for more than an afternoon, wrong that he was supposed to sleep in that bedroom with the floors that creaked when it wasn't his home and his mother hadn't come in to watch him kneel at prayer, then sing him quiet lullabies while he drifted on the highs and lows of her notes until he slept. Wrong that his toddling, blonde cousin was always there when he woke up but his mother was – gone. Except she wasn't really, she was in the sitting room. He'd been told that, too, and it was very confusing. Not only that she could be gone and here, both, but that she could be just a thin wall away from him and he couldn't hear her, he never saw her, and she never, ever came to sit him on her knee and call him her little man.

Later there was church, and things were said about his mother, his father, his Uncle Jake. He saw her then, dressed in that pink dress that he'd hidden in the hem of the last time his Uncle Jesse had come to visit them in their little cabin on the lane, when that wide, red face had come down close to his, nuzzling him with it's rough beard, and he'd squealed and pretended to be scared, there in the pink folds of his mother's dress. Her hair was up in curls like she only wore it on special occasions, and her eyes were closed. She wasn't gone, she was right there. But she wasn't – right. Even if she hadn't been so pale and unmoving Luke would have come to that last conclusion, what with how she hadn't come to hug him, not even once. He was too big for hugs, and he'd told her so, but she never stopped trying, never gave up, and if no one was looking, sometimes he'd even give in and let her hold onto him.

It was in the cemetery that he'd figured it out. His mother was, as he'd been told, gone. She'd left him, and not content to do it just once, she was about to leave him again. She was going into the ground, to a place where Aunt Lavinia, holding onto his arm with all her might, was telling him he couldn't follow her. White hot rage filled him then, and most of the details that followed were lost to him afterward. But there were bruises and cuts on him that lasted for days afterward, from where he'd flung himself against any hard surface he could find, and eventually there was Uncle Jesse holding him still against everything that was tearing him apart from the inside, and finally, there were apologies.

"We thought you was old enough," Jesse later lamented, but it hadn't been his age that was the problem. It was that his mother had left him, and then, if that wasn't enough, she left him a second time.

And that was precisely what he was about to do to Bo right now, disappear on him again after this little interim of being back in his life.

"I reckon, it's best that I'm going," he answered. Sounded good, had a logical ring to it, even if he didn't quite mean it. "So's you can concentrate on school." It wasn't a lie, technically. And that was all that really mattered.

"I don't want to concentrate on school."

And that, at least, let him swallow down the bitterness he'd tasted at saying the words, and gave him a reason to smile. "I know you don't. I just figure it's for the best that you do." There were things to be learned in class, though Luke couldn't swear that there was a one that he could point out as being important right now. "I also figure it's for the best that you learn the trade from Jesse, not me." And that was also the truth, most likely. Their uncle knew more about revenuers than Luke could ever hope to, and if the old-timer wasn't exactly a daredevil behind the wheel, well, Bo didn't need any lessons in that regard anyway. "Besides, you won't have no reason to be hanging out with them loser friends of mine." Which they weren't really, but Bo was ready to get to rolling in the dirt with Dobro Doolan over foolish, spouted off words. And without Luke there between them his hot-headed cousin and the loud-mouthed idiot might really come to blows. "There's – you don't need me around, Bo. I'm in your way. You'll be safer with Jesse and have more fun with the other guys on the football and baseball team than you would if I was here."

No answer from Bo, and maybe he was thinking and maybe he was pouting, and maybe it didn't matter. Luke reckoned it was for the best if the boy got mad at him now. It was a sacrifice, because Bo was kin, and Luke couldn't just slip away from him like he had from Candy. So he'd see to it that his cousin spent a few days in a fit of temper and when the time came that Luke had to crawl out of bed well before dawn, slipping into the cold darkness of one of the shortest days of the year, off to town and onto a bus reeking of exhaust, his cousin would be glad to see him go. A little pain now to save a lot later.