Dueling Dukes Chapter 21: Certain Kind of Fool, a dukes of hazzard fanfic

21. Certain Kind of Fool

A poster on a storefront, the picture of a wanted man
He had a reputation spreading like fire throughout the land
It wasn't for the money, at least it didn't start that way
It wasn't for the runnin', but now he's runnin' everyday*

Sobriety had never been asked nor expected of him, and it wasn't now, either. His lineage had ensured that liquor would always be a part of his life. Even Jesse, who had scolded him just about every way possible, hadn't asked him to stay away from alcohol, so he wasn't. He just wasn't drinking any, either.

He'd always known that Jesse wasn't really his uncle. His pa had made plenty clear, back in those crawfishing, tadpole hunting days, that Jesse wasn't anyone to be relied on. A distant relative, just like Atlanta was a distant city. The kind of thing you were lucky to see now and again, but nothing you should grow to love. Not when it could be gone in a heartbeat. Not when there were mountains and rivers and all manner of uncrossable geography between you.

Still, uncle had been what he'd called him, if only out of respect. Because he was older, supposedly wiser, but that was the other thing his pa had told him. Eventually, when it had been months and he was whining about why the nice man with white hair never came around to take him off on treks into the woods anymore. Jesse, his pa explained (and it might have been right there that the notion of calling him 'uncle' had died), was a fool. Hadn't always been, wouldn't necessarily always be, but right at that moment he was off doing foolish things. Luke asked what that meant and got told, in a growl that tolerated no follow up questions, to go out to the barn and collect the eggs. Years later, after his pa's angry voice had stopped being scary enough to cow him, he hadn't needed to ask the question anymore. By then Luke mostly referred to him as crazy old Jesse anyway, just like everyone else in town. Because he was mostly that, mostly living in brambles and spewing nonsense that could only sound wise to his own ears. Drunk on 'shine half the time, and it took him a few years to work his way back. When Luke's pa had gone through his own love affair with liquor, Luke'd had no choice but to seek out Jesse's help and it must've been a good thing for the old man. Being needed, being useful, because from there the oldster just kept right on cleaning up until he'd washed away all the filth from his past and become the town's pastor.

So now Jesse didn't touch liquor, either to drink or to brew. Which was a shame, because what Dukes made was a cut above the rest, but Luke figured the line would die with him. Daisy's pa never had wanted anything to do with the moonshine business; it was the chisel that had cut through the bonds between her family and his.

And the liquor he'd had two nights ago seemed to have worked its way between him and Daisy, too. Yellow-eye was as faithful as ever, staying by his side when they were at work, but when he declared them off-duty, there was no small body at his side, keeping him company or trying to touch him with a gentle hand.

So he sat alone. In the corner of the saloon nursing a glass of warm, metallic water. Far from everyone, particularly Mabel, who looked like she might just dig her nails in and tear his flesh if he got too close. Ruby was at the other end of the bar as well, making a show of flitting between a couple of Hickory boys. Sashaying lightly and laughing broadly and otherwise making it perfectly clear that she was plenty happy where she was and didn't want to be anywhere else. And he figured that was all for the best, really.

It seemed, however, as those who took their midday nourishment at the saloon began to filter in, that he'd cornered himself. Got himself far enough away from all the noise and bustle, but then sitting right down next to him and leaving him nowhere to escape, there was the marshal. Giggling at his good fortune, maybe, to find himself a surprise companion and captive audience for whatever brilliant notion that was running laps around that feeble mind of his.

"Well, if it ain't the Duke boy," Rosco crowed, just as cheerful as a bear with a bead on some honey.

"It ain't," Luke mumbled, just for the sake of being contrary. Because he had more problems than solutions, because he'd spent more than two years trying to figure out who had killed his family, and all he had to show for it was a broken nose and two black eyes. Well that and a scout that was all business and a pastor that figured he was within his rights to talk about the past as if those days weren't completely gone, leaving nothing but heartache.

"Huh?" the marshal cocked his head to the side, trying to figure that one out. Luke just waved his hand in the air and said howdy like any good boy who had been taught his manners ought to. Doc Appleby showed up to dispel the last of the awkwardness, let Rosco order his usual (which was the same as what Luke was having except he'd want ice in it, and how he thought he was fooling anyone into believing he drank anything stronger than water, Luke didn't know) and shuffled off to get it. "Duke," the marshal whispered conspiratorially. "I got a favor to ask you."

It was worthy of a sigh and nothing more. Rosco wasn't half as clever as he thought he was, always after him to give up the goods on any illegal Hickory activity. "I don't know nothing, Marshal," he answered, just as bored as he'd been reciting sums back in his school days.

"Gyu," the man answered back, his lips pursed as he worked his way through that one. How Luke could know nothing or how he could—"Ijit!" was the follow up response. "No, not that kind of favor."

"I ain't joining your posse, neither."

"Wijit," seemed like a variation on his other utterances, but then it changed, became clearer. "Would you just hush up, boy, and listen to me. I don't need you in my posse, I got plenty of fools that want to be part of my posse." Sounded like the standard ramblings of a marshal with limited control over his tongue. Luke could have reminded him that it hadn't been much more than a week since Rosco had caught him on the other side of this same room and all but pleaded with him to leave the feud and join on the side of the law. And, as far as Luke knew, there wasn't anybody that was exactly begging the man for a chance to join his posse. But for a lawman, Rosco had a relationship with the truth that was just about as slippery as a greased pig.

"Of course, you got fools that want to join your posse," Luke answered back anyway. "Ain't nobody but a fool would want anything at all to do with your posse."

"You got a foul mouth on you, boy. I figure if your pa was here, he'd whip your hide for sassing the law like this." Maybe so. But he was about dang tired of reminding everyone that his pa wasn't ever going to whip him again. "Now I heard about your little fight with them out-of-town boys and I'm sorry I wasn't here to stop it before you got the stuffing knocked out of you. Even if you are a nasty cuss most days, I don't take kindly to strangers beating on Dade boys. So I reckon you got a right to be surly, considering all them bruises you got on your face. But I also figure that you ain't so far gone into this feud that you ain't willing to listen to me for a minute."

"Go on, Rosco," he allowed with a wash of guilt. Half of the time he meant no harm with the things he said; he just had a sharp tongue and the wits to use it. The other half the time he was a miserable jackass and he figured he had earned the right to be. But teasing the marshal, whether good-naturedly or bad, just wasn't fair. Not when the man was so dang earnest.

"Governor Northen's daughter is getting married." Well, yeah, that wasn't precisely news. It'd been officially mentioned in the Gazette a few months back, but Miss Mabel's girls had been buzzing about it for longer than that. Speculating on what the bride's dress would look like and how tall the groom was. Whether the dinner would be veal or pork, and just how much fine wine would be flowing. "Up at the big falls."

"Now wait a minute." That part was news, big news and the sort of thing that he would've figured couldn't happen. "The governor of Georgia is going to come all the way out to Dade to get his daughter married off?" Sure, they weren't technically all that far from Atlanta. Maybe a hundred miles as the crow flew, but horses didn't have wings. They had hoofs and needed roads, especially if they were bringing in wagonloads of wedding finery, not to mention the guests. And the only roads that went from here to Atlanta had a detour into Tennessee just to get around the mountains. Luke didn't figure any governor of Georgia had ever bothered to come here before.

"Them falls is famous, boy. For being beautiful and maybe even romantic. And if you're the governor's only daughter," Polly, he seemed to recall her name was, "then I reckon you can ask to be married anyplace you want. And the governor, he done sent me a letter saying she wants to be married here."

Well, that was all very interesting, and surely Mabel's girls would be jockeying for some way to involve themselves in the proceedings. "Well, tell the governor congratulations for me, then," were Luke's parting words as he got up from the bar. There had been a reason he'd chosen this corner, and it wasn't to be safe from Mabel or to get a vantage point on the Hickory boys at the other end of the place, and it sure wasn't so that he could be accosted by old Rosco and told tales of romance, love and marriage.

"Boy," the marshal said, grabbing onto his arm. Thought twice about it a second too late, let him go after he'd already balled one of his hands into a fist and begun to cock it back.

Luke took a deep, steadying breath, loosened his fingers one by one, shook his head. "Sorry marshal," he said. "I didn't—it wasn't—"

"You boys," Rosco said, and Luke would swear his hair was grayer, his wrinkles deeper, his eyes tireder than they ever had before. "Are so ready to fight you ain't got the smarts to tell the difference between a kind hand and a harsh one. You ought to be ashamed of yourself." Any other time that sentence would have ended with a lecture about how you didn't sass the duly constituted law, and then there would have been nonsense syllables. This time the marshal just looked at him, something sad in his face, something lost. Maybe worried, maybe just regular old disappointed. "Sit down, Luke," was spoken about as plain as anything ever had been. No bluff or bluster, no cajoling, no admiration for the skills he had, no offers of refuge from the storm.

"Yes, sir," he mumbled, some dormant sense of propriety and manners emerging from within him. Or maybe it was more like shame. Either way, he sat like a good boy and raised his eyebrows. Waited.

"It would be an awful shame if the governor's stay here wasn't pretty as a picture. I would hate for him to wake up to gunshots."

"I don't reckon that would happen, Rosco. Ain't nobody around here in the habit of shooting at dawn."

"Duke," Rosco was getting frustrated with him again. "I don't figure it would be a good thing if the Governor saw this corner of the state as lawless and feud-torn."

Luke barked out a hard little laugh. "Of course not. Not with good old Marshal Coltrane in charge. You going to arrest the whole town, Rosco? That's about your best bet." That or he could convince the governor to stay in Morganville. Not that there was anything in Morganville worth staying for, but at least the feud had never traveled that far.

"No, I ain't gonna arrest the whole town," Rosco burst out. The heads of those men near enough to hear and sober enough to care turned in their direction. Luke smirked at Rosco's flustered attempts to hush himself. "I ain't gonna arrest the whole town," he repeated in a hissing whisper. "Not if you do me a favor."

Well, this was interesting. The big, tough marshal was in need of a favor from an outlaw feuder. Luke took a sip of his water, looked at Rosco over the lip of his glass, raised his eyebrows again. Put the glass down and waited, because whatever came next was bound to be fascinating.

"All I'm asking for is a—" pause there while Rosco pulled a piece of paper out of his breast pocket, stared at it for a few seconds, turned it upside down and started reading in earnest. "Five day truce. From July the twenty-fifth to the thirtieth."

"Well, see now, there's your trouble right there," Luke informed him. "Dates and things, why, we riff-raff in the feud, we don't know nothing about dates." Give or take the fact that just about every boy involved in the feud had as much schooling under their belt as anyone else in this town. They could count and they knew their months just fine, and any one of them could tell Rosco the day of the week, if he asked them. But all the folks with respectable jobs—be they marshal or pastor or bartender or even madam of the brothel—didn't think twice about calling the boys involved in the feud fools. It would be a shame to disabuse them of that notion now.

"Gij," Rosco answered him back, all the frustration in the world caught in his pinched, pink face. "I'll tell you what day it is. Today is July—" fingers out, the lawman started counting. Ran through the ones on his right hand and was well nigh through the ones on his left when Luke spoke up.

"Twenty-second." Because when the fingers ran out there were only toes left, and Luke wasn't quite ready to smell whatever lived in those boots of Rosco's. Besides, unless the marshal had two extra toes (and he might, Luke wouldn't put it past him), he was going to run out before he got to the end anyway.

"Twenty-second," echoed back at him through clenched teeth, followed by a half-swallowed, "ij, oo." This right here was Marshal Coltrane getting annoyed, and the whole county ought to be quaking in fear. "You're just lucky," he muttered out, jaw still tight. "That I figure I need you, boy. Otherwise I'd be locking you up in jail for being a public menace." And a public embarrassment. The little tantrum that the lawman was making a show of not throwing was getting the attention of more and more saloon patrons.

"Come on," Luke suggested, getting up off his stool and leaving his drink behind. Rosco hesitated a little bit over leaving his. "You can always get more," Luke informed him, "it's only—"

"Ijit!" Rosco interjected resolutely, interrupting anything Luke threatened to reveal about his drink of choice. It worked anyway, Rosco found his feet and followed him out the door. Onto the porch and over to where Traveler was hitched. Whenever the marshal got done asking his favor, Luke figured he might take his mount over to Gray Voice Lane and the two of them could leisurely wander through the fields of the old Duke farmland. Since the horse might be the only one who wanted him around these days.

"So what is it you want from me, Rosco?"

"Duke, you got the respect of every man on both sides of this thing." Well, that just went to prove that the duly constituted law of this county knew absolutely nothing about his constituents. "Don't you go making them faces at me; they do. You go to them Hickory boys, and you ask them for a five-day truce, no fighting in town or out of town or anywhere at all during them five days, and they're going to take it serious. If I ask 'em they'll just laugh and fight twice as much." Well, Luke had to admit that the last sentence was true anyway. What good was a feud if it didn't drive the local law mad?

"Rosco," Luke said, sliding his foot into the stirrup and grabbing the horn on Traveler's saddle. "I ain't saying I'll do it." He mounted, then steadied his horse under him for just a few seconds. "But if I do, I ain't making you any promises that it'll work." Then he nudged Traveler just enough to get him trotting. Somewhere behind him he heard ijits, wijits, and sandwiched in there somewhere, there might have been some sort of thanks.