Hey all - I'm going away later in the week, so this may be my last post for several days. Then again, I may squeeze in one more. Either way, at least you get some answers in this chapter, so I won't leave you totally hanging.
Thanks for sticking with me through this dissertation.
Don't own 'em, don't earn from 'em, don't mean 'em no (real) harm.
Chapter 25 – Worse Than a Slap Across the Face
Cooper's Gap was beautiful country. Had the slopes of the closely tucked mountains been less steep, the area would likely have long ago been turned into some kind of a tourist haven with tidy cabins around the icy lakes that reflected back out of the small valleys. The area was too rugged for long-term human habitation though, so it remained largely wilderness. Bo didn't know it well, but he figured that in the span of a week he could hike the lot of it and at the very least have a pleasant vacation before settling into another growing season.
At least, that was what Bo admitted to himself, even as he strained every sense he had in the search for his cousin. The blonde had decided that one of three things was possible. The first option was that the man who had stopped to help the college kid was not Luke at all. Bo chose not to think about that alternative. Another prospect was that the guy was Luke, but he was just passing by on his way to who knew where. Again, this was an idea that the blonde didn't concentrate on. The third possibility, and the one Bo chose to believe, was that Luke had found some obscure place in the dense woods of Cooper's Gap, and that was where he was staying. An abandoned fishing cabin would do the trick; his cousin didn't exactly require luxury. And if there was someone managing to make a life in these woods, Bo would be able to track the signs, looking for disturbed vegetation, sniffing the air for wood smoke, listening for the sound of animals scattering in the presence of a human. In other words, he'd need to be on full alert. Day one was spent acclimating himself.
On the second day, Bo stuck to the valleys, scanning up and down steep hillsides, skirting around lakes. By late afternoon, he'd explored a large chunk of the lowlands, where the sun rose later and set earlier. It was still light, but wouldn't be for long, when Bo began to look for a good place to make camp for the night. He'd been carrying a relatively heavy pack with enough food in it to last a week, his compound bow with its quiver of arrows, a sleeping bag and some clothes. He was making this trip without the benefit of a nearby automobile. Cooter's cousin had dropped Bo here, keeping the General locked up in his garage. They'd meet again in a week at the designated pickup point, unless Bo somehow made his way back to town before that time, by hitching a ride.
Finding a level and dry spot, Bo shed his pack and began to search for some good sized stones and dry wood to make a fire circle with. Before he'd gotten far in this process, Bo stopped and stiffened, sniffing the air. Someone else had a fire going out here, somewhat east of where Bo was, judging by the way the wind had just changed direction. And, mingled with the wood smoke was a familiar acrid odor. Shouldering his pack and checking the skies for the thin stream of discoloration, the blonde set off on a course that would take him around the lake that he'd been about to camp next to.
As he made his way around the southern tip of the water, Bo had narrowed down the exact location that the smell must be coming from. The mountain on the east side of this lake was very steep, dropping almost directly into the water, except for one small hollow. It was a perfect setup, with only one narrow entrance as a person approached from the south. Bo began watching for the items he knew he'd find. He was pretty sure he didn't want to startle whoever was back here, but he did have to know.
Close enough now that there was no mistaking the smell in the air, Bo began watching the ground around his feet. The late afternoon sun's reflection revealed exactly what the youngster expected to find, a low length of fishing line, stretched between two trees. Looking to his left, Bo could see the tin cans and glass bottles that were strung on the line, half hidden in some ferns.
"Takes one to know one," he muttered, pausing to decide just how safe his next few steps would be. Finally stepping over the trip wire, Bo mumbled once more, "Hope he ain't got a quick trigger finger."
Very quietly, he stole closer to what he knew would be an active still, currently cooking up a batch. He just hoped the resident moonshiner wouldn't be the jumpy sort. Now on even greater guard than he had been a few minutes earlier, Bo alternated between watching low for more trip wires, and glancing up, hoping he wouldn't find himself looking into the barrel of a rifle.
And, on one of his upward scans he found himself staring down something even more frightening: a pair of startled, but still brilliant, blue eyes.
"Bo!" The voice was harsh, but the body language resigned. "What the hell are you doin' here?"
The frustration of the past few months left the younger of the Duke cousins a lot less than submissive. "Don't you think you should be answering that question, instead of asking it? You disappear for more than two months, making the whole family miserable with worry about you, and it turns out you're here? I can't believe you, Luke Duke."
"Bo!" Luke's response was whispered, but intensely. "Shh. Just get lost now, you hear?"
This was too much for the youngest of the Duke clan. He'd done nothing but miss his cousin for what felt like several lifetimes, and now that he'd found the other boy, the response was to tell him to get lost?
"I'm not going to hush, and I ain't gettin' lost, cousin…"
"Would you pay attention to your surroundings for once? What is this thing, right here, in between us?"
"A still," Bo spat, through his gritted teeth.
"And what happens if you get caught here?"
"If either of us gets caught here, Luke. I ain't the only one on probation for this very crime."
"I know that Bo," Luke said, his own voice starting to rise. "I know that! Why do you think I don't want you here? Why do you think I didn't even want you knowin' what I was doin'? So's if I got caught, you would actually be able to say you knew nothin' about it! So they couldn't take you, too."
Finally pausing long enough to get a good look at his cousin in the fading sunlight, Bo was taken aback. Though the color of Luke's eyes was as bright as ever, the circles beneath them made them seem unusually deep set. His face was gaunt, like he hadn't been eating well, and he had wild hair with a full growth of beard, which looked as filthy as the rest of him. Somehow his cousin had become the very impersonation of some of the less than sane mountain man 'shine makers that they'd known growing up in moonshine country.
"Lukas," he worried, his tone much softer now than it had been a moment ago. He didn't even try to say more.
"Aw geez, Bo," his older cousin said, turning and walking to an older, broken tree, half-resting on the ground, not far from the still. Luke sat, not looking at the younger boy. "Why'd you have to come looking for me?"
"Why?" Bo was riled again. "How can you even ask me that? You was raised by Jesse Duke, same as me. You know that family is more important than anything!"
Luke nodded, then looking spooked again, he said, "Bo, you've got to get out of here. Go! And… forget you ever saw me. I won't have you going to prison for this…" Luke's worried eyes, peeking out from under the mop of his too-long hair, pulled at Bo's heartstrings. He still didn't understand any of this, but yelling at each other wasn't getting them anywhere.
"I ain't going without you," Bo said, trying to keep the nervous quake out of his voice. It wasn't often that he stood up to Luke like this. It wasn't often that he had to.
"Bo!"
"There ain't no point in arguing with me, Luke," he said, placing his pack on the ground. "Smells like you got a batch ready for cookin'," Bo commented, heading for one of the barrels near the still.
Luke moved faster than Bo had guessed he could, tired as he looked. Grabbing his younger cousin by the arm, Luke spun him around so that the two boys were now facing off, barrels and still forgotten for the moment.
"Stay outta there!" Luke snapped. "All of this is for nothin' if you get yourself caught here!"
"All of this is for nothin'… Luke, what is any of this for? I don't understand!"
"You ain't gotta understand, Bo," Luke said, moving up a step, toe to toe with his cousin, and making his voice as menacing as possible. "All you gotta do is leave."
If it had been anyone but Luke, Bo's fists would have been flying. As it was, he clenched his hands into tight balls, but didn't allow them to move from his sides.
"I already told you, I ain't goin' without you. We're both stayin' or we're both leavin'. Up to you, cousin," Bo answered, every word weighed carefully upon his tongue before it was spoken aloud. "So are we makin' whiskey, or are we makin' tracks?"
The boys stared at each other for a moment, breathing hard as they stood close enough to feel the heat coming off of one another. Bo noticed, with some disgust, that Luke smelled like a combination of dirt, sweat and alcohol. He would bet good money that Luke was drinking a reasonable amount of each batch he made.
Luke, on the other hand, was picking up the more subtle scent of home in the mild smell of the detergent in Bo's shirt and the barely detectable aroma of the shampoo he'd used in his hair, the same shampoo he'd been using since they were young. And underneath these more synthetic smells was a whiff of the boy he'd grown up sharing a room with, the scent of just plain Bo.
"Bo!" Luke tried one more time, but the blonde simply stood his ground. "Damn it!" he snapped, spinning around and kicking dirt into the fire under the copper pot of a still. "We're goin', all right? You happy?"
"No," Bo answered honestly. "But I'll take what I can get," he added, bending to pick up his pack. "Let's get out of here."
Bo hadn't been thinking beyond the moment, and now that he and Luke were taking a second to camouflage the still site, he realized that he had no idea where he intended to take his cousin. But for all that Luke looked like a man that could no longer think clearly, he seemed to be as sharp as ever. While Bo would have led them into the woods to camp for the night, Luke brought them to where he had stashed Sweet Tilly.
"Guess the old girl got to make a few last runs after all," Bo mused, placing an admiring hand on the car that his uncle had modified especially for the purpose of delivering moonshine.
"I suppose," Luke muttered quietly, unlocking the trunk, and blocking Bo from putting his pack and compound bow in there.
"What're you doin' now?" the blonde asked, annoyed by the gesture.
"Gettin' rid of some incriminatin' evidence. Ain't no way I am lettin' you get into the same car as this," his cousin answered, pulling out the plastic panels that they'd removed dozens of times before, and revealing some undelivered wares. Yanking the bottles out, Luke smashed them, one by one, on a mossy stone.
"Seems a shame," Bo admitted, joining his older cousin at the task.
"Never held a candle to Jesse's 'shine anyways," Luke answered, sounding defeated. Bo would have liked to have comforted his cousin, but he didn't even know how to approach the wild man that had just finished destroying his goods and was now taking the pack off Bo's back to put it in the trunk, then placing the youngster's bow atop his own.
"Let me drive?" the blonde asked. It wasn't that he didn't trust Luke behind the wheel, exactly. It was more that he wasn't entirely sure that this was Luke.
"Suit yourself," the other man said, handing over the keys.
Until this moment, Bo had been expecting to take Luke home with him tonight, but now that they were in the car, and Luke was being so passive, he wasn't sure whether that was the best idea.
"Where are we goin'?" Bo asked.
"I suppose you're goin' home. And you should take Tilly. She's Jesse's after all. I've just been borrowin' her. But you can leave me at the bus stop in town."
Bo started the car, needing to put some distance between them and the still. But he had no intention of following Luke's plan this time.
"Why would I leave you at the bus stop?" Bo asked.
"'Cause wherever I go, I can't have you finding me again. You gotta be able to say you didn't know where I was or what I was doin', if they ever catch me," the dark haired man explained, without emotion.
Bo wanted to grab onto Luke's shirt and ask him exactly what he thought he was doing, but there was the more pressing need to get them out of these woods. He put his foot down hard on the accelerator, venting his frustrations that way.
"You might want to slow down," Luke commented, as though he didn't really care one way or the other.
"Why would I want to do that?" Bo snapped, angry at his cousin, the still they'd left behind, and even the dirt road in front of them.
"Because you don't know this trail, and it ain't exactly straight. Like up here," Luke's tone didn't change, but he reached for the wheel.
"Keep your hands to yourself," Bo grumbled, but he slowed somewhat.
"I just don't want you to get hurt."
This stung Bo worse than a slap across the face.
"Don't want me to get hurt. You run off for going on three months, and when I finally find you, you tell me to get lost and that you're gonna take off again. And you don't want me to get hurt? How exactly do you plan to accomplish that, Luke? Dang it!" He slammed his hand across the steering wheel, still angry at his cousin, the still and the road, but now also the tears that were forming in his eyes.
Luke swallowed, wincing. All the big decisions in his life had been this painful. "I'm sorry, Bo," he said quietly, not explaining what he was sorry for.
"Sorry. But not sorry enough not to do it again," Bo answered, treating his cousin to half-squinted, dark blue fury. "I ain't goin' home, least not yet, and I ain't takin' you to no bus, neither," the blonde announced as Tilly's wheels finally found blacktop instead of dirt. "Jesse ain't expectin' me home for another six days anyways."
Running a hand back through his dirty hair, Luke decided to go along with whatever Bo had in mind. It wasn't like waiting six days before heading out again would make that much of a difference, anyway. It would probably be a good month before he was back in business, what with needing to find a new site, locate a new source of corn, build a new still, and somehow get some wheels that he could use to deliver his 'shine. The older boy sat back, quietly, for the rest of the ride.
With a screech of tires, Bo slammed Tilly to a stop in front of L.B. Davenport's garage. "Come on, Luke," he growled, not trusting his cousin to be out of his sight for a minute.
The brunette raised an eyebrow at the tone his younger cousin had just taken with him, but he couldn't be bothered to fight right now. He came.
"Well, well," L.B. said with a smile. "Seems like our reports of a good-Samaritan wild man out there by Cooper's Gap would be true. Hey, Luke," he greeted cheerfully, with no idea just how tense things were between the Duke boys right now.
"L.B.," Luke responded with a slight nod, embarrassed. He hadn't really expected to see anyone he knew.
"L.B., my cousin and I need a place to stay for a couple of days," Bo said, leaning hard on the word 'cousin.'
"I ain't stayed up in the loft in a long time," L.B. answered, looking from one Duke to the other, noticing that they weren't exactly the affectionate pair that he was used to seeing. "But so far as I know, it's inhabitable up there. Y'all're welcome."
"Thanks," Luke said, forcing himself to be neighborly, even if he hadn't exactly been social lately.
"Come on, Luke," Bo said again, and this time his tone was just slightly gentler. "You need some food in you, and some sleep. Thanks, L.B.," he added, as he headed for the ladder that would lead to the place that he and Luke would crash for the next few days. And when they left here, Bo vowed to himself, it would be to go home, both of them. He had six days to get through to his thick headed cousin.