"Now, you're probably way ahead of what's coming - but just remember, in Hazzard County,
when things look simple, they's only just about to get complicated."
-Waylon Jennings, Season 1 - "Repo Men"
September 30, 1985
Enos lay on his back, staring up at the dark ceiling of Hazzard's Police Station. It was Sunday, and the sheriff had left some time ago, figuring that with an armed guard of Fulton County deputies hanging around he might as well be home as at the station. Cletus was on patrol and on call if they needed anything.
Occasionally the lights from a passing vehicle shone through the small, barred window at the top of the outside wall, their reflections moving slowly around the basement like disembodied specters. It reminded him of the night his father had died, when he'd awoken to the lights of Sheriff Butch Harris' police car shining in through his bedroom window.
His father – who'd wanted something better for him than a life of moon-shining and bootlegging, who had been the one to plant the idea of becoming a cop in his mind. It had not been Enos' choice of profession... not at first. Not until Sheriff Harris told him the only way to escape becoming a ward of the Sheridan Orphan's Home was to take his GED and get out of town until he was seventeen.
He'd wanted to be a Ridge-runner, like his father - to have stories of his own to tell of outsmarting the Feds or racing the sun across the sky in a suped-up runner with an engine that growled with unharnessed potential. But of all the things his father had taught him, he had forbid him to learn to make whiskey, and so his fate had been sealed from the beginning. He had watched Bo, Luke, Cooter, and all his other peers grow up to work at their family stills, and he'd burned with jealousy over it...until his father had taught him how to race.
Daisy had been right – he'd been good. Good enough that he'd forgotten about moon-shining or running whiskey. It was a path he might have followed, had circumstances been different, but he'd quit. He'd quit because he'd lost his inspiration.
On that Saturday morning of his first race, when his heart was speeding faster than his car could ever hope to go, and his eyes shown large with teenage pride as he stood beside his car in the pits, his father had drawn him aside.
"Think of something you care about, son," he'd said, "focus on that, andforget everything else."
He'd looked up and, whether by Providence or chance, Daisy's eyes had met his from the stands, and she'd grinned and waved at him.
Every race he'd ever run, he'd run for her. As gasoline had been fuel for his car, so she had been his driving force. After he'd graduated from the Academy, time and life had come between them, and she'd no longer come to see him race. He'd quit because racing had become his secret torture - he could think of nothing but her when he drove around the track.
For a moment in the quiet dark of the cell, he gave in to his weakness. Closing his eyes, he imagined her in his arms, her lips on his as they'd been that day they'd almost been married. Even then he'd held back. He couldn't silence that voice inside him that said it was all a ruse. And so it had been. Nothing but her pity once again.
He'd made so many choices – choices that he'd convinced himself had been for noble reasons. Like going to the Police Academy. If he'd never left Hazzard – if he and Daisy had never had that misunderstanding on Christmas Eve so long ago, what would have happened? Would they have married, or would they still have lost their way – with him burying himself in his work and her...well, enough had been said about that already.
And after all the choices he'd made, here he was – behind bars. This was the reason his father had never wanted him to become a Ridge-runner...the Strates were no strangers to prison. His grandpa had died in the Choctaw County Penitentiary, and his father had never been more than one step ahead of the Feds.
Enos' thoughts drifted back to the words his father had told him, the night before he'd died:
"The boys you oughta be feeling sorry for are the ones who'll never know anything else," he'd told him. "It'd be easy to teach you what you need to know to carry on what I've done. That's what happened to my father, and his father, and his father before him. No one told me to go out and find my own way. No one told me I could do anything I set my mind to. But I'm telling you that, Enos, 'cause I'm not gonna trap you into a life where there ain't no way out. You find something to do that makes you happy - something you can be proud of, 'cause I sure as hell ain't proud to be a ridge-runner."
Enos wondered what his pa' would think to see him now.
The warm weather that they'd enjoyed so late into September broke on Monday morning, and Daisy woke to a bone chilling cold in the air of the room and a thick crust of frost on the window panes. She groaned to get out of the warm bed which it felt like she'd only laid down in a short time earlier. She'd vowed to get some rest and had crawled into bed early the night before, but instead of sleeping she'd laid staring up at the ceiling until the robins began to sing.
She puttered around the kitchen, performing her chores by rote, and serving breakfast to the guys who looked as tired as she felt. No one spoke, they all knew what they were waiting for.
When the phone rang at 7:45 am, Daisy grabbed it from the hook and held it up to her ear with trembling fingers. Her first try at 'hello' came out a voiceless whisper. She took a deep breath and tried again.
"Hello?"
"Daisy?" said Rosco, "the jury's reached a verdict. Court starts at 9:00."
Her heart thumped so loudly that she could hear it's echo in her ears. "Thanks, Rosco. We'll be there."
She hung up the phone and turned to the ring of anxious faces looking expectantly at her from the table.
"Jury's back. Court's scheduled for nine."
There was dead silence in the courtroom when Judge Bennett walked in and sat down, and the only person who did not watch him organize the papers before him was Daisy, whose eyes were on Enos. At last the Judge looked over at the Jury.
"Alright, ladies and gentlemen, I've been informed that you've arrived at a verdict. Is this true, Mister Foreman?"
"Yes, your Honor."
"Mr. Strate, please rise and face the jury."
Enos stood, but leaned heavily on the table in front of him.
"In the case of the State of Georgia versus Benjamin Enos Strate, charging the defendant with felonious murder in the willful death of Darcy Kincaid, how say you Mister Foreman?"
"We the jury find the defendant guilty, Your Honor."
Enos bowed his head as the room seemed to make a collective gasp. An anguished cry arose from the back of the room, cutting his heart because he knew without seeing that it was Daisy.
"So say you all, Ladies and Gentlemen?" asked the Judge.
"Yes." chorused the twelve jurors.
"Very well, Mr. Hunsaker, would you like to have the jury polled?"
"No, Your Honor."
"Because this case carries a possible Death Penalty sentence, the trial for sentencing will be set thirty days from today. Let's make it October 30. Will that be long enough, Mr. Blair?"
"Yes, your Honor."
"If there's nothing further..."
The crying had not stopped behind them and in fact, it had gotten louder and closer. Enos dared a look behind him and saw a group of several townsfolk, including Bo, Luke, and Uncle Jesse, trying to hold Daisy back from the front of the courtroom as she struggled against them. Enos leaned over and whispered to Gary.
"Your Honor," said Gary, "Mr. Strate asks if it would be possible to say a few words to Miss Duke to help calm her down."
"I'll allow it. Let her through. You have one minute, Mr. Strate."
"Let me go!" shouted Daisy, shoving at the bodies between Enos and herself. The path before her parted, and she she launched herself forwards at him and wrapped her arms around his neck. "I won't give up, I swear it, Enos!" she whispered fiercely in his ear. "I promise I'll find a way to get you out..."
Without thinking, he took her face in his hands and pressed his lips to hers.
Shouts erupted around them and the Judge's gavel echoed as it came down upon the wooden podium. Arms grabbed him, pulling him back from her, and he knew that he had only seconds to memorize the feeling of her mouth against his, of her face in his hands, and the soft brush of her hair where it touched his arm. Her hands clutched at him, pulling him closer.
Fulton's deputies wrenched him away, parting them at last, as the hand-cuffs clicked in place behind him. The look in her eyes pained him, despair and anger, mixed with resolve, longing, love. They stared at each other in the seconds that seemed to each to stretch to eternity.
There is a moment of revelation in everyone's life, and Daisy read hers clearly in the light of Enos' stolen kiss. Why had it taken so long to see how much he meant to her? She loved him – loved him for everything that he was and for everything that he was not, and looking back, it seemed now that she had always known it. All the years she had run from him - from a love so deep and pure and true that it frightened her, had changed nothing. In the end it was the two of them, standing against the world.
She turned and ran then, weaving through the crowd still mesmerized by the scene which had taken place before them.
Because the verdict had been pronounced before noon, Enos was shuttled directly back to Fulton later that same morning. He felt little emotion about it - a fog seemed to have settled into his mind. He didn't even have the willpower to wonder about it...thinking about anything at all seemed to take an enormous amount of effort. And so he stayed, cocooned under a blanket of murky distraction while the real world showed through only around the edges. Not once in the two hour drive did he glance out the window.
Afterwards, he remembered little between leaving the courtroom that day and waking up back in SEG block at the Fulton County Jail, dressed once again in the scratchy navy blue prison clothes. He dragged himself off his bunk and over to the wash station before going back to the front of his cell and sitting down, his back against the bars.
A deep, rumbling voice drifted in from the cell next to him. He didn't remember the man's first name, Washburn was his last name. "Heard they came down on you, brother," he said. "Sorry 'bout that."
"Yeah...," murmured Enos, faintly.
"I was pulling for you. Ain't too many guys who'll thank a guard for bringing 'em grub who'd kill a man."
"Hmph."
"Heard some news 'bout you this morning . Heard they was shipping you out."
Enos turned his head towards the voice. "What?"
"They've been moving all the hardcore stuff outta here. Ever' since Jackson opened up."
"Jackson?"
"Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison down in Jackson," he said. "Most just call it Jackson."
Enos didn't care. Iron was iron, stone was stone, and bars were bars. "Can't be any worse than here."
The man chuckled darkly. "You think Fulton's bad? You're about to go into the seventh sanctum of Hell, boy."
Enos lay on his bed, staring up at the flickering light and thought about the few options he had left to him. He hadn't told Daisy when she'd come to visit him on Saturday what Gary had said. He hadn't wanted her to worry and besides, before the verdict, he'd had a chance.
The young lawyer had told him that unless they found new evidence, he had no hope of winning an appeal for a new trial - he'd file one, Gary assured, but he didn't want him to get his hopes up. There was a new evidence technique, DNA something or other, that some police over in the United Kingdom had been working with that might be able to tell them whose blood was in the flashlight. The technology was still a good ten years away from being practical though, and even then if the blood was Darcy's, it wouldn't help Enos prove his innocence.
So, despite the appearance of a chance, he really had none, and the minimum sentence for his conviction was life in prison. Even if it had only been twenty years, it would still be unfathomable.
His mind had begun contemplating darker solutions - like asking them to put him back in general population. How long would it be before someone put him out of his misery? Probably not long.
As it turned out, he didn't need to bother...