If Luke's an Idiot, I'm a Jackass
It's an office. No different, really, from that old redbrick Hazzard County Building, which he always considered public property. Shoot, he and Luke must have entered that place every way possible – through the door, a window, the trap door in the roof, handcuffed together, charging in with fists flying. Asserting, half the time, their right to be there when they were most definitely not invited. It would never have occurred to him to go knocking on the door to any public building, but this Forest Service Branch Office makes him think twice. He's not sure that any Duke is welcome on the inside of those glass doors.
Nevertheless, Bo Duke is not used to asking for permission, so he just swings the door wide and steps in. And if the handle leaves a little ding in the wall, well it's not the first time he can be accused of forgetting his own strength.
It's a maze of walls, reminding Bo of one of those old frame houses in Appalachia where rooms were haphazardly subdivided as new generations of children got born. This office is just like the roads to get here, illogical in their turns, and for the second time in ten minutes he's lost.
"Hey," calls a seemingly friendly voice as he's wandering what appears to be the main hall, looking into doorways. "It's Duke's brother."
"Cousin," he corrects the stocky young man that has stepped out of one of the rooms. Familiar, but no one he could put a name to. Not one of Luke's, he doesn't think. "I was looking for Smitty."
"He's in here," comes a voice from behind him, and he turns to see Marks standing there, pointing down a side hall. Too many twists to this place, and Bo barely made it past the front door last time he was here. So he lets Marks lead him, and figures he might just have to hire himself a guide to get back out.
"What can I do for you?" Smitty asks, looking up from some kind of equipment he's been tinkering with on the desk in front of him. Probably sophisticated weather-predicting machinery, and it's scattered there in tiny pieces.
"I was thinking we could go outside." Away from Marks and whoever else might wander in.
The kid shrugs, opens a drawer in the desk and shoves all those miniature screws, bolts, gears and other unknown gadgets inside. Complete mess in there, and Bo reckons it might be a good thing that Luke didn't see that happen. Seems a reasonable assumption that whatever Smitty's taken apart there will never work properly again.
He follows the kid out of the office, and even though it's warmer today than it has been since he got here, he points Smitty off to Luke's Jeep instead of standing out here in the open air. Nice, private place to talk.
"You asked me what Luke wants," he starts once they're inside, because he doesn't have time for small talk and wouldn't have the first idea what to say to this kid anyway. "Well, I figured it out."
"Duke don't want nothing from me," interrupts him before he can finish. Smitty's focused out the window on the still temperamental skies, presenting as many fast-moving, gray clouds as it does sun.
Bo takes a deep breath, lets it out. "What did he say to you?" Because he knows that look to the young jumper's posture. Tough, cool, not in the least hurt. Except for his heart, maybe.
There's a shrug over there on the passenger side of the car, and Bo can see, suddenly, why this one is Luke's favorite. Most any other twenty-something-year-old would be walking away or strongly suggesting he mind his own business. This one's going to stick it out, just like a young Bo always hung in there at Luke's side, no matter what his older cousin's foolish pride and sarcastic superiority led him to say.
"I guess he as much as told me to leave him alone. Not in so many words, but it's what he meant."
Yeah, well, parting ways with Luke Duke was never easy. Mostly it consisted of getting shoved – hard – toward the door.
"He said," Smitty continues, "something about how he wasn't perfect, and if I was looking for someone to look up to, there were better people. Which isn't even really fair. It's not like I look up to him so much as I thought we were friends. But I guess he was just my boss. And if that's true, well then he's got a point. There's Martinez and Morton and we'll get a new chief next week or the one after, I guess." Such a brave front, so familiar. Bo remembers putting up a few himself, like when Luke shook him off with some carefully placed and patronizing words, right before leaving for the military.
"What's your real name?" Bo asks him, because nicknames are for little kids, and eventually a boy's got to grow up and face some truths.
"Doug Smith."
"Well, Doug, Luke's an idiot," Bo informs the boy. Gets a funny look for it, and figures that Luke's probably at least half right about how this kid admires him. Seems like there's some consideration there on Smitty's part of defending Luke with words or maybe even fists, but Bo puts his hands up in surrender before it can even start. "He always has been, at least about some things. I reckon he told you you'd be better off without him?"
"No," the youngster answers.
"Well then you got lucky; you only got half the speech. If you'd let him get all the way through there would have been that part about how he's not so special—"
"He did say that," Smitty corrects him.
"And how there's better influences. And then he'd say how you were better off without him anyways. That's just Luke being an idiot. Somehow he actually figures that'll make you feel better about him leaving." It's a fool's sacrifice, but his cousin's always made it. I ain't so great, so just forget all about me and go love someone else. "He don't mean for you to take it badly. He's just an idiot, is all."
A bigger idiot than Bo's willing to explain, because even if he is saving Luke from drowning, there's still such a thing as privacy and protecting the vulnerabilities of a man that tries to pretend he doesn't have any. But he does, oh, Luke's his own worst enemy when it comes to these things. Because while Bo knows his cousin's full of all manner of crap when he goes saying how he's no one special, and it won't matter a bit if he's gone – well, Luke comes to believe the words, once they get out of his mouth. And, Bo figures, that's always been half his fault, for acting tough like Smitty's been doing, for pretending not to be hurt. For tacitly agreeing with the lies Luke tells.
"You asked what he wants – well that's pretty easy actually. He wants to know that he matters. That this place, and you guys, are better for him having been here." And that's something Luke would never ask for, hell, he'd threaten to kill Bo for suggesting he needs it. But then, Luke's exactly the kind of smart man that would somehow reckon that flailing himself into deeper water would be the best way to keep from drowning.
"How do you give someone that?" Smitty asks. He's not wholly convinced that this half-stranger in front of him is right, but he wants to believe. Bo remembers that feeling from all the times Jesse tried to explain how Luke didn't quite mean so many of the things he said.
"You just say it, I guess." And now he's playing the role of elder, pretending after being an adult. Jesse always said it wasn't such a terrible thing to be a grown up, but Bo pretty much assumed the old man was making lemonade out of the stooped posture and white hair lemons that life had handed him. Maybe he was, and maybe that's what Bo's doing now, because this acting like an adult thing seems to be working out pretty well, so far. "It ain't the kind of thing you can wrap up in pretty paper, maybe, but then Luke never was one for that kind of present anyways. He'd just shake it, tell you what was inside of it, then put it down without ever unwrapping it." Or at least he'd wait until no one else was looking before he opened anything, then he just went quietly about wearing it or using it, whatever it was, without any further fanfare. Nope, Luke never did quite get the hang of having anything like fun when it came to presents.
Makes this Doug Smith boy laugh a little bit, hearing about what a pain in the ass Luke has always been. "Sounds like he wasn't exactly easy to grow up with."
Yes and no. Being a kid next to Luke meant getting shoved around, told what to do, snorted at for being smaller and less coordinated. Meant putting up with sour moods and a lashing tongue, but it also meant never being alone, not when he faced a bigger kid's threats or when he had to go home to Jesse with dirty knees and an even dirtier confession to make. Meant Luke telling him not to be such a baby when he got a splinter in his finger, meant Luke carrying him home on piggyback after he got his shin caught on that old, rusty nail sticking out of the O'Connells' fence that they'd been hopping over as a shortcut home from school.
"Nah, he was a hell of a lot of fun when we was younger. He could stir up more trouble than a whole hive of bees at a church ladies' picnic," which is one of those old sayings that his NASCAR teammates laugh at him for, but he can't seem to stop coming out with them. "Watch the mess unfold, and then he'd walk away, innocent as a lamb."
"How come, if the two of you were so close, you didn't stay together? I mean, it just seems awful sudden how he's going home now, to be closer to you and your other cousin."
"Because," Bo tells him, "if Luke's an idiot, I'm a jackass. Now, can you tell me which realty Luke rents his cabin from?" Because he's done having that other conversation. This Doug kid is all right, mostly, but Bo's not about to go telling tales out of school. If Luke wants to tell him about the two of them, that's fine (or it's not really, but he can tolerate it since he doesn't reckon on ever seeing the boy again once they get back east) but Bo's not going to be the tattling kid cousin he used to get accused of being.
The boy shrugs. "I thought he owned it."
Which just goes to show that Bo's instinct to stop talking was a good one. If these jumpers of Luke's haven't been told the particulars of his living arrangements, it's clear enough they don't need to get any hints about who he shares his bed with.
"I figured I couldn't afford it," Smitty goes on, snapping Bo's attention back to the conversation. "But if it's for rent…"
"You interested?" Bo asks him, and feels the water level around his drowning cousin drop down an inch or two. He had expected he'd go take a chance on talking the realtor into being reasonable, and if good old fashioned Duke wheedling didn't work, he reckoned he'd just quietly pay off the balance of the lease and convince the realtor to act like he was simply letting Luke off the hook.
"My wife's pregnant. Don't tell her I said so." Bo wouldn't think of it. In fact, he can't swear he'd recognize her if she stood in front of him right now. "But we need a bigger place once the kid shows up."
"Well, Doug," he answers, "we might just be able to work something out. Just don't say nothing to Luke. I want him to think he came up with the idea." Because Dukes can't lie, but there's no rules against shucking and jiving. "Now hop out. I got to do some real quick grocery shopping."
Smitty offers up a small smile as he opens the door and slides off the seat, and for a split second Bo can see the little boy that lurks there under the tough guy exterior. Yeah, he knows why Luke likes this kid.
"See you Friday?" the boy calls. "And no chocolate, right?"
Bo gives him a two fingered salute, the kind Luke would scoff at for being unmilitary, but Smitty doesn't seem to mind. Just accepts it as agreement, before shutting the Jeep's door and heading back for the front door into that maze of a building Luke used to work in.
And when he's thrown enough groceries into a cart that he figures it might just look normal that he's been gone this long, then bagged them and packed them into the Jeep, when he's gotten them back to the cabin, loaded up his arms with them then kicked his way inside, he finds Luke in the middle of his hardwood floor, on his knees and surrounded by a collection of boxes. Seems like both Duke boys have been busy today.
