NO MATTER WHAT
7/2/05
BY: A.L. REYNOLDS
Disclaimer: Well, I've kept forgetting to put a disclaimer on anything else I've submitted, but finally I remembered, although everyone knows there's no way I own The Dukes of Hazzard, none of its characters, cars, etc. The only people I own, as of right now, are the Grant family. I've been stewing on the idea of this story for awhile now, and I've made quite a few mental notes and adjustments for it before I started typing it out. So hopefully, it will be as enjoyable for you to read as it is for me to write. :) Now, on with the story.
CHAPTER ONE
1971
It was a warm, clear summer evening in the country. Two children played out on the lawn of a family-sized farmhouse nestled in the backwoods of Hazzard County, Georgia, laughing and shouting to eachother as they ran circles around great oaks and young, but strong maple trees.
One of the children, a boy of ten years with wheat blonde hair and eyes blue as the ocean, was chasing the other child. The other child was a girl of around the same age as the boy, with chestnut brown hair and hazel eyes, a fair dotting of freckles across the tops of her cheeks and the bridge of her nose.
"Come on, Becky, give it up already, I'm gonna getcha before you get to base!" the littel boy, Bo Duke, puffed.
"Oh no you ain't, Bo, not if I've got anything to say about it! Quit whinin'!" Becky Grant replied with confidence.
The sun was setting and a taller boy a few years older than the other two children was walking back to the old farmhouse with a fishing pole in one hand and an aluminum bucket in another. He, Luke Duke, had dark, curly hair and clear blue eyes, almost as blue as Bo's eyes. He stopped for a moment and watched the two younger children playing their game of tag, shaking his head and chuckling. When would Bo ever learn that he would most likely never be able to catch that girl?
Becky made it to base which happened to be a large tireswing on the other side of the yard and turned to laugh triumphantly in Bo's direction, "Ha ha! See, I was right all along!"
"Oh shut up, Becky, you cheated, anyway," Bo replied, out of breath and leaning over with his hands on his knees.
"Cheated?" the older boy asked as he walked over, "How'd she cheat? All she did was run away from you."
"I dunno how, Luke, but somehow she did. Girls are good at doin' that," Bo replied with his eyes glaring competitively in her direction.
Luke sighed, then turned to Becky and winked, "Well guys, the sun's goin' down, hadn't you better be gettin' home, Becky?"
"Hey, I'm gonna go ask Uncle Jessie if you can stay for dinner!" Bo exclaimed, suddenly not mad at the girl anymore as he ran up to the old farmhouse.
Bo and Luke were cousins who were both orphaned after their parents died and came to stay with their Uncle Jessie and Aunt Eliza Duke, as well as their other cousin, Daisy Duke. She came along shortly after Luke's mother had brought Luke with her to live at the farm after Luke's father, Jessie's brother, had been killed in an accident. Luke's mother had died of cancer a couple of years before Bo came along, when Luke was only eight years old.
Eliza died just after Luke's tenth birthday, which broke Jessie's heart. Some said had it not been for having those children with him, he would have been a miserable man for the rest of his life. But Luke, Daisy, and Bo gave his heart joy and contenement, and before long his broken heart was on the mend, with three wonderful children to guide him.
Becky Grant's family moved out to Hazzard when she was seven, about a month after Eliza had passed away. They lived in a nice country home a little ways down the road from the Duke family, but close enough that the children could all walk or ride bikes over to eachothers' houses and play.
Becky climbed into the tireswing and pushed off, waiting for Bo to come back with Jessie's decision, while Luke came over behind her and absent mindedly pushed her.
"Didja catch any fish?" she asked Luke, indicating the fishing supplies he had laying where he had originally been standing.
"Oh yeah, two big ones," Luke replied, "that's prolly what we'll have for dinner tonight. Say, when's your brother coming back from camp?"
Becky's brother Nathan had become Luke's best friend ever since they had moved to Hazzard and had gone to summer camp for a few weeks. Jessie felt horrible that he didn't have enough money to send Luke along with him, but Luke took it like a man and understood. So now came waiting patiently for him to come home.
"He's only gonna be gone one more week, Luke," Becky replied, "and in his last letter, he said to tell you hi and he had lots of neat stories to tell you."
Luke smiled at being remembered by his friend, "Thanks, Becky Lynn," he ruffled her hair, which had earlier been pulled back into two neatly braided pigtails that had long since become loose and messy.
Becky shook her head out from under his hand, "Hey, quit it!"
Bo then came back and looked from his cousin to his own best friend with a wide grin, "Uncle Jessie says you can stay, so long's your folks don't mind!"
"Alright, I'll go ask 'em!" Becky exclaimed, jumping out of the swing and taking off down the driveway.
"Hey wait a minute, I'll come with you - be back in a few minutes, Luke!" Bo called over his shoulder. "Race ya to the mailbox!"
"You're on!" Becky met his challenge with determination in her youthful eyes.
Luke shook his head and chuckled again as he took his fishing pole and stuck it in the barn, then went to find Jessie and let him know about the fish he had caught.
"Ooh, those are some mighty fine fish, Luke," his Uncle Jessie said proudly, taking the bucket from his hands, "just let be go back here an' clean 'em so we can get 'em a-cookin'."
"Yessir - anything you want me to do?"
"Go find Daisy - she's somewhere 'round this farm, but I ain't seen her all day but maybe once or twice," Jessie requested, going to his task of cleaning the fish.
"Yessir."
Luke had a hunch as to where she might be; their cat Ginger had had a litter of kittens not too long ago and ever since she had found out, Daisy went up into the barn loft religiously to check on them and play with them.
When he got up into the barn loft, his hunch had proven correct. A little girl with wavy dark reddish brown hair and blue eyes was laying on her stomach, wiggling her finger out in front of one little calico kitten's nose and letting it playfully smack at it with its paw, while another started batting and biting at her hair.
Daisy looked up and grinned innocently at her cousin. She had just turned twelve that past fall, making her a little under a year younger than Luke.
"Uncle Jessie was beginnin' to wonder where you were," Luke said with only the slightest amount of sternness as he came over and sat acros from her, "I figured you'd be up here, though, y'ain't been nowhere BUT here for the past week and a half."
"Did I make him mad?" Daisy asked, a little worried.
"Naw, he just wondered if you were okay. He knew you was somewhere on the farm."
"Oh, okay," she giggled as one of the kittens climbed up Luke's knee, "aww, it likes you!"
Luke chuckled a little as he scratched the kitten behind the ear thoughtfully. Soon, he heard the yelling of what could only be Bo and Becky coming back from her house with an okay from her parents. She and her brother both spent so much time over at the Duke farm with them that he begun to think they had secretly been adopted by Uncle Jessie.
"Haha! Beatcha again!" Becky boasted with pride.
"You cheated again and you know it! Girls ain't supposed'ta beat boys!" Bo argued.
Luke and Daisy laughed at the two and went down the ladder; when Luke got in front of them, he put his hands on each of their shoulders, "Alright, guys, no one can cheat in a footrace unless you trip the other person or somethin'; now come on, let's git on inside before the bugs start bitin'."