Darkness

Chapter 1: Fourth of July

The Fourth of July. There ain't no other holiday like it - especially in Hazzard County. The whole county turns out for the fair, the parade down Main Street with flags and streamers waving, and of course, the fireworks. Hazzard County has had the best Fourth of July fireworks in the state for better than forty years - ever since Jesse Duke started tinkering with the formula for the explosives. And every Fourth of July for the last ten years, the Duke family has gotten up even earlier than usual to help out at the annual pancake breakfast at the high school cafeteria, to benefit the local orphanage.

Bo Duke stood behind the breakfast buffet, a blue-striped apron covering his clothes. He flashed his most winning smile at Claire Dunney as he served the pancakes onto her plate.

"Here ya go, miss, fresh and hot for ya - you do like 'em that way, right?" he added with a wink. She smiled back and was about to say something when a voice called out from the kitchen.

"Bo! Would you quit flirtin' and get back here? I need your help!" Luke Duke called.

Bo rolled his eyes. "My cousin," he explained.

"Sounds like you better go, sugah," Claire said, "We can talk about how I like my pancakes later."

"Well, alright," Bo grinned as she turned and walked away.

"Bo!"

"I'm coming, I'm coming!"

The youngest Duke sauntered through the swinging door into the hot kitchen, where Luke stood at the stove poking at a mass of bacon frying on the hottop. He indicated a pan full of pancakes and another of scrambled eggs, which needed to be brought outside.

"Man, I love the Fourth - I get to see all the girls I haven't seen since high school…"

"Since their fathers won't let you within a mile of their farms," Luke quipped.

Bo was undeterred. "Did you see that Claire Dunney? She was just a freshman when I graduated, and she looks great."

"No, I didn't see her, cause I've been in here doin' all the work. Now would you get that food out there, and get back in here? I need you to cut up some of that fruit."

Concluding that Luke was just no fun this morning, Bo picked up one pan in each hand and headed back through the swinging door. The door had just closed behind him when three short barefoot figures dashed across his path, whooping to each other on the chase. He backpedaled a step, rebalancing to keep from dropping the pans.

"Hey!" he called after the three boys, but they were gone. Smiling and shaking his head, he continued on to the buffet and replaced the empty pans with the new trays.

"I'm sorry about the boys," an older female voice spoke. Bo looked up. It was Eleanor Sutton, a farmwife from the southeastern end of the county. "They've been so full of energy lately, I swear they're giving me gray hairs."

"Oh, it's alright ma'am. It's not that long since I was twelve myself, and giving Uncle Jesse that white hair he's got now."

Mrs. Sutton smiled and thanked him as she served herself. Heedful of Luke's wrath, Bo excused himself and returned to the kitchen to help his cousin.

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After the pancake breakfast concluded, Bo and Luke made plates for themselves from the leftovers and found Daisy and Uncle Jesse, who had been in charge of collecting donations at the door. They ate quickly and worked together to wash the dishes and clean up the hall, hurrying to finish and make it to the parade on time. Done with ten minutes to spare, they headed out the door and made it to the main thoroughfare just in time. Cooter had saved them all seats in a shady spot on a corner, a small cluster of lawnchairs amid the crowded scene. Uncle Jesse bought all five of them cold lemonade from a little girl's ambitious stand in the town square.

The Fourth of July parade was always a source of fun. The region's state police barracks supplied a quartet of crisply-uniformed troopers who marched in front bearing dress rifles and sabers, followed by Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane and Deputy Sheriff Enos Strate bearing the national and state flags and trying to march in time with the troopers' trained steps. Behind them marched a row of uniformed firefighters, tapping out a marching beat on drums, followed by a group of World War II veterans with the V.F.W. The crowd rose in respect as the flags approached, and Bo saw Luke salute out of the corner of his eye.

The groups that followed were less solemn. The boys and girls of the 4H Club walked with prize horses and sheep on braided leads, groomed to shine with red, white, and blue ribbons tied into mane and tail. The Ladies' Auxillary Club sat aboard a float on the back of a large flatbed truck - a scene of Betsy Ross sewing the first American flag in her living room, with Lulu Hogg as a very large Betsy. The high school marching band played the Star-Spangled Banner, while younger grades rode or ran alongside homemade floats of the Founding Fathers, Valley Forge, and various battles of the Revolutionary War. Luke laughed, elbowing Bo in the ribs and reminding him of the time Bo dressed as George Washington for the third-graders float. Bo laughed back, and reminded him of the time he dressed up as Benjamin Franklin, spectacles and all.

A charming addition to this year's parade was the twelve-horse team of Clydesdales in full harness pulling a long wagon strewn with ribbons and bows and driven by a smartly-dressed man in a silk hat and coattails. The Clydesdale team was visiting from the brewery in Chickasaw County - they traveled to different towns in the northern end of the state each year, mostly just for the publicity, though the reason made no difference to the children who delighted in seeing the massive horses. The horse team brought of the rear of the parade, following an assortment of floats and marching groups too numerous to describe. It was a wonder there was an audience to watch the parade at all, given the number of participants in it.

When the parade concluded, the Dukes, accompanied by Cooter, packed up their lawnchairs and headed for the fairgrounds, carrying their picnic lunch with them. Most of the parade crowd was headed in the same direction, so the walk went slowly as they met up with old friends and past acquaintances, exchanging greetings and news of the last year. By the time they'd finished lunch, it was mid-afternoon, and the fair was in full swing. A carnival company had come in and set up a huge ferris wheel, merry-go-round, spinning teacups, and all the favorite carnival rides. The smell of hotdogs and fried dough drifted through the air.

Judges moved between pens and stables set up at one end of the field, looking at horses, cows, sheep, and pigs for livestock contests, as well as a fine array of coonhounds and bird-dogs. Cooter, Luke, and Bo lingered here, admiring the sleek, fine-boned hounds and talking with the owners on points of hunting. Daisy walked with them for a bit, likewise admiring the beautiful animals, but grew tired of the hunting talk and moved off to find booths of more interest. Uncle Jesse also moved off to talk with an equine judge, apparently an old friend. The boys were left to themselves, and soon lost track of time.

It was their stomachs that finally broke them away from the prize hunting dogs, growling as they realized it was well after dinnertime. Luke searched his pockets for money, and finding none, they decided to find Uncle Jesse, who had long since disappeared into the crowd. They strolled along amiably, trying to guess which way Jesse might have gone. They spotted Daisy chatting with some young women her age near the merry-go-around, and she broke away and joined them. After a few more minutes, Luke spotted Jesse at the booth of an older woman selling an assortment of jams, and the group headed in that direction.

"Bo! Luke!" The quartet stopped and turned at the call, the likes of which was so common that day. It was Mrs. Sutton, waving a hand to flag them down.

"Well, hello Mrs. Sutton," Bo greeted as Daisy and Luke exchanged a quizzical look - Eleanor Sutton was not a particular friend of the family, though they knew her as they knew most everyone in the county.

"I'm glad I saw you - have you seen my two boys lately? They went off with Toby Dunney after the parade, and I haven't seen hide nor hair of them since! They were supposed to meet their father and I for dinner an hour ago. It's not like them to be late like this." The farmwife looked quite worried.

"Well, no, we haven't seen them, but I'm sure they're just fine, Mrs. Sutton," Bo reassured. When she didn't appear comforted, Luke stepped forward.

"We can have a look for them, if you like. Which way do you think they went?"

Mrs. Sutton smiled gratefully. "Oh, you're such good boys. I'm not really sure where to start looking, though. You saw them earlier, they run around like three tornados. I've looked all around the fair and no one's seen them."

"Hmm…that doesn't narrow it down much, but they can't have gone too far. What do you think, Bo?"

"Well, they could be down by Thatcher Brook…"

"Or Cutback Ridge…"

"The Mill Pond…"

"The sandpits…"

"And every bit of forest within three miles of here," Bo concluded.

"That's a lot to search," Luke said, and looked back to Mrs. Sutton, who was listening apprehensively. "Can anyone else help?"

"I'll go find Thomas - he was looking down by the judging circles - and we'll see who we can round up."

"Alright - me and Bo will start out by the sandpits…"

"And me and Cooter will head out to the brook," Daisy added. Cooter looked at her in surprise, wondering how he got dragged into this, and then shrugged agreeably.

"And we'll meet back up here in, say, an hour?" Luke finished.

"Oh, thank you all!"

"Don't worry, Mrs. Sutton, we'll find your boys."

The farmwife thanked them again and left in search of her husband. Bo turned to Luke. "So much for dinner."

Luke shrugged. "Later. Let's tell Uncle Jesse what's going on, and head out."

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An hour later, the searchers returned and met up at outside the fair, empty-handed. Between the Suttons, the Dukes, and Cooter, they'd checked Thatcher Brook, Cutback Ridge, the Mill Pond, the sandpits, and half a dozen other places besides, with no sign of the three boys. Luke and Bo were both truly concerned now. After they all shared news of their searches, the group leaned back against their respective cars, thinking. In just a few moments, Luke snapped his fingers and looked up.

"I've got it!"

Everyone looked up hopefully.

"Bo, what was the ultimate dare when we were younger?"

Bo looked at him blankly. "Catching a look at girls going skinny-dipping?"

"No! Before girls!"

His cousin stared at him, trying to remember if there was a time before girls.

"Bentley's Caves," Luke reminded him.

"Oh! Oh," Bo repeated, more ominously.

Thomas Sutton looked from Duke to Duke. "Bentley's Caves? You boys don't mean the old mines? Impossible, there's not a man, woman, or child in Hazzard that would go anywhere near there!"

Bentley's Caves, as the schoolchildren knew the old mines, were a complex of coal mines cut into Far Ridge. Some nineteen years ago, a fault in the mines shifted and collapsed a majority of the tunnels in a cloud of black dust. Every man inside was killed, and there wasn't a family in Hazzard that hadn't lost a friend or a son. The residents avoided the old mines like the plague, and indeed held them to be a source of bad luck. Parts of the old tunnels remained, black as night, and were occasionally used as dens by bears or cougars. They were also used by school-age country boys in a test of courage, as they dared each other to go deeper and deeper into the tunnels in search of bodies or buried treasure. The children's name for the caves came from the story of Richard Bentley, the mining foreman whose ghost was supposed to haunt the tunnels.

Mrs. Sutton gasped as Luke explained this last secret of Hazzard boyhood. "They wouldn't! Would they?" she looked at her husband.

"Sounds like we'd better check it at least," he said, putting a comforting arm around her shoulders.

"Right," Luke said, "We've got some flashlights in Uncle Jesse's truck. Let's get going."

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The sun was leaning down in the western sky when they arrived at the main cave entrance on Far Ridge, casting long rays into the tunnel mouth. They left the vehicles in the now-overgrown parking lot at the bottom of a 100-yard dirt track leading up a moderate slope to the entrance. The group started up the slope, Luke and Bo in the lead, watching for signs of the boys. They saw nothing when the reached the cave mouth.

"Lawrence! Noah!" Mrs. Sutton called for her sons. Her husband walked along the hillside to the right of the cave, finding a better vantage to look out across the valley.

Luke watched them, frustrated, and wondered what he could say to the worried parents. Then he heard a quiet, but distinct sniff! from inside the cave. Switching on his flashlight, he turned to look inside. Bo, Daisy, and Cooter, who hadn't heard the sound, followed him curiously. A few feet inside the cave, just around a slight bend, Luke's flashlight shined on a young boy sitting on a coal boulder, sniffing and crying quietly. Luke motioned for the others to back off a little, and he approached the boy.

"Noah Sutton?" he asked. The boy nodded, wiping his eyes. He couldn't be more than ten. "I'm Luke Duke, a friend of your parents. Your momma and daddy are a little ways outside, and we were all worried about you. Is your brother and his friend here? Can you tell me what happened?"

The boy sniffed again. "They left me behind. I was scared, and they told me I was chicken, and they left me behind."

"Noah!" Mrs. Sutton cried, running into the cave mouth. Bo had fetched her with the news. She swept up her youngest son in a fierce hug. "Where is your brother, and Toby?"

"He said they went further down in the caves, left him behind," Luke answered.

"When was that?" Mr. Sutton asked his son over his wife's shoulder.

"I dunno," the boy whimpered, "They've been gone a real long time."

Thomas Sutton's eyes met Luke's.

"We'll look for them. You stay here with your wife and son. Daisy, get ahold of Rosco on the CB - we might need more help up here," Luke said, looking to Bo and Cooter for confirmation.

Daisy frowned. "Y'all better not think you're leaving me here! You think the girls never come up here with the same dares as you boys?"

Bo grinned. "Well, let's get going then!"

"Be careful, all of you," Mr. Sutton cautioned, taking his son from his wife's arms.

"We'll be back with Toby and Lawrence before you know it," Luke reassured him.

Armed with flashlights, the Duke cousins and their mechanic friend set off down the black tunnel.

Now, why do I get the feelin' that even though it's the Sutton boys who started this mess, it's gonna be the Dukes who end up in trouble?