Straightening the Curves

Chapter Two: Attorney at Law

Back in Hazzard—roughly seven-forty AM

Rosco had only been outside his patrol car for two seconds and he was already freezing. He tugged his black uniform jacket closer to him and called for Flash to jump out of the car. They had just pulled up in front of his house, which is what the always did at seven-forty in the morning. Eve, his wife, wasn't much of a morning person, and since she wakes up at eight to go to work, Rosco always made sure to sneak back in the house twenty minutes til' eight and make her a pot of coffee so she wouldn't have to go through making it herself. He'd even get her favorite mug and put in the right amount of sugar at the bottom (four leveled teaspoons), and then he'd leave before she woke up in her usual "grouchy morning mood". Although they'd only been married a few weeks, the every day ritual became an engraved habit and it did manage to make Eve's mornings go better----and if she was happy, everybody was happy.

Flash jumped and snuggled on the couch while Rosco went into the kitchen. He had his back turned while he was mashing the buttons of the coffee machine when a pair of arms wrapped themselves around him from behind—which would have spooked him except he knew who it was.

"Busted," Eve said in an angelic voice, and he could tell she was smiling when she said it. "Finally caught ya."

"What happened to the grouchy monster voice I usually hear?" Rosco grinned, turning around faster than she could blink and putting his arms under hers to wrap her with. Even without make-up on, messed up hair, and wearing just his houserobe, he still thought her extremely lovely.

She chuckled. "After last night? Nothin' couldbring out "grouchymonster"after last night," she said, starting to mess with his tie. "You ain't goin' back to work right now, are ya?"

"Keep this up, and I won't be able to."

She grinned real big. "Can I make it up by lettin' you arrest me for harassin' an officer? Would that count for bein' work?"

"I reckon it'd count, 'cept I couldn't call it in," he replied to her question, getting that "heart in the throat" feeling.

"Honey, you don't need any back-up . . ."

Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!

The annoying sound of somebody consistently banging on the doorbell seemed to snap the atmosphere in two. Rosco couldn't help but groan and slightly roll his eyes at the interruption. He leaned down to plant a kiss on Eve's lips. "Lemme run them off, then I'll be right back," he promised, giving her another kiss. "Don't move."

Whoever was at the door apparently didn't understand that one only had to ring the bell once to get the message across---so far they had surpassed that one ring over two-hundred fold. Rosco tried to fix his tie back but he was so flustered that he couldn't quite get it right. He swung the door open and came face to face with----

"Bo Duke?" he asked in a slightly aggravated voice. "Do you realize what time it is?"

"Sorry, Rosco, but this is an emergency!" Bo exclaimed. He gave Rosco a funny look and then gave him one of his famous "Bo-grins". "Was I . . . interrupting somethin'?"

If the sheriff had been a little braver with words he would have said something along the lines of, "Bo, do you remember your first month of marriage?", but since Rosco's not that brave, he simply gave Bo a glare and spat out,

"Now you hush---just hush. And get that stupid grin off your face . . . as bad as Enos . . ."

Bo held back a laugh. "Sorry there, Rosco, but it's not really you I need to talk to. It's your wife."

Balladeer: See, Cooter used his one phone call to contact Bo an' explain what was goin' on. See, Cooter's a little afraid of Eve's early mornin' grouchiness, so he had Bo go over to deal with it. Sneaky, huh?

Eve got so mad when she heard what had happened, she actually clenched her jaw, jumped up from the recliner she had been sitting in and shouted, "Somebody had the nerve to arrest my baby cousin!"

"Yeah, but the whole thing's bogus," Bo told her. "They say he murdered some nurse down at the hospital in Atlanta."

"Unbelievable!" Eve ranted. She crossed her arms and started pacing back and forth across the living room floor in front of the couch where Bo and Rosco were sitting.If there was any hint that she was in a good mood earlier, it was sure gone now---much to Rosco's disappointment.

"Well, surely they don't really think that Cooter did that, do they?" she asked Bo, keeping her eyes ahead of her so that she wouldn't accidentally run into anything while she was on her march.

"I don't know, Cooter said they were pretty derned serious. Said they had a photo of him carryin' the murder weapon out of the front door to the hospital." Bo paused for a minute before he said his next sentence, the main reason why Cooter had sent him over there. "He wants you to be his attorney."

Rosco turned his head and gave him a look. Eve stopped her parade and looked at him also.

"His attorney?" Eve asked, not sure if she heard right. "He wants me to be his lawyer?"

"That's what you were before ya moved here, ain't it?" Bo asked her. "Well, who better to defend Cooter than his own cousin?"

"No, no, no, no, no," Eve stammered, shaking a finger at the idea. "I'm not allowed to do that, uh-uh. I have to be hired by a law firm or a courthouse or somethin'. I just can't waltz in and take over a case like that." She ran her hands through her hair, stressed out over the matter.

"Honey, that's no problem," Rosco assured her. "I could get Lulu to hire ya in no time flat."

"You mean you wouldn't mind?" she asked her husband. "You wouldn't mind me leavin' for a while and doin' this?"

"Of course not! Cooter's your cousin after all, and---well, Bo's right. Who better to defend him than you?"

She gave him a starry-eyed look. "Baby, you have any idea how sweet you are sometimes?"

Bo cleared his throat and got off the couch. "I think I'll leave now---"

Balladeer: Y'know, by now ya figure that people would know that in Hazzard, ya don't mess with each other's cousins.