Author's Notes: Bwahaha! This whole thing is finally almost nearly totally completed (some minor beta-ing pending) - so here's a chapter, and you can expect another in a couple of days, and then a couple of days after that. And in a completely personal and very political note, military- and current-events-minded readers might look up the 'Secret' Letter From Iraq on CNN or Time - puts an interesing perspective on current and past events, and men (and women) like our Duke boy here. :-D Enjoy!
Chapter 8: Slipping Away
"Sound the bugle now – Tell them I don't care.
There's not a road I know that leads to anywhere.
Without a light I fear that I will stumble in the dark..."
- 'Sound the Bugle' - sung by Bryan Adams
When Bo woke the next morning, the first thing he checked was the bed to his left, hoping Luke had come in during the night. He hadn't. The empty blankets were neatly made and smoothed as Daisy had left them the day before, and there was no sign of Luke anywhere.
With a heavy heart, Bo dressed and gathered his things for school. He knew Luke was still angry with him, though he still couldn't figure out his crime. The Marine made that clear enough last night in the barn. His cold tone, his utter rejection – it cut Bo to the core. He loved his cousin, idolized him, missed him terribly when he was gone, and now Luke wasn't home a week and he was furious with his little cousin already. It was like Bo could feel their brotherhood slipping away – and somehow it was his fault.
His worries seemed confirmed when he entered the kitchen, and found only Jesse and Daisy sitting there eating breakfast. Bo took his place at the table and accepted a plate from Daisy, taking a long, unhappy look at the empty seat beside him. He looked up at his uncle and cousin, who hadn't missed his miserable expression.
"Luke was up early this morning," Jesse explained. "He went to go check the fence line and see what needs fixing." His tone was even, but his eyes told their own story of worry and concern.
Bo nodded and turned his attention to his breakfast, but he found he had little appetite this morning. Mostly he just pushed the eggs around his plate with his fork, thinking back over every minute of Sunday night, until Jesse quietly spoke his name and gave him that look.
"Yes sir," Bo answered sullenly, and started eating properly. It also occurred to him that the fence work Luke was out doing was work Bo was supposed to do weeks ago, but he'd been too busy with paid jobs to earn money for the engine. That thought just brought him right back to last night, and left him more miserable, just in time to go to school.
It was several hours later before Luke made an appearance at the farmhouse, walking in silently from the fields and pouring himself a glass of water. Daisy was giving the bathroom its weekly scrub when she heard him come in, and she left off her task to join him in the kitchen.
"Morning, Luke!" she greeted warmly as he finished gulping down the glass. He didn't answer, just refilled the glass and started drinking it down too. Undeterred, Daisy went on, "We missed you at breakfast, hon – you want something to eat? I can fix something…real…quick…" she trailed off as Luke ignored her entirely, setting the glass down in the sink and walking out the door again.
A little hurt, she walked to the screen door and watched him speak to Uncle Jesse in the yard for a moment, asking for the keys to the pickup to drive fence materials and tools into the fields. Jesse readily gave him the keys, but after Luke walked away, the old farmer looked up to meet Daisy's eyes in mutual frustrated worry.
They didn't see Luke again until mid-afternoon, when he brought the truck back in time for Jesse to pick Bo up from football practice. He returned the keys to his uncle and made a brief stop inside the farmhouse before setting out across the fields again without a word. Jesse watched his retreating back with a frown, at the same time eyeing the clouds gathering in the west. There were two storms coming, he thought, but only one of them involved rain.
Luke took no notice of the darkening sky or the gusting wind as he bent over the fence post, giving a grunt of pain as the barbed wire he was fastening in place cut into his hand. The leather gloves he had on were practically worthless, thin and worn through in many places, and his hands were now dotted with a number of small nicks and scratches from his day's work. When the wire was fastened tight, he snipped the loose end off and surveyed his handiwork.
The rather mean-looking barbed wire fence wasn't so much to keep people out, but animals – cattle, deer, and horses that might devastate the corn in the fields. Here, about fifty feet of fence ran close to the tree line, and any number of branches had fallen across the wires in a summer storm, bending posts and generally mangling the fence. He'd also spent time repairing broken posts and beams of the split-rail fence that divided the fields of the Duke farm, and marked where livestock had once grazed in pastures. The work needed to be done, but it also served a greater purpose – keeping his mind off his troubles.
Since Sunday, his night walks had lost their feel of comfortable habit – nothing felt comfortable anymore, not the trained patterns of the Marines, not the quiet life of the farm. When he slipped into the former, Luke found himself constantly on edge for fear of hurting someone accidentally, but when he attempted the latter, some sight, sound, or smell would inevitably trigger some reflex or memory and send him some place very far from Hazzard, Georgia. He was at his wit's end, trying to find a solution.
The world didn't seemed to be inclined to give him a break, either, because just as he straightened up to examine the fenceline, a big fat drop of rain landed SPLAT! on the end of his nose. Luke blinked and shook it off, but SPLAT! a second drop quickly replaced it. Tension coursed through him like a splash of ice water as the rain washed him back to monsoon season on the jungle battlefield.
SPLAT! and the peaceful Hazzard forest before him transformed into the murky, menacing jungle that surrounded his base camp. SPLAT! and the muddy fields behind him became the parade ground below watch towers armed with machine guns, the boundary marked by the vicious barbed-wire fence. SPLAT! and his ears picked up the telltale sounds of a skirmish line advancing through the shadows of the trees, and SPLAT! his eyes picked out the outlines of twenty – fifty – a hundred VC emerging from the jungle, and SPLAT! Luke reached for his rifle, but there was no rifle to reach for, and SPLAT! in horror, he realized the attack was coming from all sides, and he'd left the camp undefended! Drawing the only weapon available to him, Luke took off across the fields through the downpour, praying to God as he ran, and the shouts and sounds of battle chased him down.
The Duke farmhouse was quiet and cozy, a haven from the cold downpour outside. Bo was sitting at the table reading his history homework with a furrowed brow; Daisy was at the kitchen counter working on dinner; Uncle Jesse was stoking a fire in the fireplace, with the animals already penned and fed for the evening. Needless to say, all were rather alarmed when Luke came running up the porch steps with pounding feet and flung the door open, looking inside with wild eyes as his chest heaved and gasped for breath. In that instant, staring at his family staring back at him, the echoes and shadows of days past vanished, and there was nothing but the sound of Georgia rain drumming on the tin roof.
Fear melting into confusion, Luke backpedaled a few steps, letting the door shut, and he jumped again when he bumped into the porch rail. Breathing hard, he leaned into the rail, grabbing hold of the tall porch beam for support. It wasn't a moment before the door opened again, and his family came out to find him.
"Luke?" Jesse asked cautiously, waving Bo and Daisy back a bit as he looked his nephew over. The young man had been running hard, and he couldn't seem to catch his breath, now coughing and turning red with the effort as he leaned on his knees. Rain and sweat dripped down from his crew-cut hair all the way to his mud-splattered clothes. Slight shivers ran through him as he cooled off in his wet clothes.
"Come on, inside." Jesse grasped one arm, offering support. Luke needed little urging, and soon Jesse was guiding him in to sit before the fire. The Duke patriarch looked up to the niece and nephew that trailed behind them.
"Bo – dry clothes. Daisy – a blanket, and some water. Easy…easy…" he turned his attention back to his eldest nephew, steadying him with firm hands between gulping breaths and dry coughs.
It was some minutes before Luke was warm and dry and nearly breathing normally again, sipping water to ease his dry throat. A heavy quilt was bundled around his shoulders, and he was now dressed in socks, sweatpants, and the first shirt Bo had grabbed from the closet. He leaned forward on his knees, eyes closed and breathing slowly and deeply. When he opened his eyes, the first thing he noticed was the knife blade still clutched in one hand, far too close to his uncle. Luke moved to sheath it, only to discover his boots were missing. Looking around, he spotted them a few feet away, and he heaved himself to his feet to collect them. Returning to the couch, he sat and started loosening the laces on the wet leather – all without looking once at his family.
"Luke? Is everything alright?" he heard Jesse ask softly.
The eldest Duke cousin paused as he slipped on one boot, shivering again. "I was… just…making sure you're all okay," he mumbled self-consciously, before quickly lacing up that boot and pulling on the second. His cousins could barely hear him.
Jesse's brow furrowed. "Why wouldn't we be okay?" he asked gently.
Luke looked up to the window and the pouring rain beyond. He felt his cheeks flush with embarrassment, and his eyes dropped to the floor as his hands finished lacing the second boot. When he looked up again, he saw nothing but loving concern in his uncle's eyes. Luke looked to Daisy, then to Bo, resting his eyes unhappily on his youngest cousin for a long moment before turning away.
"Nevermind," he muttered, pushing himself to his feet and letting the blanket fall from his shoulders. His uncle and cousins watched in disbelief as he walked out the front door, back into the rain.
Before Jesse turned in for the night, he stopped to look out the front porch door at the barn. The faint glow of a lantern lit the hayloft window, and he knew Luke was up there – probably cold, probably lonely, and probably miserable, yet he refused to answer Jesse's calls from the barn floor earlier, and he refused to come inside and sleep in his own bed. The old farmer's heart broke for the boy. Jesse understood his aloof behavior as a substitute for leaving the farm entirely, and it was very clear that he wanted to stay away from the family, but the Duke patriarch still couldn't understand the reason for it. Heaving a sigh, Jesse shut the door and padded down the hall towards his bedroom, but he left the kitchen light on, to welcome a young soldier inside.
Bo was disappointed, but no longer surprised, to find his cousin missing from the breakfast table again the next morning. He hadn't missed the long, reproachful look Luke had given him the night before, and he was growing determined to corner his cousin and talk things through, like Uncle Jesse always taught them. But, that was just the problem – Luke was angry and avoiding him, so it was difficult to try and talk to him about it. By meal's end, Bo left with his uncle for school with leaden spirits, dragging his feet with uncharacteristic sullenness.
Throughout the meal, Daisy watched the empty place setting sadly. As the woman of the household, she figured it was her duty to ensure that her menfolk ate a good and proper diet, especially her undernourished elder cousin, but he hadn't hardly eaten a bite since Monday night. She decided to try something different, then. After Jesse and Bo left, Daisy put together a heaping plate full of the morning's leftovers, and left it sitting on the rail of the front porch with knife and fork. Though she never heard a whisper of movement, the plate was gone by the time she finished washing the breakfast dishes, and she smiled.
Two hours later, Jesse returned with groceries from town, and Daisy left off planting in the garden to help him carry the load inside. The Duke patriarch stepped inside first, and a smile lightened his worried features at the sight that greeted him.
"Shhh," he cautioned Daisy with a nod in the direction of the living room. A clean plate and silverware dripped dry on the drain board, and, showered and dressed in clean clothes, Luke was stretched out on the couch, dead asleep.
Daisy smiled too, as she set down her burdens, and followed her uncle with light steps into the family room. Luke breathed in soft, deep breaths, one arm lying across his chest and the other dangling to the carpeted floor. He didn't stir at his uncle and cousin's approach, but he was obviously deep in some kind of dream – the small twitches and jerks of random muscles gave him away, and his lips moved slightly in muted, unspoken words.
Daisy looked at him wistfully for a moment, before raising her eyes to her uncle. "What do you figure he's dreamin' about, Uncle Jesse?" she asked with a frown.
"Look at his hands, Daisy," Jesse instructed gently.
The callused fingers of Luke's hands moved in muted twitches as well, but none so much as the regular jerks of his trigger finger.
"Uncle Jesse…" Daisy said softly, sadly, as she understood.
"Shhh, let him sleep. He probably didn't sleep a wink in the rain last night. Dreams pass – even this kind." Even as he spoke, though, Jesse stepped forward to take the quilt off the back of the couch and gently spread it across his eldest nephew, shushing him quietly. Luke settled under his uncle's soothings, breathing a deep sigh, and Jesse smiled again before he turned back to his niece. "Come on, now – there's things to be done."
Trees limbs grass bushes wet rain mud drip slog puddle paddy rice rain run shoot bang duck cover helmet pack rifle reload cartridge enemy fire shoot cover bang rattle nine fire forward attack trees field charge forward fire bang left right eight sweat heat wet sun bright shoot bang cover down dodge check dead seven Lord-help-us bang outnumbered ambush flanked run RUN shoot bang six shoot bang five Lord too close rifle shoulder bang boot knife throat dead eyes run stab three mud slip RUN slash trees RUN bang two RUN bang Lord bang RUN bang one RUN - BANG!.
Luke woke with a gasp even as he felt the bullet burning into him in his nightmare, twisting around in sheer uncoordinated reflex and falling to the floor with a heavy thump. There he paused, looking around wildly, surprised to find himself in the furnished family room. Then, beneath the coffee table, he saw Daisy's slim legs emerge from the kitchen, and he did his best to shake off the nightmare.
"Luke? Everything okay, sweetheart?" she asked as she came into the living room.
"Sorry," Luke started to mumble an apology, picking himself up off the floor. He sat down hard on the couch as he started coughing again – his lungs were still protesting his jaunt the day before. Daisy brought him a glass of water, which he took gratefully, and sipped slowly until the fit had passed. He looked up to find his younger cousin sitting beside him, rubbing his back gently and leaning on his shoulder.
"Better?" she asked softly. She leaned in to hug his shoulders and kiss his rough-shaven cheek affectionately, but she was surprised when he neither returned nor even acknowledged the gesture. He only nodded slightly, looking down at the floor.
"I just closed my eyes for a minute…" Luke started to say in a gravelly voice, but he glanced up at her and fell silent with a sigh. After a moment, he spoke again. "I better get back to work…" he muttered, pushing himself to his feet and leaving his cousin's loving embrace. She watched him leave with sad eyes, shaking her head as the porch door shut behind him.
Daisy couldn't understand her elder cousin at all. She knew things had been rough on him overseas, and her imagination probably couldn't dream up what had really happened to him over those thirty months. But she couldn't see how that translated into Luke ignoring and avoiding his family, who loved him to the ends of the earth and wanted nothing more than to be there for him. The cousin sulking around the shadows of the barn wasn't the big brother who'd answered her letters with sage advice and hopeful encouragement. He wasn't a shoulder to lean on or a source of laughter and fun. He was a ghost, plain and simple - a pale, hollow ghost haunting the fields and buildings of the Duke farm, with a ghost's indifference to the living around him. Then, for just a moment as they passed by one another, she'd catch sight of his eyes, and she knew he wasn't indifferent at all – though 'haunted' was a very appropriate term.
The Marine made himself scarce for the remainder of the day, busying himself with farm chores and self-appointed tasks that generally kept him well away from the farmhouse. Daisy continued to leave food out for him every few hours, and it continued to disappear. She thought, sadly, that it was a bit like feeding a stray dog – one that was too wary to approach an offered meal until the would-be rescuers were gone from sight.
When Bo came home from school that afternoon, it took only a cursory glance around to determine that Luke was nowhere to be found. He greeted Daisy at the garden with a short, glum 'Hey' before depositing his backpack inside and leaving for the farm and horses waiting to be groomed up the road. Pausing in her work – planting flower bulbs to winter and be ready for spring – Daisy watched his yellow shirt retreat in the distance. His obvious sadness tugged at her heartstrings, but, she decided, she wasn't going to sit by and watch any longer. Luke might not want to talk to her, but Bo – well, Bo she could do something about.
Later that evening, after dinner and the evening chores, Daisy found Bo sitting on the front porch steps, theoretically watching the stars come out. His thoughts were so far away, though, that he was startled when Daisy settled on the porch step beside him, looking out at the stars herself.
"You're awful quiet tonight," she commented casually.
"Just thinking."
Daisy turned to him. "About Luke?"
Bo picked at a loose splinter on the step below him. "Yeah," he admitted. He was quiet for a moment, frowning deeper. "I just can't figure out why he's mad at me."
"Luke's mad at you?" Daisy asked, surprised. "What happened?"
"Well – we were fine, until Sunday night…he went out into the woods, and I followed him. Luke got real mad…and then Monday he started avoiding me – he ain't been to breakfast, or dinner, he won't sleep in our bedroom…he wasn't there to go get the engine, and when me an' Cooter brought it back, he didn't want to help work on it either - told me he was busy…" The words came tumbling out, and Bo looked up with sorrowful blue eyes. "Daisy, he ain't never been too busy to hang out with me before…"
"Oh Bo," Daisy said sadly, reaching up to touch his cheek. "Luke's been acting strange around all of us lately, not just you. I don't know what's going on, but I don't think Luke's mad at you. He loves you, you know that."
"I don't know, Daisy…you didn't see him that night. He's never yelled at me like that before, not even with some of the stupid stuff I've done…"
"Bo, remember what Uncle Jesse told us on the way to Atlanta on Friday?"
"Well, yeah, he said…he said it would be real different for Luke, being home again after all that fighting, and we might need to give him some time an' some space to get used to things…"
Daisy smiled. "Exactly. Things will work out, you'll see…Luke just needs some time and space, that's all."
Bo attempted to give her a smile, but clearly he wasn't convinced. He sighed and looked out at the night sky again, while Daisy got to her feet.
"Come on now, hon – I've got a guitar over here that's been hoping for some attention tonight."
Bo just shook his head, though. "Not tonight, Daisy," he refused.
"Please?"
"No, Daisy - I'm…I'm tired, and my hands are sore from working on Mr. Keller's horses." In truth, he'd had so much fun playing alongside Luke again on Sunday night, it hurt too much to think of playing alone now.
Daisy frowned as Bo turned his back to her, hugging his knees and looking out into the darkness. Then she smiled, and sat down on the porch swing, settling the guitar into her lap.
"Whenever I chance to meet…some old friends on the street…" she sang softly, picking at the chords. She smiled again when she saw him shift restlessly where he sat, willing himself to stick with his grumpy resolution. He had spent part of the summer learning the chords and lyrics to the new song on the radio, partly because Daisy loved it, and partly because he thought it would be great to sing to Sarah-Mae on a summer's evening. Sarah-Mae left him for Alec Miller before he'd gotten it all right, but he finished learning it anyhow, for Daisy's sake.
"They wonder how does a man get to feel this way…" she went on, purposely striking a few chords exactly wrong.
Finally, Bo had enough. "Oh, gimme that thing," he said with a scowl, climbing to his feet. He sat down beside her and took the instrument, looping the strap over his shoulders. "Here, it's a G there, remember?" He brushed his fingers across the strings and adjusted one or two of them, then played the proper chords for the next line.
Daisy smiled, eyes twinkling, as she sang. "I've always got a smilin' face…any time and any place…"
Then he joined her in soft harmony. "And every time they ask me why, I just smile and say…"
"You've got to…kiss an angel good morning…"
Daisy leaned over and kissed her cousin on the cheek, making him smile as he played.
"Let her know you think about her when you're gone…kiss an angel good morning, and love her like the devil when you get back home…"
"Well, people may try to guess…the secret of my happiness…but some of them never learn it's a simple thing…"
"The secret that I'm speaking of…is a woman and a man in love…and the answer is in this song that I always sing…"
This time around, Bo kissed his lady cousin's brow and pulled her into a quick hug between lines of the chorus, and he laughed when she tickled his ribs playfully at the words 'the devil' in the last line. It turned into a full-out tickle fight there on the porch, ending only when the guitar thumped noisily on the porch floor. Laughing as he surrendered, Bo picked up the guitar again and looped the strap back around his shoulders.
"Alright, what next?" he asked, settling his fingers onto the strings and looking up at Daisy with a smile.
The pair spent the next hour singing and playing, trading off singing verses of their favorite songs, laughing when one or the other messed up or couldn't quite remember a line. Jesse smiled from the kitchen, watching them through the screen door.
Another pair of blue eyes watched from elsewhere on the farm, through the open window in the dark recesses of the hayloft. Luke longed to join the happy scene, to sing and play and laugh with his cousins again, but he kept telling himself he didn't belong there. As he watched, Jesse came out to join the cousins in the warm porch light, and he strained to hear Bo singing one of his favorite Hank Williams songs. Would it be so bad, if he went down there? Maybe if he was real careful… if he was on his guard…just for a few minutes…
Luke was half a second away from climbing to his feet when Bo finished the song, and Jesse's gruff voice echoed across the farmyard.
"Alllright, you two – it's time for bed. You've got school tomorrow, Bo," Jesse reminded him, as though he'd managed to forget after eleven and a half years of the daily academic torment.
Still smiling, Bo stood and followed his uncle into the house, one arm around Daisy and holding the guitar in his other hand. Luke watched the door shut behind them, though all the lights stayed on, and in ten minutes' time, the farmhouse was quiet and still. Edging his way back to the pile of loose hay and musty horse blankets that had been his bed for several nights now, Luke felt a pang in his gut, thinking he was a fool for ever hoping things could be the same. Nothing was the same, not even the things that hadn't changed – and he certainly had.
Thursday morning presented Jesse with a perfect opportunity to force things in the right direction. He had been so reluctant, the last two days, to press Luke for answers for fear of pushing him into running a second time, that he had been hard-pressed to think of any way to bring the family together again at all. It was hard to corner a shadow that kept running from the light. This, though – this could certainly be a good start.
"Luke!" he called from the floor of the barn. He knew his nephew had been sleeping in the hayloft instead of his own bed, and since the morning chores hadn't been done yet, he assumed Luke was still up there.
"Luke!" Jesse called again, a little more urgently, because this was something of an urgent situation. One of the younger billy goats had somehow put a nail through his hoof, and the poor thing bleated in pain in Jesse's arms, adding its own plea to the call.
"Mmhm…yeah, Uncle Jesse?" came Luke's sleepy response at last.
Jesse felt bad for waking him, but only briefly. "I need you to drive Bo to school today."
Hay rustled and denim scraped on wood floorboards, and Luke looked down at his uncle. He immediately saw the goat and its pain, and he knew he could come up with no good reason to refuse. He sighed.
"Alright. What time does he have to be there?" Luke asked, though as soon as he spoke the words, he realized he knew the answer. School hadn't changed that much since he graduated.
"Seven-thirty. It's just after six now."
Luke nodded and climbed down. Just enough time to shower and change.
Daisy was as shocked and surprised as Bo when, an hour later, Luke got up from his cup of coffee at the breakfast table and picked up the truck keys.
"Come on, Bo. I'm driving you today," he announced, and he was out the door.
Bo exchanged a grin with Daisy, hoping it meant Luke finally wanted to talk, then snatched up his backpack and was out the door on his cousin's heels.
Well now, I just know that once those two get together, they'll be able to sort things out! Nothing can keep the Duke boys apart for long - right?