Chapter Thirteen: Sometimes, you have to go to the brink…
"Something we were withholding made us weak,
until we found it in ourselves."
"So, all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are."
Robert Frost
Daisy and Enos had always been able to work together on some plan or scheme. Only when the stakes involved anteing up their hearts did things tend to go sideways—each protecting that vital organ with the tenacity of a scorpion.
Tonight, they'd put the skeleton of a plan together. Weary from the battle, they settled into quiet communion with the night – a familiar symphony of crickets, frogs, and the occasional plop of a fish breaking the water to capture an insect that had ventured too close to the surface.
The day had been warm enough for the ground to have already started to collect dew. Enos and Daisy were both comfortably tucked away under the lean-to atop the blankets Enos had 'borrowed' from Boss and close to the fire he had built while she had been out. He'd parked Dixie strategically to shield them from the cold night breeze.
When he'd needed to get her away from town, the quarry, what the folks in Hazzard County referred to as 'the swamp,' was the first place he thought of. Once upon a long time ago, they had spent hours together there. Mapping out the cracks in the still exposed cliffs leftover from quarrying marble – Enos searched for the darkest veins, the most quartz, the shiniest mica flecks, and Daisy explored how plants could root into bare rock. Those were memories from their childhood; before life intervened and Enos no longer had time for such things. Before the first time that she felt abandoned.
On the lake is where they'd talked of getting married. And he'd kissed her. Not the glancing blows she'd managed in the past by ambush – a real, warm, deep, luscious kiss filled with a hint of desire that left her…wanting more. She'd forgotten wanting more from him. No. She'd trained herself not to expect more. Her unreciprocated advances were interpreted, in her heart, to mean only one thing, and she'd forced herself to fall out of love with him. Or so she'd thought until about an hour ago. Somewhere deep within her, while she devised ways to get him to the altar, hadn't she known all along? She hadn't felt so alive in the last fifteen years as she'd felt in the previous sixty minutes.
"I caught a couple of stripers while you were asleep. You hungry?" Enos asked softly.
"Yes, very much."
The look she gave him was strange and unfamiliar, even to her, and probably revealed too much. And yet, like ancient logs that are suddenly dislodged from the depths of primal lakes, the call of something long submerged had bubbled to the surface. She wasn't sure if she'd be able to contain it…or if she wanted to.
Reigning herself in, Daisy watched as he opened a cooler and pulled out a tray of fileted bass. Had she also blinded herself to how much she admired his form as well? Tucked or untucked, no one filled out a plaid shirt quite the way he did.
"How long was I out, anyway?"
"Long enough."
Enos returned to their plot of blankets with the filets, a grill grate, and a large pair of tongs, settling himself once again beside her. Had she not been afraid of bursting the delicate bubble they'd been allowed, she would have blurted out her revelation right then and there.
"Looks like you midnight requisitioned more than a couple of blankets from Boss's fishin' shack."
"Considerin' everything'll be back where it was before, I figure what Boss won't remember tomorrow won't hurt me."
Daisy watched his hands as he arranged the grate over the fire and set the fish on it.
"Enos."
"Uh-huh?" he asked, intent on placing the fish over coals that would achieve the perfect sear and sizzle.
She hesitated, but only because she was about to broach one of the topics they'd both been dancing around.
"Maybe I should do the grilling."
"Won't take very long. You need to rest."
"No…I mean, should you be gettin' so close to the heat like that? You're just gonna aggravate those blisters."
He examined his hands. "Don't seem to bother me as much as they did this afternoon."
"Your face doesn't seem quite as blistery, either."
"Come to think of it, I ain't felt like scratchin' for a couple of hours. Seems like that's all I been doin' the last ninety days."
"That potion the nurse gave you didn't help?"
"I only got to use it for the one night. Next mornin' it wouldn't be there anymore, and I'd have to go through the process of goin' back to the clinic and gettin' it all over again."
"How many times did you have to go––?"
"Aw, now Daisy. Don't start that again. I toldja' I don't even think Joanne's real."
"But she said you helped her with a tire a week before, I mean before you went to the clinic the first time."
"But I don't remember her bein' there the first time because she wasn't, not the real day. Miss Aggie, the usual receptionist, was there. I was just goin' along with it 'cause way back in that round-a-bout, I mean do-over, I wasn't allowed to let on to you…You know…"
"That you were repeatin' our weddin' day too?"
He nodded and then, knowing the fish needed looking after or it would be inedible, turned his attention back to the fire. No matter how you sliced it, Daisy knew they both were thinking about what it meant – that his blisters didn't seem quite so pronounced or bother him as much tonight.
"I wonder why Aunt Lavinia's lettin' us do this now? Together, I mean. Bein' out here and all. I've been expectin' to blank out any second and find myself back in my bed at the farm."
"Me too. Only on the hood a' my truck. Maybe it was gettin' outta hand." He looked down at her right wrist, still slightly reddened from the chafing of his handcuffs, and brushed his fingers over it lightly until he got self-conscious and went back to staring into the glowing embers.
"I was gonna kidnap you once," she said. "I was gonna cuff you to Dixie, drive to Hazzard airfield and take off in that plane we had waitin' to fly us off to our honeymoon. Only I was gonna get us as far away from Hazzard as the plane's fuel would take us."
He actually smiled at the thought. "It would'na worked, though."
"I know. Rule Number Two."
"Yeah."
"And Number Five."
"Nothin's gonna be a walk on the…"
"Beach?" she finished.
Daisy insisted on cleaning up after the fish had been consumed. The task, no matter how paltry, gave her time to think about a few things. She'd gone these past ninety days convinced she was the one carrying the load, but she was doing a lot of blind leaping. Enos was carrying it for both of them, looking after her. Like always.
"What time do you usually wake up?"
"Different times, but hardly ever before 4:45 or after 6:15. Why? You think it means somethin'?"
"No, maybe. I don't know. But that's not why I asked. I was thinkin' I could be out here tomorrow morning, let's say 4:30, 'cause I wake up at all hours, with a thermos of hot coffee and a warm blanket."
"I appreciate that, Daisy. But I wouldn't want you to have to––"
"I won't be able to sleep knowin' I'll wake up in a nice warm bed while you're out here in the damp cold."
"Then, I guess I'll see you in the morning."
While Enos laid back on the blanket and closed his eyes, Daisy's mind sank slowly back into the downward spiral she'd taken the past three hundred and sixty hours. Since she fled his room that night that he told her he was going back to L.A., their avoidance of each other after that hadn't exactly been mutual. She was only lying to herself that it was. She had tried to get back to that moment just before she had bolted ever since. Each time she failed had made her more desperate and ended in a meltdown of epic proportion – rods exposed, leaking into the atmosphere, and poisoning everything around her. There were no do-overs for failure in Aunt Lavinia's time-out – and the sheer weight of not being able to control it or change it flattened her.
Lying next to him, she was unaware of dropping into sleep.
~000~
From far away, she could hear her Uncle Jesse's voice, "You were such a headstrong girl when you were growin' up. Still are in some ways. Always leapin' before ya' look. Your aunt used to say that you'd rue that one a' these days."
"You think I'm gonna rue marryin' Enos?"
"I'm afraid maybe y'are, but not for the reasons I'm thinkin' you're thinkin'. It's what your Aunt Lavinia was frettin' about's got me worried. She loved you very much, but she was fond a' Enos too. Real fond. When his Mama died, and Otis was out on a run, and Enos stayed with us a lot…"
"I know, Uncle Jesse. He was like a part of the family."
"Yes…and no…Luke was older, and Bo was a youngun, so you and Enos spent a lot of time together."
Daisy smiled at the memories of running the woods, hunting for wild blackberries, exploring the cracks in the rocks at the old quarry…
Jesse continued, "Then you two started gettin' older, and Enos, well, he had to grow up fast when Otis died. He got serious about what he should do with his life, and you just stayed headstrong. Not that that's a bad thing. I always admired that you were kinda free-spirited. But before she died, Lavinia was always knittin' worry lines that you weren't takin' life serious enough."
She remembered now how Lavinia had tried to warn her.
"Daisy, my sweet little girl, you gotta stop this stubborn willfulness, and tryin' to make everybody bend to fit how you want um to be while you refuse to bend at all. I'm afraid for you, child. Afraid some ill wind is gonna come along and break you cause you refused to believe it's possible. We're all breakable, honey—even the strongest of us. You have to learn to be the one to give way sometimes, baby. Otherwise, you're gonna lose the thing you love the most, the one thing you can't survive this life on Earth as a whole person without. And it's gonna hollow you out inside, just like that rotten oak down in the meadow gettin' cut up for firewood. Once that happens, the first stiff breeze will have no problem at all knockin' you flat and leavin' you with nothin' but a broken spirit and an empty heart."
~000~
In a cold sweat, her breathing labored, Daisy jerked upright from the blanket.
"Daisy…Daisy, what's wrong?" Enos took hold of her arms.
"I should have stayed."
She saw the confusion in his eyes.
"I should have stayed that night…when you told me about L.A."
"It's alright, Daisy. I wish ya had, too. We might notta had to go through these last fifteen days. But I understand why you didn't."
"But why? Why should you understand? I should have stayed. I should have screamed at you…We should've had a knock-down-drag-out fight right there in Mrs. Oxford's Boarding House…so loud she'd have to call Rosco. I should have told you how mad I was...how much…"
"Cause you thought I was goin' away…'cause 'it's what I'm good at?'"
"I didn't mean it…I didn't."
"You did. An' you're right…You…and Aunt Livvy. I'm just a big coward."
"How can you say that? You captured a killer, and then…" her voice hitched, "…then risked your life by…he could have killed you."
"Scanlon couldn't do nothin' to me but take my life."
It was the weight of what he hadn't said that made her head drop into his chest. He could feel her body convulse against him as tears fell on his shirt. He put his arms gently around her, more afraid now to let go. Neither of them knew how long, but he held her until she went limp, and he thought she was asleep again.
"What did you mean," she asked, still sunk into him, "about not havin' to go through the last fifteen days if I'd stayed that night?"
"If you promise to calm down and not to run while I get somethin', I'll tell you."
She nodded her head against his chest, and he gently let go of his hold on her. She watched as he rooted around in the bushes where he'd pitched the small box that had tumbled from the glove compartment.
Kneeling in front of her as she swiped the wet from her cheeks, he said, "You asked me how I knew it was Aunt Livvy who was runnin' this game…and I didn't give you an answer."
She nodded, focused on the ring box, but he kept it closed.
"If you'da stayed that night, I'd been able to tell ya'…even though they were keepin' a spot open for me at the Academy, I was never even considerin' goin' back unless you went with me."
She studied him with what he interpreted, incorrectly, as disbelief in her eyes.
"You can call Turk or even Lieutenant Broggi. I told um both more than a week ago…I mean, back in real-time…I wasn't gonna commit to anything if you didn't come with the deal. They'd remember because that was before––"
"And…if I didn't go with you?"
"Then I'da just stayed here."
"But Rosco said stayin' here in Hazzard was killin' your spirit. That you belonged back at Metro."
"When did he say that?"
"After I ran out that night, I couldn't get back to you…so I talked to him."
"He had no business sayin' anything ta you about that. And when we get outta this, me an' him's gonna have a sit-down."
Daisy wasn't really listening now. She was focused on something else. "You were gonna ask me to go with you."
"Daisy, I came back ta Hazzard 'cause I missed you so much, I couldn't live another day not bein' able to see ya'. Even if…even if you could never be mine."
She laughed and said something, faintly, but he couldn't make it out.
"Daisy, I don't understand what you're say––"
"I said, I was always yours…you big dope! I wish you'd kissed me, just once, in the last fifteen years the way you kissed me in the boat…'cause if you had––"
Daisy got her wish when he pulled her lips onto his and lit them both on fire – a conflagration long, long, long overdue.
