Chapter 1: Far From Home
Author’s Note: This story starts four years after the Dukes of Hazzard series ended, so the year would be 1989. I’ve kept most of the time-line that we learned from the first Reunion movie intact up to that point. Daisy has been married to a man named L.D., Boss Hogg has passed away leaving Rosco most of everything, and Enos is in Los Angeles. Instead of continuing on that time-line until the events of the movie however, I’ve used the circumstances that it laid out as the basis for this story, otherwise you can just pretend that the movies never happened. Part of the point of this story is to make those circumstances fit into the series, ’cause let’s face it, they didn’t. Who the heck is L.D.? Why did Daisy marry him? Why did Enos leave to L.A. when we know he would have rather been in Hazzard? This story attempts to answer those questions and make those answers plausible in relation to the show.
Beneath a Hazzard Moon is probably one of the more darker of the Hazzard stories you’ll find. I like to take comedies and explore the more serious side of the characters – giving them challenges where they must either sink or swim. The character’s histories are based on facts from the series ,though there’s not much to go on. Hope you enjoy the journey!
Detective Enos Strate watched the rain as it fell, beating against the window of his office. It was dark now, another night spent up too late and working too hard, and the lights of passing traffic shone far below him. He raised his hand to the glass, tracing the patterns of their taillights – a endless, mindless stream of red in the vast ocean of dark Los Angeles. Once again the reality of how small and inconsequential his world was struck him, a feeling that had never ceased to fully disappear even in the nearly four years he’d been here since returning from Hazzard. In truth, he knew it never would, but little of that bore thinking of now. The past was a memory as dark, deep, and murky as the storm that raged outside.
He turned back to his desk and the solitary folder that still lay open. A simple domestic violence case which had ferreted out a small drug ring on the outskirts of the city, hardly large enough to make a dent in LA’s major drug runners, but one contact had led to another before. Hand-written notes in his characteristic block script lay neatly to the side, and he placed them back into the folder before closing it and filing it away in his desk drawer. The clock on the wall read 2:10 am, and he knew he’d regret the late night in the morning. Enos took his coat from its hook and shrugged it on, making his way through the outer office and out the door, turning left into the corner stairwell instead of continuing to the elevators. He’d always believed that a little extra exercise never hurt, and besides that the idea of hurtling down eight stories in a metal box made him slightly claustrophobic.
The rain had subsided to a steady drizzle by the time he made it to the subway station. He stepped into one of the partially filled front cars instead of the abandoned rear ones, too tired to have to fight off any punks who were too drunk or too stupid to see the LAPD insignia on his jacket. He took a seat, resting his head against the window and dozed off as the vibration of the subway car lulled him into sleep.
The conductor announcing his stop woke him and he counted himself lucky he hadn’t missed it. His apartment wasn’t far and five minutes later he slid his key into the lock and bolted it behind him as he entered the meager dwelling.
The job at the LAPD paid enough money for something larger and the good Lord knew he didn’t have anything else to spend it on, but it was better this way he figured, and one didn’t notice the loneliness so much when they lived in a walk-in closet. Most of his money he sent home to his mother, who he had a sneaking suspicion wasn’t spending it either though he’d told her to pay off the mortgage that his father had left behind when he’d died. Thankfully Rosco wasn’t as eager to foreclose on the good people of Hazzard county as Boss had been.
He dressed for bed, turned out the light, and raised the blinds on the window. The rain reminded him of another day – three years, seven months, and four days ago to be precise, in a little town half a world away from where he sat now. It had been raining the night he’d left Hazzard, and it had followed him like a dark cloud to sunny California. His eyes came to rest on the drawer of the nightstand in which a single picture lay, but he made no move to open it. Instead he turned down the covers and crawled into bed, trying to remember what it felt like to be happy, only to dissolve into a dream where a girl with long brown hair and a radiant smile had stolen the sun from his sky.
A/N: The only age we know is that of Enos. In the movie (1997) he states that it’s been 32 years since he was in 7th grade. That would put him at about 32 when the series ended. From the series, we know that Luke is around the same age, Daisy is next, and then Bo is the youngest.