Chapter 19: Questions & Answers
Daisy knelt down in front of him, her eyes shining. “Enos Strate, what do you think?”
He looked nervously at her. “Honestly Daisy, if it’s all th’ same t’ you, I’d rather just hear ya’ say it than t’ guess.”
She wrapped her arms around him. “Yes, Enos. I want nothin’ more than t’ marry you.”
“Oh Daisy..,” he whispered. He held her tight, slightly dazed over the fact that she’d had agreed to marry him. In truth, he’d been afraid she might have said she wasn’t ready, or that heaven forbid her last experience would have put her off the idea forever. He’d had to try though, had to know where things stood between them because he honestly didn’t know how much longer he could stand only seeing her haphazardly through the week. He wanted her to be there when he went to sleep at night and woke up in the morning…and other things which he kept failing miserably at not thinking about.
“Enos…”
“Yeah?”
“Is this gonna give you th’ hives?”
He laughed and let her go. “Shoot Daisy, I plum forgot about that. Turned out it wasn’t you that gave me th’ hives after all.”
“Well if it wasn’t th’ thought of us gettin’ married, then what was it?”
“Well, it happened t’ me again out in California, – th’ hives thing that is, not th’ gettin’ married part. I’d been chasin’ this drug dealer through a nature preserve there, just a big swamp mostly, an’ by th’ time I caught him I was soaked to th’ bone. Th’ next day ya’ couldn’t see me for th’ hives.”
“What does that have t’ do with us almost gettin’ married?”
“‘Remember when ya’ asked me, an’ I almost fell outta th’ boat? Th’ doc there in L.A. said it’s some sort of algae that I’m allergic to. Reckon it must be in Hazzard Pond, too.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” she grinned. She got up from where she still knelt with him to sit on the hood of the General Lee, still warm from their drive. Enos took off his gun belt and set it in the car, then turned on the Charger’s lights and took a seat next to her. The sun was nearly down, and the last of the light fading from the tops of the hills. Daisy shivered as the wind blew across them.
He noticed and took off his coat, putting it around her shoulders. “I’m sorry for keepin’ ya’ out here when it’s gettin’ cold. We can go if ya’ want.”
“Oh, no, that’s alright. There’s no one at home anyway. I should’ve brought my jacket. I forget it’s still winter when it’s so warm during th’ day.” She glanced at the uniform he was still wearing. “You’re gonna get cold, though.”
“Shucks, Daisy. I ain’t never cold when you’re around.” She laughed, and he turned towards her, frowning. “That didn’t sound right.”
“Oh, so it’s not true?”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t true,” he said, self-consciously. “It just wasn’t what I meant t’ say.”
Daisy couldn’t resist teasing him. “Oh Enos, I’m sure there were plenty of girls out there in Los Angeles that coulda kept ya’ warm.”
“Why?” he laughed, knowing she was just trying to pester him. “‘Cause I was a detective for LAPD? Come on now, Daisy. How many’d still be around when they found out I’d rather be a hick cop and go fishin’ on Saturdays?”
“Well, I’m real glad they’re not.”
“‘Sides, ain’t a one of ’em could hold a candle t’ you, Daisy,” he said, quietly. “Ya’ don’t know how miserable I was tryin’ t’ convince myself t’ forget ya’. Th’ harder I tried, th’ more I missed ya’, an’ every night I’d dream I’s back in Hazzard.”
She closed her eyes, wishing she could take back what she’d done to make him leave. Just the thought of Enos trying to forget her and Hazzard was enough to break her heart. “No one woulda blamed you if you’d moved on, Enos. ‘Specially not after what I did t’ you.”
He looked out, into the dark beyond the hazy beams of the headlights, and Daisy got the feeling his mind was far away, seeing something else entirely.
“Why’d you wait for me?” she asked, honestly not knowing the answer.
He turned and put his arm around her, and she rested her head against his shoulder. They sat there in silence until Daisy began to worry that perhaps he couldn’t think of a good reason at all.
“Daisy,” he said finally, with a sigh, “that’s not somethin’ that I can tell ya’ in fifty words or less, ’cause I’ve loved ya’ longer than I’ve known what love is. When we was kids, wasn’t nothin’ I couldn’t do as long as you were with me. An’ y’ always knew just what t’ say…or what not t’ say.”
In those dark days after his father had died, it seemed everyone had thought they’d known what to say to him – to a fifteen year old boy who suddenly found himself in the position of being the man of his family. Everyone except Daisy. He didn’t know if she’d still ever mentioned what had happened, but she’d been there through it all while he’d struggled to work it out on his own.
“I don’t know if I woulda made it through my fifteenth year without y’ there.” She raised her head from his shoulder and sat back so she could see him. “You spent a year’s wortha hours an’ a decade’s wortha patience on me when I didn’t have any for anyone, an’ I know it couldn’a been easy on ya’. There were times when I felt like you were th’ only thing I had keepin’ me tied to th’ world.” He caught a lock of her hair and twirled it absently around his fingers as he spoke, a new habit he’d picked up to substitute for fidgeting.
She shook her head sadly. “But I never even said anything, Enos. All that time, I knew you were hurtin’ so much, an’ I’d lie awake at night wishin’ I could do somethin’ t’ make it better.”
His fingers stilled, and he looked up into her eyes. “But ya’ did, Daisy,” he said, confused. “Didn’t ya’ know that? An’ I could pick a thousan’ more reasons why I love you. But I took ya’ for granted all those years, an’ I thought nothin’ would ever change. Then I came back from th’ Academy an’ somethin’ was broke between us.”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
“Why didn’t ya’ just tell me, forevermore?”
“I don’t know, Enos. Honestly, every reason I have sounds like I’m scrapin’ th’ bottom of th’ barrel. We were both just kids, and at first I thought you’d tease me about it, so I played it off like I was just kiddin’. Then it got t’ be where it’d gone on for so long, I didn’t rightly know how t’ tell ya’,” she said. “I almost did once, though…when Norman Willis was after me, an’ I had t’ stay th’ night with you.”
Regardless of what he remembered about that night, she’d never quite forgotten it – or what it had felt like to go to sleep wearing his shirt and wake up in his bed…without him in it, of course. She hadn’t been able to stop herself from imagining was real, just for a little while. It had been a strange, almost painful thing to watch him walk away from her that next morning, knowing the ruse was over, but in the end she couldn’t make herself tell him what was in her heart. Perhaps, she thought, he wouldn’t of believed her anyway.
“I always wondered about that…,” he said dismayed. “When you called me back.”
“I didn’t want ya’ t’ leave.”
Enos could only imagine how different that day could have turned out if she’d only told him the truth then. He’d noticed something different about her that morning, and when she’d called him back and walked over to him, he’d thought until the very last second that she was going to kiss him on the lips instead of the cheek…something that he shared a love-hate relationship with. Loved them for what they were, hated them for what he believed they were not – which was the reason he’d never kissed her back. But now, tonight, it was different – a million light years away from that room and the longing that had hung unspoken and unshared between them.
“If you’d told me th’ truth, maybe I wouldn’t’ve,” he told her. ” I always thought ya’ were just joshin’ me, but ya’ dang near ’bout drove me crazy sometimes. If I’d…” He stopped short at the look on her face. “What?”
Daisy slid off the car to stand in front of where he sat. Her body blocked the light from that side’s headlamp, silhouetting her against the misty beams that spread out behind her – like an angel of darkness in the moonlight. His heart skipped a beat because she couldn’t know how so very alluring she looked, nor could she feel the fire that started where her hands rested just above his knees as she leaned forward and whispered to him.
“Enos…do I still drive ya’ crazy?”
He couldn’t hold back the nervous laugh that escaped him before his body recovered from it’s initial shock. His fingers tangled in her hair as his lips found hers in the darkness, and he kissed her hard – his mind spinning with all the years he’d ached for her and the desire he’d so carefully concealed for so long.
Daisy, who’d only meant to tease, found herself swept up in Enos’s passion. She realized how very wrong she’d been to think that a kiss was nothing more than a trifle – to be given away on a whim to any guy who came along, as she drowned in a yearning more boundless and deep than anything she’d ever known. A love lain in wait – biding its time for only her.
He stood, sliding from the car and drawing her closer into his arms. Time stretched away into nothing, as their past collided with their present, as though every kiss was fueled by a separate memory. She pulled his shirt loose from where it was tucked in, feeling his breath catch as she slid her hands up under it, over his chest, so lost in him she didn’t even feel them falling, until she collapsed with him underneath her, cushioning her from the gravel.
She felt him still, but she could tell from his heart racing beneath her fingers that he was anything but calm as he sat up and broke their kiss. Face to face, she saw the panic in his hazel eyes, and with a horrible premonition, she knew what he was going to say.
“Daisy,” he whispered, his breaths ragged and uneven, “Daisy…I’m s-”
Daisy clapped her hand over his mouth. “No, please don’t say it,” she pleaded. “You’ll break my heart if you tell me you’re sorry.”
Enos closed his eyes, torn between the fear of having acted upon what he’d kept hidden for so long and the longing for more. His introspection was shattered by her voice, whispering in his ear, telling him she loved him, unknowingly pushing him further towards the edge of what self-control he still possessed. He took a deep breath and forced himself to focus on something else – on the cold, for it was cold now that the sun had set completely and the wind blew over the hills from the north, and the gravel his hands rested upon. He opened his eyes to find Daisy watching him, no doubt worried that he might yet say what he had been going to say before she stopped him. She should know though, that he could never break her heart – even if he felt he should apologize for his behavior.
Instead he put his arms back around her and hugged her, hardly daring to believe that three weeks ago, he’d still been in L.A. It would have been Thursday, January 19th – the day before Daisy disappeared. He thought back over all that had happened since then…and all that could have played out so differently, not only finding her at all, but the night at the cabin. What if she’d never said anything while she thought he was sleeping? They could have very well gone the rest of their lives believing that what they both wanted could never be.
“Ya’ know, we don’t have t’ stay here t’ be alone,” she said, softly. “There ain’t no one at th’ farm tonight.”
He sat back and gave her a long look. “Maybe I oughta stay somewhere else.”
Daisy leaned forward and kissed him gently. “Maybe ya’ oughta take me home.”
Enos noticed right before he climbed into the car that the headlights had noticeably dimmed since he’d turned them on, and since he’d lost all track of time, he had no idea how long ago that was.
“I hope th’ battery ain’t dead,” he told her, “or else we’re gonna be walkin’ home.”
He turned off the General Lee’s lights before he turned the key. It cranked once, sluggishly, and then again. His eyes met Daisy’s as they waited nervously. On the fourth try, the engine finally turned over and roared to life. She laughed.
“It ain’t funny,” he complained. “Five more minutes an’ we woulda been walkin’.” He backed the car up and spun it around, heading back down Ridge Road. “See now, you’re pickin’ up right where ya’ left off when we was in school.”
“What’re you talkin’ about?”
“Shoot Daisy, you was always gettin’ me in trouble.” He didn’t hear what she said in response, his attention was diverted by a car, less than a half mile ahead of them. By the random movement of it’s headlights, he could tell the driver either wasn’t paying attention or was drunk, and being that they were driving through the heart of moonshine territory, his bet was on the latter.
“Daisy, fasten your seatbelt.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Gosh dang, Daisy, just do it!”
“Okay, okay…” A ‘click’ sounded as she fastened the lap-belt.
He flicked the lights onto the bright setting for a moment, illuminating both sides of the road in front of them. Any other road in Hazzard and it wouldn’t be as big a deal, even if they had to run off into the ditch. Any other road but this one – with one side a hill even the General Lee couldn’t climb and the other side a sheer drop-off into oblivion. He could just make out a turn off ahead, between him and the other car whose lights still wandered crazily back and forth.
It was like one of those damned math problems he’d always hated…th’ ones where you had one car traveling north at 55 mph and one car traveling south at 35 mph and you were supposed to figure out where the blamed things were gonna meet. He’d been cocky one time and written “They don’t ’cause the smart one turned around first before they got there” – for which he’d received an ‘F’ and a couple whacks on the backside.
“Enos…,” Daisy noticed the car in front seemed to be swerving quite a bit. “Enos, th’ car…”
“Yeah, I know, I see it, but there ain’t nowhere t’ go. Hold on…”
He down-shifted and floored it, knowing the only hope of coming out unscathed was to try and make it to the turn-off before the other car. The Charger surged ahead, and Enos struggled to keep one eye on the car in front of them and another on his escape route. Three hundred feet, 200, 100, 50… The other car swerved, but the wrong way and back into their lane. Lights exploded in his vision as he cut the car hard to the right, and Daisy’s scream was the last thing he heard before the crunch of metal…