by: Marty Chrisman

Luke spent a sleepless, restless night worrying about Kelly. When she wasn’t in school the next day, he had the awful feeling that something was wrong. Unable to shake the nameless dread he felt deep inside of him, he cut his afternoon classes and walked back towards the farm. But, instead of going home, he cut across the fields and headed towards the shack where Kelly lived with her parents.

When the old rundown shack came in sight, Luke felt a cold chill run down his spine. It was too quiet, much too quiet. Everything instinct he had screamed at him to run, to go home and get Jesse. But his concern for Kelly over ruled his common sense. Slowly he walked across the dirt yard and stepped up onto the rickety old porch. The eerie silence gave him the creeps but he had to make sure that Kelly was okay.

The front door gapped open an inch or two, but Luke couldn’t hear any sounds from inside the house. He felt the goose bumps on his arms and the hair on the back of his neck standing on end. Something was wrong, very very wrong. He could feel it. Slowly, he reached out and pushed open the door, hesitating for several seconds before finally stepping across the threshold.

A strangled cry caught in his chest, and he stumbled back until he hit the wall behind him. His eyes widened with horror at what he saw. Kelly’s mother was lying half on the couch and half off, her eyes wide open. Her throat had been cut and the blood had pooled on the floor beneath her body. Kelly’s father was sitting in a chair next to the front window. Most of his head was gone, blown away by the shotgun lying across his lap. Luke heard himself whimpering like a child as his mind tried to block out what he was seeing.

Continue reading →

by: Marty Chrisman

            Over the next couple of months, the bond between Luke and Kelly deepened. They snuck away as much as they could to be alone and Kelly practically lived at the Duke farm. If anyone else noticed the shift in their relationship, nobody said anything to either one of them. It was getting harder and harder to hide the way they really felt, but Kelly was terrified of her father finding out that she was in love with Luke.

“What can he do?” Luke asked Kelly with just a trace of impatience in his voice  “You’ll be eighteen in a couple of years. Then he can’t stop you from leaving and doing whatever you want.” They were hidden away in the hayloft, where they had been discussing the same thing for almost an hour.

“Luke, you don’t know my father. He’d kill me if he found out about you and me.” She sighed with a far away look in her eyes “He keeps trying to keep me from coming over here as it is.”

“Why don’t we talk to Jesse? I’m sure he could help us figure something out.”

“No, I don’t want to involve Uncle Jesse.” Kelly said in a determined voice.

Continue reading →

by: Marty Chrisman

After supper was over and the dishes done, the family gathered in the living room. Daisy and Kelly watched TV, while the boys played a game of checkers. Around nine o’clock, Jesse left to make his deliveries, reminding them all to make sure they were in bed by ten. When Daisy went upstairs to take a shower, Luke walked over to Kelly and bent down, whispering in her ear “Meet me in the barn after Daisy goes to sleep.” Kelly smiled and nodded

They all went upstairs at ten o’clock. Kelly and Daisy went to Daisy’s room, which was across the hall from Uncle Jesse. The boys went to their room at the other end of the hallway. The girls got ready for bed and climbed under the covers. Kelly lay there in the darkness listening to the sound of Daisy’s breathing, waiting for her to fall asleep.

An hour later, Kelly slipped out of bed and quickly pulled on her jeans and blouse. Barefoot, she left the bedroom and quietly made her way down the hallway in the dark. Opening the back door, she ran across the barnyard and into the barn. A couple of chickens squawked then settled back on their perch, momentarily disturbed by her presence. She climbed the old wooden ladder that led up to the hayloft. She paused for a moment to let her eyes adjust to the darkness of the loft, the only light in the barn was from the moonlight that filtered in through the cracks in the walls.

She yelped in surprise as she felt Luke suddenly wrap his arms around her from behind. He laughed softly, as she leaned back against him, knowing that he was lucky she didn’t sock him for scaring her. For the last couple of weeks they had been meeting like this in the loft after everyone else had gone to bed. With Jesse gone on a run, they knew they’d have several hours alone before they would have to sneak into the house and go back to bed.

Continue reading →

by: Marty Chrisman

Luke Duke leaned against the old Oak tree, his sapphire blue eyes focused on the ridge off to his left. At seventeen, Luke was already a handsome young man with a lean build and well developed muscles earned from working for years on his Uncle Jesse’s farm. Luke had lived in Hazzard County his whole life with his Uncle Jesse and his cousins, Bo and Daisy. Luke couldn’t remember his real parents, they had died when he was four and he had been sent to live with Jesse and his wife, Martha. All he really knew about his life before coming to live on the farm was that his father, Adam, had been Jesse’s younger brother and that his parents had died when their house caught on fire.

As far as Luke was concerned, he couldn’t have asked for a better life than the one he had. The Dukes may not have much in the way of material things, but they had each other and that was all that they needed. Daisy was just like his little sister and Bo, well Bo and Luke were as closer than brothers. Uncle Jesse kept a tight rein on the three cousins, but he did it with love and with kindness. Although Bo and Luke were almost full grown, Uncle Jesse didn’t hesitate to take a switch to their backside if he felt they needed it.

Luke’s eyes brightened and a huge smile crossed his face as he saw a girl coming over the top of the ridge. Kelly Dalton lived in a rundown shack just on the other side of the ridge with her violent, abusive father and her mother. The Duke cousins had met Kelly almost 8 years ago when her parents first came to Hazzard. Since then, Kelly had become part of the family, spending more time at the Duke farm then she did at home. The Dukes all knew how violent her father was, they had all seen the bruises Kelly sometimes had after one of his beatings, but Luke was the only one who knew all of Kelly’s darkest secrets.

Continue reading →