by: Keith

UNCLE JESSE: Well, boys, as foolish as I feel askin’ this….you two alright?

LUKE: (shrugs) Believe it or not, Uncle Jesse, I ain’t in all that much pain, considerin’.

UNCLE JESSE: How bout you, Bo?

BO: ‘Cept for a couple of cracked ribs, I reckon I’m about the same as Luke.

DOC APPLEBEE: Which, I want you to know, is a miricle in itself. (to Uncle Jesse) Jesse, I’m gonna be blunt. After seeing the General Lee hooked onto Cooter’s tow truck, and seein’ what these boys looked like when they came in here……well, frankly, I should be wheelin’ Bo and Luke down to the morge right now rather than just settin’ a couple of casts on their legs.

LUKE: Aw, come on, Doc…it couldnt’ve been as bad as all that.

DOC APPLEBEE: Oh, it was. It was. Boys, I’ve seen auto accident victims come through here that didn’t look half as bad as you two did. They ended up leavin’ here paralyzed for life. You boys aughtta thank the good lord in your prayers tonight.

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by: Kristy Duke

A small worm of doubt mixed with guilt slowly begins to grow within me as I silently watch Trent slamming the door behind him, leaving me alone with Boss once again. Glancing around at Boss, whose round face is lit up in happiness and joy of another deal done, questions flare wildly within me. Why Garrett and Ethan? Hogg could have put an ad in the paper and he’d have a driver in no time around here where jobs are limited and with plenty of young people in need of a job. Yet he had set out to get Garrett specifically. He may be a Duke, but he’s not like Bo and Luke, Garrett never got in the way, but usually looked the other way. Yet he was the chosen Duke.

“We gone and done it, Rosco,” J.D. Hogg laughs as he grabs another cigar from his top drawer, his dark brown eyes twinkle in the light in his enjoyment, “we got ourselves a new sport shop . . .we’ll make a fortune out of this.”

“If you say so Boss,” I softly respond as I glance through the window lying on the side window to watch an old rusted blue truck pulling into Cooter’s parking lot before glancing back at Hogg.

“You don’t sound so excited, Rosco,” Hogg smiles as he lights his cigar, “I mean I’ll be sharing a big chunk of that money with you.”

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by: Marty Chrisman

“We’ve got him back!” The voice said from a long distance away. Why didn’t they just be quiet and let him alone. He was dead, he heard them say so. He wasn’t supposed to come back. And the pain, so much pain, how could one man live and still be in so much pain. Jesse and the rest of the family was planning their funerals, he’d been there. He’d seen it. He’d seen them both lying in their coffins in the living room at farm. Was he crazy? Had his mind slipped over the edge without him realizing it? He just wanted to retreat back into the darkness where it was safe.

            “Don’t you die on me, boy!” Uncle Jesse’s voice said gruffly in the same tone of voice he used when they were kids and in a lot of trouble. A voice that he had been conditioned since childhood to obey. And he had no choice but to obey. Death would have wait for another day. An alarm sounded shrilly as he drew a breath on his own, fighting the machine that was forcing air in and out of his lungs. Why didn’t somebody shut off that damn thing. It was giving him a worse headache than he already had. Maybe he really was still alive after all. It was all too confusing to try and figure out right now. It still all seemed so real in his mind. He could still feel the intensity of the  pain and the suffering his family and friends had gone through because both of them were dead.

            “Come on, sugar…please open your eyes.” Daisy. He could hear sweet Daisy’s voice begging him to wake up. He could tell that she was crying and he hated to make her cry. But he couldn’t seem to make his body do what he wanted it to do. 

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by: Marty Chrisman

Jesse quietly opened the back door and slipped outside. He walked over to the old picnic table and sat down. He just needed some time alone and a breath of fresh air. The house was crowded with mourners just like it had been for the past two days. Tomorrow Cyrus could come after the boys and take them to church for the service on Saturday afternoon. Jesse’s tired old eyes swept across the barnyard. He could almost see the boys as children climbing the old oak tree or Bo when he was just a little thing chasing the chickens around the barnyard because it was so much fun.

He smiled as he remembered catching them when they were 8 and 12 sampling some of his shine that they’d found hidden in the barn. He whipped them good for that but it wasn’t too many years later that they were right there by his side helping him make the shine and delivering it too. Moonshine was tradition in this part of the country and like most other boys their age it was first hard liquor the boys had ever tasted.

He remembered them building the General Lee out in the barn (with a little help from Cooter) and how proud they had been when they showed the completed car to him for the first time. And lord, them boys could drive but then Jesse could too and he was the one who had taught them everything they knew about handling a car. That car was such a big part of their lives. He knew that Cooter had towed the General out to his farm after the accident and had stored there in barn.

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by: Kristy Duke

Levi Dunning’s dark brown eyes steadily scans through the smokey haze of the crowded bar while his mind slowly turns from thought to thought. ‘Damn, where is he?’ Impatience and frustration intertwines within his broad muscular framed body as he silently looks from face to face of the people that crowd around him in the hick bar. Once again, he glances down at his expensively gold watch to find that the man he is looking for is now a half hour late to steadily increase his frustration. Glancing back up at the people that surrounds him, he takes everything in with a trained eye while his thoughts return to the plan they had created; it had to work. A small smile crawls across his chiseled face as he can’t hide the excitement that begins to spread through him with his thoughts of the plans, the plans that will change the future for everyone in the hick town.

Taking a deep breath, Levi slowly slips back down into his old wooden chair and grabs onto his condensed beer mug and as he brings it up to take another drink from his watered down beer, a small beefy hand lands upon his broad shoulder. Surprise fuels the anger within him as beer melts down the condensed cup and onto his muscular hand that grabs tightly onto the glass handle and he forcefully sets the mug down onto the old torn table clothed table. “Lookin’ for someone?” a deep southern voice comes from behind him as the hand seems to sink into his shoulder. A long moment passes by as Levi fights to control his raging emotions before he glances back to find it to be a short round man dressed in an expensive three piece white suit with a matching Stetson hat. Under his hat was the mans thickly dark gray eye brows above a pair of piercing brown eyes and a thick cigar stuck within the man’s cocky smiling mouth, the cigar clinging desperately between the man’s thick beefy index and middle finger. “Sorry I’m so late,” the man takes his hand off of Levi’s shoulder to pull out an gold pocket watch, “I got hung up at the office.”

“Look Hogg,” Levi’s deep voice brings the attention from a few people that surround his small table before he lower’s his voice, “I’m in no moods for any of your games or for your damn lateness. We agreed upon a time and a date…I was here!”

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