Author's Note: This one's a little different, at least for me. Not my usual subject matter, but it's been in my head for a long time, waiting for me to figure out how to write it. Hopefully I have succeeded, and if I have, I owe it to HazzardHusker and Mirthless Laughter, both of whom encouraged me through it and shared some of their own experiences to help me flesh it out some more. Also, I used the balladeer for the first time ever on this story. Not sure if he'll hang around for other stories, but he's been pretty helpful for this one.

Relevant canon for this chapter is "A Baby for the Dukes" from season six. Dialogue from the episode is included. (And, yeah, the chapter title might seem weird right now. It'll explain itself later, I promise.)

And that's it, other than the usual disclaimers and apologies to the real people who own these characters/played them on TV. Sorry all – I can't seem to stop messing with you!

The Next Fall

September 30, 1983

Friends, welcome to a perfect Hazzard noontime, where the skies are blue, the breeze is filled with the smells of fall flowers and fried chicken, and the sound of guitar strings and singing echoes through the hollows. See that charming little clump of blues and yellows? Them ain't flowers, them's people. More to the point, them's Dukes: Bo, Luke, Daisy and Jesse. Ain't it hard to believe that such a nice-looking bunch of folk is about to jump into the fertilizer with all eight of their feet?

The guitar neck is a warm, familiar fit in his hands, even if his uncle has banned any more playing – dawdling, he calls it, though he'd been content to sing along with the rest of them when he knew the words – for now, condemning them all home for an afternoon of chores. The sun's doing a lazy southward tip that tells the tale of October knocking on the door of September, and the breeze feels cool against sunwarmed skin. There's the promise of the drive-in come dark, which is more of a lawn-chair-in since it'll be in the middle of Hazzard Square. A white sheet stretched from one tree to the next, an old projector on the stump with a long extension cord running across the road and into the courthouse, and a movie that's at least five years old and wasn't popular even then, but it's an annual tradition in Hazzard. Everyone goes, even Boss Hogg, who collects two dollars from each person in the vicinity. Even if it's not his event.

"Someone's got to pay for the electricity," he always simpers and there's no one that can dispute that fact so they mostly cough up the money without too much complaining. Then they buy his popcorn, too, even though it's far too expensive, isn't real corn and the yellowish stuff on top sure isn't butter. The whole snack is mostly constructed out of salt crystals, which ensures a thirsty crowd that will buy watery cokes to wash it down.

It's all worth it though, for the girls. And the courting, and the darkness, and the blankets spread out on the grass. Yep, it's going to be a fine night, once the guitars are stowed, the chores done and dinner—

And then anything that might have been simple, easy and fun about the day – heck about the whole year – gets lost in reality when Luke walks ahead of the rest of them, right up to the General Lee as though he trusts that their car would never betray them.

"Hey, y'all," he says, interrupting an intense discussion of popcorn (that's really just a conversation about the night's activities, cleverly disguised so Uncle Jesse won't get to lecturing them about the shenanigans they really plan to get up to once the sun's light fades completely from the square). "Hey, we got company here." Luke's guitar gets leaned against the side of the General, like so much forgotten kindling, and his cousin's reaching into the shotgun seat, hands wide and gentle, half a soft smile on his face. "He's got some kind of note pinned to him."

No, Bo wants to say. Stop. Let's just go back up the slope, unpack our picnic basket, settle our guitars across our knees, sing about cowboys and Duke boys and forget anything at all about company, especially this kind.

But he doesn't, he moves forward out of instinct, arms outstretched to take what Luke offers him with practiced hands.

Daisy's there, hot and close, leaving Bo caught somewhere between being angry at her for snatching away what Luke was trying to hand him, and relieved that his arms are still free. Relief wins out when there's a small cry from his right, where Daisy stands, and steady reading from his left, where Luke has uncrumpled the note that was held in a tiny fist.

"'Dear Duke family, please take care of my baby. Some bad people are trying to steal him from me. And please don't give him up to the authorities. I'll come back to your house for him as soon as I can. Thank you with all my heart, Jamey's mother.'"

This one's got a mother, and more than that, a mother that's coming back for him. Soon, it sounds like, maybe today and that would be for the best. If none of them had to feed this baby, to change him or bathe him or—

And at least he has a name. That alone saves more trouble than anyone would guess.

"Who the heck is Jamey's mother?" And where is she, and what does she think she's doing – no, it's not her fault. If she figures there are bad folks out to kidnap her baby, it's a cinch that she'd leave him with the Dukes. Odds are, she doesn't know any better. It's been more than a year and it was summer, a season for planting and tending and watering and otherwise worrying about crops. There's plenty of folk in town who never even knew.

Now if you're wondering what old Bo's thinking about there, well, some things ain't easy for a man to put words to, even in his own mind. So if he can't or won't get around to telling you the story, don't you worry none. It'll get told all the same.

"I hate to say this but," Jesse butts in, looking from Bo and Luke to the bundle wrapped in blue and back again. "I guess we'd better take him by and give him to Rosco or somebody."

Daisy has an argument to make against that notion. Jostling, cuddling, kissing and fussing, she makes it right into the baby's face. "Uncle Jesse!" She looks to her each of cousins for support, though it's doubtful she finds much there. "That's just what she said not to do!" The baby gets bounced in her arms, like that's going to soothe a kid who's been dumped off in a stranger's car, passed from one set of arms to another and subjected to the raised voices of strangers. The instinct rises up to take the baby from her until she can calm herself and talk quietly, but that would mean holding him. Smelling the baby powder his mother must have put on him an hour – maybe two – ago, feeling his trusting weight, looking into his eyes. Blue eyes, most likely, the color of Luke's. But Bo doesn't know for sure because he's been keeping himself at arm's length from the baby. "She begged us not to take him to the authorities!"

Luke, he notices, is also doing a fine job of keeping himself at a distance from the little one. Making faces like he's annoyed by Daisy's words, and just maybe he is. Maybe he's more annoyed that she's right.

"Well, uh," their uncle stumbles, looking to him, to Luke, for help. "There you go, little feller," seals the deal, though. Jesse's done what no one other than Daisy's really been willing to do up until now. He's let the baby have a small square of his heart. His big old hand pats gruffly on the tiny shoulder. "I suppose we could take him by the house and change him and clean him up a little bit and maybe feed him." It's a question, and it's posed at his two nephews. Do you want to? Is this a good idea or will it send you running for the hills again?

Now friends, I know you're asking yourself why Jesse Duke would be wondering if it's a good idea to help out a neighbor by feeding and changing her helpless baby, and you'll get the answers, I promise. But first we've got to get this poor little critter safely back to the Duke farm and make him comfortable. It just ain't safe for a baby to be standing with the Dukes on the side of the road. Not with how passing cars have a bad habit of aiming themselves in all manner of strange directions when the Duke boys are around.

Well, honestly, what are they supposed to say? No? We've been down this road before and it's a dead end with nothing but concrete to stop the momentum? Luke agrees it's a good idea and Bo makes sure he's got the car keys so they can take the baby home with them. They all crawl in their various windows and get underway.

The true test of their commitment to bringing the little one back to their house comes in the form of lights and sirens and clouds of dust kicking up behind them.

"What a time for Rosco to show up," Luke grumbles, which isn't really fair to their sheriff. After all, the man lives in this town, too; simple happenstance will cause them to cross paths with him every now and then. And there hasn't been a single time in the past decade that it's been a good time for Rosco to show up.

Daisy begs him from the back seat to keep the sheriff from getting any closer to her and the baby she's cradling like it's her own and she means to keep it. Quit that, he wants to tell her. That kind of thing can only end in misery. Especially with Jamey's mother out here somewhere, planning on reclaiming the kid any second now.

"Well, I got to drive careful so the baby don't get too shook up," he says like an echo of words that he's heard a few times before. Maybe even going back a bunch of years when he and Luke were shuttling Mary Kaye Porter around and she was just about big enough to burst. Slowing down and being protective used to go against every instinct he had; now it just seems natural.

Luke, who has taken to the back with Daisy (and Bo figures that's almost as bad an idea as the way his girl cousin's letting herself get attached to little Jamey), offers to hang on to the baby, leaving Bo free to drive any way he wants. He ought to be grateful for the opportunity.

He's not, not when it comes at the price of the careful balance of peace that he and Luke have finally managed to find over the past few months.

Losing Rosco at Joe Kemper's roadside vegetable stand is as easy as breathing. It's like a magic trick – a bright-colored distraction on the side of the road is bound to draw the sheriff's full attention and attract him like a magnet. It makes Daisy happy to see an end to the chase, but Bo can't help but notice that Luke keeps on hand on the baby's carrier, even after the danger is gone.

This is not a good idea, he wants to holler. Let's turn right back around and peel the bananas and tomatoes off of Rosco's cruiser, find the sheriff buried underneath, and hand him that little fella, carrier and all. He's good with babies, speaks their language fluently. He can get Jamey to 'fess up to who his mother is and we can just go home and forget that any of this ever happened. A little popcorn, a little movie, a little necking with whichever pretty girl makes herself most available and the day can just get right back onto the tracks it started out on. Perfectly safe tracks, which lead to well-known destinations. None of these crazy side-tracks leading to Dukes raising babies…

But he doesn't turn around, doesn't surrender the child to the authorities (maybe because he doesn't want to surrender his eyes to Daisy's fingernails), he just gets them home, safe sound and with one extra mouth to feed.

"I sure don't see how we're going to take care of a baby here at the farm," he announces to a kitchen filled with his kin, all of them making goo-goo eyes at the kid like they haven't learned a thing. Heck, even Mary Kaye could have told them – the Duke farm is a nice place for a baby to visit for an hour or two, but it's no place that one should live. (Himself aside – there are pictures of Bo, grinning widely despite his lack of teeth and hair, sitting in the old high chair that was his father's before him, in this same kitchen, at this same table.)

"Well, don't you worry about it!" Daisy snaps at him, claiming what she figures is her rightful place at the center of this particular crisis. "I'll take care of him." Sitting at the table, arms full of baby that she jiggles and jostles like she doesn't know any better. It would seem that she should have learned something, somewhere along the line. He looks to Luke, who looks away and shrugs. Let her do what she wants, the gesture says.

"It's going to be kind of fun having a little tyke around the house again," Jesse concurs from the stove where he's heating a bottle in that old iron pan with an energy that's been missing from his movements for the past year or so. Stop, Bo wants to say again, as the conversation tumbles over that familiar stony ground of how little he and Luke were when they first came here, who cried and who was sullen and quiet. This can't end happily. Even little Jamey cries about what he somehow knows is coming.

"Luke," Bo says, because he can't just stand here, keeping a safe distance from the kid while Daisy holds onto him like she used to hold her dolls. Like she means to keep him in a tiny crib in her room. "I sure feel sorry for him." It sounds about right, sounds like what he ought to say. Much better than I feel sorry for us. "Why don't we go out and try to find his mama?"

Luke starts to formulate a plan like they all know he will. Like he did last time this very thing happened, and Bo can only hope it turns out a little better this time than it did before.