Disclaimer: I don't own Psych or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Psych-Os like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

Rating: T+

Spoilers: Few, though most strongly from episode "High Noon-ish."

Wild West Show

"Hey! Drop your weapon and come peaceably."

"Well, Sheriff, I ain't exactly a peaceful man."

The two men stared each other down across the dusty street. The man in the black hat reached for his gun, but the sheriff in his white hat was faster. His 1873 Colt Peacemaker let out an authoritative bang and the man in the black hat flew back and landed in the dirt. The sheriff twirled his gun and holstered it. The tourists applauded politely.

The boy with the bright blue eyes blinked once, for the first time since well before the showdown started, and then sidled towards the blacksmith's shop. The sheriff turned around, prepared to walk back into his office and forget about the tourists until the next show, until he spotted the boy. He didn't often make note of tourists, particularly children, but he noticed something odd about the boy straight off.

He was alone.

No anxious mother called out to him not to wander off. No father took his hand or hoisted him onto his shoulders. No, the little boy with the dark hair and the bright eyes was completely on his own, and he didn't seem weepy like a child who'd been separated accidentally. He was just poking around Old Sonora like alone was his natural condition, and it made Sheriff Hank Mendel more than a little unnerved to see it.

Still, it was none of his business. Most likely the boy's folks were somewhere about, surely.

Surely.

Sheriff Hank entered his office and sat down at the table inside, prepared to forget all about the strange little boy as he dealt himself a hand of Solitaire. He didn't see the boy when he went out again the next hour to shoot down the town villain once more, and he put the last of his worries aside then. It wasn't uncommon for youngsters to roam about Old Sonora while their parents stayed in the saloon. That was all it was. He didn't know why he was left with an uncomfortable certainty, deep in his heart, that the little boy he'd seen had been more profoundly on his own than that.

"Hank? Hank! Hank!" The desk clerk from Old Sonora's one small hotel ran up the street toward him.

"What is it?" Hank asked.

"We've, uh…got a 'situation' at the hotel."

Hank started walking that direction. "What kind of situation?"

"It's…uh…just kind of…weird," the clerk said. "I left him there with Miss Chelsie."

"Left who with Miss Chelsie?" Hank asked, with what he felt was remarkable patience.

"The…the, uh…the boy."

Hank stopped dead in his tracks. "Little boy, ten, maybe eleven years old? Dark hair, some kind a' damn blue eyes?"

"You've seen him, then."

Hank resumed walking toward the hotel. "I seen 'im. What kind of devilry is he up to?"

"He wants a room for the night," the clerk said.

Hank stopped again. "What's wrong with that?" he asked.

"Well, Hank, he's…uh…alone. No parents."

Hank started walking again. "I'll talk to 'im, see what's up."

Hank entered the hotel. The lobby was small, and Miss Chelsie took up most of it. She wasn't inordinately fat, only on the chunky side, but her voluminous skirts made up the difference, along with her rather monumental breasts that spilled out over the tight corset she wore, just this side of totally indecent. Miss Chelsie was just an actress, but she took her role as one of the town's prostitutes more seriously than most. She was always to be found flirting with male tourists, and right now she had her attention fixed on the underdeveloped specimen at her side who was pointedly looking anywhere but at her.

"Oh hey, Sweetie-britches, here's Hank. He'll sort this mess out," she said in her lazy drawl. She tweaked one of the boy's slightly overlarge ears and he jerked away from her. "Take it easy on the kid, Hank. He's a little cutie-patootie."

"What seems to be the problem here?" Hank asked, with his thumbs under his belt. He looked down at the boy and tried to size him up, but found he couldn't. There was something off about the kid, and he didn't know what it was.

"I just want to rent a room, that's all," the boy said. "I've got money, and the sign out front said there's a vacancy."

"Where's yer folks, young'un?" Hank asked.

The boy's blue eyes shifted and he shuffled uncomfortably. "What do you mean?" he asked, as if stalling for time.

"Yer Momma an' Poppa. They in town? Maybe at the saloon?"

The boy shook his head.

"Then where are they?" Hank asked.

"I don't know. Mom dropped me off this morning, said she'd pick me up tomorrow afternoon. She gave me money, told me to get a room here."

Hank squatted down in front of the boy so they were at eye-level with each other. "You ain't tellin' a fib, are ya?" he said. "Yer Momma dropped you off; you didn't run away from home?"

"I don't run away!" the little boy said, in clear outrage at the very suggestion.

Hank held up his hands placatingly. "All right, okay. You didn't run away. Where's home, young'un, an' how far away from it are ya?"

The boy looked at him consideringly for a long moment, then reluctantly said, "Santa Barbara. Sir."

"A fair stretch from here. How old are you, young'un?"

"Eleven."

"Mighty young to be runnin' around on yer lonesome. Tell me exactly what happened today. Was this a planned trip, or did it take you by surprise?"

The boy's eyes, blue as the skies on the bluest of days, opened wider, and Hank saw deep down in them the slightest flicker of what might have been fear, and he realized that was what was off about the boy. He radiated lots of emotions - embarrassment, suspicion, frustration - but before that moment there hadn't been the slightest whiff of fear about him.

"It…it…it was kind of a surprise," the boy said, mumbling now.

"Have you ever been here before?" Hank asked.

"No, Sir."

"Tell me how it came about, Sonny. Don't be scared."

There was more than just a flicker of fear in those blue, blue eyes now. Hank wondered just what the kid was thinking about.

"Mama works all week," the boy said at last, still not speaking in much more than a mumble. "I look after Geena and Lincoln - my little brother and sister - while she works. They don't…they don't mind me real well, but I do my best."

"I bet you do. It's a lot of responsibility, bein' the Big Brother," Hank said, with a smile he hoped was reassuring. The boy blushed.

"Anyway, Mama has weekends off. And today, well…Geena was all upset over something she wanted to do that Mama wouldn't let her do. She's ten, but she doesn't look after herself very well. If Mama let her run off to play with her friends by themselves Geena would get herself kidnapped or something even worse. I tried to explain it to her, and promised I'd take her out to play later after I got my homework done, but she wouldn't stop pitching a fit. And Lincoln…well, he's just five, and can't really help being a pain in the rump at all times. He made everything worse by copying Geena's crying and screaming, in between trying to run out into the street and get himself run over by cars. He's always doing that. Running into the street, I mean. Kid has a death wish. So I'm trying to do my homework and I'm trying to shut Geena up and I'm trying to keep Lincoln from killing himself, and Mama's on the couch with a headache, and the house is louder than a machine shop and finally, just when I've gotten to the point where I sat on Lincoln and put my hand over Geena's mouth, Mama jumps up off the couch and shouts 'I can't take it anymore!' Then she gives me a big hug and tells me to get my homework, and she piles us all in the car and drives us here."

"So there's two more little ones runnin' 'round here?" Hank asked in alarm.

"No, Sir. Mama didn't let them out of the car. Just…just me." The boy took a deep breath in and let it out in a rush of words. "She said she's picking me up tomorrow but what if she just leaves me here I mean I was trying to keep everything under control it's not my fault I can't always shut those two up Mama wouldn't just dump me…would she?"

"Calm down, young'un, I'm sure she'll be back for ya," Hank said, and hoped mightily that was true. "Tell me, though - what are you doin' with homework in the middle of summer?"

The boy grimaced. "Gramma was a schoolteacher 'til she retired. She makes me do book reports all summer long, and she makes me do them over and over until she'd give me an A on them, too."

"Just you? Not the other two?"

"They're not dyslexic, Sir," the little boy said.

"So you have a hard time with regular schoolwork," Hank said. "Gramma's tryin' to help you."

"Yes, Sir."

"Where's yer Poppa while all this was goin' on today?" Hank asked.

The little boy's face twisted up into the most remarkable expression of disgust. "He's in jail again," he said, almost as though he spit the words out onto the floor.

Hank sighed and stood up. He reached out and clapped a hand to the boy's back, but the boy winced away from the contact, gentle as it was. Hank's brow furrowed in concern.

"What's the matter, young'un? That hurt?" he asked.

"N-n-n-no, Sir," the boy said, too wide-eyed.

"Yes, it did," Hank said. "I can see for myself it did. What's wrong with yer back?"

"Nothing, Sir, I swear."

"You got a lousy poker face, kid. Pull up yer shirt, let me see."

The boy rolled his eyes and sighed deeply, but did as commanded. On his narrow back were a number of livid black bruises and red welts, some of which looked like they were made by hands and some of which looked like they were made by a belt.

"Lord a' Mercy, boy, who whopped you so bad?" Hank asked. The boy tugged his shirttails down and made something of a production of tucking them back in his slacks.

"Nobody, Sir. It's nothing. He's in jail."

"Oh Lordy, Hank, his Daddy did it," Miss Chelsie said, with a groan.

"It's no big deal. It doesn't hurt," the boy insisted. "Daddy gets drunk, he gets mean. Sometimes he tries to beat on Mama, but I won't let him. It's not right to hit a lady. And I'm dang sure not going to let him beat on Geena or Lincoln."

Miss Chelsie threw her hands in the air. "So you think it's all right for him to beat on you? Honey child, he shouldn't be putting his hands on nobody!"

"I know that, but better me than Geena or Lincoln. It's no big deal. I can take it. I'm tough," the little boy said. "Mama calls me her little Spartan." He said this last with obvious pride, but then deflated somewhat when he remembered he wasn't sure whether his Mama had abandoned him or not.

"What are we gonna do, Hank?" the desk clerk asked.

"Well, for one thing, we're gonna rent the boy a room for the night," Hank said. "His Momma'll be here tomorrow like she promised. We'll just look out for him 'til then."

"I'll look after 'im," Miss Chelsie said. She grabbed the boy's head and pressed him against her enormous, satin-clad bosom. "He's a cutie-patootie."

The boy squirmed out of her hold and smoothed back his mussed hair. His face was as red as a fire engine. "Thank you, Ma'am, but I really need to do my homework. I was just going to spend the rest of the day in the hotel room working on it. I don't need to be babysat."

"Will it take you all the rest of today to get yer homework done?" Hank asked.

"Well…no. The report is written, I'm just checking it over. For spelling errors, that kind of thing. Gramma is real nit-picky about spelling. Well, it kinda goes to figure, I suppose, but sometimes I wish she'd cut me just a little slack about it. I usually put in all the right letters, I just don't always get them all in exactly the right order. But I'm big enough to look after myself. I won't be any trouble. I'll just stay in the room."

"Oo! I'll spellcheck it!" Miss Chelsie said, excitedly. "I'm a good speller. I won a ribbon in the annual spelling bee back home."

"I don't doubt yer a good speller, Miss Chelsie," Hank said, with a smile crinkling up the corners of his eyes, "but I think you make the boy a mite uncomfortable, maybe because you keep callin' 'im 'cutie-patootie.' Or because yer dressed as a hooker."

"Little bit of both," the boy said.

Hank laughed and ruffled the boy's hair. The boy smoothed it out again immediately, but his shy smile indicated he didn't mind the messing.

"Tell you what, kiddo; you finish up yer homework an' come meet me at the Sheriff's Office up the street. We'll figger out somethin' to do more fun than hangin' 'round in a hotel room all the rest a' the afternoon," Hank said.

The boy blushed again. "That's okay, Sir. I don't need babysitting."

"Didn't say I was gonna babysit ya. Gets awful dull sittin' 'round between shootouts. Might be nice to have someone t' talk to. Maybe we could play some poker."

"I don't know how to play poker, Sir."

"Well, then, I'll teach ya," Hank said.

The boy wanted to say yes, Hank could tell, but something was holding him back. There was still an air of suspicion surrounding him, but mostly, from the look deep in those sky blue eyes, it was a simple disinclination to make a pest of himself for the adults. Hank thought this was a boy who preferred to be invisible to grownups as much as possible.

"Come on, kid," Hank said. "Whaddaya say?"

A faint flicker in those big eyes heralded a chink in the wall this young man had already built tall and strong around his heart. "If you're sure I won't be a bother, Sir," he said, in a very quiet voice.

"If you're afraid you'll be a bother, I'll happily throw you in jail for a couple a' hours. Then you won't be able to be," Hank said. "We can play poker through the bars."

The boy laughed and ducked his head to hide his quick grin. "Okay," he said.

The desk clerk set the boy up with the key to room three, and the boy zipped out of the hotel to where he'd left his homework sitting in the lee of the apothecary building. He returned to the hotel and went up to his room, where he ran through the proofreading of his book report with a speed he'd never before achieved. It still took him the better part of forty-five minutes, and he caught three spelling errors that his grandmother would have taken him to task over. He carefully recopied the report onto fresh paper and prayed that he hadn't made any new spelling mistakes because his eyes and brain hurt and he didn't want to reread the new copy for errors. He would hand his grandmother the report after Sunday dinner, assuming he hadn't been abandoned here, and there was not a chance in hell she would not give him another assignment at that time. This week she'd made him read The Great Gatsby. Next week it could be Ulysses or Moby Dick. Something difficult for an ordinary eleven year old to read and comprehend, let alone a dyslexic, and woe be unto him if he didn't have the report ready to hand in after Sunday dinner like always. Gramma wasn't a proponent of the belt, like his father, but she had a fondness for wooden rulers that was almost as painful.

The effect of this training was giving him a tremendous early grounding in classic literature that would come in handy when he entered high school and carry him well into college as well, but it was also making him hate the act of reading, which was reduced to a kind of torture. The only book his grandmother had made him read that he'd actually enjoyed was White Fang, and he felt great sympathy for the main character, even though it was not human. He had his own Beauty Smiths in his life, and hoped someday to find a home of peace like the wolf at last did. Like White Fang, he knew he would gladly lay down his life for that home, and that family. His family. The family he would choose for himself.

Even at eleven, some small part of himself knew that he was being forged in a manner that would make it difficult to relate to that family, just as it was difficult for White Fang. He knew next to nothing of gentleness or kindness. His father was outright abusive but his mother wasn't much better. She kept her hands off of him but her tongue was sharp and her voice was loud. Gramma, her mother, was much the same, with the exception of the rulers. The women loved him, and he knew it, but they were bad at showing it. He'd long since given up the hope that his father loved him in any small way, though on the rare occasions the man was sober and around he was almost tolerable. His mother had told him once that his father, dead sober, could charm a nun out of her habit and her vow of celibacy. He didn't quite know what that meant, but he'd never seen much sign of any charm in his father himself. He sometimes wished he could. Mostly he was just grateful for all the times his father wasn't around, like when he was in jail.

Like now.

It was bookmaking this time around. Usually it was for things like disturbing the peace, public intoxication, driving under the influence, assault. Sooner or later they were going to get sick of constantly arresting him and throw him in jail forever. The boy wouldn't be sorry when that happened. The times his father spent in jail stood out in his memory as oases of peace compared to the times he was home. No one was beaten and his mother was only half as loud and maybe a third as vicious. There would be time before they let him out again for the bruises from this latest beating to fade, though the memory was doubtless indelible.

The boy sat where he was for a long moment, not thinking about his father or his mother or anything except the report he'd just rewritten and the sheriff's offer of a game of poker. He had a learning disability but he was far from stupid. He knew he was being babysat. No adult would willingly spend time with him. But he'd seen his father play poker with his loud, beery friends and it…it looked like it might be kind of fun. He hoped it wasn't hard to learn. Adults were, in his experience, impatient teachers. Like Gramma, who would brook no excuses that a week wasn't long enough for a dyslexic eleven year-old to read and comprehend Moby Dick, even with his own babysitting duties to contend with.

He got up, shuffled the papers together neatly and laid them aside. He left the hotel room and headed out to the street, where Sheriff Hank was once again blowing away Stinky Pete, the town villain. He watched the production, applauded politely with everyone else, and when the Sheriff turned and met his eyes, he returned the man's slow nod with one of his own. Sheriff Hank waited for him to cross the street to the Sheriff's Office, and held the door open for him.

True to his word, the first thing Hank did was lock him in the one jail cell at the back of the room, where there was a cot, a bucket that was probably meant to be the toilet, and a small three-legged stool. Then he pulled the card table over to the bars and sat at the other side of it and began shuffling a deck of cards with an expert's hand.

The boy pulled the stool over to the bars and sat as close to the table as he could. He sat quietly, with his hands folded on the table through the bars, and waited.

"Before I deal a hand of cards to a man, I like to know his name," Hank drawled.

"CJ, Sir," the boy said.

"That's not a name, that's initials," Hank said. "What's yer name, boy?"

"Carlton. But nobody calls me that."

"I can see why. Kind of a stuffy name for a kid. S'a good name, though. Strong."

The boy's nose wrinkled in an expression of disgust. "It's my dad's middle name."

"An' you don't like it?" Hank asked.

The boy shrugged. "It's my name. Can't really do anything about it one way or the other."

"You'll grow into it," Hank said. "What's the J stand for?"

The boy's nose wrinkled again. "Jebediah."

Hank laughed outright. "Another name you can't do anything about one way or another, eh? Still, it's a good name. It's an old name. A western name."

"What's your name?" the boy asked.

"Henry. But folks 'round these parts call me Hank."

"That's a good name," the boy said.

"Well, you go right ahead an' call me Hank, an' I'll go ahead an' call you 'CJ,' even though that ain't a name."

Hank dealt the cards, and showed the boy the basics of five card stud. He proved to be an able and most importantly patient instructor, and the boy picked it up fairly easily. At the end of an hour's instruction, when Hank had to go out and shoot Stinky Pete again, he came back with Miss Chelsie and Stinky Pete himself and they played a real hand of poker. The adults did not patronize the boy, and he lost every hand, but he liked it, because he lost honestly. They treated him like just another adult, not an annoying little kid. Then some tourists came into the Sheriff's Office and the woman asked why there was a little boy sitting locked up in jail.

"Little boy? Why ma'am, that there's Peewee McGee, the meanest hombre ever to come outta Santa Barbara. He's wanted in six counties for robbin', rustlin', murder an' bad singin'. Took twelve deputies to haul 'im in, an' we have to keep a special close watch on 'im. Ain't a jail made can hold 'im," Hank said.

The woman looked at the boy, and the boy looked right back at her. His lip curled in the faintest of sneers. She fidgeted and looked away. The boy sternly repressed the urge to laugh.

The rest of the day passed in the same way. Poker games, with a shifting cast of extras coming in to take their seats as third and fourth hands, being made part of the tour when tourists stumbled in to gawp. The boy didn't mind this, and played along willingly. There was distinct appeal in pretending to be someone else, even for a moment. Eventually, however, Hank pulled the table back to its original position and came over to unlock the cell door.

"Suppertime, CJ. I expect yer hungry by now."

An understatement. The boy was famished.

"You'll find the cuisine at the saloon is kinda limited," Hank said. "I hope you like beans."

"I'll eat anything that doesn't eat me first, Sir," the boy said, and Hank laughed.

"Didn't I tell ya to call me Hank? Go on; I told the saloonkeeper to give you whatever you want, on the house. Try the buffalo burger."

"Sounds good. Does it come with beans?" the boy said, grinning.

"Yes, it does," Hank said. "Go on, now, an' eat, you little blue-eyed devil."

The sun was on the wester, and Old Sonora was quiet, nearly devoid of tourists. The saloon was still open, and the saloonkeeper looked up from wiping down the deserted bar as the boy walked in.

"Ah, you must be the young fella Hank told me about," he said. "What'll it be, Son?"

"Sheriff Hank recommended the buffalo burger, Sir," the boy said.

"An excellent choice. And what can I get you to drink? Mescal? Bourbon? Root beer?"

The boy laughed. "Root beer, please."

"Coming right up."

With an expert flourish, the saloonkeeper deftly flicked the cap off a frosty bottle of IBC root beer and slid it down the length of the bar to the boy. He caught it and climbed up onto one of the stools to sit.

Miss Chelsie was at the back of the saloon, chatting with the piano player. She finished up her conversation and walked up a few steps of the stairs at the back of the saloon to stick her head up into the next floor.

"Girls, come downstairs. He's here," she said. In a moment, a small bevy of similarly-clad women came bouncing downstairs: the three other actresses that played the town's women of ill-repute. At the same moment the saloonkeeper slid a tin plate of beans and a whopping big burger in front of the boy, the women surrounded him, leaning against the bar or perching themselves on nearby stools.

"Isn't he just the cutest thing?" Miss Chelsie cooed. It seemed the other women agreed with her assessment.

"Look at those eyes. Have you ever seen eyes that blue before?" one of the women, a redhead, said.

The boy kept his blue eyes fixed on his plate and ate unhurriedly.

"You know what my Mama would call eyes like those?" another woman, a blonde, said. "Panty-droppers, that's what she'd call 'em."

The boy choked on his beans, and Miss Chelsie pounded on his back with some vigor until, with a gasp, she remembered the condition of his bruises.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, cutie," she said.

"S'okay," he said, in a strangled voice. He took a deep pull from his bottle of root beer and hoped the well-chilled liquid would cool the flush of embarrassment on his cheeks.

The third prostitute, who was dark-haired, reached out and ran her fingers through the boy's hair. "You're Irish, ain't ya? I can tell. With Irish charm and those big, blue eyes, you're gonna be a real heartbreaker when you grow up."

Hank walked in through the swinging doors and rescued the boy from these attentions, scattering the actresses like a flock of birds. He took a seat next to the boy and the saloonkeeper passed him a beer.

"Girls must bother on you all the time," Hank said, after he swallowed a swig.

"Not really, Sir," the boy said.

"Didn't I tell you to call me Hank?"

"Yeah."

"So what's with this 'sir' business?"

The boy grinned. "Force of habit, Sir."

"Well, get over it. My name's Hank, not 'sir.' How's yer burger?"

"It's good."

"Interestin'. Don't look to me like you've taken so much as a bite out of it yet," Hank observed.

"That's because I was distracted by these wonderful beans," the boy said, with a huge grin. "But I'm sure it's delicious…Hank."

"Now we're gettin' somewhere," Hank said. He took another swig of beer. "Tell me about yerself, kid. What kind of history you got in yer family? My ancestry traces back to Daniel Boone. Got any branches like that on yer family tree?"

The boy took a bite of burger, chewed, and swallowed. "Both of my parents are big into genealogy," he said, with an air of reluctant acceptance. "I'm not sure why my Dad's so into it, since most of his relatives seem to be horse thieves, but there was a Civil War Colonel in his line, Muscomb Tiberius Lassiter. Mom's big claim to fame is that she's got some real tenebrous connection to Abraham Lincoln, which is how my little brother got saddled with his name."

"Tenebrous? That's a big word for a little boy," Hank said. In truth, he wasn't entirely sure what it meant.

"All those book reports Gramma makes me do. If nothing else, they really improve my vocabulary," the boy said.

"What kind of things does she make you read?" Hank asked.

"Tough things. Things that really weren't meant to be read by a kid, you know? This last one was The Great Gatsby. Last week it was 'The Miller's Tale' from The Canterbury Tales. She hasn't told me yet what grade she'd give me on that paper, but I bet it isn't good. I have enough trouble reading things that are written in modern English, and that was not written in anything even vaguely resembling modern English."

"'The Miller's Tale?' Dad gum, CJ, that ain't literature for young'uns, is it? Not just because it's tough to read. Did you…understand what it was about?"

"I don't have the first clue, Hank," the boy said, and Hank laughed, slightly relieved despite himself. He'd never actually read "The Miller's Tale," but he'd heard it was dirty and knew it had been banned in many schools.

"Did she ever set you to read anything you actually ended up liking?" Hank asked.

"White Fang," the boy said at once.

"Oh, that is a good one. Ever read 'To Build a Fire?' One of my favorites. It's by the same author."

"I love that story. It can be eighty degrees outside and I can curl up with that story and feel cold," the boy said.

"How about The Call of the Wild?" Hank asked.

"I've never heard of that one," the boy said.

"It's kind of a companion to White Fang, without being about any of the same characters," Hank said. "White Fang is about a wild dog that comes to sit by man's fire and ends up becoming civilized. The Call of the Wild is about a tame dog that learns to live in the wild. You'd like it. Hold on, I'll be right back."

Hank got up and left the saloon, returning in a few minutes with an elderly hardcover book in his hands. He set it down on the bar next to the boy's now nearly empty plate. The Call of the Wild, by Jack London, a copy from a printing run off in 1931. The boy looked doubtfully at the book, and then at the sheriff.

"For you," Hank said. "I've read it so many times I've about got it memorized."

The boy picked up the book in hands that trembled slightly. "For me? To…keep?"

"Yeah."

"Well, geez…thank you, Sir. I mean, Hank."

"Yer welcome, CJ."

The two continued to talk about literature (the boy had already read far more than Hank ever had, but Hank's reading interests proved of great interest to the boy, being concerned mostly with westerns and adventure and history), and hobbies (they matched up fairly well in this regard, too, since the boy was interested in guns and horses and Civil War reenactments), and avoided touchy subjects like parents. Hank realized he'd enjoyed spending time with this strange child. A lifelong bachelor, that was an unusual circumstance for him, to say the least. He couldn't imagine a father so drunk and bastardly to actually beat the poor kid, or a mother so cold as to drop him off in the middle of nowhere and leave him there. She had to be coming back. She had to be.

Although a part of him, deep down and buried, wouldn't mind much if she didn't.

He pushed the thought away as soon as it occurred to him. Even if she didn't show up, it wasn't like he could keep the kid. He'd have to call in the real police, and they'd take the boy away and put him in some foster home or an orphanage of some kind. It hurt even to think about. Who knew what kind of place they'd dump him in?

Not that he particularly looked forward to sending him back to what he came from, come to think of it.

After another bottle of root beer and some more conversation, the boy went to bed at the hotel and Hank went back to his house above the business office. He had a hard time getting to sleep that night, thinking about the boy, what he came from, where he was going, what, if anything, Hank could do about any of it. He was glad the boy's father was in jail, and hoped to God it was for a long damned time.

When the sun rose and Old Sonora's cast of actors began to stir again, Hank tracked down his deputy, a fellow called Tripsy, and put him in charge of the shootouts for the day. Tripsy was both surprised and pleased. Hank hadn't handed off his role in all the years they'd been working together. Then Hank went to the hotel and sat down in a chair in the lobby to wait.

He didn't have to wait long. He'd expected the boy to sleep in, at least a little, but he was up and about not much later than the sunrise, so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed that it seemed a natural thing for him to be up early on a summer's weekend. He seemed surprised to see Hank waiting for him.

"Good mornin', CJ," Hank greeted.

"Good morning, uh, Hank," the boy said, with a nervous twitch of the hands at his side.

"You said yer Momma told ya she'd be here to pick you up this afternoon. I figure that gives us a few hours to kill, at least," Hank said, and stood up. "How'd you like to meet our horses?"

"Sure," the boy said.

They spent the morning at the stables. The boy had never ridden a horse before, but he learned quickly at Hank's instruction, and before the sun rose to its zenith in the sky Hank said of the boy that he looked like he was "born in the saddle."

The boy slipped off his horse's back with a glance at the blue plastic watch he wore. "I'd better get to the parking lot, Hank," he said. "Mom will be mad if she has to come looking for me."

"But you don't know what time she's coming, do ya?" Hank asked.

"No, but even so."

"At least have some lunch first," Hank said.

"That's okay, Hank. Sunday nights Mom and Gramma always cook up a huge meal. I won't starve."

"Well, I'll just come an' wait with ya."

The boy looked at him with solemn eyes. "You don't have to, Hank."

"I want to, CJ. I'm gonna miss you when you go."

The boy blushed and looked away. He went back to the hotel and got his things, which consisted only of his homework and The Call of the Wild, and met Hank outside. They walked together to the parking lot, where the boy perched himself on the top stile of the fence by the gate to town, and Hank leaned on it with crossed arms. They talked and they watched, and in about two hours a rather badly-kept specimen of forest green '72 Thunderbird pulled up in front of the gate. There was a black-haired woman behind the wheel, and a pair of rowdy children slapping at each other in the back seat. The boy jumped down from the fence and, even though he was already walking toward the car, the woman called out through the open window in a voice that could shatter concrete, "Get in the car, Booker!"

"Bye, Hank," the boy said, and Hank raised a hand to him in a wave, his mind turning on what he'd heard. The woman was obviously a smoker, quite possibly a heavy drinker, too, and it was hard to wrap his brain around the syllables she'd said.

What did she call him? Binker? Booky?

Binky?

"Geena! Lincoln! Shut it!" the boy said, as he opened the passenger side door, and both youngsters in the backseat immediately quieted as though the boy's voice were the Word of Law. It made Hank smile, but it was a sad smile. He figured he'd never see the boy again. He really and truly would miss him.

A/N: What do you think? One-shot? Or not? Something tells me I may be adding to this story in the near future.