You Ain't Nothing but a Hound Dog

Blair tightened the blindfold around Jim’s eyes.

"How’s that? Too tight?" he asked, peering at his work.

"It’s fine and I can’t see anything. Let’s get this over with, Sandburg."

Jim crossed his arms across his chest impatiently. They were in the middle of a forest, doing a Sandburgian test on Jim’s senses.

"OK, good. Come over here." Blair took a hold of Jim’s arm and moved him back a couple of steps. "OK, OK… Hold it." He positioned Jim carefully and moved behind him. Jim could hear a scruffing sound like Sandburg was climbing a tree and frowned.

"What are you doi-OOF!" A sudden weight appeared on his back and two arms wrapped around his neck, along with two legs around his waist.

"SANDBURG!"

"Yeah?" Blair’s voice came by his right ear. "OK, this is good." he barreled on without waiting for a reply. "Now, I want you to tur-"

"What are you *doing*?" Jim interrupted, his hands automatically going to grasp Sandburg’s feet, which were hooked in front of his stomach.

"Tests, remember? You said I could."

"GET OFF."

"Now Jim…"

"Get OFF!"

"Now Jim…"

"Sandburg, I’m not saying it again."

"Good, we don’t have time for you to be fussy. Th-"

"I’m not fussy!"

"Come on, Jim. Making me make three different trips to the store to return three tubes of toothpaste?"

"That was your fault. What part of ‘toothpaste’ don’t you understand? That tarter control stuff makes my tongue burn, and extra whitening is bad for your teeth. I just wanted *regular*."

"You didn’t want the last one because it was in ‘the wrong container’!"

Blair protested.

"I like the stand-up kind," Jim mumbled. Blair shook his head.

"Sure, Jim. Now, can we get on with this? The sooner you give in, the sooner we get done." Jim sighed.

"I just don’t see the *point* of this." Sandburg happily started rambling off the virtues of patience and exploration, and Jim suspected that somewhere the reason for all this was buried in, but he didn’t care to look for it.

"Get started, Chief," he admitted defeat, cutting off Sandburg’s flow of words.

"Thanks, Jim! Trust me, this is a great exercise in endurance and self-control. It’ll be better for you in the long run."

"Just get moving, Sandburg."

"Right! All right, I want you to walk around the forest and try to get back to the truck on your own."

"That’s it? Just find the truck?" Jim replied, a bit disdainfully.

"Well, I’ll be singing the whole time."

"Oh," he supposed he earned that one. Blair cleared his throat dramatically.

"Sugar pie honey bun!…" Jim bit back a groan and tried to dial down his sense of hearing. However, that made it more difficult to tell where things were around of him, and he was forced to keep it nudged up. He maneuvered around, more uncertainly than usual, and stumbled a couple of times.

Blair was really getting into his role in this, singing energetically. He stuck mostly to oldies, apparently thinking those were what Jim could relate to, or knew, or something. Jim felt a distinct satisfaction at one point when he "accidentally" ran into the branches of a tree and Blair paused to yelp in surprise.

"Hey, Chief, Chief, hang on a second," Jim suddenly stopped, interrupting Blair’s lusty rendition of "Downtown".

"No fair cheating, man," Sandburg admonished, and started to take a deep breath.

"No, wait, I think I hear someone in trouble." Jim cocked his head.

Blair hushed up instantly.

"What is it?"

"A woman… and a man… She’s pleading for her life… I think he raped her."

"Let’s go," Blair said, hopping down. "Whoa, whoa, Jim, one second." He grabbed the sentinel’s arm and narrowly stopped him from running head-long into a tree. He quickly pulled off the blindfold. Jim blinked against the sudden light.

"This way," he turned to the right and sped through the woods, gracefully dodging trees and rocks, even leaping over a startled, waylaid squirrel at one point. Blair followed more slowly- due to shorted legs- noting that Jim was currently closely resembling his spirit guide.

"FREEZE! Cascade PD, put down your weapon!" Jim had his gun out and pointed at a bearded man who was holding a knife over a sobbing woman.

"Don’t move, or I’ll stab her!" the guy yelled back, waving his knife threateningly. It glinted cheerfully in the sun. Blair appeared next to him, breathing hard and taking in the scene with wide eyes. The woman was crying face down into the forest floor, wearing a torn dress, blonde hair hiding her face.

"Step away from the lady," Jim said lowly, menacingly, sliding a foot forward. The man snarled and lurched toward the woman.

"I said don’t move!" he bellowed. Jim froze. Suddenly, something whizzed by his ear and hit the rapist’s hand, sending the knife to the ground. In a second, Jim was on the guy, cuffing his and reading him his rights. Blair was next to the woman, talking to her soothingly, but making a point not to touch her.

"Sandburg, call Simon," Jim ordered, roughly pulling the man around, out of the woman’s sight as she shakily sat up, clutching the remains of her clothes to herself. Blair nodded and retrieved the cell phone from Jim’s coat pocket.

"Tell me what went on here," Simon said later as they hauled away the rapist. The woman was wrapped in a thick blanket and sipping steaming coffee, eyes unfocused. Jim felt only sympathy for her.

"Sandburg and I were here in the woods, working on stuff." Simon didn’t need a clarification for that. "I heard Miss Deduse crying and pleading for her life and we ran over to help her. Apparently, this guy- John Accermen- had been making advances on her all week at work. She kept deterring him, but he couldn’t handle "no". He lured her out behind her house, which is about fifty yards or so south from where we found them, and…" he trailed off, shaking his head. Simon sighed and fingered his cigar, looking old and tired. "I pulled out my gun and ordered him to drop his knife. He didn’t, and threatened Miss Deduse’s life. I advanced slightly and he moved closer to Miss Deduse. Something flew past my head and hit Accermen in the hand.

What was that, Chief? I meant to ask but forgot." Blair shrugged.

"It was a large pine cone I found on the ground." Both Simon and Jim just stared at him. "What?" Simon shook his head.

"Can’t you two simply take a walk in the woods without getting into trouble?" he asked.

"I don’t know, sir, Sandburg often takes on more than he can handle," Jim smirked. Blair scowled. Simon looked suspiciously at them.

"What does that mean?" he asked Blair.

"I ran into a glass door, OK? It was closed, I thought it was open, can we move on please?" Simon laughed loudly.

"Sandburg, you are a piece of work," he said with a broad smile. "I want you two to work on your story and get why you were out here nice and tight for your report, got it?" He walked off.

"I don’t suppose karaoke would go over too well, would it?" Blair asked with a grin. Jim shot him a look.

"Don’t even start with me, Chief," he replied, getting in the truck.

Blair hopped in the passenger side. Jim started the engine and Blair popped in a tape. Elvis Presley instantly filled the car.

"SANDBURG…!"

The End

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