“Sit,” he commands the dog.
P.J. sits, but whimpers.
I lower myself to my knees next to Samson and watch as he continues to uncover more of the bones.
“Maybe you shouldn’t touch it,” I suggest.
Samson says nothing. He just keeps digging until he reaches the shoulder joint of the skeleton. There’s still a shirt attached to it. It’s a red-checkered shirt, faded and torn. Samson touches a piece of it and it falls apart in his hands.
“Do you think it’s an entire body?”
Samson still doesn’t answer me. He just falls back onto his haunches and stares at the ground.
“I’ll go get my phone and call the police.” I start to get up, but Samson grabs my wrist. I look at him and his eyes are pleading.
“Don’t.”
“What?” I shake my head. “We have to report this.”
“Don’t, Beyah,” he says again. I’ve never seen his expression so unyielding. “This is the guy I was telling you about. Rake. I recognize his shirt.” He looks back down at what he’s just uncovered. “The police will just throw him in an unmarked grave.”
“We still have to report this. It’s a body. A missing person.”
He shakes his head again. “He wasn’t a missing person. Like I told you, no one even noticed he was gone.” I can already tell by Samson’s demeanor that I’m not changing his mind. “He would want to be in the ocean. It’s the only place he belongs.”
We’re both quiet for a while as we think.
For whatever reason, I don’t feel like this is my decision. But I sure as hell don’t want to be here a second longer.
Samson stands up and disappears back over the dune. I have no intention of being left alone with human remains, so I follow after him.
Samson walks toward the water, and when he’s a few feet away from it, he just stops. He clasps his hands behind his head. I stop walking because it looks like he needs a minute to process this.
He stares at the water for what seems like an eternity. I just pace behind him, torn between doing what I know is right or leaving this decision completely up to Samson. He’s the one who knew the guy. I didn’t.
After a while, I finally break the silence. “Samson?”
He doesn’t face me. His voice is resolute when he says, “I need you to take the golf cart back to the house.”
“Without you?”
He nods, still facing the other direction. “I’ll meet up with you later tonight.”
“I’m not leaving you out here. It’s too far to walk in the dark.”
He turns now, and when he does, he looks like a completely different person than he did ten minutes ago. His features are hardened, and there’s something newly broken inside of him.
He walks toward me and takes my face in his hands. His eyes are red, like he’s on the verge of breaking down. “Please,” he says. “Go. I need to do this alone.”
There’s an ache in his voice. A pain I’m unfamiliar with.
An agony I expected to feel after finding my mother dead, but instead I was left empty and numb.
I have no idea why he needs this, but I can see his need for me to leave this up to him is greater than my need to disagree with him. I just nod, and my voice releases in a whisper when I say, “Okay.”
For the first time in my life, I actually feel an overwhelming need to hug someone, but I don’t. I don’t want our first hug to be attached to such an awkward moment. I climb into the golf cart.
“Take P.J. with you,” he says. I wait while he walks back over the dune to get him. When he returns with P.J., he puts him in the passenger seat of the golf cart. Samson grips the top of the golf cart and his tone is flat when he says, “I’ll be okay, Beyah. I’ll see you later tonight.” He pushes away from the golf cart and walks back toward the dune.
I drive home, leaving Samson with something I know he’ll never explain to me, and likely won’t speak of again.
EIGHTEEN
I’m worried about Samson, obviously. But the longer I sit here and wait for him, I wonder if that worry should be mixed in with anger.
It wasn’t fair of him to ask me to leave that situation, but the look in his eye made it seem like throwing Rake’s remains into the ocean was way more important to him than reporting it was to me.
I’ve seen some disturbing shit in my life. A few bones being moved from a dune and into the ocean is surprisingly not that jarring to me. I don’t know what that says about me. Or Samson, for that matter.