Heart Bones

“Where’s your dog?” he asks as we start to climb into the golf cart.

I look around, but don’t see Pepper Jack Cheese anywhere. I call for him, but he doesn’t come running. My heart picks up a little and that doesn’t go unnoticed.

Samson calls for him.

I start to get worried because we’re a long way from our houses, and if we don’t find him, he may not be able to make his way back.

“Maybe he’s behind the dunes,” Samson suggests. We both make our way over to the high rows of sand. Samson grabs my hands and helps me up the dune. When we reach the top and look on the other side of it, I’m immediately relieved to see P.J.

“Oh, thank God,” I say, scaling down the other side of the dune.

“What’s he doing?” Samson asks, walking behind me. P.J. is about ten feet away, digging furiously in the ground.

“Maybe he found some crabs.”

When we reach him, I freeze. Whatever he found, it’s not a crab. It looks like… “Samson?” I whisper. “What is that?”

Samson drops to his knees and starts wiping dust off what looks like bones in the shape of a hand.

I pull P.J. away, but he fights to get out of my grip. Samson is now digging, moving sand away, revealing more and more of what is obviously a human arm.

“Oh, my God,” I whisper. I cover my mouth with my hand. P.J. slips out of my grip and gets away from me. He rushes back to Samson’s side, but Samson pushes him away.

“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.”