When he shut off the engine, he also twisted the knob to the left of the steering wheel that killed the headlights. That was when the woman in the passenger’s seat protested.
“How are we going to see where to dig?” she said with a perfunctory lilt that sounded like she’d done little other than objecting for considerable time.
He turned the lights back on but kept his hand on the knob. Before the car was a metal railing, beyond that sand, and beyond that, out there as one says waving in a general direction, presumably was the ocean; it was too dark, even with the lights to see for sure. He turned the lights off again.
“What are you doing?”
“What’s the point of coming a half hour before sunrise if we’re going to call attention to ourselves by blasting high beams?” he said and opened the door and got out and closed the door as she closed her mouth. She got out, too.
The trunk was open when she walked back. He was already leaning two shovels up against the rear bumper.
“This is so illegal,” the woman said to the gaping trunk.
“It’ll be good for him,” the man didn’t look at her when he spoke. “It’ll be closure.”
“Because we’ll be closed behind bars.”
“Will you get the shovels?” he said.
She took the shovels off of the bumper. The man reached into the trunk. With a great deal of effort, he pulled out an old quilt that had been wrapped around a considerable mass. Once out of the trunk, the quilt and its inner weight flopped with a plosive smack to the parking lot asphalt. The man closed the trunk.
He picked up the quilt and the weight and struggled to open the car’s backdoor. The overhead light didn’t wake up the boy.
“Benny,” the man said in a forceful whisper usually reserved for passing notes in class. “Benny.” The man bent down to nudge the boy before changing his mind and kicking him lightly in the foot. The boy came to life and followed the man out of the car. They walked towards the sound of the ocean.
“I’m over here,” the woman’s voice came to them from the left. They descended the concrete steps and felt the sand. She was already digging.
The man dropped the quilt and picked up the other shovel and they worked in silence. The boy, still within sleep’s memory, sat cross-legged in the sand and ran his finger over the grains in a winding gyre pattern. The man was happy it was dark and the boy could not see his tears.
“Okay. I think that’s good,” the man dropped his shovel and caught his breath. He took up the quilt and the weight and placed it with great care next to the four-foot deep hole in the sand. As carefully, he rolled out the quilt so that a large object fell noiselessly into the hole. The woman immediately began putting the sand back where they’d found it.
They patted the top of the sand into place and stood back.
“He loved this beach. He loved digging in the sand,” said the man.
“Hey, daddy, why do dogs bury their bones?”
The man looked down at the boy.
Before he could speak, the boy said, beaming with delight, “Because they can’t put them in trees!”
The man smiled, rubbed the boy’s hair and looked back at the sand that was beginning to glow in the hazy sunrise.