I couldn't take him in. I had him on that beach cuffed, but I let him go. I couldn't lock him up, put that free spirit in a cage. I know it seems awful, he'd killed and others had died because of him, but still I couldn't do it. Couldn't cage that spirit then sit back and watch it slowly die. I talked the big talk but I had known I couldn't do it before I set foot on that beach. Before I saw him standing there watching the waves rolling in. Waiting for his set.
When we were together he taught me so very much... he revived my dying soul. Those kisses in the darkness. Those nights when he appeared at my door and took me to bed and loved me. The way he taught me to read the waves and talk to ocean, and when to let go and stop caring about anything but the moment.
Via con Dios, I told him. Go with God, a farewell to the dead or dying. Not a good bye or until we meet again. Because I knew the moment he paddled out that he wasn't coming back, not to pay his debts to society, not to me. Even if God were watching over him he would never come back out of those waters. The force of those waves, the pure power. I didn't watch, I couldn't.
That night I found Rosie's body, part of me was so scared that it would be him. That was the night I realized that despite everything he had done to me, everything that had happened, I still loved him. I buried that deep down and instead of getting myself reassigned like I should have, I just kept after him. After that I was angry with him... for making me love him; for everything. If I caught him it would be over. I wouldn't love him anymore; I could lock him up and banish it, and forget I broke the rules. That he made me break the rules. But even then I know part of me was dreaming of finding him and the two of us surfing off to places unknown; just us and no one else, no past, nothing else.
He was so much to me; a lover, a brother, a father, a kindred spirit, even though I might not of seen it. Tyler was right; he and I... we were the same. A father, yes, I was reborn after meeting him, reborn because of him. He gave me life, taught me, set me free.
So now I'm walking on a beach thousands of miles from where this all started, in the midst of the biggest storm in fifty years, my now chin length hair plastered to my head. My cuffs are on the sand, my badge sinking in to the ocean. Listening to my liaison officer's comment on the most important person in my life, then, more telling then anything they could have said, their silence. I know he's gone. I knew he was gone before they fell quiet; I felt him go. He's gone... and so am I... or the person I was. The newborn Johnny Utah is leaving this beach. Not the FBI agent. A free spirit, someone to let the world know that the human spirit still alive and kicking. Bodey's legacy.
I don't grieve for my friend. I won't miss my lover. I will long for my teacher when I'm sitting alone on the waves. But I know we'll meet again, in the next life. He promised we would and I know he wasn't lying. Besides, we're two of a kind, we will always be drawn in life after life to the same things, and same places, to the ocean, to each other. I grieve not for what I haven't really lost.