Carpetbagging
It’s fall now, with December snow approaching fast, and everything’s
starting to look fragile and thin and sort of sad in the way that the shrubs
seem to know that most of them probably won’t make it through the winter.
Sometimes, though, once it warms up a bit, it rains real hard here,
like we’re stuck in the middle of an unnamed hurricane, and once
the rain settles, the air tastes like tobacco; and I have to resist the urge
to stoop down and claw at the earth until my fingernails are the same
murky color as the sandy Carolina soil. Because if I take some part
of the land back home with me, I might start to put down roots and
pull something out of the soil that’ll make these barrier island beaches
start to resemble home; I might start to sympathize with those boys
who drive around with their sons down back-country mud roads in pickup
trucks and wave red-and-blue striped flags; or I might start to feel comfortable
drinking Kentucky bourbon instead of imported vodka, and feel comfortable
in a town with one main road, four stoplights, and a damn lot of leisure time
with nowhere to spend it.
