Hotel Habitue 16: Escape
I don’t have many two-week long jobs. But when I do, I’m frequently stuck there for the weekend. It’s Sunday. There isn’t jack shit to do in this town. I had to get out of the hotel room before the cable tv turned into a brain-eating parasite and I was relegated to a mass of contorted restlessness on an unmade king-sized bed, a character out of a Dostoevsky novel. With a corporate card and company vehicle, I did the only thing I could think of: put diesel in the tank and drive.
St. Simon Island was a 25 minute drive. Endless immaculate saltwater marshes, twisted cedar trees emerging from their edges. Herons and Cormorants on driftwood they sell for 20 dollars a pound at Pottery Barn. Multi-million dollar homes ensconced under ancient oak trees, yachts in the marina with more amenities than my house.
It’s nice, quiet, clean, beautiful. I’m partial to settling down in the mountains, but I could live here, watch my children race their dinghies along the inlet, be a better Hemingway. Watch the tide come in every day on a second-story balcony and use binoculars to witness songbirds serenade the sea from Spanish moss abodes. I spent my childhood on Florida beaches; it would feel natural to return to the salty air, let the water ease my aching, weathered joints. My wife and I could probably make it work, eventually. Watch her tend the garden she’s always wanted to have. Catching fish with my son and watching her cook it.
I’m turning onto the bridge to head back to the hotel. A new trawler is coming up the river from the East, its stainless steel fittings catching the climbing sun. Coming back into port from the open water. Jason Isbell’s “Alabama Pines” comes on the radio and I’m instantly homesick and willing to give up all the opportunity God may have in store for me just to be home in time for dinner. Live in poverty for the rest of my life, wear rags from a dumpster, eat unboiled ramen. Make some Greek monk who’s never even seen a woman his entire life concerned about my threadbare existence. There is suddenly no amount of money to justify it, no company car nice enough, no fringe benefits alluring enough.
My plants and life need watering more than my bank account does.