I woke up feeling spectacular, and after coffee I made breakfast outside: ham, an egg, and toast. It was delicious. I yelled aloud to the campground, “I’m back, you sonsofbitches! I’m back!” I didn’t actually say this, but I thought it, and then I headed down to the beach to sit and fish. After setting up my chair and casting, I applied spf 50 liberally, my snow-white Minnesota skin an easy target for the threatening UV rays of the South Carolina sun. That is, I applied it to my arms, my face and neck and shoulders, but I did not apply it to my chest, thinking my thick, manly chest hair would be spf enough. I was to be painfully mistaken.
For several hours I fished, caught nothing, read a book, and even, for the first time, fully dipped into the ocean. The cold water took my breath away and I came up smiling and giggling a little to myself. I watched the seagulls play above the glimmering water, those great white soprano rats of the shoreline skies, ever in search of a free meal.
Then I packed up and headed half-a-dozen miles down the road to an expansive tree boneyard—an area near the western tip of Hunting Island where the trees and shore were decimated by Hurricane Matthew years ago, now so eerily beautiful. In the absence of tree life, oysters and cockles had made rotting wood and other wreckage their homes, and people had found nooks to sunbathe in semi-privacy. I hiked a maritime forest trail for a few miles and came across fully six cardinals bathing in a puddle, not shy at all about their brazen nakedness. I took photos.
My legs were tired, probably because my body had started to atrophy from laying in bed for nearly a week with food poisoning. Still, I pushed on to a nearby fishing pier where I fished for another hour, again to no avail. About this time I noticed my chest hurt. I took a peak and it was quite red. I too, am like a cardinal, I thought. A stupid, stupid cardinal.
Suddenly I was hungry again, and I recalled that last evening, on the way home from Savannah, I’d driven past a Taco Bell. Keep in mind I’d had likely fewer than 2,000 calories at this point in the entirety of the last 6 days, and my appetite was back and playing for revenge. I checked Google—19 miles. It was 4:30 p.m. By 5 I could order 17 steak burritos—or whatever culturally fabricated name Taco Bell’s marketing department developed to make them seem like friendly, approachable dishes (steak chumpoopas?)—and eat myself to oblivion in the parking lot. I hit the gas.
But on the way I passed a food truck. What’s this? A “latin” food truck, the sign said. The menu consisted of mostly tacos and burritos and quesadillas, but since I’d been on my way to Taco Bell, I couldn’t exactly pass it up. I ate 5 tacos on the tailgate of my truck as the (it turns out) Colombian woman laughed at me from her little truck window for eating like a wild animal. I’m back, you sonsofbitches. I’m back.
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