The Bone Field by Debra Bokur (top e book reader txt) 📕

found that older people who were bored usually had a lot of memories they were willing to share.

She gestured back toward the brightly colored pineapple at the end of the drive. “That’s quite a mailbox.”

His face creased into a wide smile. “Grandkids gave that to me. Pretty special, isn’t it?”

“Very,” agreed Kali. “Do you have a few minutes to chat with me? An investigation I’m working on involves the old fields, and I’m trying to get a sense of the workflow that was involved with the production. I was told you were the head foreman for a number of years, and might be able to help me understand some of the day-to-day.”

“That’s right.” He stood away from the door. “Come on in. Afraid it’s pretty hot inside. If you don’t mind sitting out in the back, I’ll tell you what I can.”

CHAPTER 17

Kali followed Manuel across the front room and through the kitchen, then out the back door onto a large lanai. It was shaded and much cooler there, and Kali felt herself relax. An assortment of mismatched chairs faced the trees leading up the slope behind the house, and a well-tended collection of plants in pretty pots had been placed on the wooden floorboards amongst the chairs.

Manuel chose a large metal deck chair lined with cushions, and made himself comfortable. There was a wood-slatted chair beside it, and Kali turned it slightly to face him. She sat down and placed her bag on the floor at her feet, reaching in and rummaging around for her notebook and pen. Manuel watched her, his face reflecting what appeared to be a mild suspicion outweighed by curiosity.

“You don’t look like a cop,” he said.

“Oh?” she said, her voice still friendly. “What is a cop supposed to look like?”

He laughed gruffly. “I mean, you aren’t wearing a uniform or anything.”

She glanced down briefly at her faded jeans and canvas slip-on shoes. The shoes had been a deep purple color when she’d purchased them, but repeated wear and washings had left them a pale violet shade. Her white T-shirt bore a logo showing a can of Spam. Around her neck was a leather cord, from which her small collection of talismans hung. She considered what Manuel had said, and had to agree. She probably didn’t look anything at all like what most people assumed a cop should look like.

“Well, I’m not part of the uniform division,” she said. “So I guess that might be confusing. But what I’d really like to discuss is the Shandling Fruit pineapple plantation on Lna‘i. I understand it’s been defunct since 1997, but it must have been a busy place before then.”

Manuel nodded, even as a deep scowl consumed his face. “Greedy. That’s what the Shandling people were. Greedy and heartless. Didn’t care about the job losses, or how they would affect the people and families who worked the fields. All they cared about was how it would cost them less and give them bigger profits to grow their pineapples where it’s cheaper. Costa Rica. Honduras. Ecuador. Thailand and India, too. Those places. Cheap labor, and more.”

Kali noticed that his breathing had become more rapid. He began to drum the armrest of his chair with his fingertips, growing agitated. Clearly, he had still not come completely to terms with the shutdown of Lna‘i’s farms and production facilities.

“There was kind of an art to it, you know. Determining the pick point, when the pineapple was at its peak for harvesting, all brown and yellow. You could smell them when it was time—a kind of perfume that filled the air and your heart. One day, it wouldn’t be there. The next day, you’d walk into the field and it was as though every fruit in the field had decided it was time to be full.”

Kali watched his eyes. The light slowly growing in them was replaced abruptly with sadness.

“They told us we could find new jobs in the new hotels, those two big resorts they built. What could we do there? Take out other people’s trash? Bring them food on trays? Change their dirty sheets as if we were servants, trapped inside a big house?” He shook his head. “No, no. It was all wrong. We were strong men and women, meant to be outside, working with the earth beneath the sun.” He looked at her. “When the business shut down there, it broke so many people. Their spirits and their hearts.”

She spoke carefully. “There must have been a lot of anger when the announcement came that the shutdown was happening.”

He looked at her, incredulous. “Anger? People’s lives were being destroyed. And that wasn’t the worst of it.” He rose from the chair, the action labored. “Let me show you something,” he said. As she began to get up to follow him, he shook his head. “Stay here in the shade. I’ll be right back.”

He went back inside, where Kali could hear him fumbling around. In a few minutes he was back, carrying a heavy photo album. He placed it on a small, glass-topped table that stood at one end of the lanai, brushing off a few stray leaves that had fallen on the table’s surface. He dragged it closer to where Kali was seated, pulled his own chair up to the table, and sat back down.

“I guess these days, everyone keeps their pictures on their phones,” he says. “But this is how we used to do it. Big books full of memories you could keep nearby and look through whenever you wanted to remember some other time or place. You could pick them up and hold them.”

She watched as he opened the album and flipped through a few pages, each one of them a series of cellophane sleeves that held photographs. He removed a few, laying them on the table glass in front of Kali. He pointed to one.

“This was my crew, the people who kept things running all day. And me, in the middle.”

She