As it shivered to a stop, Koji eased the sugar train back into the barn. He parted ways with Pedro and walked back up the dirt road to his cottage, only to pause midway and look down at the wide sweep of fields. They spread out before him like a quilt Mariko might have sewn, squares of flat, burned fields, next to those of growing cane that wouldn’t be harvested until next season. The owners kept the cane fields on different yearly rotations to ensure an annual harvest and income. They controlled the plantings, just like they controlled the workers, including him. Koji had conveniently surrendered to a life that Razor worked endlessly to try to change. The years had turned Koji into someone he no longer knew. It hadn’t started out that way; cutting cane had been his pride and provided for his family. Now he was only one of a handful remaining from the early years still working on the plantation.

Koji stood and looked across the cane fields, but there was still no sign of Razor.

Island Voices

Island Voices

RAZOR, 1904

It’s the harvest, yeah, and I’m finally cutting cane. Got a new dog too. Wandered onto our back porch and refused to leave, so he’s the newest member of Kazoku Village and already family. He’s a big, gray shepherd mix, a hapa dog I’m calling Laki, which means Lucky, because he’s one lucky dog to have found me, yeah. Every day when I drudge back to the village after work, he’s there waiting, nipping at the rope that keeps him from running after me and into the fields every morning.

We’ve been squatting in the fields cutting all afternoon when I suddenly stop and look up at the sound of laughter, not the happy kind, but a low, guttural, in-the-throat kind of laughter, raw and cold and callous. Been here long enough to know it can’t be good, yeah. When Koji sees me he stops, too. We’re both sweating in the heat and dust as we stand and pull down the bandanas tied over our noses and mouths and listen. If we’re caught by a luna for standing up too long instead of cutting, we’ll feel the stinging slap of his whip across our shoulders and backs that can leave oozing, angry red welts for weeks.

Still, we stand.