Daniel had been relieved to step into the cool, dark, crowded store, away from the hot and humid heat. The store smelled sweet and vinegary. The counter was cluttered with jars filled with hard candy, licorice, gumballs, and a big jar of what looked like cabbage fermenting in something murky and potent. He wrinkled his nose at the smell. Against one wall were wooden crates with sweet potatoes, Chinese cabbage, turnips, long beans, bananas, and lychee. On the other side were large barrels of rice and flour and sugar, and toward the back of the store stood a big icebox that held soda pop, beer, eggs, and rice balls. Daniel hesitated, walking slowly around the crowded store to the back, where he finally opened the door to the icebox and reached for a grape soda pop.

* * *

Daniel put the bottles of beer he bought on the passenger seat and sat in the truck watching the slow march of the tired, dusty men and women walking along the dirt road back to their villages after work. They carried tin pails and burlap bags, shedding layers of clothes. He wondered how many of them ever left the plantation, which was a world in itself, a map of crisscrossing dirt roads leading from their villages to the fields to these buildings, which provided everything they needed and were all Puli Plantation owned and run. Just over the hill on the far side of the fields, the plantation manager and his family lived in a big, sprawling house, surrounded by smaller houses where all the haole supervisors, lunas, and staff lived, adequately separated by several miles from all the cane workers.

A few years after his first visit, Daniel learned that what little wages the cane workers earned every week was spent at the small plantation store. “Most on the plantation have no choice, yeah, but to sign their lives away,” Uncle Koji said. “Their credit keeps on growing until the owners have the families collared and tied from one generation to the next. Always been like that, yeah.”

“Why?” he had asked.

“They have to feed their families.”

“Why can’t they pay the workers more?”

“Good question,” Uncle Koji huffed, without giving him an answer.

Daniel thought of all the Sundays Koji came down to visit them after his father left, usually to help his mother fix things around the house. His uncle always seemed happiest when they sat down for dinner together. He looked at the home-cooked meal in front of him as if surprised at his good fortune. “Lucky, yeah,” he said to Daniel on more than one occasion. Daniel had simply nodded, not quite understanding what it all meant back then.

“Do you have to sign for credit too?” he had asked.