Mrs. Elena Osborne, nee Elena Espenida, lived in the Lucky Star Trailer Park with her son, Warren, about nine sparsely settled blocks away from the cafeteria. As they walked together, Elena told Hoke a few things about her life. She was from San Fernando, Luzon, in the Philippine Islands, and had married a retired army staff sergeant. One of her friends in San Fernando had obtained a copy of a magazine called Asian Roses. The magazine was published and edited in Portland, Oregon. The subscribers were Americans, Australians, and New Zealanders who wanted to marry Asian women. Girls and women from Hong Kong, the Philippines, Japan, and Hawaii sent in their photographs, short biographies, and five dollars and were listed in the magazine. She and her girlfriend both had sent in snapshots, biographies, and five-dollar money orders. Her girlfriend had received three letters, and Elena had received only two. Her girlfriend was too timid to answer her letters, but Elena had answered one of hers. She hadn't answered the other because it came from a seventy-one-year-old man who had recently lost his wife, and he had merely wanted a young woman to keep him warm at night. But the other letter, from Sergeant Warren Osborne, was very persuasive. He was a very handsome man who wanted a mother for his children and a companion to share his life in Immokalee, Florida. He had been retired from the army for two years, owned his own mobile home in the Lucky Star Trailer Park, and worked as a checker for Sunshine Packers. He also owned a Toyota pickup, only two years old, and he had never been married before. His mother had lived with him in the mobile home, but she had been dead for more than a year, and he was very lonely. He also felt, now that he was forty, that it was time to get married and have a son to carry on his name. He had told the truth about Immokalee, explaining that the town was in a rural area, with the same climate as the Philippines and that there were cities nearby - Naples and Fort Myers - where they could go and shop on weekends and see first-run movies and major-league baseball games during spring training.

They had corresponded, and after a few airmail letters back and forth, and discussions with her mother, Elena had agreed to marry him. She was twenty-one years old, and although she had an eighth-grade diploma and could read and write English very well, her opportunities to find a husband in San Fernando as well-off as Sergeant Osborne were nonexistent. When she agreed, he made all the arrangements for her visa through a lawyer in Fort Myers and sent her two hundred dollars and her airplane ticket from Manila to Fort Myers, Florida. She had given her mother one hundred dollars of the two, packed a suitcase, and made the long flight, changing planes in San Francisco. He met the plane in Fort Myers, and they were married three days later in Immokalee. Her son, Warren, junior, was born ten months later. Her husband began to drink then, after her son was born, and, after three or four months, was fired from his job at Sunshine Packers. After he lost his job, he drank even more than he had before, and when he got drunk, he would sit at the little table in their trailer and cry.

One morning he went to the bank, drew out all his savings, and gave her five hundred dollars. He was going to drive upstate, he told her, and look for work. When he found a job, he would come back for her, Warren, Junior, and the trailer. No one in Immokalee, he told her, would hire him now, so they had to move away. That was almost three years ago, and she hadn't heard from him since. His army retirement checks were no longer deposited electronically in the bank, and the teller at the bank didn't know his new address.

When her money was exhausted, she had applied for welfare, and she got an extra allowance because of Warren, junior. She also got food stamps, but there was very little cash left to live on after she paid her mobile home space rent and utilities. To make extra money, which she needed for Warren, Junior, she occasionally turned a trick.

Hoke was puzzled mildly by her story. But not for long.

There were twelve trailer homes in the dusty park. A barbed-wire fence surrounded the lot, which had a single entrance gate. Only residents had a key to the gate, and those residents who owned cars parked them outside the fence in a graveled lot. The manager lived in the first trailer beside the gate, and when Elena opened the gate with her key, he poked his grizzled head out of his front door to see who it was and then slammed his door again when he recognized Elena.

Elena's trailer was small, with one bedroom and a double bed, a combination living room and galley, and a short corridor to the bedroom. There was a bathroom off one side of the corridor and an alcove closet across from the bathroom door. The furniture was mobile home standard, with an eating nook and cushioned seats. A window air-conditioner labored away above the table. A thirteen-inch black-and-white TV set was bolted to the wall beside the entrance door, and Elena switched it off when she ushered Hoke inside. There was a nose-tingling odor of urine and feces, but the trailer was clean. A framed black-and-white photo of Warren Osborne in his uniform was on the wall. The man was handsome enough, Hoke noted, but the photo of the soldier had been taken when he was nineteen or twenty years old.

Warren, Junior, was in a quilted box in the closet alcove, and Elena pulled the box out so Hoke could take a good look at him. The boy was wearing a Pamper, but nothing else. He moved his thin arms feebly within the box. His tiny legs had atrophied. He had thick, curly red hair, bulging green eyes, and a protruding forehead. The head was much too large for his short body, and he was obviously retarded. His mouth was full of overlapping teeth, and the harsh sounds he made in his throat resembled the caw of an aging crow. The retarded child, Hoke figured, undoubtedly explained the serious drinking and the disappearance of Sergeant Osborne. As Hoke looked at the boy, he wanted a drink himself.

Elena took a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke out of her refrigerator, filled a baby bottle, added a nipple to it, and gave the bottle to Warren, Junior. She poured two glasses of Diet Coke and joined Hoke at the table. Hoke gave her one of his roast beef sandwiches, and she brought two plates to the table from the rack beside the sink. She cut her sandwich in half and then cut up one of the halves into small squares. She fed the bite-size pieces to Warren, who chewed greedily and sucked at the nippled bottle between bites. Hoke took her knife and cut his sandwich into bite-size chunks as well, and gummed them as well as he could before swallowing. When Elena finished feeding Warren, she sat across from Hoke and began to eat her own half sandwich. Hoke got up from the table. With his foot, he pushed the box containing Warren back into the alcove out of sight. He was no longer hungry, and looking at this deformed kid gave him a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"How long will he live? Warren, I mean?"

Elena shrugged. "I don't know. We are all children of God, and God decides how long we will live."

"That's one way of looking at it. If I don't get a job with Mr. Bock tomorrow, I'll be going back to Miami. If you want me to, I can find out where your husband went. I don't think he'll come back to you, but there’re ways to make him send you child support."

"No." She shook her head and smiled. "When Warren finds a job, he will send for me." She crossed herself. "But sometimes, I think, maybe he is dead."

"He isn't dead, Elena. When he dies, you'll be told, and the government'll give you a VA pension and an American flag to hang on the wall beside his picture. I can find him easily enough, if you want me to."

"You are a good man, I think. I change Warren's Pamper, then we fuck, okay?"

Hoke went outside to roll and smoke another cigarette while Elena changed the helpless boy. He had never changed the diapers on his daughters (there had been no Pampers then) and had always gone out into the yard when his wife changed them. He didn't mind changing Pepe, however, so he thought he had gotten over this hang-up. He could not understand why, but he knew he wouldn't be able to watch Elena change her three-year-old without getting sick.

Hoke's initial problem had been solved, however. If Tiny Bock asked him how he knew about the job opening for crew chief, he could tell him that a Mexican at the pepper tree had told him about it, and also Mr. Sileo. He would talk to Bock at the farmers' market, and then, when he was turned down, as he would surely be, he could return to Miami. On the other hand, if Bock and his foreman came to the market every morning, it might be possible to visit Bock's farm and look around while they were at the market. That would mean staying over another day or two, but then he could at least tell Brownley that he had nosed around and found nothing.

Elena opened the door, and Hoke took one more drag before stripping his cigarette and going back inside. Elena had taken off her elastic top and denim skirt and was removing her panties and bra when Hoke sat at the little table to finish his Diet Coke. Without her high heels she was much shorter - about four-nine - and despite her small breasts, she had long dark brown nipples. Her short legs were noticeably bowed. She had an abundance of pubic hair; but it hung straight down, like a lamp fringe, and there wasn't a single kinky hair. Hoke bad never seen straight pubic hair before, and be found it exotic but not erotic. That was all he needed, he thought, a case of AIDS to take back to Miami with him.

Hoke took out Adam Jinks's wallet, removed the five-dollar bill Mr. Sileo bad given him and put it on the table. He weighted it with the catsup bottle so the breeze from the air-conditioner wouldn't blow it away.

"I'd like to fuck you, Elena," Hoke said, "but I'm a married man. I've got a sick wife up in Lake City. Are you a Catholic?"

She nodded.

"Then you understand why I can't make love to you. But I'll give you this five if you let me take a shower in your bathroom and sleep here tonight. This table pushes up and the cushions make into a bed, right?"

She nodded again. "But bed is too short for you. You take back bed, and I'll sleep here." She went to the alcove closet and pulled out, a gray-and-white seersucker wrapper. "You go ahead. Shower. I'll stay up and watch TV." She slipped into the wrapper and tied the sash into a bow. "No hot water in shower, but it's not too cold."

Hoke took off his shirt and went into the bathroom. The zinc-lined bathroom was cramped, and so was the narrow shower, and the water came out in a drizzling trickle. There was a brown bar of Fels Naptha soap in the dish, and he soaped his body and his hair. Elena opened the door and came in.

"You want a slow hand job in shower? Hand job not the same as adultery."

"No, thanks, Elena. If I wanted a hand job, I could do it myself. Women don't know how to do it right anyway.

"I know how. You like?"

"No, but thanks anyway." The lukewarm water felt good on his body, and Hoke took his time rinsing away the thick suds. After drying with Elena's clean pink bath towel, Hoke took his clothes to the bedroom and lay down on top of the bed. There was a sheet on the bed but no covers. None was needed. The chilly air from the air-conditioner didn't reach this far back in the trailer, and he was soon perspiring again. Hoke set his mental alarm for 4:00 A.M. and fell asleep immediately on the rubber mattress.

Hoke awoke with a start inb the dark, feeling uneasy, not knowing where he was for a moment, and then he sat up and dressed. As he pulled on his white socks, he regretted not washing them when he showered. The toes were sticky, and they were still stiff with sweat. The living room-kitchen overhead light was on, and Elena got up from the couch when she heard Hoke open the sliding door to the bathroom. When Hoke came out of the bathroom, she was stirring a pot of oatmeal on the tiny two-burner stove. She put two slices of white bread into the toaster.

"What time is it?"

"Four-fifteen," she said. "It's too early to get up."

"I've got to find the farmers' market, and I'm not sure where it is."

"In the big lot behind Golden Packinghouse. You'll see all the lights."

Hoke rearranged the seats in the eating nook, pulled down the Samsonite tabletop, and locked it in place. He had slept well, but he was still sleepy. He rolled a cigarette. "Aren't you going to make coffee?"

"No coffee." She poured a glass of Diet Coke and brought it to the table. She then served Hoke a bowl of oatmeal and handed him a spoon. Apparently she was out of milk as well. Hoke crumbled his toast into the hot oatmeal. Cawing sounds came from the closet, and Elena gave Warren a nippled bottle of Diet Coke. The caws stopped, and she filled a smaller bowl with oatmeal for Warren and placed it on the counter to cool. She sat across from Hoke and watched him eat.

"You want to shave? I'll boil some hot water for you."

"No. Yes, I want to shave, but I'm trying to see how I'll look with a beard. Aren't you going to eat anything?"

"Too early for me. I'm going back to bed."

"I'm sorry I took your bed, but there was room enough if you wanted to sleep with me."

"You said you no like me."

"I didn't say that. I said I didn't want to fuck you, that's all, and I explained why."

She shrugged and made a face.

"Have you got a social worker? D'you take Warren to a clinic for checkups?"

"Sometimes. You want more oatmeal? Toast?"

"No, but thanks for breakfast."

Elena got up from the table and picked up the small bowl of oatmeal and a teaspoon. Hoke didn't want to watch Elena feed Warren or even take a final look at the kid in his box. He patted Elena on the head, said good-bye, and left the trailer. There was a buzzer on a post that opened the gate from inside. Hoke pressed it and walked down the street. The city was dark, except for a brightly lighted area down by the tracks. Hoke headed for the lighted area.

The farmers’ market was well lighted, and there was a great deal of activity in the large lot. Stalls were set up, and there were overhead strings of light bulbs crisscrossing the area. The larger hotels and restaurants from Naples, Fort Myers, and Marco Island sent cooks to buy produce in the market, and small farmers had regular booths. The buyers prodded and squeezed produce, and there were excellent bargains. Cantaloupes that sold for $1.39 apiece in supermarkets could be purchased here for thirty-five cents apiece. There were lugs of lettuce, tomatoes, turnips, and other vegetables that sold for only a fraction of the prices they sold for in supermarkets, Hoke noticed. Eight cents' worth of broccoli could be transformed by a Naples nouvelle chef into a $5.95 side dish. An old lady was selling doughnuts and coffee in a booth, and Hoke bought a twenty-five-cent Styrofoam cup of coffee. Carrying his cup, he strolled slowly through the lot, looking for Mr. Sileo. He found him in the parking lot. Mr. Sileo was hefting a fifty-pound sack of potatoes into the back of his Impala station wagon. The back was already loaded with vegetables. There was a dead naked child on the passenger side of the front seat. Startled, Hoke took a closer look and recognized that the body was the carcass of a dressed lamb.

"Good morning, Mr. Sileo."

"You ready for a good day's work?"

"I'm always ready to work, Mr. Sileo. But I haven't had a chance to talk to Mr. Bock yet. You told me you'd point him out."

"Anyone here could do that."

"There’s a lot of people here. I didn't expect to see so many."

"If you get here early, you get the best shit. And if you come late, you get what's left a hell of a lot cheaper. See that fucker sleeping in the back of the Ford pickup?" Sileo pointed. "He drives all the way down here from Sarasota once a week, waits until nine or ten, and then loads up on what's left at rock-bottom prices. He has his own little grocery store up there in Sarasota, and he cleans up. I could buy the same way, 'cause I'm right here in town, but I'd rather be successful selling good food at reasonable prices."

"Sure," Hoke said, remembering that he had worked for less than a dollar an hour for this cheap Levantine bastard.

"How do I find Mr. Bock?"

"He's in a tent on the other side near the coffee stall. He'll have a half dozen Haitians with him probably. I'll wait here for you, and you can ride back to the cafeteria with me."

"Don't wait. If Bock doesn't hire me, I'll work for someone else. I can't work for ten bucks a day."

"I'll pay you twelve."

"Give Marilyn my love."

Hoke got another cup of coffee before he went to the tent that the coffee lady pointed out as Mr. Bock's. Hoke realized that he was acting much too arrogantly for a man who was supposed to be a mendicant fruit tramp. He looked the part, but he still didn't feel like a migrant worker. After all, he was a detective-sergeant earning thirty-six thousand dollars a year. The farmers here were living marginally, and except, perhaps, for a few chefs from the better hotels in Naples and Marco Island, who were buying produce, Hoke probably had a higher annual income than anyone else in Immokalee.

The tent was a pyramidal army surplus top. All four sides were rolled up to waist level. Tiny Bock sat inside at a card table on a folding metal chair. He had a clipboard and a stack of vouchers on the table, the latter weighted down with a small chunk of brain coral. Bock wore a Red Man gimme cap, a blue work shirt with the sleeves cut off at the shoulders, creaseless corduroy trousers, and lace-up work shoes. His bare arms were muscular, and there was a blue rose tattooed on his left wrist. The forefinger of his left band was missing down to the second knuckle. His thick eyebrows were gray and black and formed an almost straight line above his dark brown eyes. His tanned face was crisscrossed with hundreds of tiny fine lines. There was a sun cancer the size of a half-dollar on his right cheek, bordered by a quarter-inch hedge of gray stubble. He had a slight paunch, but it looked hard. He was probably a few years older than he looked, but he could pass for fifty-five.

Hoke rapped the doorway post but didn't enter the tent. "Mr. Bock?"

"The load's been sold," Bock said, without looking up. "I'm not buying, sir. I'm looking for work, and I was told you needed a crew chief."

"Who told you that?" Bock looked at Hoke but raised his eyes without lifting his head.

"Mr. Sileo told me, down at the Cafeteria. I was a crew chief down in the Redland, working tomatoes."

"Why'd you leave? There’s plenty of tomatoes left down there in South Dade."

"I was fired. I got into a little fight in Florida City."

"What happened to your teeth?"

"I had a set, but they were lost during the fight. When I got out of jail, I went back to the bar, but nobody'd seen them. Somebody probably found and pawned 'em, I guess."

"Follow me."

When he got to his feet, Bock was a much bigger man than Hoke had thought he was when he had been sitting. His thighs were so large they stretched his corduroys tightly, and Hoke figured that he was at least two hundred and forty pounds. Hoke followed Bock to the far edge of the lot, where five black men were unloading a semitrailer of watermelons and loading them onto another trailer. The two trailers were about fifteen or twenty feet apart. There was a man on each truck, and three men were on the ground passing the melons. The men were talking in Creole, and one man was laughing. But as Bock and Hoke approached, they fell silent. The pace of the work did not speed up, however.

"What's wrong with this picture?" Bock said, looking at Hoke with narrowed eyes.

Hoke scratched his neck. A rash had developed at the bottom of his beard, and scratching and perspiration had made his neck a little raw.

"The three men on the ground are all facing us," Hoke said. "If the guy in the middle turned around the other way, it would be easier to pass the melons. But that's not all that's wrong. If the trailers were backed up bed to bed, you wouldn't need anyone on the ground. Two men could transfer the melons instead of five."

"Then what would you do with the other three men? Have them stand around with their fingers up their ass?"

"I'd give 'em some other work to do."

"You're talking logic, but what we're dealing with here is Haitians. Two Mexicans could do it your way, but two Haitians would take all day to do it. If I made the man in the middle turn around, the other two would think he had an easier job than they did, and they'd squabble about taking turns in the middle. That would add at least another half hour to unloading the truck. D'you see what I mean?"

"Not exactly."

"Neither does the State Agricultural Commission. Two white men, or two Mexicans, can outwork five Haitians. And that's why I pay these five bastards only as much as I would pay two Mexicans. Besides that, Mexicans wouldn't break melons accidentally on purpose so they could eat one."

"What's the right answer then?" Hoke said.

"There isn't any right answer, and there ain’t gonna be. Things are gonna get worse, not better. With the new immigration law, the supply of illegal Mexicans will dry up to a trickle. These Haitians will become legal residents, and they'll demand a minimum wage. If I don't pay it, the Labor Board'll fine my ass. If I hire the few illegal Mexicans who sneak through the net, I'll be fined or sent to jail. So next year my watermelons'll probably rot in the fields. Over in Miami fine restaurants put a three-inch slice of watermelon on a plate with a hamburger, and then they can charge six ninety-five for a dollar-and-a-half burger. But I can't get three bucks for a thirty-pound melon. I need a man who knows how to work Haitians. You ever hear of Emperor Henri Christophe?"

"In Haiti? Yes, sir, I've heard the name, but I don't know much of anything about him."

"He's the man who built the citadel on the mountaintop above Cap Haitien. Big square stones weighing hundreds of pounds were pushed by hand up the mountain trail. When fifty men couldn't move one of them big stones, Christophe would remove ten men and kill them. The remaining forty then found out that they could push the stone with no trouble at all. See what I mean?"

"Yes, sir. I see what you mean. But Florida ain't Haiti."

"That's right, and that's too fucking bad. My foreman does the hiring, not me. If you want to talk to him, you can ride back to my farm when the truck's unloaded. You can either help 'em unload now or stand around and watch ‘em. I don't give a shit what you do."

Tiny Bock returned to his tent. Hoke watched the Haitians work, not knowing what else to do. The man in the middle dropped a melon, and it broke into three large pieces. The two men in the trailers jumped down. The Haitians divided the broken melon. One of them offered Hoke a small piece.

"Guette mama!" Hoke said, grinning.

All five of the men laughed, and they ate their pieces of watermelon. When the melon was gone, they tossed the rinds aside and went back to work. Hoke found that it was boring to stand there and watch, so he went back to the coffee stall for another cup of coffee. He sat on an overturned crate where he could see the two trailers. When the job was finished, about forty-five minutes later, the sun was coming up across the Everglades, and the cloudless sky was the color of steel.

When Bock left the tent, Hoke joined him at the truck.

"Get in the back," Bock said.

Hoke climbed into the back of the trailer with the five Haitians, and Bock drove away from the market.

Bock's farm was about ten miles away. After Bock crossed the wooden bridge over the canal, he drove down a twisting gravel road for almost a mile before he pulled into the farmyard. A sagging barbed-wire fence surrounded the vast yard. Beyond the fence, a field of skeletons, with little round knobs on the ends of the stems, stretched out for a hundred yards or more to the Glades. Brussels sprouts - as ugly in their natural state as they were in a bowl, Hoke thought.

There was a one-story concrete brick house with a wooden veranda in front, a barn, three rusting trailer homes behind the barn, and a dented yellow school bus. A few oaks, twenty feet tall, shaded the bus and trailers. A black Ford pickup was parked on the right side of the house. Instead of a license plate, a piece of cardboard, with "Lost Tag" written on it in black ink, was Scotch-taped to the rear window. This was an old trick. In Miami, unless a man got stopped for a violation, be could drive around with a homemade "Lost Tag" sign for years without buying a license tag.

Two pit dogs, with clipped ears and tails, were chained to a column of the veranda. Their chains were long enough to reach the porch and the doorway. The dogs stared stupidly at the semi, but they didn't bark. There were three loose goats in the yard. A black-and-white nanny bleated as she came over to Tiny Bock and rubbed against his leg when he climbed down from the cab of the truck. The Haitians jumped down, went over to the trailers behind the barn, and entered the one in the middle. Hoke dismounted and rolled a cigarette. He lighted it and joined Bock. Bock patted the nanny goat on the head. She bleated again and then trotted over to a wooden box and climbed on top of it. Her udder was full, and she wanted to be milked, Hoke thought; but be didn't see any kids around the yard.

A man came out of the house and crossed toward them. He said something to the dogs, and they both went under the veranda and crouched on their bellies in the dirt. The man was almost as big as Bock, with long black hair that reached his shoulders. He wore a yellow bandanna headband, a white Orioles baseball shirt, low-slung jeans, and pointed cowboy boots. His hand-tooled leather belt had a silver buckle in the shape of a horseshoe. There was a wide scar on the left side of his face that went through his eyebrow and ended at his chin. His left eye was missing, and the skin had been gathered and sewn over the socket, leaving a star-shaped scar. His face was slightly darker than his brown arms, but he looked more like an Indian than he did a Mexican, Hoke thought.

"Chico," Bock said, "this fucker here told me he wanted to be a crew chief. If you look at his hands, you can see he's never worked a day in his life. He was willing to ride in back with the niggers instead of joinin' me in the cab. Find out who he is and what he wants."

The Mexican nodded and hit Hoke in the solar plexus with a right jab that didn't travel more than eight inches. Hoke doubled over and fell to his knees. The cigarette flew from his lips, and Tiny Bock stepped on the cigarette before he crossed the yard to the house without looking back.

Hoke clutched his stomach with both hands and tried to regain his breath. The griping pain went all the way through to his spine. The Mexican kicked Hoke in the right side, and Hoke heard his ribs crack. A sharp, searing jab inside his gut made him yelp - just as his breath returned - and he felt as if his side had been pierced with a spear as the Mexican kicked him a second time in the same place. Hoke vomited then and his breakfast came up- coffee, Diet Coke, oatmeal, and bread chunks. Hoke was kneeling, with both hands on the ground supporting his upper body, and trying not to breathe. Even a shallow breath increased the pain in his side. The Mexican went behind Hoke and kicked him in the buttocks. Hoke's arms gave way, and he sprawled in the dirt, his face in the pool of vomit. The Mexican then picked up Hoke’s feet and dragged him, arms trailing, across the yard and into the barn.

On the near verge of passing out, Hoke thought: This son of a bitcb is in trouble now, because I'm going to kill him!