Pineapple Fruitcake

Golden juice was dribbling from the back of the rental truck, leaving a sticky-sweet trail for miles. Time was running out. The truck wasn’t refrigerated and the countless pineapples stuffed inside were rapidly softening and turning to juice. Frank tried to drive at night when it was cooler, and during the day park the truck in the shade but the puddle of juice it left drew flies and bees and ants and even small animals, all happy to lap up the rare nectar. This accumulation of fauna created a fog of insects that was liable to draw the attention of authorities, which Frank was hoping to avoid. So his stops were brief.

“This isn’t going to work. We should just walk away,” said Victor.

“It will be fine! We’re more than halfway done!” Frank enthused.

“How long until we get to Idaho?” Victor asked.

“We’re nearly to the border; less than a day if we drive all night. Then we sell all the pineapples and live like kings.”

Frank worked downtown in the kitchen of a farm-to-plate restaurant serving Boise’s emerging population of foodies, tech workers and Democrats. While loading deliveries into the kitchen he met a local beekeeper that sold artisanal honey, which he claimed, was made exclusively from the pollen of heirloom apples. As he and Frank shared a spliff, he explained he merely mixed pineapple juice into his honey, which accounted for the fruity flavor. Frank asked if the pineapple juice was expensive.

“By weight, it costs more than blood.”

This struck Frank as an unsettling comparison but took it to mean that it was expensive.

“Do you need pineapples, or just the juice?”

“Either one works. I can spin the juice out of the pineapples with my honeycomb spinners. Why, do have some pineapples laying around?”

“I know where I can get some. A whole truckload.”

“If you can get them for a good price, I’ll buy as many as you have.”

“I’ll be in touch,” Frank said.

Frank had a cousin who worked on a Dole pineapple farm in Honduras. Frank remembered his cousin spoke of giant piles of rejected pineapples left to rot in the sun. Frank planned to rent a truck, drive to Honduras and sell the rejected pineapples to the honey man. If it worked, he could do it every week!

Victor was Frank’s roommate, and Frank offered to cover his rent for a month if he helped with the driving.

They arrived in Honduras and as promised there were piles of pineapples twenty feet high all over the perimeter of the plantation-like farm.

“Why do they throw out all these pineapples?” Victor asked.

“It is a strange and unaccountable thing,” Frank’s cousin observed, “with many of them they just cut off the tops to replant. They sometimes say the pineapple is too sour from cool weather or too sweet from the heat, but they taste fine to me. But a man can only eat so many.”

Frank and Victor immediately began to load the truck, but ran into trouble. They could only half fill it before the pineapples would start rolling out. Frank’s cousin led them to a dirt ramp and with the rear of the truck pointing to the sky; they filled the truck to the brim. The door was secured and as Frank washed his hands under a trickling faucet his cousin asked, “What are you going to do about ice?”

“Ice? What ice?”

“You need ice if those pineapples are going to make it all the way to Idaho. They’ll spoil otherwise.”

“Spoil? They’re for bees! Bees don’t care if they’re spoiled, so long as they’re sweet. They’ll like them better because they’ll be juicier!”

“By the time you get to Idaho all you’ll have left is trunkful of sticky husks.”

“Alright, I’ll get some dry ice and throw it on top. That will keep them nice and cold.”
Frank hugged his cousin, and started the journey back to Idaho.

“What about the ice?” Victor asked.

“That will cut into profits! The pineapples will be fine. It’s only three days to get there.”

But Frank underestimated the speed of the pineapples’ decay, and even driving at night it remained hot. Parking in the shade made little difference when the temperature remained over 100 degrees. The pineapples were liquefying. Frank and Victor could feel the sloshing and thumping of floating fruit whenever they turned a corner.

“How will we unload the truck, if all we have is juice?” Victor asked.

“We’ll just put down a tarp, or get a bunch of kiddie pools! We could drill a hole in the truck and drain it with a hose! It will be easy!”

At the US border, Frank joined the hundreds of trucks and cars waiting to cross into the United States.

“What do you plan to tell them about the leaking juice?” Victor asked.

“The truth! I’m hauling pineapples, and a bit of juice is bound to leak. Very simple.”
As Frank pulled up to the patrol booth, the truck looked as if it was peeing nectar.
The border guard asked, “What’s wrong with your truck? What do you have in there?”

“Pineapples. Just leaking a little juice. Perfectly normal!” Frank replied.

“Pull over to the inspection area.”

“No problem officer.” Frank smiled.

“What are you going to do? You can’t open the truck; all the juice will come pouring out! I don’t want to go to jail!” Victor exclaimed.

“Calm down! I’ll talk to him, and if I have to, I can slip him a bribe and we’ll be on our way. This is how things work. Trust me. But wait in the truck, I don’t want you to screw this up,” Frank replied.

They pulled over to the inspection area and Frank hopped out, with an eager-to-please smile on his face. The border agent was at the back of the truck, looking down at the growing puddle of juice.

“What is this? You can’t take this into the United States. It’s making a mess everywhere.”

“It’s true that we are losing a bit more of our stock than usual, but this happens all the time!” Frank smiled, “It’s harmless pineapple juice. You can have some if you like.”

“Please open the truck. We need to inspect it.”

“Officer, I’d be happy to. And I want you to know how much I appreciate the work you and the other officers do for here at the border keeping America safe. And I know that you are underpaid for the work you do, and I’d like to help you with that.” Frank reached for his wallet just a plume of black smoke erupted from the truck and it pulled away at top speed. Victor couldn’t take the pressure of waiting and decided to make a run for it.

The inspection area had barricades and tire spikes, which Victor gamely avoided. But as his speed increased, navigating the obstacles caused an ever more forceful sloshing of the juice and greater difficulty steering the truck. In the end Victor clipped the passenger-side tires on some spikes, which lurched the truck suddenly to the right and tipped it over. The truck cracked open and a tsunami of sickly-sweet juice and rotted husks gushed over the road, covering multiple lanes, even washing back to the inspection booths and pooling into an inch-deep muck of road dirt and golden liquid.

Victor ran from the truck, and per protocol, border agents released their police dogs to give chase. But once they whiffed the juice, the dogs simply stopped to lap up as much as they could.

Frank’s arm was twisted behind his back, as the border agent was bringing him to a holding pen. It was then when they first heard the humming.

Low and barely audible, it sounded like some sort of engine off in the distance. As it grew louder, they also heard horns honking and the sound of cars crashing into one another. The sound was coming from the south, and as Frank and the agent looked, a dark cloud hanging just above the road was approaching.

Unknown to Frank, his trail of juice had been collecting insects for more than three thousand miles, and the descending cloud of them could smell the pool of juice just released at the border. A storm of bees, hornets, flies, grasshoppers, gnats, beetles and all other winged insects descended like some biblical curse. Panicked drivers tried to jump out of line, crashing into other cars and buildings. Border agents were overwhelmed in their booths, finally running into the storm to try and escape the melee. A few agents tried shooting at the insects, with very limited results. In the confusion, Frank was forgotten and ran splishing and splashing through the juice to avoid prosecution. He called Victor and they met up at a rest stop, anxious to wash away their miserably sticky misadventure.

“Sorry I panicked,” Victor said, as they sponge-bathed in the bathroom sinks.

“It was okay. The cop wasn’t going for the bribe, so you saved us! Your instincts were good!” Frank offered. “Next time, we’ll use dry ice in the truck. That will solve everything!”