Breadfruit by R. G. McLeod

Breadfruit by R.G. MacLeod

There it was again.

Well, actually, it was another one, one of about a dozen or so. This big green bumpy lumpy thing, a breadfruit.

Someone had just tossed it in the pit with the pig. I say pit, but it was just a big pile of rocks. Very hot rocks. These people had never heard of hickory, applewood, or pecan but that didn’t stop them from thinking they knew something about barbecue. Back home barbecue is what gets you elected. The dogcatcher couldn’t get elected without putting on a barbecue. These people had never heard of a dogcatcher.

Fortunately, they had heard of God. Not so many years ago, it might have been me on those hot rocks.

Breadfruit grows in Indonesia, Polynesia, Micronesia, Melanesia, all over the South Pacific. It was taken everywhere humans settled, often in outrigger canoes fashioned from the trunks of the trees that bore the fruit.

I didn’t come here in a canoe. I plummeted from the sky, riding down on a pillar of smoke and flame until I un-jammed my canopy and hit the silk seconds before my P-38 slammed into the reef.

As I watch steam and smoke curl from between banana leaves, I see a submarine surface beyond the reef. It’s American, come to take me back to Guadalcanal. The warriors paddle me out to meet the sub as I wonder about the meal I missed. I eat on the submarine. Never has Spam tasted so bad.