This was the last shot taken of my uncle.

His name was Bob, but everyone called him Banana Bob. He single-handedly turned the flailing banana economy around in the late 70's. On an ill-fated trip to the forbidden Hawaiian island of Niʻihau in 1987, he vanished from the face of the earth. He made an off-the-books trek to visit an as-yet-uncreated bird sanctuary to view his favorite bird, the ʻalae keʻokeʻo (Hawaiian Coot). He was never heard from again.

In early 2003, a man named Darius Johnson who was on death row in Abilene Texas for the murder of a police officer was scheduled to be executed. In an attempt to commute his sentence, he offered up his only leverage: the whereabouts of an extraordinary image.

His execution was stayed by the Governor. The US Marshalls then accompanied Darius to a lonely field with a solitary windmill, where they found a faded photograph of Banana Bob. The most unsettling aspect was the tropical tan that was evident on his usually pale skin.

In a deal worked out with the Texas Attorney General, Darius spilled the beans on a black ops mercenary death squad employed though a Dole Corporation slush fund. The people at Dole had captured my uncle, and through massive injections of ibogaine and synthetic psychedelics and in conjunction with forced interrogation techniques and sensory deprivation tanks, were attempting him to eschew his banana-promoting ways for the pineapple.

Unfortunately Bob was never one to capitulate to organized criminals. Eventually his body was exhumed in a remote field 15 miles from Kona, where the ME's report showed massive blunt force trauma resulting from being beaten with unripe bananas.

We no longer call him Banana Bob. And every time i see this picture it gives me tears.