Coconut

Is it me?  The big boss has a meeting with the little man to go over his perfor-mance of the past year.  The big boss says, “Little man, you’ve had a banner year.  No-body’s going to take that away from you, a banner year!”  The little man sat in the chair that was small and low and directly in front of the big man, and the air went into him heavy and came out small. When the big man said he had a banner year, the little man felt the air go in him easy and come out full.  His chest pushed out the buttons of his shirt so that little waves of fabric surrounded the buttons and parts of his undershirt pushed passed the crease in the folds and looked out at the big boss who was not looking at the little man.

Then the big man took the small notebook he uses to write down the things he likes to forget and looked up at the little man without moving his head.  Instead his eye-brows grew into palm prawns and his eyes were like coconuts that hung from the prawns and swung back and forth, knocking into one another.  This confused the little man be-cause it wasn’t like palm prawns to have coconuts dangling from them and swinging back and forth into each other when someone was having a banner year.

The big man looked at the little man with his coconut eyes and then spoke about all the things that the little man could do to become a big man, but he was distracted by the coconuts rattling back and forth and hitting one another while the big man told him what he needed to do to become a big man, just like him.  The list of things that the little man could do to become a big man grew and grew until the big man became distracted by his own palm-prawn coconut eyes, and he went over the list again and again until the co-conuts sagged down and rested on his cheeks.

When the big man tried to look at the little man, he couldn’t.  The coconuts that swung back and forth to help him find the words that allowed him to tell the little man how to be a better big man kept his head down, and the coconut eyes looked sad.  He said to the little man, “what about the tiny person who works for you, little man?  Do you think they can do what a little man does?”  The little man didn’t understand why he was being asked a question about the tiny person, when he was there to be told if he was a good or bad little man.  Then he tried to look at him, but the big man’s head was down and his coconut eyes were almost touching the desk as he clutched the paper that had all the questions and suggestions that might make him a big man.  Suddenly the big man lifted his palm-prawn coconut eyes and he said, “Good, good, little man, that is why the tiny person will take your place.  The tiny person is good, so the tiny person will replace you.” 

The little man sat there while the big man’s coconut eyes swayed and bounced and crashed into one another as he returned to the list of things that would help the little man become a big man.  The little man struggled to be a good little man, to be all that was required of a man such as the one with the coconut eyes that now sat before him talking and swinging his distracting eyes all over the little man’s patience.  Suddenly, as quickly as he had started, the big man’s palm-prawn coconut eyes slid back down over his cheek bones and came to rest without motion just above the paper that the big man clutched in his hands. He took a cautious breath before asking the little man, “Are you oaky with this little man?”  At which point the little man pulled a sharp machete out from under his seat and swung it wide across the big man’s face until his palm-prawn coconut eyes fell to the ground, and bounced in a pool of blood on the paper that now fell from the big man’s blood drenched hands.  And as he swung a vicious swing across the big man’s neck that severed his head he cried out, “No, I’m not okay with that!”