The Pineapple - A Short Story

This is a short story I wrote for our literacy class in the MAT program. The mini-pineapple in my last post made me think of it. I hope you like it. Let me know what you think?



The Pineapple

by Colby Spell

My brother's name is LokomaikaiKeAkua. That is probably quite mouthful for you mainlanders. Fortunately, my brother was obsessed with Western movies and insisted on us calling him by the name of Shane. This was convenient for my mother because, as much as she had to yell at us, “LokomaikaiKeAkua and Kolupi” would have exhausted her long before the day was done. Shane and Kolupi, that's my name, were much quicker to say when parenting was necessary. In spite of the best efforts of my Mom and Dad, we were trouble. It is not that we were bad kids, we just had a lot of energy and above average curiosity. If I told you all the mischief that we made before the age of 12 it would fill a whole book. I will tell you this one story though.

We spent a lot of time at the beach. We would often spend hours by the waters edge looking for shells, rocks and other treasures of the sea. There were these really slimy gobs of seaweed that would wash up on the shore. Since there were copious amounts of the stuff there was really only one thing that could be done. Thats right, seaweed fights. The seaweed was perfect for throwing. It would make such a satisfying “schlop” sound as it splattered all over its target. If you were lucky you would hit your opponent in the face where the salty shrapnel would find its way into an open eye. Oh the exquisite pain. Mind you, this usually resulted in a spanking, but it was still satisfying. I guess maybe we were not the nicest of children. Still, it was basically good clean fun.

Then one day it crossed the line. We had just cut an unripe pineapple and we were playing soccer with it. It was not a great ball but we had nothing better to do. It did not take long before there was some disagreement as to whether the dead seagull counted as in bounds or out of bounds. Push came to shove and we were throwing seaweed. On accident, my brother picked up a jelly fish and flung it at me. My mouth happened to be open and, you guessed it, I got a mouth full. I just lost it. I picked up our little green pineapple and whiffed it at him. It hit him above the eye hard enough that I knew it would leave a mark. “Yes!” I said. “He kâkalaioa!” he yelled back. Just so you know, that is not a very nice thing to say. But he was very mad. He grabbed the rock-hard pineapple, reared back and threw it me as hard as he could.

That is when it went horribly wrong. At first I thought luck was with me but I was wrong. “All right” I said as it whizzed safely past my ear. The pineapple hit a coconut tree behind me with a horrible “thunk”. “Oh crap” I said as I heard the tell tale sound of swish, whack, swish, bang, swish as a coconut smashed through the branches of the Monkey Pod Tree above me. I ran in a panicked circle like an Ghost crab running from an Albatross. After that everything went black.

I don't remember much after that. I remember Mom yelling and Shane crying. But that I don't remember clearly. All I remember is that I had a headache, Shane had a black eye and we had Haupia for dessert that night. That must have been what happened to the coconut.