LIONWORLD

By William E Justin
Ethan Vulerummer
Big-E White’s Last Lion Head
Coco’s Big Day

Coco’s Big Day

PART TWO

Coco didn’t greet Sidney at the front entry when she arrived with her husband. She didn’t want everyone to see
her cry. But Sidney quickly made her way to Coco’s room and soon the two were grasping each other, crying,
saying how much they loved one another and how they would always be the best of friends.
They had met at sixteen, at a girl’s camp. Before the week was over they had proclaimed their “sisterhood”.
By the age of eighteen they were leaving a bouquet of smiles wherever they went. A typical Saturday saw them
collecting pieces from local thrift stores and working them into new fashions that Coco drew up on her computer.
The 3-d studio model she used as the point of departure for shapes and sizes was made up from a careful measur-
ing of Sidney’s body. Coco was a budding seamstress and designer and Sidney her perfect model. They made up
some slightly wacky outfits fashioned from sleeves of one blouse sown onto the body of another; or dresses that
were trimmed, hemmed and re-pleated in funny ways. They liked to stitch part of one fabric onto another.
By eighteen, the two young women were charming their way into clubs at night and driving out to the northern
Bay Area fringe whenever they could. They became fascinated by the young aspirants to Lion-fighting who con-
gregated out there. Both girls came from what had become known as “comfortably B Class” families. Coco’s
mother Lynette had an office job to go with what Claude had left her. Sidney’s father was a mid-manager for a
company that built giant-size blending units for various packagers of cleaning products. They both received mod-
erate allowances from their mothers. Coco’s was the larger because she had to do much of the house work and
baby-sitting of her two younger brothers. Sidney was always around the house in those days helping her finish up
so they could go out.
Out on the fringe, both girls developed altruistically. Seeing the squalor of the C Class castoffs had effected
them deeply. The two volunteered one day a month out of the goodness of their hearts—and because it gave them
an excuse to go and be around the Lion-fighter boys who looked so cool and excited their fantasies.
Sidney and Coco lived together in a small apartment when they were twenty. They each attended San Fran-
cisco Bay College. Coco was in full gear pursuing fashion design and the needle crafts with Sidney learning busi-
ness skills to run the business both saw in their future. By then they were always in demand as guests on nice trips
to wonderful places. Men loved them. But the only one who broke into their inner circle was Robert Casoni—a
smaller man born in Tanzania, who was homosexual. Robert seemed destined to be Coco’s personal assistant. He
quickly became a member of the girls’ dreams of world domination in the design and fashion business.
Often he would come into their little studio apartment first thing in the morning, and see them dead asleep and
cuddled-up together like soft kittens. He would sit at the foot of the bed and tickle the bottoms of their feet until
they woke and got onto whatever they had planned for the day. Robert told his friends that he was, “the Coco and
Sidney” handler. The person in charge of taking them for long walks and making sure their coats of fur always
shined with a healthy luster.
Then there was Jean D’Sole. Following Claude’s death, the Frenchwoman built a strong friendship and alliance
with Lynette. She had only one son and had always longed for a daughter. Her heart adopted Coco, and then Sid-
ney as well. Later, Robert too was taken into her natural order. Coco and Sidney visited in Paris every year and
later the smaller young man from Tanzania came along too. He had no maternal figure in his life and was deeply
drawn to the slender Frenchwoman who possessed a measure of love for many. She visited them as often as possi-
ible in California and was always with one of them on the phone.
Lynette and Jean planned to back the three in a small business following college. And this did in fact
happen. They began at the bottom. They solicited donations to manufacture basic fresh clothing for the
school children left abandoned by Corporatized Education out on the fringes. There—schools backed by
donations—were often the only thread of decency available in these districts where rows of tents were
employed as housing for those who just couldn’t function within the nearly sub-human world that lower
C Class workers were often forced to live in.
Coco, Sidney and Robert never made much money but still managed to enjoy themselves. Coco’s
great love was needlework. She was always making something. She could stitch and talk on the phone
for hours, or stitch and watch movies. Lynette told her once that if she ever got into a real relationship
with a man, she’d better not be bringing that needlework into the bed!
When the women were twenty-five years old, the change came. Lion-fighters Big-E White and Sa-
moan Luani came into their lives and carried them off in different directions. Sidney went with her man
to Hawaii and Coco with hers to Santa Barbara. Robert came along with Coco and they restarted their
company exporting various products to small shops around the world. In Hawaii, Sidney was soon preg-
nant with the first of two sons that were born one year apart like Maxim and Merle.

Coco reaffirmed to Sidney that she hadn’t called her fat out of meanness but because she just could-
n’t stand to see her youthful beauty diminished in any way and had only wanted to spur her forward.
“But look at you!” She said through another burst of tears, “oh…you’re looking perfect!”
“Well you were right baby. And I’ve been training for six months now.” Sidney had laid her hand
on Coco’s shoulder. “I don’t ever want you to be disappointed in me”. They hugged again and renewed
their life-long sisterly vows of love for each other.
Little B came over to the edge of the bed and put his paw on Sidney’s hip. She quickly gathered the
pampered poodle dog up in her arms and fawned over him for a moment. He appeared intoxicated by
the extra dose of women’s perfume that filled the air in the room.
“Anyway sweetie, you’re gonna experience what happens to your body after childbirth. You gotta
start praying for a son. Big-E needs to have a boy.” Sidney’s glanced at the doorway and lowered her
voice a notch. “…to make up for that father of his!”

That father…and his son, had made their way inside. Many of the guests had arrived and a bed of
smiles quickly bloomed with the appearance Big-E White. Many of those blooms instantly wilted how-
ever as Buster entered. His presence made a lot of them a bit uneasy. Two of the exceptions were Bill
and Ronnie Le Muffett. Their eyes twinkled at the site of Buster White and they rushed over to greet
him and make some attempt to fulfill the promise they made to Coco to “take charge of him”. Buster
liked those two. They at least knew how to have a good time which was more then he could say about
Big-E whom he felt had turned into another of those “boss types” he really didn’t care to be around.
Buster liked Merle too. He was great as an unknowing set-up man for one of his jokes. As for Maxim,
well, Buster simply considered him to be the only real man he’d ever had the pleasure to meet in person.
Shortly, the four Le Muffett men had Buster surrounded and were listening to his biting comical ren-
dition of the people on the train ride up from L.A. But his gaze kept sliding off to the far side of the
room to a table where Coco’s auntie Lucile was sitting. She saw Buster and was smiling at him with
those shiny, flashing black eyes of hers. They had briefly met the previous year and had developed a
strange chemistry. He wrapped up his story quickly and began to slide out of the group of men to go to
her. Merle was going to block his way but Maxim held onto the back of his coat. When Buster had ex-
cused himself, Max addressed his brothers. “Might as well let him go on being what he’s always been”,
he said watching what seemed like the opening movements of some play.
Bill was smiling. “It gonna be a shame to see him go down like that”.
“What did you say?” said Ronnie Le Muffett. “I got faith in ol’ Busta”.
“I’m taking bets” said Merle. He calculated the odds as being 6-4 in auntie Lucile’s favor.
 Buster was over eighty years old. Maxim, Bill and Ronnie each pulled out one-hundred dollar bills,
made their bets and handed the money to Merle who quickly calculated the range of his own fixed win-
nings if he could work the room for more bettors and refresh the odds at each stage. He took a little pad
of paper from his pocket, wrote down the bets with the change in the point spread, and handed a receipt
to his brothers. “Listen” instructed Maxim, “Everybody gotta know there’s no active rootin’ on of the
participants. We can’t be embarrassing Coco and Big-E.”
Bill, half-jokingly, said they aught to get an ambulance on site in case the worst happened.
“I’m stickin’ with my man Busta” said Ronnie with gleeful confidence that the old man would pre-
vail. “He gonna ride da wild thang and come out smellin’ like a rose. You watch.” Big-E’s dad always
impressed him as being a bit ahead of the opinions and expectations others had for him. Ronnie had
never met another old guy like Buster White.
As the Le Muffett brothers discussed the details and conditions of the bet, Big-E was chatting with
Samoan Luani in a corner. The two Lion-fighters weren’t particularly close—not anything like their
women—but they had known each other a long time and shared mutual respect that greatly over-
whelmed the small amounts of professional jealousy between them.
Jimmy Luani acquired the name Samoan Luani when he first hit the big stage in Lion-fighting.
He had a clever manager that worked up a story of this boy who had killed every last lion in Samoa.
The truth of the matter was that lion had never been seeded in Samoa. It was a lion-free land. Once
however, a cargo ship had stored cages with thirty fringe lion at the docks and a group of boys including
Jimmy, had snuck in during the night, cut the locks, and set them all free to go up into the into the hills.
The next day they began to form into teams to go out and battle the large cats. Within a month they had
spent their small supply of lion but loved every moment of it.
Jimmy’s grandmother was Samoan but his father was mostly Hawaiian. And his mother was a Latina
from Southern California—where he spent most of his time growing up. He had been famous in the re-
gion as a high school athlete who set records in football, baseball, wrestling and swimming. People said
he was the most complete athlete they’d ever seen. He had been signed to attend the Southern California
University and take over the quarterback position in his sophomore year. But during his first year there
he developed an interest in Lion-fighting. He was a regular out on the fringe in Riverside. His prowess
as a battalier grew by the month and he was quickly signed by Eastern Motors’ All Asia Team as
backup for the aging superstar Fallon Chi. When Chi was beaten and partially devoured in the final
match of the season, Jimmy instantly inherited the all-important middle spot.
For season after season, Samoan Luani & The All Asia Team were outscored by the Le Muffett
Crew. Jimmy was flanked by spearmen who were among the best martial artists in the world. They did-
n’t just drive lions the required distance off the field of play where the big cats were instantly hit with
tranquilizer darts—they made a show of it. The Asian fighters would occasionally grab their spears at
the center point and slap the beasts around a little. This had several effects. One, it made them the artis-
tic favorites. They constantly had a pay-per-view audience greater then the Le Muffett Crew. And as
Lion-fighters received a cut of the sales, they were the top money-makers in the sport.
But their flourishes cost them time and points and aided in making them perennial runners up. The
third effect of their style of play was that it cost four Asian spearmen their lives. To slap a Tall Lion
around with the ends of a spear means that you must open up your front to the powerful forward burst
that one of the great beasts can spring. As Maxim put it in one interview, “It may be pretty to watch, but
its damn stupid!”
While Jimmy Luani pretty much agreed with Max in this regard, he loved the guys he had played
with and had cried after each of his four teammates had been killed. What jealousy he felt toward Big-E
had to do with his good fortune to play with The Le Muffett brothers. They never fooled around with
lion but processed them like a machine. Maxim controlled the field and orchestrated the effect with
quick, coded commands to his brothers that even Big-E couldn’t always comprehend. Lions communi-
cated with each other through scent and instinct and so did The Le Muffett Brothers. With the lighten-
ing reflexes of Maxim close by and the sheer effectiveness of the crew, Big E White never had to spend
attention protecting his sides and back. He was free to do what he did best which was to go one-on-one
with the main alpha male. As was the case with Jimmy, Big-E’s mind moved at a completely higher
level of speed then a lion’s. When the window of opportunity opened—even for a split second—Big-E
batted the beast into unconsciousness setting it up to be finished off before being further processed into
artifacts. Merle always immediately skinned the alpha male and packaged its sellable parts for the mar-
ket.
What jealousy Big-E had for Jimmy stemmed from feelings that his rival was perhaps the better of
the two. But they were so close in talent and results that it always made for perfect fodder for sports
shows. The statistics showed that Big-E White had knocked out 97.4% of all of the lions that came
within striking distance of his bat, and that Samoan Luani had knocked out 96.9%. Considering all of
the other intervening factors, nobody could really say one was better then the other. Maxim had set the
standard with 97.8% during his seven seasons as a battalier. What went undisputed was the fact that of
beasts that spent much time inside the “wheelhouses” of the three great Lion-fighters, only a small frac-
tion went home that night.
It’s not that the primary alpha male lions didn’t score on the battalier—this happened all of the time
when the lions managed to get their razor claws on the protective gear Lion-fighters wore beneath their
clothing. Lions ended up as trophies because that they couldn’t usually gain the upper hand on the men.
They would become “passionately involved” and fight to the death rather then retreat. Plus, they really
liked to eat Great Ape. There was an unknown biological factor to their involvement.
Lion-fighting was a biological endpoint for the long evolutionary battle between man and the monster
cats that roamed the earth. What made this Lion-world especially dangerous for human beings was the
fact that such predatory beasts had become a bit larger and smarter for having eradicating the chimpan-
zee thousands of years before. Man was next up on the menu for them and they didn’t often walk away
from an opportunity for human meat and to carry on the biological trial. When Man brought them back
from the verge of extinction they came back taller, meaner and smarter then ever.
Jimmy and Big-E weren’t talking about Lion-fighting however. And they avoided talk about the lit-
tle spat their women had been involved in. They were talking about the photo they would make with
Maxim before the dinner. When Max joined the two, Jimmy began to kid them both.
“Hey, you guys gonna dress up in that uniform Coco has everybody wearing now?” He was smiling
as Max looked down and shook his head. “The things they do for her” Max muttered. Coco had de-
signed new uniforms for the crew but Max did not go along. He didn’t wear baggy shorts. He wore
plain, loose-fitting black silk pants and shirt as he always had.

Finally, Coco came out with Sidney and Little B and joined the party. She put the dog down and he
immediately ran over to where Merle, Bill and Ronnie were sitting with some of their camera crewman
and tranquilizer dart-shooting security enforcers. This was the first time they had seen him since “the
Little B incident”. He went to Ronnie who picked him up and spoke to him so all the guys could hear.
“Hey Little B, Merle say next time we get a lion he gonna send back a little treat for you!”
The table had broken into such a roar of laughter that the everyone in the large room turned to look.
Big-E looked over too and frowned. He quickly moved over to the table and grabbed Little B. “This
dog being a nuisance?” He carried Little B out a door, put him down, and told him to go play with the
children. Little B trotted off obediently and quickly ran into a pack of little girls who picked him up and
began to fawn over him.
There were twenty-seven children out on the back lawn of the property in an area that was set up for
the girl’s summer camp Coco had hosted for three years in a row. It was available for girls from all of
the different employment classes. Participants coming from the A Class families directly sponsored
girls from the lower classes and for C Class castoffs that lived on the fringe. The theme of the camp was
“Work and Have Fun”. It was developed from the pioneering education reform group called Precepts
Of The Curriculum that Coco had been involved with in San Francisco Bay. The central idea was to
“have fun” and learn to impregnate that spirit into the more structured and goal-oriented activity we call
work. The methodologies or logical activities for achieving this however, required far greater amounts
of time for teaching and learning then was available. At a summer camp, they could only touch on a few
things. But the girls and their families became year round program members and were offered counsel-
ing and various other guides for upping and maintaining the values introduced to them at camp.
Coco’s involvement had increased rapidly when Precepts Of The Curriculum found itself targeted by
the True Christo Leagues funded and manipulated by Fascists from the entertainment media and other
areas that resented competition for the minds of the young. The mixing of C Class castoff children with
A and B Class children was especially galling to them. The Fascists were basically against all things
progressive. Little girls leaning sewing and physical culturing and creative thinking and “first things
first” logic were a direct threat to “private control by the elite”—which was the rudimentary mantra of
the Fascists. The A Class executives who went after Precepts Of The Curriculum were known for pro-
moting the illusion of upward mobility rather then the reality-based, spiritualized, genuine article. They
wanted children and their families tuned to channels such as SKNK TV with their patented All You
Need To Know News programs such the The Lou Glen Show and the nightly predatory “fun” of You Stu-
pid Idiot (Controversy/Comedy/Humiliation/Pretty People and MORE—a full 360 degrees of Riveting,
Entertaining, Must-See Content!!!).
Since all compensation packages offered to C Class workers included what was called “basic TV”,
many children and their parents were swamped by it. Programs with enlightening Christoism were
never included. Christo sayings such as, “blessed are the poor for they are filled with opportunity for
becoming enriched with the True Spirit” and, “the lowly swine is more apt to attain the Kingdom of
Light and Tranquility then is he who has become lost in the thickened mud of the material world”—
statements such as these were the basis for entire mini-series’. But that is not what the Fascists and their
water-carriers had in mind at all. Statements like these and folks like the Precepts Of The Curriculum
people were an actual threat to the “private control” motto of the Fascist elite. That motto: We Are The
Power In This Town! was actually coded into a secret handshake they used with one another at certain
times. Eight distinct squeezes of the hand represented the syllables in the phrase. Sometimes one could
see the ridiculous farce playing out comically in full view as the secret hand shakers counted beneath
their breath trying to get it right.

There were extra nannies hired by Coco for this day’s event. They were charged with watching over
the children only to the extent they didn’t wander too far off, or go and start smacking one another—
which especially the boys were prone to do in such a group with so many brothers and cousins. Two of
them—young college students—were smiling as some girls fashioned a napkin into a bonnet and put it
on Little B. The little dog, like usual, just sat there. Off a ways behind the property were two security
men with automatic fast tranquilizer dart crossbows. They were hired to guard against lion. For the
California Tall’s that roamed in the Gonzales National Forest east of the property, the squeals and
shrieks and laughing sounds of a yard full of children playing could be heard for miles and would strike
them like the ring of a dinner bell. It was a remote possibility, but Big-E would take no chances and
paid the extra expense of the guards.
A few of the boys were standing by a window peering in. They were looking at the old man with the
hat and snow white beard. “Who that?” The younger boy had not seen the man before and he looked
funny. Another boy replied; “I dunno”. He waved over yet another boy who was older then him—one
of his cousins. “You know who that old guy is?”
“Yeah, that Big-E’s dad Busta” he answered.
“How’d Big-E get an old daddy like that?”
“I dunno”.
Inside, Buster White didn’t notice the boys peering in at him. His dancing eyes were focused exclu-
sively on auntie Lucile. Her piercing gaze was aimed straight into his. Her three sisters sitting around
the table hadn’t seen it in a long time but they knew what that meant. They grew up watching their old-
est sister cast her eyes at men like that.