Kiss of the Fur Queen (17 page)

“I can’t dance!” Fuck off! was more like it.

“What are you
doing
to that poor boy?” a female voice interjected, not a moment too soon. When a sweat-faced Jeremiah turned to look, a tiny, brown woman, cute as a blueberry, blinked up at him.

“Oh, Granny,” Amanda relented, her mock disgust not mock enough for Jeremiah’s liking. “It’s just Jeremiah, the guy
I’ve been telling you about, playing hard-to-get. You know these Cree.”

“Oh, these Cree.” The marble-eyed septuagenarian sighed and fanned her cracked-earth face with some dark bird’s wing — a hawk’s? an eagle’s? “Sometimes I wish they were more like us lusty, enthusiastic, gung-ho Ojibway,” she bobbed at Jeremiah. “Don’t you?”

Well, no, not exactly, Jeremiah felt he should say. I don’t even know if I enjoy being Cree, he knew he shouldn’t say. That his embarrassment had descended to a simmering dislike dismayed him. But why shouldn’t he hate this place, these cheap goings-on, this conquered race of people?

“Ann-Adele Ghostrider.” The old woman regaled Jeremiah with two robust handshakes. “But I have a Cree name, too: Poosees.” She batted threadbare eyelashes.

“Hmph.” Jeremiah took some comfort in the fact: imagine, a woman called Cat or, better, Pussy.

“I travel too much,” Poosees sighed. “For a girl my age? Way too much! Pooh! Anyways, some old Cree fart away up in South Indian Lake — Parliament Moose, can you believe that for a name? — takes a shine to me. Five years ago. Gave me that name because I have a kind of … cat-like personality, this Parliament Moose says to me. Now I ask you: what in the name of Jesus Christ is poosees-like about me?”

“Your whiskers,” Jeremiah suggested, as a sudden burst of sunlight announced that the withered upper lip on the merry old dame was adorned by a caragana-hedge of fine white bristles.

“Why, thank you. My granddaughter here tells me you play piano better than ten white people jammed in a blender. Might this be true?” Green and pink beads sparkled from her white deer-hide tiara. “Or is she just goofin’ around on me again?”

Her pupils spewing sparks, Amanda brushed past her flustered Cree captive. “I’ll make you dance yet.” And quicker than a sparrow, she was off through the crowd and into the dance. Jeremiah followed her progress with panic-struck eyes. What was he to say to this ancient stranger? Nothing, apparently — to his immense relief — for she took the initiative.

“You northern people,” she sighed, as with nostalgia, “it’s too bad you lost all them dances, you know? All them beautiful songs? Thousands of years of … But never mind. We have it here.” She, too, was looking at the dance now. The drumming, the chanting crescendoed — pentatonic mush, Jeremiah opined.

And what the hell was this tired old bag yattering on about anyway? What dances? What songs?
“Kimoosoom Chimasoo”?
The “Waldstein Sonata”?

“Them little ol’ priests,” Poosees persisted, “the things they did? Pooh! No wonder us Indian folk are all the shits.”

Jeremiah turned away. Then he saw her, on the dance floor: the della robbia blue windbreaker, the calf-length boots, the pale blue rose in her hair, now ten, eleven months’ pregnant, her womb engorged, mountainous. In a circle of dancers cor-ruscating with magenta, turquoise, luminescent orange, she looked like a handful of dirt. Evidently, however, this was of
no concern, for she was possessed, her eyes glazed over, her feet inching along as if her body had neither heart nor soul. How could she find the strength to stand, never mind to dance? How had she — they — survived that freezing New Year’s Eve?

“Devil worship,” said Ann-Adele Ghostrider. “That’s what they called this. The nerve!”

Yes, Jeremiah thought, the nerve. And right on the money. He mumbled some excuse and left. Chopin’s mazurkas could wait no longer.

A
s if artfully arranged, Jeremiah and Gabriel knelt in the tenth pew, the fresh June sunlight that fell across their faces, shoulders, arms, rendered doubly rich by the stained glass of windows. Gabriel’s gaze, however, was directed at the walls between the windows, bristling with images of blood, agony, cruelty, superimposed with games of make-believe at Birch Lake Indian Residential School.

Our Lady of Lourdes must have some well-heeled parishioners if it could afford such expensive-looking sculptures. Each painstakingly carved out of some rich dark wood, the depictions were so life-like that Gabriel swore he could hear whips snapping, Christ sighing in reply.

No one in this sparse and motley congregation looked particularly devout. The women in their flowery hats may have been involved enough; some had the decency to rattle their rosaries from time to time, move their lips like fish, or
hold their hands to their hearts. But the men, in suits as nondescript as muskrat fur, gave the distinct impression that they were really at the races, or in some fishing boat on Falcon Lake.

From the rear balcony, a small choir was making mincemeat of the harmonies to Abraham Okimasis’s favourite hymn, “Faith of Our Fathers.” Fortunately, thought Jeremiah, Holy Communion was on the way, and he wouldn’t have to listen much longer. Withdrawing into his conscience for the words, “We will be true to thee till death,” he prepared for the feast.

Unlike Jeremiah, who had been to this church a dozen times before, Gabriel reminisced, unimpeded, merrily. What else was a first-time customer to do? The service was boring, interminable, and, when all was said and done, unnecessary. He contemplated the carving of Jesus being spanked across the buttocks: he envied the man. Yes, Father, please, make me bleed!

Jeremiah rose and took a step towards the aisle. “Well?” he whispered.

“Well what?” Gabriel whispered back.

“Are you coming?”

“I haven’t been to confession” — a ruse; Gabriel wanted nothing to do with communion, holy or otherwise — “so I can’t go.”

Jeremiah knelt back down. “You don’t need confession. Not these days.”

“I’m
not
going.”

“We promised.”

“Promised? Promised who?” Gabriel was suddenly so annoyed by the turning heads he could have ripped the mosslike eyebrows off the stubby small man in front of him.

“Mom.
And
Dad.” If they hadn’t been in church, Jeremiah would have slapped him.

“You
promised Mom and Dad. I didn’t.”

“Come on, Gabriel. Just this once.”

Jeremiah looked so pitiful that Gabriel relented. What did he care? It would be an act of kindness, for their mother, nothing more.

At the communion rail, the brothers squeezed between two well-nourished, black-garbed Italian widows, the space so confined they had to take turns breathing. Gold chalice in one hand, paper-thin wafer in the other, the priest turned his back on the tabernacle and started down the altar steps.

Natty in pretend red cloak and ankle-length white tunic, Jesus sat straight-backed and princely at the table’s centre. Judas leaned over to offer him bread stolen from the school kitchen. The six-year-old Lord took a slice, turned to his guests — the boys of Birch Lake School, six to his left, six to his right, including Jeremiah-Judas — and told the starving crew that they would each get a piece, on one condition: that they refrain from speaking English. The table exploded with a flurry of Cree so profane and so prolonged — the scandalous ditty
“Kimoosoom Chimasoo”
the most profane and prolonged — that the feast would have been sabotaged but for Brother Stumbo’s piercing whistle announcing bedtime.

Past the scrap of cardboard on the fence — “The Okimasis Brothers present ‘The Last Supper’ ” — stampeded the midget Cree apostles.

At the communion rail, the line of faces went on forever, every size and shape of nose well represented. Gabriel imagined their owners anticipating the great event by moistening their tongues. The very thought made his taste buds harden.

One by one, the tongues darted out as the priest, with a confidential murmur, placed the wafer on them. One by one, the tongues darted in, the straw-haired altar boy deftly catching wayward crumbs with his gold-plated paten.

Here was a sturdy specimen, mused Gabriel, square of shoulder, generous of chest, with a dimpled chin, grey-blue eyes partly obscured by glasses, no more than forty years of age. In Superman leotards, the priest would look none too shabby.

When the mumbling celebrant reached him, Jeremiah hurriedly asked God to accept Mariesis Okimasis into His Kingdom upon her death. When he realized that the prayer had sprung up in his mind fully formed, that he had had nothing to do with its conception, he was genuinely in awe. His mouth fell open, his tongue unfurled.

“The body of Christ,” the priest confided, and deposited the host.

“Amen,” replied Jeremiah, swallowed, and rose.

The Jesuit’s crotch was arrestingly level with Gabriel’s line of vision; but there was little to amuse the eye, the green silk chasuble so jealously concealed all possible event. Rebuffed,
Gabriel’s gaze raked its way up the belly, chest, and neck to the face, where he knew he had induced a flashing spasm in the holy man’s gaze. The Cree youth curled his full upper lip — and watched with glee as celibacy-by-law drove mortal flesh to the brink.

Flailing for his soul’s deliverance, the priest thrust out a hairy, trembling hand. And by immaculate condensation or such rarefied event, a length of raw meat dangled from his fingers. What was a humble caribou hunter’s son to do? He exposed himself. And savoured the dripping blood as it hit his tongue, those drops that didn’t fall onto the angel’s paten below.

“The body of Christ,” said the wizard. But the instant the flesh met Gabriel’s, a laugh exploded where his “Amen” should have been. The laugh was so loud — the joke so ludicrous, the sham so extreme — that every statue in the room, from St. Theresa to St. Dominic to Bernadette of Lourdes — even the Son of God himself — shifted its eyeballs to seek out the source of such a clangour.

“Madre di
Dio!” gasped the widow to Gabriel’s left, crossed herself, and clutched a rosary to the earthquake of her bosom. The priest turned pale but soldiered on; a dozen more diners were waiting, screaming with hunger.

Up the aisle Gabriel bumped and clattered, his mouth spewing blood, his bloated gut regurgitant, his esophagus engorged with entrails. At every step he took, ghost-white masks and gaping mouths lunged and shrieked: “Kill him! Kill him! Nail the savage to the cross, hang him high, hang him dead! Kill him, kill him! …”

“W
hat’s wrong with going to church?” Jeremiah pummelled Gabriel with the question, in Cree.

“Only old people go to church,” Gabriel replied with cavalier insousiance, “when they know they’re running out of time. Look at Uncle Kookoos.” No response from Jeremiah, who was trying to marshal his thoughts. The church receded behind them. “I mean, how many kids at Anderson High practise some form of religion? How many of them believe in something?”

“You don’t know that.”

“The churches sit empty and the malls get bigger.” Word by word, Gabriel’s confidence, like his Cree, bloomed. “Some day, the world will have a mall the size of Manitoba, and then everyone will be happy. Back home people may take their religion dead serious. But we’re city boys now, Jeremiah. To us, it should mean nothing.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Well, then, what
does
it mean to you, this … Catholic thing?”

Flail as he might, Jeremiah couldn’t find the words to express what he believed.

“These church-goers,” Gabriel felt obliged to fill the silence, “they talk about respect, and love and peace and all that jazz, and the minute they’re out of that church, they’re just as mean and selfish as they were before. It’s as if going to church gives them the right to act like, well … like assholes. You know what I mean?”

“They’re not all like that,” Jeremiah all but yelled back. “Take our parents. They’re Catholics and they’re good people.”

“Yes, they are, but what about all those Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland? Blowing each other’s brains out over the love of Jesus Christ.”

“That’s political,” said Jeremiah. Thinking how childish Gabriel sounded, how simplistic his argument. “It has nothing to do with religion or, or, or spiritual belief.”

“Yes, it does. Every war in the history of the world has had religion at its root. And what about those guys who beat the shit out of their wives while the host is still melting on their tongues? All that does is make one lose respect for organized religion.”

“But what else is there?”

“There’s Indian religion. North American Indian religion.”

“There’s no such thing,” Jeremiah spluttered.

“Yes, there is,” countered Gabriel. “A religion that’s one hell of a lot older —”

“How do you know all this?”

“— and makes a whole lot more sense than your Catholic mumbo-jumbo. And how do I know? Because Amanda Clear Sky told me.”

“Amanda Clear Sky knows fuck all. How can anything make more sense than Christianity? You’re being sacrilegious, Gabriel, just to get my goat.”

Twirling to trace a falcon’s flight, Gabriel spied the priest, briefcase in hand, emerging from his church.

“Amanda said that Indian religion listens to the drum, to the heartbeat of Mother Earth.”

“That’s pagan, Gabriel, savages do that kind of thing. How can you listen to people like—?”

“Christianity asks people to eat the flesh of Christ and drink his blood — shit, Jeremiah, eating human flesh, that’s cannibalism. What could be more savage—?”

“Jesus wasn’t a man. He was the Son of God.”

“Hah! Do you wonder why the world is so filled with blood and war and hate when it has, as its central symbol, an instrument of torture?”

“The crucifix is a symbol of hope, for God’s sake, Amanda, I mean Gabriel! It’s an instrument of love!”

“Sure. An instrument of love. If you’re into whips and chains and pain. Where do you think them priests get their jollies?”

Gabriel could feel the clergyman now a mere ten yards behind them. He lowered his voice. “How do you think they
get their rocks off? All that sticky white fluid? Tell me, Jeremiah. Where does it go?”