Kiss of the Fur Queen (22 page)

“And who are you to tell me what I should or should not –?”

“Honeypot, if I were you, I’d watch my tongue. Cuz you’re talkin’ to Miss Maggie Sees. Miss Maggie-Weesageechak-Nanabush-Coyote-Raven-Glooscap-oh-you-should-hear-the-things-they-call-me-honeypot-Sees,
weaver of dreams, sparker of magic, showgirl from hell. And this is what turns her crank.” Her breath redolent of soil after rain, she hissed into Jeremiah’s ear: “Show me the bastard who come up with this notion that who’s running the goddamn show is some grumpy, embittered, sexually frustrated old fart with a long white beard hiding like a gutless coward behind some puffed-up cloud and I’ll slice his goddamn balls off.” She winked, then flung the cigarette over her shoulder. “Go grab yourself a seat, honeypot. It’s show-time. Comp’s on me.” As though she had North, South, and Central America shoved up the crack of her furry little ass, Miss Maggie vamped back to the crook of the piano, which began to play on its own, and as the Cree chanteuse parted lips for her opening note, the fog swept back in.

And all Jeremiah was left with was the sound of the north wind, slow, persistent, moaning, the most beautiful song he had ever heard.

B
linded by the darkness, the caribou hunter Abraham Okimasis lay locked inside his coffin. Though he found the satin lining strangely soothing, he could move nothing, not his wrists, not his neck, not his toes. And all he heard was wind, like the singing of a woman, the most beautiful song he had ever heard, teasing him, taunting him, daring him to venture out and find her.

Then it sounded like breathing, laboured, pained. Was that him? Or was the hunter standing inside some being’s lungs? The cavern was vast, hollow but for stalagmites of moist, veined tissue, and stalactites that trickled condensed humidity.

The drip became a thump — a giant pacing aross the caverns roof? — and the hunter was standing inside the creature’s heart.

Finally, light appeared, first as a pinprick, and faint. In moments, however, it expanded to a glow, a flame, which
splintered into two, three, four, until seven tall candles ringed the head of Abraham Okimasis.

From the coffin that, for some reason, hung upright in midair, the hunter raised an arm. Funny, he could move it now. And, funny, the hand had passed, unscathed, right through the satin, the pine lid, the six feet of soil, the snow, disappearing into the fog.

But where was he? In hell? The living room of the plywood bungalow he had shared with his Mariesis for near on two decades? On the barrens a hundred miles north of Mistik Lake, where no tree grew and the caribou roamed ten million strong?

The mist thinning out, his vision seeped back. He thought he could discern a thousand white masks hanging from the sky. Or were they faces? Yes, the faces of the living, it dawned on him, kneeling at his grave, the priest leading them in prayer as billowing snow waltzed, elegant, silent, around their feet. And that wind was his own lungs swelling, compressing, swelling. And somewhere in that crowd of faces his sons were weeping, from fear, fear that he was leaving them forever.

“Ayash oogoosisa,”
the hunter rasped at them, “the greatest Cree hero knew no fear, he …” And the wind took the words.

A note rang out, high-pitched, sustained. And from his father’s corpse, slowly, Gabriel Okimasis raised his naked torso. Strings crashed, electric, twanging, catapulting the dancer on a trajectory beyond the grave, the village, the earth.

In the theatre’s last row, among the thousand white faces,
Gregory Newman sat slumped, coldly assessing his creation, built on a story-line by Gabriel. His frame had thickened, his hair greyed by experience, but his heart would not be engaged. Instead, its owner kept thinking about this luminous man on stage who had learned to climb air as a spider climbs webs. Thirteen years he had lived, and worked, with Gabriel, yet he had failed to plumb something essential. What did Gabriel keep stashed so jealously, and so deeply, in those secretive corners, behind those eyes whose dark little flashes he would plead were nothing but headaches, fatigue?

He had told him stories, of course, of boarding schools, of priests playing complex games with brown little boys. But why did he disappear from time to time, for hours? Where did he go? Did it really have something to do with the limitless freedom of the north, of endless roaming, of solitude in the midst of crowds?

His left hand gripping handlebar of chariot, his right lashing air with whip, Gabriel shouted
“mush!”
and, one by one, eight grey huskies reared up from the mist, each a dancer sculpted in sinew and muscle, straining at the harness.

Behind Gregory Newman, a wedge of harsh light materialized; a door had opened. The man stood, shoulders stooped, suitcase in hand, a tired, a travelling man. The door fell shut and the silhouette was gone.

Have you ever wondered where the universe ends? asked a voice at the centre of Gabriel’s dreamworld, where the final star lives? The caribou hunter Abraham Okimasis would soon find out, and, tonight, so would his last-born.

“Cha!”
Gabriel shouted. The chariot swerved right and now he could see it: the final star.

There, he would find God the Father, sitting on his throne of aromatic leather, sucking at a big fat cigar, and he, Cree dancer, would ask him a few key questions.

In the dressing room, Gabriel sat before the mirror looking at his wan, exhausted reflection as he manoeuvred the dryer adroitly through his shoulder-length hair, the table strewn with make-up, brushes, his father’s Fur Queen portrait their dignified sentinel.

Like a ghost, Jeremiah floated into the mirror, into the reflection of this flawless baby brother who had journeyed past the sun.

His throat teetering on a sob, Jeremiah begged him:
“Weechee-in
. Help me.”

H
elp
him? Gabriel, who had never been asked to help anyone? How, exactly, did one go about such a task?

Gabriel lay beside the snoring Gregory, smoking his daily cigarette, staring blankly at the moon-mottled ceiling. Impatient with himself, for thinking had never been his forte, he stumbled through the possible scenarios.

A trip to Vienna, the city of music, about which Jeremiah had dreamt since Birch Lake School? Out of the question. On a dancer’s salary? Besides, would such a trip get Jeremiah back to music? Unlikely.

Find him a job? As what? Cook, lawyer, Indian chief? Dancer? He drank too much, ate and smoked too much, never twitched a muscle; in fact, he looked not unlike a sewer rat.

Pull him from the sewer, that was the answer. The country. A camping trip, to thaw their cold war of thirteen years. Jeremiah could flush out his lungs with fresh, clean air — not
to mention chop wood, pitch a tent, hike lustily through forests, perhaps even stalk a black bear in the likely absence of wild caribou. The only question was: where?

Mistik Lake would be ideal, of course, but too far, too remote. No time. But May had a three-day weekend, did it not?

At first, it was a blimp, though rather long and skinny.

“Sort of like a hot dog,” said Gabriel, “without the bun.”

“A dachshund with its legs chopped off,” suggested Jeremiah.

The grey-blue object hovered above a squiggly horizon. Only as the ship advanced did it become apparent the blimp was an island floating on Lake Huron, a dinner plate strewn with parsley. Thrilled to be on water after so many years, the brothers Okimasis leaned on the railing. How gigantic islands here were, like little countries; by comparison, those on Mistik Lake were mere tufts of pubic hair.

“I have to warn you, though,” Gabriel switched to English, thereby losing half his lustre.

“Of what?” From the start of the two-hour crossing, dark-skinned people with round, pudgy faces had glanced at them. Faces from here, from there, from everywhere, on their way to … what? A grand chief’s funeral? An apocalyptic bingo?

“We’re walking into the bosom of Ojibway country.”

“And what, pray tell, is wrong with Ojibway bosom?” Native as a moose-hide, a chubby-chested woman jiggled by, scowled at Jeremiah, and marched into the restaurant.

Gabriel hissed that he could hear the war drums already, a
claim Jeremiah dismissed as mentally unstable, which accusation Gabriel countered in eloquent Cree: the beat was “steady, foreboding, and magisterially rhythmic, though thoroughly unsyncopated and therefore as simple as the mind of Crazy Salamoo Oopeewaya.”

“Yeah, right,” scoffed Jeremiah, though his face beamed, for each vowel had been jam, the consonants great gobs of peanut butter. He could have drowned their speaker with love slathered on love; but, like a cow, the ferry mooed, and a megaphoned voice barked: “Back to your cars!”

“Kaaaa,”
Gabriel sighed in an approximation of the vile Jane Kaka, and, tittering like chipmunks, the brothers headed for the stairwell.

Jeremiah steered their canary-yellow Rent-a-Wreck Beetle off a gravel roadway treacherous with pot-holes to a parking lot so full of cars waiting to embark that latecomers had to pray like bishops. For once off the sturdy ramp of the docked
Chi-Cheemaun
, locked into the cavalcade and ignorant of island geography, they had ended up, as by providence, in their present situation.

Gabriel was beside himself. Having been to three, maybe four, such events inspired him with visions, one of which was
to plaster himself with feathers and take to the stage in a glitter-crusted Las Vegas—cum—pow wow dance revue. Jeremiah merely scratched his balls, for, after ten years of southern Manitoba pow wows — scraping drunks off the street and taking them there by the van load — they still made him feel like a German tourist.

Already, the dancing field beyond enticed them with colours so excessive they wondered when the seven dwarfs would pop from a mole hole, Porky Pig come strolling down the rock-pocked hill. But, no denying it, the drum beat audible as war. Dust hung thick, and heat so high Gabriel wished he could go skinless.

“Look at these cars!” Jeremiah exclaimed, as they rattled past the Impalas, Pontiacs, Buicks, the Chryslers, Mazdas, the Cherokee Chiefs, “These southern, eastern Indians sure are … twentieth-century.”

“You expect a parking lot lined with huskies? Of dogsleds crammed with beaver?”

“When I first moved east,” Gabriel could see that Jeremiah’s spiritual crisis would be quelled only with a dash of virtuosic Cree, “I couldn’t believe it either: Mohawk duchesses minked and pearled, Onondaga divas in five-inch heels, Micmac mannequins straight out of
Vogue
. One night, a vision came upon me such as no Cree Indian has ever been visited with. There, on my bedroom ceiling: Mariesis Okimasis trussed up as a well-tanned Zsa Zsa!”

Jeremiah guffawed. “Zsa Zsa Gabor would murder small children for cheekbones like Mom’s.” Whereupon they found
a parking space so tight that, in impeccable Cree, the little yellow Bug squealed.

Elbowing their way through great knots of sweaty, heaving Indians, they eventually reached the dancing field, just in time to see a dozen bronze youths throb by. Their backs sprouted feather-rimmed suns — black on yellow, red on black, pink, blue, purple, orange — two per fancy dancer, one above the other. A gust of wind ruffled the suns, a shimmering domino effect that fell against the wall of Gabriel’s heart, sparking the image of the spiked, roiling spine of the mythic lake serpent, the Son of Ayash riding it across to the island of the flesh devourers.

“Say,” ventured Jeremiah, “that couldn’t be Ann-Adele Ghostrider over there, could it?” He craned his neck.

“Who?” asked Gabriel.

“That little old lady. The one who almost fell flat on her ass. That’s Ann-Adele Ghostrider, I’m sure of it. Remember Amanda Clear Sky?” Try as he might, however, he saw no Amanda. And, by then, her granny, Poosees, had vanished.

“Come on.” Gabriel grabbed Jeremiah. “Let’s go dance.”

“Nah. You go ahead. I’ll wait here.” Against all reason, Jeremiah was still frightened of this dance, this song, this drum, “the heartbeat of our Mother, the Earth,” as he had heard it said on more than one occasion. Like the door to a room off-limits to children, it still made his blood run cold.

Gabriel had to admit, if only to himself, that never had his body moved with such gracelessness; a fish on land would have fared better.

There were no rules to this Round Dance that he could recognize. Feet wore moccasins, that much he could see, hide of deer, moose, buffalo, caribou, from slippers to lace-ups to knee-high mukluks. How were his feet to move in motorcycle boots that weighed half a ton? How long since they had known smoked hide of young caribou?

Midget step by midget step, he found himself circumnavigating the centre of a gargantuan, fantastical wheel, the centre an arbour of poles buoying cut tree branches, birch, willow, poplar, how were city boys like him to distinguish?

Thus shaded, five bass drums lay flat on blankets, each in a huddle of seated male players. Only one drum was at work, however, six men pounding beaded, padded sticks, chanting in a quavering falsetto. Through the day, Gabriel assumed, each drum grouping would have its say.

Suddenly, the brothers understood a word repeated by the singers, apparently the same word in Ojibway as in Cree. An old man passing Jeremiah raised an eagle plume, a woman did likewise.

The crowd shaded eyes to look up at a peerless sky. Half a mile above the field,
migisoo
— the eagle — flew lazy circles. For the song, apparently, had summoned
tnigisoo —
the messenger of God, according to those praying — and she had heard.

In a fit of panic — where was it coming from? — Jeremiah closed his eyes and determined he would ask, as soon as possible: where is the nearest bar?

But Gabriel saw a people talking to the sky, the sky replying.
And he knew he had to learn this dance. Someday soon, he may need it.