Kiss of the Fur Queen (6 page)

Champion bent down, took Gabriel’s hand in his, and the pair glided off towards the shimmering grey rock, as in a gavotte, Champion would shamelessly ornament the story years later.

On top of the large rock, Champion sat, legs splayed, Gabriel
on his lap, Champion’s arms clamped hard around his waist, Gabriel’s hands gripping Champion’s forearms, Champion’s right cheek pressed to the grey felt back of Gabriel’s parka. Both had shut their eyes tightly as if to blot the noise out with pressure on their eyelids. And there they clung, stiff as wood yet pliant as willow saplings buffeted by autumn winds.

Champion may have had Gabriel’s back to hide behind, but Gabriel had nothing but wind, warm and moist and rank with animal breath and fur and sweat and sinuous muscle, blasting his face. When he opened his eyes, slowly, fearfully, all he could see was antlers, antlers far as the eye could go, jostling, careering, twisting, mangling air. Eventually, the blur without end took on form, but what? Dancers? Spirits? Whirlpools of light and air and shadow? The shapes became one pulsing wave of movement, throbbing, summoning him, beckoning him on. “Come with us, Gabriel, Gabriel, Gabriel Okimasis-masis-masis, come with us. Come with us, Gabriel, Gabriel, Gabriel Okimasis-masis-masis, come with us.”

Champion began to sing, his soprano soaring above the pounding basses and timpani of hooves like the keening of a widow.

“Ateek, ateek! Astum, astum!”
sang Champion,
“Yoah, ho-ho!”

Slowly releasing his hold, Gabriel opened his arms to embrace this immense field of energy. And he began to weep.

By the campfire, of which only smoulders remained, Mariesis had her face crushed hard against her husband’s chest.

When the last of the herd was but a low hum, the whisper of the southeast wind was almost jarring.

First came the sound of Mariesis sobbing, weakly, as if collapsing from the exertion. Then came Kiputz’s excited bark. And last, Abraham’s mellifluous baritone.

“Ho-ho!”
he laughed, “My Champion boy,
ho-ho!”

Mariesis raised her face, shocked, insulted by such uncalled-for exuberance. Abraham’s weather-hewn brown face was lit up like a sun, suffused with an ecstasy she had never seen.

And then Mariesis saw her sons, perched atop the large grey rock, glowing with triumph, Champion and Gabriel Okimasis, laughing.

They had never been on an airplane. They had seen them, drifting in the wind like dragonflies. They had seen them berth at Father Bouchard’s old dock, swallowing — or, better, spewing out — Josephine, Chugweesees, Chichilia, and other Eemanapiteepitat children. They envied them their wings, their ability to become airborne; it was said that they could climb above the clouds. So Champion was excited, Gabriel jealous, when the red seaplane arrived late that September morning.

Abraham wondered out loud, to other long-faced parents on the priest’s old dock, what on earth their son was going to get “down there.” Champion proudly replied that he was only going for a ride, that he would come back the next day to tell them all about “the south.”

“At least Josephine and Chugweesees will be with him,” Mariesis sighed wearily.

Inside, it smelled like gasoline and rubber. The glass in the
window felt like plastic: yellowy, scratched, difficult to see through. Still, as the plane floated off and its propellers whirred to life, Champion spied Gabriel on the sandy shore, like a toy soldier, saluting him. For certain, he would be able to tell his little brother when he got back if
K’si mantou
really lounged lazily among the clouds as if they were giant fluffed-up pillows.

But there were no clouds that day, merely an eternal blue. And far below, endless lakes that looked like his mother’s doughnut cut-outs, except of rabbits’ heads, caterpillars, and human faces with great big eyes.

At noon, Gabriel sat across the table from his parents and Chichilia, refusing to cry. Instead, with a temerity that surprised his elders, he ordered his mother to put out some trout
arababoo
for Champion anyway. The plane would crash and Champion would swim back and be home by sunset, Gabriel insisted. He would be very hungry.

C
hampion Okimasis stood at the head of a line of seven small Indian boys watching the tall, pasty man in black cutting the hair of another small boy. At first, Champion thought the holy brother might take pity and leave some hair, but as the seconds ticked on, this appeared unlikely. The silver clippers made one last ruthless sweep, leaving a pate as shiny as a little moon. With a flourish of his great right arm, the brother gave the boy a gentle shove, swept the pale blue sheet off his shoulders — causing a rainshower of jet-black hair — and said “Next” in a tone as business-like as if he were counting money. Humiliated, the boy slid off the chair, which was much too high for him, and ran off, sniffling.

Champion had never seen such an enormous room, bigger than Eemanapiteepitat church; arctic terns could fly around in here with ease. “Gymnasium,” he had heard the room called by the barber brother, the only word that Champion
had found musical in this queer new language that sounded like the
putt-putt-putt
of Happy Doll Magipom’s pathetic three-horsepower outboard motor.

Champion would dearly have loved to hide in some dark corner, perhaps even run all the way back to Eemanapiteepitat, except that his father had told him three hundred miles was too far for a boy of six to walk. Biting his lip, he waded through the river of discarded hair and scrambled clumsily into the chair in front of Brother Stumbo, who stood there waiting with his smile, the hair-sprinkled pale blue sheet, and sharp-toothed stainless-steel clippers. As Champion’s weight sank in, the leather upholstery sighed. A split second before Brother Stumbo enveloped him in the sheet, Champion reached up and touched, with wistful affection, the strand of wavy hair around his right earlobe.

Brother Stumbo had to pause. “Down. Put your arm down.” And though Champion didn’t know what the man was saying, his body language clearly ordered Champion to lower his arm and sit as still as a rock.

Poised for the slaughter, Champion straightened his back and called forth every ounce of courage so he wouldn’t burst into tears. The bristles of discarded hair made his neck itch. He wanted desperately to scratch but his arms were immobilized. If he started to cry, he wouldn’t be able to wipe away the tears and he would be seen by all these strange boys from other places with a baby’s crying face. He wished that he could look at his hair one last time. He
wished he was on Nameegoos Lake with his family. And the caribou. He wished his accordion was strapped to his chest so he could play a melancholy song, he thought mournfully, flailing about for anything that could hold the tears at bay.

Clip, dip, clip
. Champion could feel his hair falling, like snowflakes, but flakes of human skin. He was being skinned alive, in public; the centre of his nakedness shrivelled to the size and texture of a raisin, the whole world staring, pointing, laughing.

“And what’s your name?” Brother Stumbo’s voice hit the boy’s neck with a moist, warm billow of air that smelled of days-old coffee and Copenhagen snuff. Champion assumed that he was ruminating on some sacred subject known only to men of his high station and remained silent.

“Name? What’s your name?” the snuffy whiff came at him again. Champion’s nerves began to jiggle, for he was beginning to suspect that he was being asked for something.

“John? George? Peter? Joseph?” The clipper-happy barber cut four incisions into what remained of Champion’s mop of hair.

“Cham-pee-yun!” He countered the assault by ramming the three syllables in the spots where the ouches would have been. Not only did he now know that he was being asked a question, he knew exactly what the question was. “Champion Okimasis!” he reiterated, in challenge.

“Okimasis,” a fleshy voice floated up behind Champion’s ears. “So this is the one named Jeremiah Okimasis.” A face surfaced, one he had not yet seen in this new place, one with
eyebrows so black and bushy they could have been fishing lures. The face consulted a sheet of paper.

Champion’s heart gave a little shudder. But he refused to admit defeat, especially now that there were two of them to one of him. He summoned forth the only English word he knew and, with it, shielded his name.

“No. Champion. Champion Okimasis.”

“According to Father Bouchard’s baptismal registry, you are named Jeremiah Okimasis,” chortled the portly, elderly face, now attached to a great black cassock, starched white collar, and silver crucifix that dangled from a chain around his neck. As with Father Bouchard, Abraham Okimasis would have decreed that this man’s word bore the weight of biblical authority and therefore was to be listened to; feeling his father’s eyes looking over his shoulder, Champion would have knelt before the priest and crossed himself but for the pale blue sheet that held him prisoner.

“Ah, Jeremiah,” said Brother Stumbo as he snipped merrily. “Jeremiah Okimasis. That’s a good name.” Champion felt the tear that, against his best intentions, had escaped from his right eye. “There now, Jeremiah. It’s only Father Lafleur. You mustn’t cry in front of the principal.” His hair now gone completely, Champion had no strength left; he began to bawl.

Father Lafleur placed a hand on Champion’s thigh and, like some large, furry animal, purred at him. “There, there. You’ll be happy here with us.” The scent of sacramental wine
oozed off his tongue, and incense appeared to rise like a fog off the surface of his cassock. Cold air, like a large, gnarled hand, clamped itself on Champion’s naked head.

With what looked like a hundred bald-headed Indian boys, Champion found himself climbing up several banks of stairs made of some grey, black-speckled stone. Stairs made him quiver with excitement — wait until he told Gabriel about them. You could slide up and down their pale green iron banisters all day long, he would report, stairs are such a clever, whimsical whiteman sort of thing.

Uniformly garbed in sky-blue denim shirts and navy denim coveralls, the boys marched out into a long, white passageway that smelled of metal and Javex — everything here smelled of metal and Javex — where lines of Indian girl strangers were marching in the opposite direction. But there was his sister Josephine, hair now cropped at the ears like all the girls, as though someone had glued a soup bowl to her head. He waved surreptitiously at her but, just then, one of the innumerable doors that lined this tunnel swallowed her. Ghost-pale, tight-faced women sheathed completely in black and white stood guarding each door, holding long wooden stakes that, Champion later learned, were for measuring the length of objects.

The echo of four hundred feet on a stone-hard floor became music:
peeyuk, neesoo, peeyuk, neesoo
. Until Champion became aware that music of another kind entirely was
seeping into his ears. From some radio in one of these rooms? From some
kitoochigan
hidden in the ceiling? All he knew was that this music was coming closer and closer.

Pretty as the song of chickadees in spring, it tickled his eardrums. Like a ripe cloudberry in high July, his heart opened out. He forgot the odour of metal and bleach, and he forgot the funny shape of his exposed head that had caused such jeering from the boys of other reserves. He looked with hope to see which doorway might reveal the source of such arresting sweetness. His forced march, however, left him with no option but to put words, secretly, to a melody such as he had never heard,
“Kimoosoom, chimasoo, koogoom tapasao
, diddle-ee, diddle-ee, diddle-ee, diddle-ee …”

Finally, the music splashed him like warm, sweet water, in a cloud of black-and-yellow swallowtail butterflies. He wasn’t even aware that he had stepped out of the queue and was now standing at the entrance to the room.

On a bench sat a woman in black, the stiff white crown stretched across her forehead, her hawk’s nose and owl’s eyes aimed at a sheet of white paper propped in front of her. Her fingers caressed the keyboard of the biggest accordion Champion had ever seen.

Except that it didn’t sound like an accordion; the notes glided, intelligent and orderly, not giddy and frothy and of a nervous, clownish character.

He wanted to listen until the world came to an end. His heart soared, his skin tingled, and his head filled with airy bubbles. He even felt a bulbous popping at the pit of his
stomach, rising up through the narrow opening of his throat, making him want to choke. His lungs were two small fishing boats sailing through a rose-and-turquoise paisley-patterned sky, up towards a summer sun lined with fluffy white rabbits’ tails. His veins untwined, stretched, and swelled, until the pink, filmy ropes were filled to bursting with petals from a hundred northern acres of bee-sucked, honey-scented, fuchsia-shaded fireweed.

Something soft and fleshy brushing up against his left shoulder made him flutter back down to Earth, unwillingly. He turned to look. What met his gaze, to his great surprise, was the upper body of Jesus, nailed to a silver cross, wedged into a wide black sash.

“Jeremiah,” said Jesus, “class will be starting soon.” Champion blinked at the thrice-punctured man, to be assured that he had indeed spoken, and could he please say more? But the victim’s mouth remained unopened, leaving Champion to look elsewhere for the source of these words.

Champion turned his face upward until the little bones of his neck began to smart. There, way up, hovered the giant, beaming face of Father Lafleur.

C
hampion-Jeremiah — he was willing to concede that much of a name change, for now — sat with his black-covered scribbler, his stubby yellow pencil, and the mud-caked fingernails he was anxious that nobody see. Twenty-nine other Cree boys and girls his age sat in rows around him, thirty little wooden desks dappled with late-September sunlight filtering through the yellow, brown, and orange leaves of birch and poplar trees. This golden light culminated at the front of the room, the usual domain of the fearsome grade-one teacher, Sister Saint-Antoine. In her place now stood the even more fearsome principal of the school. As he spoke, the oblate scraped a metal-edged wooden ruler across a large paper chart on which was drawn — in complex detail and swirling, extravagant colours — a cloudy place that he referred to as heaven. Champion-Jeremiah suspected that this might be the same locale Father Bouchard called
keechigeesigook
.