Kiss of the Fur Queen (8 page)

Jeremiah dearly wished he could toss off an English sentence just as jazzy, but he couldn’t. The priest grunted, “Aha! You’ve gained some weight,” and deftly deposited him on the dock with two delicate pats on the lad’s burgeoning posterior.

The next passenger to appear was Gabriel Okimasis, five years old, black hair even fuller and wavier than Jeremiah’s, skin transluscent, eyes doll-like.

“Can that be Jeremiah’s little brother?” asked a nun, her voice filled with doubt.

“Naw, it can’t be.”

“Impossible!” harrumphed a short dumpy nun. “Much too pretty.” The pilot passed the object of adulation over to Father Lafleur, whose chunky ruby ring momentarily got entangled in the fringes of Gabriel’s beaded home-tanned caribou-hide jacket. The priest just managed to save Gabriel from falling into the lake by clamping his hand onto the boy’s thigh.

“So, Jeremiah,” chortled the priest as he set Gabriel lightly down on the dock, “you’ve brought your little brother this time.”

“Yes,” piped Jeremiah in a tiny, humble voice. We didn’t have much choice, he would have added, if the language had been his.

Jeremiah took Gabriel by the hand and started walking him, proudly, onto shore. Josephine and Chugweesees, now ten and twelve, were somewhere behind him, but he couldn’t say goodbye. He didn’t want to look at them. He didn’t want to cry in front of these people.

Cooing like a wise old owl, a nun reached out to ruffle Gabriel’s hair. Never having seen such a creature before, Gabriel recoiled in fear, his voice teetering on the edge of tears.

“Awiniguk oo-oo?”

“Mootha nantow. Aymeeskweewuk anee-i,”
Jeremiah replied with as much reassurance as he could muster.

As if from thin air, a grinning Father Lafleur appeared behind the brothers and, with a gentle touch to Jeremiah’s left shoulder, purred.

“Now, Jeremiah. You know you’re not to speak Cree once you’re off the plane.” Jeremiah felt a choke breaking against his throat. Small brown suitcases in hand, the Okimasis brothers silently trudged up the grassy slope, past a dying clump of fireweed.

The Okimasis brothers took a last wistful look at their sisters and waved a shy farewell. Chugweesees, like Champion, had long been divested of her illustrious name and was now
known simply as Jane, a regrettable change, for it reminded them of the unfortunate halitosis-stricken Jane Kaka McCrae, the most slovenly woman in Eemanapiteepitat.

“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee; blessed art Thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus,” recited Brother Stumbo in a sleep-inducing monotone as he paced down one aisle and up another, his large black rosary beads swinging from both hands. Identically attired in pale blue flannel pyjamas, thirty-seven newly bald Cree boys knelt beside their little beds in the junior boys’ dormitory.

“Hello merry, mutter of cod, play for ussinees, now anat tee ower of ower beth, aw, men.” Gabriel rattled off the nonsensical syllables as nimbly as he could, pretending he knew what they meant. But, his knees hurting from the cold, hard linoleum, he couldn’t help but wonder why the prayer included the Cree word
“ussinees!”
What need did this mutter of cod have of a pebble?

“Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost,” intoned Brother Stumbo as he swept by Jeremiah’s bed, fingering the small wooden crucifix at the end of his shiny black rosary.

“Azzit wazzin da peekining, izznow and fereverer shallbee,” answered, in imperfect unison, thirty-seven little voices. And then boys and brother brought the session to its grand finale with a lusty and unanimous “Aw, men.”

Under his blankets, Jeremiah craned his neck to catch a
glimpse of his little brother seven beds away. With a weak little smile, Gabriel waved and he waved back.

Brother Stumbo addressed the assembly one last time. “Goodnight, boys.” To which the entire room dutifully replied, “Goodnight, Brother Stumbo,” their voices resonating like one large “aw, men” Brother Stumbo flicked the light switch, and the room was plunged into darkness.

In no time, Jeremiah heard the muted wheeze of sleeping children, like summer breezes flitting about the room, now here, now there. “Maple Sugar,” the jig his father had taught him just before the boys had left home on the plane that morning, bounced merrily across his mind like a naked rabbit. Above the yard, a large three-quarter moon slid out from behind a clump of clouds. Jeremiah yawned and drifted off.

Like an otter surfacing for air, a shadow rose out of the darkness. The moon slid back behind the clouds and the moving figure was enveloped once again, though not before it sent a quick glint of silver light into the gentle rhythm of children sighing in their sleep. Then an errant wind, perhaps the motion of the earth in its nightly orbit, moved the clouds so the white, vapoury moon glowed once again.

The figure was caught in a web of moonlight, fleetingly, just as it rose from one bed and moved towards another.

With a swish of cloth, the figure resurfaced, large and looming, beside Gabriel’s bed, its silvery point of light throwing off one final glimmer.

A small black-and-white photograph rested on the pillow,
glass-covered, gilt-framed. Next to it lay two sleeping heads whose gleaming pates bore witness to Brother Stumbo and his magic silver clippers. Covered by a sheet, a blanket, and a bedspread, the Okimasis brothers lay wrapped around each other, their snores all but nonexistent.

The Fur Queen laid her lips upon the cheek of caribou hunter Abraham Okimasis, grand champion of the world, the kiss frozen in time.

Father Lafleur watched the two boys for a minute, to him, Caravaggio’s cherubs, pink and plump-cheeked, their lips full, ripe cherries. Then, gently, he shook Jeremiah’s arm. Once. No response. Twice. Still no response. Father Lafleur bent over and shook him yet again, almost violently, and hissed: “Jeremiah!”

Jeremiah and Gabriel were flying across blinding white snow in their father’s pinewood sled. The vapour of the February morning was playing havoc with the sun’s rays. What should have been rainbows instead were isolated balls of pastel colour, now appearing, now disappearing, pink, purple, blue, orange, purple, sunburst yellow, turquoise, purple, pink, dazzling their eyes. Somewhere above these shifting spots of ethereal light arced Abraham’s loon-like yodel, “
Weeks’chihowew!”

But it wasn’t the caribou hunter yodelling “the winds a-changing!” It was Father Lafleur whispering Jeremiah’s name at his face. It wasn’t rainbow-coloured dots through winter vapour that Jeremiah was seeing but the glinting eyes of the principal, inches from his own. And it wasn’t flecks of snow from the racing dogsled that was spraying his face but the holy man’s saliva.

“Get back to your own bed.”

Jeremiah barely remembered, earlier that night, shuffling drowsily over to his brother’s bed, to see if the sniffling he had heard was Gabriel’s, which it was. Jeremiah had only meant to hold him until he fell asleep.

Briefly, the two had whispered about the herds of caribou and the hunting season. Gabriel had even taken their father’s Fur Queen photograph from under his pillow and they had kissed it. “The Fur Queen will watch over you,” Mariesis had said to Gabriel as she had packed it into his little brown suitcase. “The white fox on her cape will protect you from evil men.”

“Come on,” whispered Father Lafleur. “Up” He tugged at Jeremiah’s arm. Jeremiah slid out from beneath the sheet and his brother’s warm embrace. His hair was gone; he had no power. Childish sleepiness masking his defeat, he shuffled down the aisle of slumbering bodies, back to his own bed.

The priest stood watching Jeremiah’s receding figure. Then he turned back to Gabriel, who remained oblivious. Suddenly, his eye was caught by the photograph. In the semi-darkness, the moon, playing her usual tricks on glassy surfaces, made the Fur Queen wink. Nonplussed, the priest replaced the photo on the pillow and slinked down an aisle towards the door, as another cloud broke the moon’s silvery spell and enfolded him once more in darkness.

O
n a stage festooned with white crêpe-paper bells, large red satin bows, and deep red velvet curtains, Gabriel Okimasis was dancing. His little feet were kicking dust, his cowboy hat was bouncing up and down and would surely have flown right off his head if it hadn’t been for the string under his chin, the white satin tassels on his red cowboy shirt were swinging left and right and back again. A six-year-old square-dance caller standing on a low wooden box called “Do-si-do and swing your partner round and round, promenade!” to the rhythm of Jeremiah’s festive, jiggly piano music The eight miniature cowboys and cowgirls did exactly that.

“À la main
left,” the caller shouted, and Gabriel swivelled to the left, grabbed the right hand of his partner, who grabbed the next male dancer’s left as Gabriel moved on to the next female dancer’s left hand. And so it went until the circle was completed and Gabriel had returned to Carmelita Moose.
Gabriel was so happy he wanted to grab Carmelita Moose and twirl her over his shoulder until she saw stars, but the choreography did not call for such elaborate moves. Instead, the dancers formed circles, squares, spinning wheels, and daisy chains. Their rhythm was so infectious, their enthusiasm so irresistible, that the audience tapped their feet and clapped in time.

Gabriel beamed with pleasure and once, in the middle of a turn and tap-tippity-tap of the feet that required particular panache, winked down to the place where, on the bare floor of the boy’s gymnasium, beside a Christmas tree as tall as a house, Jeremiah sat, playing the piano as if he had been born for that sole purpose. In a crisp white shirt, perky black bow tie, and sleek black dress pants, his back as straight as a paddle, Jeremiah was banging out “Maple Sugar” in a way that would have made Abraham Okimasis’s chest puff out with pride, had he been there.

But he wasn’t, and neither was Mariesis. Nor was any other parent of these dancing children among the two hundred in their audience. The front row of seats was occupied by twelve nuns, two brothers, and two priests. The hawk-nosed, owl-eyed Sister Saint-Felix beamed like a car light at the keyboard-pounding Jeremiah Okimasis, who, she crowed every chance she got, was her best student in a fifty-year career tortured by one crushing disappointment after another. As Gabriel Okimasis bounded past centre stage, the principal followed the dancing form until it disappeared into the wings. The curtains closed and applause resounded.
Father Lafleur sat still for a moment, then clapped three slow thoughtful claps.

The fingernail of a giant index finger, a crescent moon hung in the sky, pointing into uncurtained windows to reveal sleeping children, row on row on row: white bedspreads, white sheets, white pillowcases, the hair on small dark heads grown to fluffy black brushcuts.

A sliver of light flashed once from the dark recesses of the room. It could have been a firefly except that this was mid-December. Other than the soft rhythm of children purring in their slumber, there was only the sound of cloth brushing against cloth, stopping briefly and then swishing on. The firefly reappeared and disappeared again as it approached the row where the dreaming Gabriel Okimasis was furiously engaged in a do-si-do made particularly complicated because his partner, Carmelita Moose, kept floating up, balloon-like, so that, while his feet were negotiating quick little circles, his arms had to keep Carmelita Moose earthbound. The undisputed fact was that Gabriel Okimasis’s little body was moving up and down, up and down, producing, in the crux of his being, a sensation so pleasurable that he wanted Carmelita Moose to float up and up forever so he could keep jumping up, reaching for her and pulling her back down, jumping up, reaching for her, pulling her back down.

When Gabriel opened his eyes, ever so slightly, the face of the principal loomed inches from his own. The man was wheezing, his breath emitting, at regular intervals, spouts of
hot air that made Gabriel think of raw meat hung to age but forgotten. The priest’s left arm held him gently by his right, his right arm buried under Gabriel’s bedspread, under his blanket, under his sheet, under his pyjama bottoms. And the hand was jumping up, reaching for him, pulling him back down, jumping up, reaching for him, pulling him back down. He didn’t dare open his eyes fully for fear the priest would get angry; he simply assumed, after a few seconds of confusion, that this was what happened at schools, merely another reason why he had been brought here, that this was the right of holy men.

From some tinny radio somewhere way off — Brother Stumbo’s room next door? — he could hear Elvis Presley singing “Love Me Tender.”

Through his slitted eyes, he could see that the motion of the priest’s hand obviously gave him immense pleasure: his eyes were closed, the furrows on his forehead smoothed out, his lips curved into a smile, his face glowing in the moonlight with the intense whiteness of the saints in the catechism book.

Gradually, Father Lafleur bent, closer and closer, until the crucifix that dangled from his neck came to rest on Gabriel’s face. The subtly throbbing motion of the priest’s upper body made the naked Jesus Christ — this sliver of silver light, this fleshly Son of God so achingly beautiful — rub his body against the child’s lips, over and over and over again. Gabriel had no strength left. The pleasure in his centre welled so deep that he was about to open his mouth and swallow whole the living flesh — in his half-dream state, this man nailed to the cross was a living, breathing man, tasting like Gabriel’s most
favourite food, warm honey — when he heard the shuffle of approaching feet.

He shut his eyes tight. He held his breath.

Jeremiah had awakened with a start from a dream of playing concerts to vast herds of caribou. Why, he didn’t know, but he thought he might have heard a whimper from Gabriel. Once his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he decided to check up on him, perhaps give him just one kiss.

With great reluctance, he slid out of bed, flinched from the cold and slipped into the night. His pale blue pyjamas glimmering, the little ghost, all vapour and mist, floated through the eerie light, down one aisle and up another.