Kiss of the Fur Queen by Tomson Highway Read Free Book Online

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 thewindow 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.

P
ART
T
WO
Andante cantabile

F IVE
    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 Championhad 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