Born with a Tooth by Joseph Boyden

Author:Joseph Boyden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group (Canada)

WEST

Running

KUMAMUK

Buzz on the reserve was that the wrestlers were definitely coming. The chief had worked it that eleven of the monsters would stay and do battle in three events spread over seven days. Every Cree on the James Bay coast was invited and with the ice road melted to thick mud, the only way to the reserve was by air. Air Creebec had already added extra flights. People for three hundred kilometres were coming. Such an event had never been attempted in so remote an area, and the council and promoters stood to make some very good money.

But money was not what interested young Noah. He’d seen the names on the card. The one and only Chief Thunderbolt, Protector of the Indian Nations, was coming. He was the warrior who’d developed the Strong Bow, and that move was feared by all his opponents. Although Noah had not heard of the other wrestlers, he’d seen Chief Thunderbolt on television before; the children had been allowed to meet in the community hall every other Saturday, if they’d done well in school that week, to gaze at the television and the wrestlers battling on the screen. And now next week, real live wrestlers were going to be in that very same community hall, fighting it out right in front of Noah. Not many events in Noah’s eight years of living had seemed so exciting. He couldn’t wait.

The day of the match, all of the smaller children were horrified, Noah among them. The wrestlers had brought bright lights and very loud music and an announcer shouting through a microphone. Nearly-naked men paraded into the packed room, hollering and beating chests and slapping hugely muscled arms. For the most part their flesh was ghost-white, but a few were bronzed dark as the Indians who surrounded them, and there was one as black and shiny as a Canada goose’s beak. Everyone had expected them to be larger than normal men, but here in real life they seemed as monstrous as windigos, and their howls and shouts were just as scary.

The announcer continued rumbling into his microphone. Children clapped their hands over their ears at the booming voice. Noah looked around him at the crowd, at the children retreating from the front rows as the huge men scrambled up into the ring and continued their shouting and slapping. Noah was the only one to move forward. He stood in the third row all alone, transfixed.

There was a fat monster with a straw hat and overalls; the announcer called him Giant Haystacks. Another had long greasy hair and black makeup covering his eyes and was called the Diesel Machine. Another wore some kind of fancy army uniform, skin tight, with tall black boots. He had a tiny moustache and in his hand he carried a short stiff whip. The announcer called this one Fritz Von Schnitzel.

The next had a crewcut that was dazzling white. He seemed as if he were made of bronze and his arms and legs were as big as some of the kids watching.

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