Kiss of the Fur Queen by Tomson Highway

Author:Tomson Highway [Highway, Tomson]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780806139333
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: 1998-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

NINETEEN

Pretty as Miss Muffett on her tuffet, Marie Antoinette, queen of France, sat on a stool, pink crinoline with white frilled hem spilling around her like a foam bath. Her shoulders draped in ermine, her poker face all but hidden by a powdered wig and a crown that resembled a clipper at full sail. Behind her, the fabled guillotine; beside it, one terrified presenter.

“And this woman, born with …” Jeremiah’s tongue could have been anaesthetized for all its gummy thickness, “born with … ahem, born with her mouth wrapped around the biggest silver spoon the Western world has ever known,” he had practised his English-Canadian accent for this occasion until his tongue had hurt, “was about to prove this theory.” Never before had he had to address a room filled with white people. He could hear them shifting in their seats, embarrassed, no doubt, by his backwoods ungainliness.

“So while France starved, the queen ate cake. Now if I … now if I were …” He cursed the flamboyant, sadistic Herr Schwarzkopf for his insistence on what he termed teatro verismo class presentations. “Ahem, now if I were to eat cake while you were eating straw and the boiled s-s-s-soles of your shoes and couldn’t even pay your rent rent rent, what would you want to do? To me?”

Finally, and mercifully, Herr Schwarzkopf redirected his chilling German glare at the grade-twelve history class.

“Vell?”

“Cut your head off,” the jock Rob Bailey responded with an undisguised lack of interest.

“Right.” Jeremiah plunked the queen of France under the blade of the midget guillotine and viciously pulled the string. The razor blade, weighted with magnets and radio batteries, slid down and struck with a muffled thud. The stringy neck of the hapless royal doll flew open. A jet of blood sprayed out, two specks landing on Jeremiah’s forehead. The laughter was explosive. And sustained.

“Theory proven: Never take silver spoons for granted.” Finally, Jeremiah’s presentation was the laugh-provoking spectacle he had planned with such meticulous care. There was applause. Rob Bailey’s stuttered taunt “War war warpaint!” failed to register. Instead, the caribou hunter’s son, his confidence in glorious bloom, threw off one last flourish. “And she wasn’t the only one.” His ts and ds had improved these past two weeks, and he was determined that this become public knowledge, “for there were hundreds whose heads fell to the guillotine in what was surely …” He wiped his forehead, he felt the goo, his voice began to quaver, “What was surely the most violent and bloody peer …” his hand came down, he saw the ketchup, and thought Marie Antoinette a most fortunate woman, “bloody period in the his … tory. Of the world.” His first theatrical production had been a disaster.

“I disagree,” a low, rich voice cut through the din. The laughter stopped. Heads swivelled.

“Yes, Amanda? And vat is it you disagree vis in Mr. Okimasis’s interestink presentation?”

Amanda Clear Sky, dusky Indian maiden of eighteen years, disengaged herself from her desk and stood for all to see.

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