Kiss of the Fur Queen by Tomson Highway

him! Nail the savage to the cross, hang him high, hang him dead! Kill him! Kill him! …” ten million people roared.
    Down went Jesus, down into the gravel, the crucifix crushing him, swirling dust playing havoc with his vision, his lungs, the very air he breathed. Pant, groan, and weep as fiercely as he might, he received no pity. Instead, the Roman centurion raised his whip and lashed God’s sole offspring, lashed and lashed; he would stand back up, he would take up his cross, he would march up Eemanapiteepitat hill. Blood from the victim’s lacerated spine splashed the soldier’s scarlet tunic, his gold breastplate, his leather leggings, and naked thighs.
    Slowly, Christ wobbled to his feet. What choice did he have? The crowd jostled, they slavered at his pain: “Kill him! Kill him! Nail the savage to the cross, hang him high, hang him dead! Kill him! Kill him! …” And this was only his firstfall; the script demanded he have two more. The Son of God wailed at fate but dragged the cross around the bend.
    And who should he run into but his mother, swathed in della robbia blue and laughing giddily, her hair a blizzard of confetti. Jane Kaka McCrae’s last born, Big Dick, had finally married the lovely Asscrack Magipom — Mariesis Okimasis was so drunk she could barely stand.
    “Jane Kaka ran out of wine!” she ululated, then paused to suck dry a Javex jug; like excess milk, red wine streaked her breasts. “At the dance! Can you believe it?” She reeled, her knees buckled, and she collapsed in a heap.
    “Not now, Mother, can’t you see I’m busy?” said Jesus.
    “And Jane Kaka was so upset she fainted —” Mariesis burped, “right there in the church-hall kitchen. Banged her head against the statue of you, and
poof!
the water in Father Bouchard’s tank turned into Baby Duck, can you believe it?” She fell again. “One week later, and the party’s still raging!”
    Crack!
the whip struck the Lord’s round buttocks. Mother or no mother, he could tarry no longer.
    One week earlier, Gabriel had felt that same sensation, the stinging pain that brought with it a most unsaintly thrill. But playing Jesus was admired, even praised, by lay and clerical staff alike. It kept the children out of mischief, “supplemented” their religious instruction, and gave the principal food for thought: a course in drama for all altar boys was a virtual fait accompli, so Brother Stumbo had been overheard to say. No, far from being penalized for playing God the Son,Gabriel’s crime had been to be caught singing
“Kimoosoom Chimasoo”
when he was hanging from the cross and already seven tokens in the red.
    In an office whose four walls verily vibrated with cigar smoke the principal had unbuckled his thick black leather belt and slid it off.
    With Gabriel’s now six-year-old posterior exposed to the light, the priest had lashed and lashed until, by the third blow, it had turned as red as cherry Jell-O.
    “Bleed!” a little voice inside Gabriel had cried. “Bleed! Bleed!” He wasn’t going to cry. No sir! If anything, he was going to fall down on his knees before this man and tell him that he had come face to face with God, so pleasurable were the blows. In fact, he clung to the vision with such ferocity that there he was, God the Father, sitting large and naked in his black leather armchair, smoking a long, fat cigar, little Gabriel’s buttocks splayed across his knees, the old man lashing them with his thunderbolt, lashing them and lashing them until both man and boy gleamed.
    “Kimoosoom chimasoo,”
Gabriel’s little Cree voice rang out from the pit of his groin, even as a little English voice beside it pleaded: “Yes, Father, please! Make me bleed! Please, please make me bleed!”
    Up the road, Jesus of the bleeding buttocks met the saintly Simon, who helped him bear the cross for two delicious yards until a phalanx of foul-mouthed soldiers clattered up and whipped him off. Next came Veronica, who dabbed once