Kiss of the Fur Queen

In Toronto, Jeremiah’s new day job is to provide recreation and music to urban Indigenous children, most from conflict-ridden homes. Jeremiah tries to teach his six- to eight-year-old charges beats, songs, and stories they’ve heard since their infancy. His innocent students, especially a boy named Willie Joe Kayash, remind him of Gabriel as a young boy. Willie Joe shyly asks Jeremiah about a Weetigo. Jeremiah tells him a Weetigo is a monster who eats little boys. After the class, Willie Joe approaches Jeremiah, hugs him, and says, “A Weetigo ate me” (271). He refuses to explain the statement and runs away. Suspecting abuse, Jeremiah reports the incident and learns the boy’s stepfather is being tried for sexually abusing him. For Jeremiah, jail is nowhere close to enough punishment for such a ghastly crime.

Driven by Amanda’s challenge that she will move to Toronto only if he writes her a play in which she can act, Jeremiah takes to an old IBM. The thought of writing an entire piece of drama overwhelms him, but the beautiful memories of his childhood inspire him; he fills the play he is writing with Cree elements such as the story of Ayash.

Gabriel moves out of Gregory’s home into a new apartment, carrying only a few belongings and the portrait of Abraham Okimasis with the Fur Queen. The couple has broken up because of Gabriel’s sexual encounters with other men. Gabriel has been getting ill recently, a bruise on his neck refusing to heal.

Gabriel watches the attractive singer Robin Beatty perform in a bar while Jeremiah shows him the first draft of his play. The play is called “Ulysses Thunderbolt” and presents the story of Ayash in a modern context. Jeremiah has written the story as one day in the life of a Cree man in Toronto, paralleling Irish writer James Joyce’s novel Ulysses, which chronicles one day in the life of a man in Dublin in 1903. Gabriel cannot understand why the story of Ayash needs a modern twist. According to Jeremiah the twist will make it relatable to a wider audience. Jeremiah stuns Gabriel by asking him to choreograph the play.

All the theatres in town reject Jeremiah’s play, making him suspect that the presence of Cree words in the text has put off the white readers. When Jeremiah, Amanda, and Gabriel decide to produce the play themselves, Amanda critiques the piece, saying the lines are “unplayable” and lack magic. Gabriel explains that the problem with the story is that it’s “all head and no gut” (280). To demonstrate, Gabriel, Amanda, and the other actors launch into improvised shouting, wailing, and snarling. Amanda instructs Jeremiah to simply play from his heart. Jeremiah plays in fury, and the company falls into “the chant, a dance, a Cree rite of sacrifice swirling like blood around the altar and bouncing off the bass of the piano like, yes, magic” (280).