CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS: INDIAN KILLER

    The dim light in the hut cast dark shadows on the faces of the Arawak family as they went about their daily tasks, the women preparing their unsightly straw dolls for market and the men divvying up the final few pieces of buffalo. They did this work in quotidian silence, as was their custom - to speak during Task Time would be to throw their unparalleled concentration right out the window. Nay, not a one dared to interrupt this colorless string of activity: none but Christopher Columbus.
    He burst through the sagging buffalo-partition with the speed of a Hero, toppling a primitive towel rack with his arrival. “Ha!” he exclaimed at its collapse, punctuating the crash with his own might roar. The family looked up in true flabbergast, each member guessing New World guesses as to answer this mystery entrance (not a one daring to break the silent sanctity of Task Time with vocalized postulation), but the sacrosanct silence had only seconds to live, for silence was the enemy of Christopher Columbus.
    “Yooo-uu!” he thundered, pointing his bony finger at the small Arawak boy. The child’s rounded eyes looked quizzically at the tall European, his black brows bending like the curve of a river. “YOOoouuuuUUU!!!” Columbus let loose again, grabbing the babe by the underarm and lifting him well above his Mighty head. The Arawak family remained silent and still.
    Columbus shook the boy pointedly, as one would shake a salad or a car battery. He shook with fervor and intention, spying every alternate second at the ground in wait for what fell. Verily, one could hear the fluffered ruffling of the boy’s clothes against his tiny frame as the multi-muscled Columbus shook with all his Godly strength. The European was not shaking out of malice or spite, as the Arawak family had silently guessed; he was shaking instead for profit. Christopher Columbus was shaking for Spice.
    All over the New World, the Columbuteers were shaking the Indians to see what spices fell from their wobbling bodies. Look, there goes Frankincense! And here, Paprika! Ho-ha! This elderly woman was squirreling a bushel of nutmeg beneath her robes! Praise our Catholic God, the King and Queen of Spain will give us land and milk and holes to plunder with all this bounteous spice! Ha-ho!
    And yet, no seasoning fell from the little boy. Columbus was outraged; no matter the vigor that Christopher shook (and his vigor was many), the boy’s body remained dry to the corporal cajoling for flavor. “Fall, God and Damn you, fall!” Columbus cried out, commanding the Spice he was sure he had smelt on the boy’s person. His eyes began to bulge with rage and intent.
    The boy’s father had seen enough of this shaking, and broke the eternal inviolability of Task Time with a cry and a means. “You will not shake my boy!” he yowled, flinging the buffalo kidney that had previously lived in his clenched fist towards the tall white monster. The kidney landed with a moist “Teuff,” wetting the European’s left boot with its buffalo juice. The Arawak wife looked in pride and horror at her husband’s courageous apostasy.
    But instead of deterring Columbus from shaking the small child, the kidney had served as a catalyst to action, sending the Euro-Nightmare into Kill Mode. “Raaaaaa-gaaaa!” Columbus screeched, loud enough to give the neighboring Floridians pause. He bolted from the hut, the child raised high above his head, and went in search of the nearest cliff.
    Trailing swiftly behind the enraged European, the mother and the daughter shouted words of encouragement to their elevated family member while the father shot shape-shod arrows at his enemy (taking careful aim not to hit his child in the face). Whish! went one arrow. Fliff! went another. Columbus paid these trifles little mind. He had a cliff to find.
    Some arrows later, the retinue shrieked in horror as they spied a crag in the distance. The boy, who had long ago fell unconscious from the gratuitous shaking, was roused into wakedness by the briny sea air. This same salty breeze seemed to activate a dormant strength within Columbus, who did not even wait for the cliff’s edge to send the boy tumbling seaward; instead, he flung the child a hundred flat yards across the plain and into the precipice, where he most probably died a brackish death.
    Heaving, throbbing, descending from such dizzying heights, the spiceless Columbus did not even gratify the remaining Arawaks with a backward glance. Instead, he flew off into the day with the aid of his Life-Coat and opened his nostrils in scent of ground cumin.

AT THE TIME OF THIS ACCOUNT, CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS AND HIS COLUMBUTEERS HAVE KILLED OVER SEVENTY SIX THOUSAND INDIANS, IN THE UNENDING SEARCH FOR FLAVORING.