Peggy Herring: Anna, Like Thunder

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Brindle & Glass

An imprint of TouchWood Editions

touchwoodeditions.com

Edited by Claire Mulligan

Cover design by Tree Abraham

Interior design by Colin Parks

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Herring, Peggy, 1961-, author

Anna, like thunder : a novel / Peggy Herring.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

e-ISBN 978-1-927366-75-2.

I. Title.

PS8615.E7685A83 2018 C813'.6 C2017-906536-X C2017-906537-8

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and of the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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Vasilii Mikhailovich Golovnin (English translation by Alton S. Donnelly), The Wreck of the Sv. Nikolai , “The Narrative of Timofei Tarakanov” (Lincoln, Nebraska, University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 59.

Anna Akhmatova (English translation by D.M. Thomas), You Will Hear Thunder: Poems by Anna Akhmatova , “You Will Hear Thunder” (Athens, Ohio, Ohio University Press, 1985), 86.

Armstrong, J., Gatherings of the En’Owkin Journal of First North American Peoples, 1 (1) “The Disempowerment of First North American Native Peoples and Empowerment through Their Writing” (Penticton, BC, Theytus Books, 1990) 141.

Coat! Coat!

Greetings, strange ones.

Your floating village is stranded.

Do you wish to ask to stay? If so, I will advise the elders to decide whether they will allow it.

Stranger!

You are acting like a deer in the hunters’ grounds.

If you wish to live, you better act like you’re a puppy!

I am Chabachita, a name that has passed down through five generations.

Some drifting village people have come to our land before.

Those strangers didn’t kill the Indians with their thunder sticks. They gave us gifts and bought fish or animal fur.

The families of those you killed will probably ask me to kill you for revenge.

Wake up.

Wake up! We need help.

Come!

Cow parsnip or wild celery

Avens

Yarrow

Did he say, “Feel the urge to fuck?”

Ha! Crazy name!

Scrawny. Scrawny.

I helped the white men. This is my own cloth.

I helped them, and my father said that I could have this for my own.

This is not our way!

Hello, the house (lit.)

You’ve returned, drifting village people.

This lyric is from a “Song for delivering brides (or women) to Neah Bay.” It is believed to have been found by Young Doctor, a noted Makah shaman and finder of songs. The words are thought by the Quileutes to be “song syllables” that don’t mean anything—like the “scoobee doobee do” found in several American songs of the 1960s.

Come here!

We’re leaving! Where are you?

Don’t be cowardly! You bathe now—you need to bathe!

Do you need help?

Come here, we’ll scrub you.

My, you have changed a lot. What happened?

You must be having troubles.

So, do you think you can do that?

A whale! He got a whale!

Come on. She wants more wood again.

I love it. I could eat this every day and never grow tired of eating it.

Thank you and farewell. You did everything appropriately.

Here, have some gum.

Stop!

Wow! Come with me. Here’s something to make hearts glad. We will be gut-full tonight. C’mon. Let’s go, everybody.

How about this! I told you this was great.

Here, poor little sick one. This will help you with the vomiting and make a strong baby.

You’re doing fine. You can make this.

It’s not hard from this point on. It’s easy from here.

Oh, the great Land, help me harvest some of your plentiful cedar bark.

Her face is so pale.

Well, of course!

Are you okay?

Come on, ladies. We have to get home.

There are so many gull eggs! Hurry!

We are playing hide and seek. It means that you run and hide, and I look for you.

That’s not a rock dolly. Where did you get it? I like it!

NOTE: Traditional Quileute dolls are made of thin, round, flat beach rocks. Eyes, a nose, and a mouth are scratched on that face. The dolls wear dresses of woven cedar bark.

I misled you to make you laugh. My heart is sick.

Come. He wants to see you now.