Chapter Seventeen: Sidney Longfellow
“Ellen, wake up,” Tanya said from across the king-size bed.
Ellen glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand. It was only eight o’clock in the morning.
“Please, Tanya, let me sleep. Go to breakfast without me.”
“It’s not that. Your phone keeps ringing. You must not have turned the ringer off last night when we got back. Will you please make it stop? I want to sleep, too.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
Mortified that it had been disturbing her friend, Ellen searched for her phone. It wasn’t on the nightstand. She felt beneath her pillow and came up empty. She climbed out of bed and checked the floor. Then she heard it ringing in her purse.
She stumbled across the room and fished it out. She didn’t recognize the number.
“Hello?” she said into the phone.
“Hello, Mrs. Mohr. This is Eric Old Person.”
“Oh, hello.” She had no idea why the chief of the Blackfeet would be calling her, especially at this hour. A glance at her phone revealed that she had four missed calls from him already. “How are you? Is everything okay?”
“Everything is more than okay. I am calling you to personally invite you and your two companions to the burial ceremony of Rabbit Talks to Buffalo and Alma Marcello this Thursday the 29th at Talks to Buffalo Lodge after sunset.”
“Thank you, Chief Old Person. We’d be happy to attend.”
“I wanted to call you as soon as possible to let you know that Sidney Longfellow has reached out to me and has asked to be included in the burial ceremony of his grandfather.”
Ellen almost dropped the phone. “What? He has? Oh, my goodness!”
“For this reason, many of us will be fasting this week. We will participate in purification ceremonies and vision quests so that we can be more open to the spirit guides as we forge this new relationship with Mr. Longfellow and as we help Crow Woman and Rabbit to find their way to our ancestral grounds.”
“Oh, I see.”
“I wanted to call you as early as possible this morning so that you and your companions could begin your fasting, too, so you can join us tonight for purification and prayer at the Two-Badger Medicine.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes. You said you wanted a vision quest, didn’t you, Mrs. Mohr?”
“I did. I do. Are you saying that’s happening tonight?”
“It begins tonight and will last four days,” he said. “After that, we will break our fast together with prayer and preparation of the ground for the return of our loved ones to the earth.”
Ellen thanked the chief again for his invitation. Then she raised her hands in the air and danced around the room with glee, careful not to disturb her snoring roommates.
An hour later, after she’d showered and dressed and Tanya and Sue had finally begun to stir, Ellen told them about her conversation with Eric Old Person.
“What a shocker!” Sue said.
Tanya stifled a yawn. “I wonder what changed Sidney’s mind.”
“I think it was Brian,” Ellen said.
Sue pouted her lips. “Does this mean we aren’t having breakfast this morning? I was so looking forward to eating something other than train food.”
“It really wasn’t very good, was it,” Tanya agreed.
“No,” Sue said. “And it seems hardly fair that the garbage we ate on the train will be our last meal before four days of fasting. I’ve never gone that long without food, I don’t think. Have you?”
“I don’t think so,” Tanya said. “And I’m not sure I can go that long.”
“Then are we agreed that we should wait to begin our fast after a big breakfast?” Sue asked. “That’s what we did before our last purification ceremony, and no one was the wiser for it.”
“But Eric Old Person went to so much trouble to call us early this morning,” Ellen said. “Won’t we feel guilty?”
“Nope,” Sue said. “You, Tanya?”
“Not at all.”
Ellen gave them a sheepish grin. “Then I guess I’m outvoted.”
Ellen and her friends were just finishing up their gorging on eggs, bacon, waffles, and hash brown potatoes in the Glacier Park Lodge Restaurant overlooking the pristine mountain views when Ellen’s phone rang again from another number she did not recognize.
“Hello?” she said into her phone.
“Hello, Ellen, this is Sidney Longfellow.”
Ellen’s heart seemed to skip a beat, and she found it hard to find her tongue.
“I hope you don’t mind me calling you. I got your number from Brian.”
“Um, no, Sidney. I don’t mind at all.”
Sue and Tanya’s brows shot up. Sue mouthed, “Put him on speaker!”
Ellen quickly did the phone on speaker just as Sidney said, “Good. I wanted to apologize to you and to your friends for the way I behaved.”
Tanya’s mouth fell open.
“That’s not necessary,” Ellen said. “We sprang something life-altering on you from out of the blue. Your disbelief was to be expected.”
“Thank you for that.”
Ellen said, “Chief Eric Old Person called me earlier this morning. I was shocked by the news. What changed your mind?”
“I’d like to talk to you about that in person. My wife and I should be arriving at Glacier Park Lodge this afternoon. Would you and your friends care to join us in the lobby around two o’clock?”
Now Sue’s mouth fell open. Ellen raised her brows as if to say, Can we meet him at two?
Sue and Tanya nodded.
“Two o’clock would be fine,” Ellen said.
“Then it’s a date. I’ll see you then.”
The call ended.
Ellen and her friends were speechless.
“What time are we supposed to be at the Badger-Two Medicine tonight for the purification ceremony and vision quest?” Sue asked as she, Ellen, and Tanya left their room in the Glacier Park Lodge and headed for the elevator.
“Five o’clock,” Tanya said.
Sue pushed the down button when they reached the elevators. “Then don’t you think we could eat one more time?”
“I feel like I’m going to faint,” Tanya admitted.
“It’s only been five hours,” Ellen pointed out as the elevator doors opened. “How will we last four days if we can’t even make it for five hours?”
As they climbed into the elevator, Sue said, “We might have a better chance of making it four days if we eat one more time.”
Ellen shook her head. “You do what you want. I already feel bad enough for having breakfast.”
“Well, you’re no fun,” Sue said.
Sidney Longfellow was already in the lobby seated on a rustic sofa beside a lovely woman in her seventies whom Ellen recognized from his family photos as his wife. The two of them stood up as Ellen and her friends approached them.
Sidney was wearing a crisp white shirt without a tie with the top button undone beneath a gray dinner jacket. With that he wore crisp denim jeans and gray leather cowboy boots. His wife, who looked just like her photos in his office, with her curly blonde shoulder-length hair, blue eyes, and pink cheeks, was wearing a pink rayon pantsuit and taupe pumps. She also wore a short strand of pearls around her neck and several rings on her fingers. Ellen was beginning to feel underdressed and frumpy in her cotton blouse, capri pants, and loafers.
Sidney offered each of them his hand. “It’s good to see you again. This is my wife, Sheila Ann.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” they said to her.
“Likewise,” Sheila Ann said as she, too, shook each of their hands.
“Please have a seat,” Sidney said, motioning to the sofa facing the one where he and his wife had been sitting.
Ellen and Tanya sat on either side of Sue.
“I want to apologize again for my rude behavior in New Orleans,” Sidney said as he took his seat beside his wife.
“We understand,” Sue said. “But we’re curious to hear what changed your mind.”
“Well, it wasn’t any one thing,” Sidney said. “It started with that white buffalo fur. When I bumped into it at the dance, it felt almost like I’d touched a live wire.”
Ellen lifted her brows and glanced at her friends. “Then you are the rightful owner.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what that means,” he said.
“The Blackfeet believe that the Creator chooses who can and can’t kill the rare white buffalo,” Ellen explained. “The person who kills the buffalo cannot sell the hide. The hide belongs to him until he passes it on to a relative after he dies. Rabbit—that is, your grandfather—was unable to receive the hide from his father or to pass it on to his son. Since you are the only living son of his son, it belongs to you.”
“I see,” Sidney said.
“I shouldn’t have interrupted,” Ellen said. “Please finish what you were saying.”
“All right, then,” Sidney said. “Well, I still didn’t think much of your story, even after that strange feeling at the benefit. But then Brian McManius called me yesterday morning and told me all about you three ladies—how you found his missing brother when no one, not even the FBI, could help him.”
The memories of her time in Portland swept over Ellen, reminding her of the days when she’d first began to fall for Brian. She felt her cheeks grow warm.
“Then he told me what you’ve been up to here in Montana,” he said.
“I find it very fascinating,” Sheila Ann said. “Especially the part about the rods pulling you from a boat and into the river where Sidney’s grandfather lay!”
“Look at you getting all the credit,” Sue teased Ellen.
Sidney said, “Brian convinced me that it wouldn’t hurt to check out your story by simply looking at my parents’ birth certificates. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that my father had no birth certificate. Instead, there were adoption records. He’d been adopted from the Ursuline nuns.”
Ellen scooted to the edge of the couch and leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. “But that didn’t prove that you are descended from the Blackfeet.”
“No,” he said.
Sheila Ann also leaned forward. “But we’d just been told your story—about Sister Alma and Rabbit.”
Sidney patted his wife’s hand. “I called the convent and asked them to look into my father’s records. The mother superior didn’t know anything about it. They aren’t an orphanage, you see. They don’t normally take in unwanted infants and adopt them out. But she did some digging, and she found the admission records from 1909 confirming that an Ursuline nun returned from Holy Family Mission with an orphaned baby boy.”
“That cemented it for us,” Sheila Ann said.
“Well, what cemented it for me was a dream I had while napping yesterday afternoon—at least, I think it was a dream. I didn’t know I’d fallen asleep.”
“He dreamed of the white buffalo,” Sheila Ann explained.
Ellen glanced excitedly at her friends.
“Did the white buffalo speak to you?” Sue asked.
“He did. He said he was glad to finally meet me.” Sidney Longfellow wiped a tear from his eye.