Chapter Nineteen: The Burial Ceremony

As Ellen followed Karen Murray down the mountainside, she wondered what had become of her friends, especially when she caught up to Sidney Longfellow, who said, “Have you seen Sheila Ann?”

“No,” Ellen said. “Have you seen Tanya or Sue?”

Sidney shook his head.

Karen led them across the shallow part of the freezing river and back to camp, where Sue and Tanya were siting with Sheila Ann and Rich Falcon on blankets around a campfire.

“What are you eating?” Ellen asked them as chills crept up her body from her drenched legs and feet.

“Come and have some,” Rich Falcon said.

She sat beside Rich on the blanket and moved her feet close to the fire. He handed her a cup of nuts and berries. She poured some into her mouth.

“It’s actually quite tasty, isn’t it,” Sue said without inflection. “But maybe anything tastes good—even tree bark—after four days of nothing.”

“Did you have a good quest?” Ellen asked her.

“I saw my mother,” Sue said. “It was kind of crazy, actually. I was just telling the others that she was trying to teach me the Rumba, of all things. She said it would be important for my future.”

Their little group around the fire busted out laughing—all except Karen Murray, who said, “I can tell you what it means, Sue. Your mother is letting you know that she will always be there for you, no matter how crazy your life gets.”

Sue brushed a tear from her cheek and said, “I guess I can’t get rid of her that easily, huh?”

Karen smiled. “I guess not.”

“What about you, Ellen?” Tanya asked. “You were up there for a long time. Did you have a good quest?”

“It went by fast,” Ellen said. “I was visited by a fox, a white buffalo, a horned owl, and, best of all, Paul.”

“What an honor!” Rich said. “To be visited by so many spirit guides during one vision quest is rare.”

“That’s true,” Karen said. “You might just have the makings of a medicine woman. Do you have Indian blood in your family?”

Ellen bit her lip. “My grandmother used to say she had Cherokee ancestors, but I was never told anything more about it.”

“Interesting,” Karen said.

Ellen turned to Tanya. “What about you? Did you have a good quest”

“I saw my parents. They came to me as cardinals.”

“Really? How cool! What did they say?” Ellen asked.

“That I was brave,” Tanya said laughing. “What a joke, right?”

“But you are brave,” Karen said. “Look where you are. It takes bravery to be here.”

 

After they’d eaten their snack and had their fill of water, the questers and helpers gathered up their things and walked up the hill from Two-Badger Medicine toward the road, where a dozen vehicles were parked. Sidney and his wife were offered a ride in a van with the chief, Terry Murray, and Jack Stone. Ellen and her friends rode with Karen in her black Honda Accord. Rich drove another group in his van. The caravan made its way down the dark road toward the reservation and Talks to Buffalo Lodge.

Ellen was surprised by how many cars were already parked in front of the dilapidated house near the old Chevy pickup with no wheels. A string of lights behind the house illuminated the path as Ellen followed the others past the rotting fence to one of the dead trees in back where a table had been laid out with turkey legs, cobbs of corn, and watermelon slices. Others were already eating as they sat on blankets on the ground. They used no utensils or plates and ate only what they could carry with two hands.

“When in Rome,” Sue said as she picked up a turkey leg and a cobb of corn.

Ellen and Tanya laughed, and after choosing a cobb and a turkey leg of their own, followed Sue to find a spot to eat. That’s when they saw Father Gonzales waving to them from where he was sitting on a blanket with a fellow priest. The ladies carried their food through the crowd to say hello.

“Father O’Brien, these are the ladies I told you about,” Father Gonzales said before introducing them.

Father O’Brien was older and rounder than his companion. He wore round spectacles beneath bushy white brows.

“Please have a seat,” Father O’Brien said. “We were beginning to feel a bit ostracized. No one wanted to sit with us.”

“I’m so grateful that this day has finally arrived,” Father Gonzales said.

Ellen, Sue, and Tanya told the Jesuit priests about their vision quests as they ate their meal. As they listened, Father O’Brien said very little, but Father Gonzales was fascinated and full of questions. Ellen and her friends hadn’t finished answering his questions when Chief Eric Old Person walked to the front of the crowd and asked everyone to pray with him.

The chief spoke in his own language for several minutes. Ellen noticed him pointing to the casket beside him. It was sitting on the ground beside a deep hole beneath the dead tree.

In English, the chief said, “We pray for the spirits of Crow Woman and Rabbit. We also pray for Rabbit’s wife, Alma Marcello. For the first time, we welcome Rabbit back to his home, back to his people. We pray that he and his mother and wife may finally let go of the pain they experienced while alive so that they can dwell peacefully among our ancestors, including Talks to Buffalo, who waits for them there.”

The chief paused for a moment of silence before saying, “And now we will hear from a few of the questers. Who would like to speak first?”

To Ellen’s astonishment, Sidney Longfellow stood up. “I have something to say.”

Everyone was silent as Sidney made his way to the front of the group beside the chief and the casket beneath the old tree.

“When I was a young man, I felt a strong attraction to this land,” he said. “Back then, in my early thirties, I didn’t know about my Blackfeet ancestors. My brother, may he rest in peace, and I were petroleum engineers driven by a desire to make a difference in the world. We hoped to help our nation, the United States of America, become independent from foreign oil. So, when Ronald Reagan decided to offer gas and oil leases in the Badger-Two Medicine in the early eighties, I took that as a sign. You see, it married the inexplicable attraction I felt to this area with my desire to provide domestic gas and oil to my country.”

The crowd was so quiet, that Ellen could hear her own heart beating.

“Up until recently, I couldn’t fathom why the Blackfeet had any right to get in the way of my dream. From my point of view, they didn’t own the land, and the government had granted me legal rights. For forty years, my hands were tied. I watched my dream come to nothing as I went from being an idealistic young man to a disillusioned old one.”

Ellen heard sniffling. She looked across the yard to see Sheila Ann sitting on the edge of a blanket beside Rich Falcon with her face in her hands.

“My days are numbered,” Sidney said. “I realize that all our days are numbered, but you see, I have stage four cancer. I won’t be here much longer—at least, not in this old body. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for the chance to discover ancestors I didn’t know I had, for a chance to learn about a heritage I didn’t know was mine.”

Sidney wiped tears from his eyes and cleared his throat. “During my vision quest, my grandfather, Rabbit Talks to Buffalo, appeared to me as a white buffalo. He had already visited me in a dream, but this time, I was awake when I saw him. He told me that he was sorry for the struggle I’d endured with the gas and oil lease but that it was the ancestors’ way of bringing me back to them.”

Sidney’s voice cracked on those final words. When he could speak again, he said, “I promise you, my brother and sisters, that the first thing I will do tomorrow morning will be to call my attorney and order him to halt all legal proceedings related to rights to drill on the Badger-Two Medicine!”

The crowd erupted with applause and cheers. People jumped to their feet and embraced one another. Others shouted with joy. Many of the people openly wept tears of relief.

Ellen noticed Rich Falcon enter the back of the house and return with the white buffalo hide, which glowed, luminous, in the moonlight. With tears streaming down his cheeks, Rich maneuvered with the hide through the crowd and placed it on the shoulders of Sidney Longfellow.

Sidney accepted the robe with a handshake. Then he wiped his eyes and returned to Sheila Ann. He took her into his arms, and the two of them wept together.

After the cheering and the singing and dancing had died down, six more of the questers stood up to talk about their visions, the last of which was Karen Murray.

“Crow Woman came to me,” Karen said.

Ellen gasped and covered her mouth as she glanced at Sue and Tanya.

“She came to me as a great crow and said in the language of our people, ‘I am Crow Woman, wife of Talks to Buffalo, and mother of Rabbit. I cannot and will not forgive what the U.S. government did to my son and to our people. For years, I tried to destroy the sons of those who dared to live in the house where my Rabbit was taken away. Now, I am grateful that my son has come home, and I am thankful to those who made it happen. I cannot and will not forgive the injustice committed against me and our people, but those responsible have already died. It is up to the living to rectify past wrongs. Because my son has been found, I will move on.’”

Karen and the other questers who had spoken returned to their seats. The chief prayed over the casket as it was interred. Father Gonzales said a few words about Alma. Then the chief led the Blackfeet in a final prayer.

When the ceremony was over, Tanya reached over and put one arm around Sue and the other around Ellen. “What a night,” she said, grinning from ear to ear. “I don’t suppose it’s too late for you guys to let me in on the renovation of Talks to Buffalo Lodge, is it?”

Sue turned to Ellen. “Hmm. What do you think? Should we give her a chance to redeem herself?”

“She did come and rescue us from here,” Ellen said. “But I’m not sure.”

“You guys!” Tanya said with a mock huff.

 

It was nearly midnight when Ellen, Sue, and Tanya returned to their room at Glacier Park Lodge. The first thing they did was check their phones. Ellen had a missed call from Brian and another from Nolan. Both had left her a message.

The first was from Brian:

Hi, Ellen. I know you’re away on your vision quest, but I just wanted to call to let you know that I’m thinking of you. Love ya. Bye.

Ellen smiled gleefully before listening to the message from Nolan:

Hi, Mom. Will you call me as soon as you can? Everything’s fine. I just have something important to tell you.

Ellen remembered what the red fox had told her on the mountainside. She was tempted to call Nolan right then and there. There was a possibility that he’d be working the night shift at the hospital and would be able to accept her call, but she didn’t want to risk waking him and making him groggy for the rest of his day.

As she readied for bed, she wondered what important thing her son wanted to tell her.