Читать книгу Finding Faith - C. E. Edmonson - Страница 4

WHEN A LOUDSPEAKER announced that their train was ready for boarding, Faith Covington followed her mother out of the terminal to the open-air train sheds. She stopped for a moment before they boarded to stare at the massive steam locomotive at the front of the train. The locomotive’s driving wheels were taller than she was, and the cab so high that the engineer and the fireman needed a ladder to reach it.

Once again, she sensed the powerful forces behind the changes in her life. There was something out there, certainly larger than she, perhaps larger than all the human beings put together.

Behind her, the train stretched out, its fifteen metal cars with their rounded windows as sleek as a basking snake. Where would they carry her? Into the unknown, into something new, something different. That was all she could say.

“Faith?” her mother called softly.

Faith finally took her eyes off the train and broke away, following her mother into a second-class car, where they quickly found seats. There were signs of neglect there. The chrome trim on the luggage racks was dented, as was the trim around the soiled and scratched windows. The tiles on the floor were old and worn, and the leather seats gave way under Faith’s weight. She told herself that the trip would only take four hours. She could put up with anything for four hours.

As she waited for the ride to begin, Faith found herself looking forward, not back. She wondered what Aunt Eva would be like, what the farm would look like. Would there be cows and horses, pigs and lambs? She imagined fields of corn stretching into the distance, plows moving across the land, turning the soil, just like the modern farming methods described by Miss Tredway in her natural sciences class at school.

Faith just started to think about how much she missed that class and all of her schoolmates—well, most of them, anyway—when the train’s whistle sounded once, then twice, and finally a third time, pulling her back from the past and into the present. A shudder passed through the cars as the great locomotive inched forward. Steam from the engine shot straight up toward the sky then slowly drifted off.

“We’re on our way,” Margaret said.

Faith looked around her. The train was only half-full, the passengers mostly businessmen in double-breasted suits that had seen better days. Even the conductor’s blue uniform, when he collected their tickets, had a tear over the breast pocket. But he was cheery enough.

“Pocono Summit, eh?” he said. “Mighty quiet in Pocono Summit this time of year. Tourist season don’t start for another month.”

Margaret sniffed once as she took the punched tickets out of his hand. She wasn’t going to satisfy his curiosity and so turned her head to the window. The conductor tilted his cap and scratched at his shaggy hair, the expression on his face one of amused indifference.

“Well, little girl,” he said to Faith, tipping his hat, “good luck in Pocono Summit.”

When the conductor moved on to the next passenger, Margaret turned to her daughter. “In New York, people mind their own business,” she said.

“I think he meant to be friendly.”

Margaret started to speak, but then stopped. Friendly or not, the effect was the same.

The train was passing through Passaic, New Jersey, an industrial city not all that different from the New York City that Faith knew. Squat, brick factories crowding both sides of a narrow river were flanked by long blocks of attached homes. She could see workmen sitting on crates at the river’s edge, enjoying their lunches, and women hanging laundry in backyards. At the end of a broad avenue lined with shops, the steeple of a tall white church stood out against the blue sky.

“Faith, there’s something we have to talk about,” her mother began suddenly.

“Something else?”

“Where we’re going...it’s not exactly what you think.”

“How do you know what I think?”

Ordinarily, Margaret took no guff from her daughter. Faith had a fresh mouth, as some of her teachers had noted. But now Margaret, as she turned to the window, seemed not to hear the question, so deep was she in thought.

Faith watched her mother with a wary eye. Something was coming, something big. But Margaret didn’t turn back toward her daughter. She continued to stare at the houses and factories until Faith relaxed in her seat.

They passed through a number of small towns before reaching the city of Paterson forty minutes later. Paterson was bigger than Passaic, a center for the silk industry on the east coast. It was industrial for the most part, but at one point they crossed a deep gorge with a river at the bottom. In the distance, a waterfall gleamed in the sunlight, its waters dropping eighty feet to the bottom of the gorge. The view was there and gone before Faith was able to take it all in.

“Do you know what river that is?” she asked her mother. “I’m sorry?”

“The waterfall. You were staring right at it.”

Margaret looked at her daughter for a moment. She was a good-looking woman, with a firm brow and brown eyes only a shade lighter than her hair. Ordinarily, she projected firmness and determination, but now she seemed positively grim.

“I was thinking about something else,” she said. “Sorry, baby.”

“Thinking about what?”

“Something I should have told you about long ago. Something I had tried to put behind me.”

Faith was torn between her curiosity and the near certainty that her mother’s little secret wasn’t one she wanted to know. Over the past year, Faith had developed a sixth sense for bad news.

“I don’t think I’m going to like this,” Faith said.

“I’m sure you won’t, Faith, but the subject can’t be avoided any longer. In fact, we’re headed right into it.” Margaret straightened in her seat and took her daughter’s hand. “Let’s begin with the simple fact that I’m part...that you’re part...” She paused and cleared her throat. “We’re part Indian.”

Faith blinked. She wouldn’t have been more shocked if her mother had told her that she was part Martian.

“What? How?” she asked.

“My mother. She was part Ojibwa and part Lenape Indian. The Lenape are also called the Delaware, but that’s a name given to them by the settlers who drove them out. They never use it themselves.” Margaret Covington stopped long enough to shake her head and squeeze Faith’s hand. “This is very hard for me.”

“After what we’ve been through, I don’t see how anything can be hard,” Faith said.

Margaret laughed. “Out of the mouths of babes.”

“And that’s another thing, Mom. After all we’ve been through, I’m not a baby.”

“Okay, fine. You’ve got to grow up and this is part of the process. My mother passed away when you were an infant and my father went back to his hometown in South Dakota, so you never got to know them. But your grandmother was an Indian and your grandfather was Scotch-Irish.”

“How did they get married then?”

“Does that seem impossible? People fall in love, Faith, even people from different races.” Margaret paused, but Faith didn’t reply. “Anyway, your grandmother chose the modern way. She grew up on a reservation, but she rejected Indian life, for the most part.”

“For the most part?”

“Grandma had a sister, Eva, who took the opposite course. Eva chose to live in the Indian way, or as close to it as she could manage. I spent several summers with her...”

“Wait a minute. You’re talking about Aunt Eva? The one who’s taking us in?”

The train’s whistle sounded and the train began to slow as they approached a station. Faith read the sign, TEANECK, as they came to a stop by a stationhouse much smaller than any they’d seen before. As if cued by a movie director, a dozen men emerged from an encampment several hundred yards away. They carried trays on straps hung around their necks and moved from window to window, offering apples and nuts and skinny sandwiches. “Shabby” didn’t begin to describe these men. Their clothes were dirty and, for the most part, they were unshaven. One man’s shoes were held together with string. Another wore a hat without a brim.

Windows began to shut as soon as the men appeared, but Faith was intrigued. If nobody wanted to buy their goods, why did the men even bother? Her mother didn’t close her window, but she didn’t offer to buy anything, either.

“They’re afraid.” Margaret said, without any prompting.

Faith shuddered. There were times when she was sure her mother could read her mind. “Who’s afraid?”

Margaret gestured to the other passengers.

“Do they think the men will hurt them?”

“No, they’re afraid that what happened to these men will happen to them, too. Keep in mind, not all that long ago, these men probably had jobs and families. Now they’ve lost everything.” Margaret’s mouth tightened as she thought of her own husband. Struggling to maintain her composure, she nodded to herself. “Some people think poverty is contagious. They try to keep as far away from it as possible.”

A man limped up to the window, an old man; what was left of his hair was now snow white. He was gaunt, with flaring cheekbones and hollow cheeks, and his thin lips were spread in a humorless smile that revealed several missing teeth.

“Buy an apple, ma’am? Help out an old veteran. Only five cents.”

Margaret went into her purse, found a coin and laid it on the man’s tray. She started to take an apple, but changed her mind. They were too bruised to be eaten.

“Bless you, ma’am.” His voice trailed off as he moved to the next window. “Bless you.”

A moment later, two railroad policemen ambled out of the stationhouse. Seeing them, the peddlers began to move away. The drama seemed to take place in slow motion, as though all concerned were acting parts in a play they’d performed many times before.

A man sitting in front of Faith turned to the woman sitting next him. “What these bums need,” he declared, “is a swift kick in the pants.”

“Yes, dear,” the woman said, tilting her head in the man’s direction. “Whatever you say.”

Faith giggled. How to get along with an obnoxious husband was a frequent topic of conversation among her and her friends. Never disagree, that was one way. Men need to be in charge, the reasoning went, or at least think they’re in charge.

“Mom, why didn’t you tell me this before? About you—about us—being Indian?”

“Part Indian,” Margaret corrected. “But that’s not really the point. I was raised as an ordinary American, except for those summers with Aunt Eva on her farm. And when I became old enough to make a choice for myself, I chose the American way of life. Aunt Eva wouldn’t put it that way. She says that I chose the white man’s way of life. As though I was some kind of traitor.”

Faith looked past her mother, out the window. They were passing through farm country now and the carefully tended fields stretched to the horizon. Cows grazed on a hillside. In a fenced paddock, a foal pranced on unsteady legs. Faith watched it trip, fall, get up and trip again. The little horse didn’t seem to mind, as its mother didn’t seem to notice.

“You’ll have to work,” Margaret said.

“What?”

“Everybody works on the farm.”

“Even the children?”

Margaret smiled. “I thought you said that you weren’t a child.”

“I’m not.” Faith shifted in her seat. “What kind of work?”

“Whatever Aunt Eva tells you to do.”

“Aunt Eva’s in charge?”

“Oh, yes, my daughter. It’s Aunt Eva’s farm.”

“What about her husband? Does she have children?” Now that Faith had a chance to adjust, her curiosity was running ahead of her tongue.

“Aunt Eva’s a widow, and her children have moved away. They’ve chosen the white man’s life, something you don’t want to mention to Aunt Eva. But even when Uncle Jonas was alive, Aunt Eva ran the farm. That’s another thing about the Indian way. In the old times, women were completely in charge of the farming. Men built the houses, which the women then owned, and they hunted for meat, but women planted and tended the crops. Without them, the people would have starved.” Margaret hesitated before adding, “That’s what the name Lenape means. ‘The people.’”

Faith sat back in her seat, her thoughts flying through her head like swirling searchlights at the opening of a Broadway premiere. Indians? The Indian way of life? What was it all about?

Thomas Covington loved westerns and he’d taken his daughter to watch dozens of them. Over the years, Faith had seen just about every western actor in Hollywood. Bob Steele and Tom Mix, Randolph Scott, Walter Houston, and Gary Cooper—there was always a new western playing at one or another of Manhattan’s many theaters. Not every western featured Indians, but they had only one role to play in the movies that did. Covered with war paint and wearing feather bonnets, they were bloodthirsty savages who attacked settlers, stagecoaches, and cavalry forts, whooping at the tops of their lungs.

Had there ever been a scene in any of those movies showing an Indian farm? Or an Indian doing anything but scalp fallen soldiers? No, movie Indians were all alike. They attacked for no apparent reason and they lost in the end.

“Did Aunt Eva ever go on the warpath?” Faith finally got the courage to ask.

Margaret laughed for the first time in weeks, a laugh that came from deep inside. “Aunt Eva’s always on the warpath,” she announced when she caught her breath. Then she turned serious. “I know this is hard for you, honey. I know that. And I would never have subjected you to Aunt Eva’s way of life if... The truth is that we have no other choice. Your other aunts and uncles have problems of their own. They couldn’t take us in.”

“But not Aunt Eva?”

“That’s the funny thing, Faith. Aunt Eva didn’t hesitate when I wrote to her. She said that sharing was the Indian way, especially when it came to family. I was her sister’s only child and there would always be room for me and my daughter in her home.”

An hour later, Faith asked to go to the observation platform at the end of the car just to stretch her legs—but really she wanted to clear her mind. She was surprised when her mother agreed, and even more surprised when she was allowed to go by herself. Maybe this was part of becoming a woman. If so, Faith wasn’t about to complain.

She walked down the aisle, threw open the door at the back of the car, and stepped onto an open-air deck. The view from there was broader than the view through the car’s dirty windows. Nevertheless, it was anything but encouraging. They were passing through a region of low mountains, snaking around and between the peaks. To either side, a forest—dark and thick—pressed to within fifty feet of the tracks. When they crested one of the lesser mountains, the view was of a virtually unbroken wilderness that ran all the way to the horizon. She could count the tiny farms dotting the landscape on one hand.

Faith was dismayed. She was in real-life wilderness!

Oh, sure, that was just great. Did she look like a pioneer? Was she supposed to be Lewis or Clark?

Faith could distinguish between a dessert fork, a shrimp fork, and a dinner fork. She’d been taught never to begin eating until everybody was served and her hostess began to eat. She knew how to fold a linen napkin, to take small bites of her food, and to return the napkin to the table unsoiled. But what good would that do her here? The forest was a world entirely unknown to her and they were heading deeper and deeper into it with every mile. There didn’t seem to be any end to it, as there seemed to be no end to the Covington family’s troubles.

As Faith considered her situation, the door to the facing car, a first-class car, suddenly opened. A young girl, perhaps ten years old, accompanied by a middle-aged woman, stepped onto the facing platform. The girl wore a wool crepe dress, pearl gray, that fit her so perfectly that Faith knew it was hand-tailored. Her hat, of the same color and material, had just as obviously been created by a milliner. Faith’s bonnet, on the other hand, had been purchased at Macy’s. And none too recently, at that.

“Hi,” the girl said, giving her perfect blond curls a little shake. “My name is Pauline.”

The woman standing behind the girl emitted a little grunt of disapproval, but Faith paid no attention. In a cheap cotton dress and the plainest of sturdy brown shoes, the woman had to be the governess. It was her job to be displeased.

“Hi,” Faith returned. “I’m Faith.”

“Don’t you just hate train rides, Faith? Soooooo boring. I much prefer touring by car,” the girl said precociously.

Faith didn’t know exactly how to respond. Her family’s trips, once to Cape Cod, once to Niagara Falls, twice to Atlantic City, were wonderfully exotic treats. Faith had looked forward to each and every one. She would have walked if that were the only way to get there—to say nothing of riding in a first-class train cabin.

“Where are you going?” Faith finally asked.

“Pocono Summit.” Pauline rolled a pair of sad blue eyes before repeating her favorite phrase. “Soooooo borrrrrring.”

“I’m going there, too,” Faith said, though she realized they were headed to the same place under much different circumstances. “My mother and I are going to stay with my Aunt Eva.”

“I’m staying with my father for the summer. His name is Jaspin Gore. He’s in mining.”

What could Faith say to that? My aunt’s in the business of scalping settlers? Instead, she asked, “Are you traveling with your mother?”

Pauline’s eyes softened and, for a moment, Faith was certain she would cry. But she only said, “My parents are divorced.” Then she smiled. “My father has a summer home on Wildwood Lake, but I hope we don’t stay there all summer. It’s soooooo borrrrrring. I hope we move to Scranton. That’s where my father really lives. In a house with so many rooms I still haven’t seen them all.”

Faith stopped listening, though the girl went on and on. A breeze had sprung up while they were talking and the topmost branches of the surrounding forest were gently swaying. Beneath her feet, the hiss and clack of the train’s wheels continued on, relentlessly, indifferently. Equally indifferent, the clouds above cast vast, moving shadows on the treetops. In the far distance, the waters of a lake reflected a white-hot drop of light.

“I’ve got to go,” Faith said, a bit abruptly. “My mother’s probably getting nervous by now.”

“Maybe we’ll see each other in Pocono Summit,” Pauline said brightly.

Faith noted the look of grim disapproval on the face of the girl’s governess. The woman’s nostrils were so pinched that Faith didn’t see how she could breathe. No, a friendship between the daughter of a man whose home had too many rooms to count and a beggar who couldn’t afford to put a roof over her head was quite out of the question.