Finding Faith. C. E. Edmonson

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      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 СКАЧАТЬ