Finding Faith. C. E. Edmonson

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      BEN HIGHTOWER MANEUVERED the pickup through the lot and onto the road, following the path of Pauline’s Cadillac limousine, long ago lost to sight. A marker by the side of the road read: “SR 115.” Faith Covington assumed that SR meant “state road” and she wondered why the road had a number and not a name. But she didn’t raise the question with her mother or Ben Hightower. There was no point. That was their road and they were going to take it: name, number, or nothing.

      They drove the first several miles through a resort area. Most of the inns were little more than Victorian houses with deep gables and porches that wrapped around the fronts of the buildings. The one exception was the Pocono Manor Inn. With its fieldstone walls and rounded corners, the manor resembled a medieval castle. Faith spied a small lake behind the house.

      For just a moment, she was cheered, but then the resorts dropped away and the forest pressed in on both sides of the narrow road. To her, the woods seemed impenetrable. The branches of the smaller trees intertwined at the level of her head and every inch of ground was covered with brush.

      Thankfully, her mother’s attempt at conversation took her mind off the forest for a moment.

      “Well, Ben, how have you been?” Margaret asked.

      “I’m doin’ okay.”

      “And Aunt Eva?”

      “Eva’s her usual surly self.” Ben’s small mouth broadened slightly. He might have been smiling. He might have been nursing a toothache. Faith couldn’t tell either way.

      “That bad?” Margaret asked.

      “Eva is what she is. I’m not expectin’ her to change. No, ma’am.”

      Margaret turned to her daughter. “Ben’s been staying with Aunt Eva for years. They’re a team.”

      Staying with Aunt Eva? Talk about never done! In Faith’s world, a respectable woman would never think of sharing a house with a man she hadn’t married.

      “What do you do?” Faith asked Ben.

      “Whatever Eva tells me to.”

      Ben and Margaret laughed, sharing a joke lost on Faith. Back in New York, there was a word for husbands who were bossed around by their wives: “henpecked.” Only Ben wasn’t Aunt Eva’s husband. He was some kind of employee, maybe like a ranch hand in a western movie. But in the movies, ranch hands were always white and Ben Hightower was definitely a red man. He had the small eyes and broad cheekbones of movie Indians, and his expression, now that he’d settled down, was so composed that New Yorkers would probably assume he’d lost consciousness.

      “I guess I don’t have to ask how you been,” he said to Margaret. “From what I’m hearin’, things are mighty rough in the cities.” Ben shifted into third gear and the truck—though it blew out a cloud of black smoke in protest—slowly accelerated.

      “‘Mighty rough’ doesn’t begin to describe the situation,” Margaret said, her voice flat. “New York is falling apart. We’re just part of the rubble.”

      Ben ignored the bitter tone. “I remember them summers you passed with us, Margaret...remember ’em real well. Yes, ma’am. You were a might spunky, if I do say so. Spoke up, too, and ain’t too many folks speak up to Eva. Way I see it, you’ll do fine. You got grit.”

      “Thanks for that, Ben. I only wish I was as certain.”

      Faith looked past Ben and out the window as they passed a small house. The house, and the little clearing it stood on, was gone in an instant, and they were back to the forest. This time, though, Faith managed to pick out a few details. First thing, the leaves on the trees were tiny, unlike the forest in the valley, where the leaves were fully developed. They were high up on the mountain now, and the effects were plain to see.

      “Is spring always this late?” she asked.

      “The winter was cold,” Ben explained. “Still had ice on the lake two weeks ago. But it’s warmed up now.”

      “Did Aunt Eva get her crop in yet?” Margaret asked.

      “Just gettin’ started.”

      Faith spotted a line of small trees in full blossom, their branches lined with clusters of small white flowers. “What are they called?” she asked.

      “Juneberry,” her mother replied.

      “Make good eatin’ when the berries are ripe,” Ben added.

      “And those?” Faith gestured to a patch of yellow blossoms growing in the open space beside the road. The flowers were butter-bright in the sun.

      “Wintercress,” Margaret responded.

      “Scurvy grass,” Ben quickly added.

      Faith shuddered. Scurvy? Wasn’t that a disease that British sailors got?

      “Does wintercress make you sick?” she asked.

      “Just the opposite,” Margaret said. “Late winter was always a hard time for Indians, especially up here where the first frosts come early. Without green vegetables, the people suffered from a number of vitamin deficiencies, especially Vitamin C, which causes scurvy.”

      Faith was impressed—and more than a little surprised— that her mother knew so much about plants. Back home, she couldn’t even keep a house fern alive.

      “And wintercress contains Vitamin C?” Faith asked.

      “Exactly. The plant begins to grow very early in the spring. In the old days, the people were more or less desperate for green vegetables by then.” Margaret looked at Ben. “But that was the Indian way of life. Feast or famine.”

      “What does...scurvy grass taste like?” Faith asked.

      Ben spoke without turning his eyes from the road. “That, Miss Faith, you’ll find out for yourself. We’ll be eatin’ it tonight.”

      They drove on for another fifteen minutes, occasionally passing a few small houses, until they finally came to a Texaco gas station. By then, steam was leaking out from beneath the Chevrolet truck’s hood and the needle on the gas gauge was pointing to empty. Ben pulled inside, settling the truck next to a bright red gas pump. The pump was crowned with a circular crest displaying the familiar Texaco star against a white background. A sign just beneath the crest announced the price: “12 CENTS/Complaints Extra.”

      “Twelve cents a gallon,” Ben complained as he opened the door. “It’s ten cents in Stroudsburg.”

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