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