Liv smiled, no longer scared by the angry voices of the spirits. Stephen’s giddiness enveloped her.
“You don’t think it’s weird?” she asked, gesturing to the stone and the bent sticks from the drum she’d already destroyed.
“It’s incredible. You’re incredible.”
A little tremor passed through her at his words.
“I’d like you to meet someone,” she told him.
Chapter 12
Liv
“Hurry,” Liv called as the train started to pull away. “We’ve got to catch it on the fly.”
They waited in the trees, and then ran together toward the last car on the freight train.
Liv jumped onto the little ladder that clung to the back and shoved the door open. She swung inside. Stephen ran along behind the train, his face determined as he sprang onto the ladder.
He hurtled into the dusky interior, grinning.
“Hot damn! We just jumped on a train. We’re like stowaways,” he laughed.
Liv grinned and leaned back against a bag of corn.
“No bulls on this line of freights, either, so we don’t have to keep a lookout,” she told him.
“What are bulls?” he asked, settling on a sack of corn beside her.
“They’re guards who throw people without tickets off the trains. Sometimes they club ya, too.”
Stephen grimaced and glanced toward the open door.
“Has that ever happened to you?”
She shook her head.
“I know which ones to ride. George taught me years ago. We didn’t ride much, but when we did, we steered clear of any trains with bulls.”
“Your uncle sounds sharp. I can’t wait to meet him,” Stephen said, leaning back and putting his hands behind his head.
“Time to jump,” Liv announced. They walked to the edge of the train car. It was moving along, not fast, but quickly enough that she felt a little tremor of exhilaration as the ground passed by.
“On three,” she said.
They counted together, “One, two, three!” They jumped, landing in a thicket of leaves at the edge of the forest.
“This way?” Stephen asked skeptically as Liv led him into the trees. “Your uncle lives in the boondocks.”
Stephen jumped when a twig cracked nearby.
George stepped from the shadow of trees.
He was tall with dark hair and a dark beard and wore clothes he made himself from the hides of animals and the fabric Liv brought him a few times a year. A deerskin bag was slung across his chest.
“George,” Liv beamed. She walked forward, and he embraced her, but Liv felt the rigidity in his shoulders.
“Listen, Völva,” you must go home,” he told her, pulling her away and looking into her face.
“But George, we hopped a train. We rode the rails to get here. I want you to meet my friend Stephen,” she argued.
George frowned over her shoulder.
She glanced back at Stephen, who stood with his hands stuffed in his pockets, his face sooty and scraped.
“I’ll walk you into town. There’s a bus that leaves in an hour,” George insisted.
“George-”
“Don’t argue with me, Volva,” he growled, and she clamped her mouth shut.
He rarely rose his voice, and her face grew red.
She walked back to Stephen and shrugged.
“I guess it’s not a good day,” she lied.
“Did he call you Vulva?” Stephen asked with a sneer.
Liv laughed and rolled her eyes.
“Volva. It’s a Norse word.”
“What does it mean?”
Liv paused and half-considered a lie.
“Witch,” she admitted, realizing in that tiny confession how much she trusted Stephen.
George, apparently, did not.
As they walked into town, Liv and Stephen stuck out their thumbs, giggling and complaining when cars passed them by.
“You’d rather ride?” George asked, after several minutes of their antics.
“My feet are killing me,” Stephen admitted.
George looked pointedly at Stephen’s once shiny, now scuffed loafers.
George disappeared into the forest for several minutes. He emerged with a handful of fine green ferns. He held the plant near his face before tossing it on the road.
A truck ambled down the road, and Liv quickly stuck her thumb out. The driver pulled over.
“In the back,” the driver called.
The three scrambled into the bed of the pickup.
“What was that?” Stephen asked, nodding toward the ferns the truck had run over just before stopping.
“Dill,” Liv told him.
As they bounced along the road into town, Liv tried to fill the strained silence.
George’s displeasure was plain, and Liv vacillated between angry and embarrassed at his poor treatment of Stephen.
“Stephen goes to a private school, George. He’s going to the University of Michigan in the fall.”
“And how did you find Liv?” George asked, directing his gaze steadily at Stephen, who seemed to shrink smaller within his skin.
“He rescued me,” Liv announced, tilting her chin up. “He saved me and Arlene from drowning in the Dead Stream. If he hadn’t shown up, we both would have drowned.”
George flicked troubled eyes to her.
“When?” he asked.
“Last Saturday,” Stephen offered.
George shifted his attention to the trees. Liv knew he was searching for his own signs of their misfortune, but like her, she thought he found none.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” George asked.
Liv clutched the tailgate as the truck bounced over a bump in the road.
“I forgot,” she told him, and she had.
The truck deposited them in front of the Kalkaska Tavern and drove off.
George fished some money out of his pocket.
“Go have a sandwich and a Coke. I will get your bus tickets,” George told them. He stuffed a few quarters in Liv’s hand and walked off without another word.
“I think it’s safe to say he doesn’t like me,” Stephen said after their hamburgers arrived.
“Why can’t we go to the cabin, George? I told Stephen I’d show him the bones.”
George studied her, a worried look in his eyes.
“Volva, you shouldn’t have brought him here.”
“But why?” Liv demanded, growing frustrated at George’s lack of kindness toward her new friend, her only friend. “He’s my friend.”
George shook his head.
“I won’t speak about this right now. Go.”
George inclined his head toward the bus, where Stephen stood with their tickets.
Liv stormed away, not looking back as she and Stephen climbed on the bus and pulled from the station.
Chapter 13
Mack
Mack read a few chapters of Peyton Place; a paperback abandoned by Diane during their last attempt at reconciliation. They’d gone to the cabin with a teaspoon of hope and a bucket full of resentments and bruised egos.
They squabbled over petty things for three days, until Diane finally threw up her hands and stormed into the summer woods, disappearing into the dense foliage moments after she walked out the door.
Mack thought of going after her. Misty barked and howled at him like she could hardly believe what a jackass he was being, but he had his own streak of stubbornness. He sat in a chair outside and waited until Diane wandered back two hours later, dirty, sweat-streaked, and puffy-eyed from crying.