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Morley Callaghan
on the gentle, patient expression that was on her face. At that mo-
ment Michael thought that she was desperately uneasy and terribly
alone, and he felt sorry for her even while he was rushing out of
the back door.
He saw his father walking toward the woodshed, walking slow
and upright with his hands held straight at his side and with the
same afternoon sunlight shining so brightly on the high dome of
his forehead. He went right into the woodshed without looking
back. Michael sat down on the steps and waited. He was afraid to
follow. Maybe it was because of the way his father was walking
with his head held up and his hands straight at his sides. Michael
began to make a small desperate prayer that his father should sud-
denly appear at the woodshed door.
Time dragged slowly. A few doors away Mrs McCutcheon was
feeding her hens who were clucking as she called them. 'I can't sit
here till it gets dark,' Michael was thinking, but he was afraid to go
into the woodshed and afraid to think of what he feared.
So he waited till he could not keep a picture of the interior of the
shed out of his thoughts, a picture that included his father walking
in with his hands as though strapped at his sides and his head stiff,
like a man they were going to hang.
'What's he doing in there, what's he doing?' Michael said out
loud, and he jumped up and rushed to the shed and flung the door
wide.
His father was sitting on a pile of wood with his head on his
hands and a kind of beaten look on his face. Still scared, Michael
called out, 'Dad, Dad,' and then he felt such relief he sank down on
the pile of wood beside his father and looked up at him.
'What's the matter with you, son?'
'Nothing. I guess I just wondered where you were.'
'What are you upset about?'
'I've been running. I feel all right.'
So they sat there quietly till it seemed time to go into the house.
No one said anything. No one noticed Michael's black eye or his
cut lip.
Even after they had eaten Michael could not get rid of the fear
within him, a fear of something impending. In a way he felt that he
ought to do something at once, but he seemed unable to move; it
was like sitting on the edge of the roof yesterday, afraid to make
the jump. So he went back of the house and sat on the stoop and
The Runaway
389
for a long time looked at the shed till he grew even more uneasy.
He heard the angry drilling of a woodpecker and the quiet rippling
of the little water flowing under the street bridge and flowing on
down over the rocks into the glen. Heavy clouds were sweeping up
from the horizon.
He knew now that he wanted to run away, that he could not stay
there any longer, only he couldn't make up his mind to go. Within
him was that same breathless feeling he had had when he sat on
the roof staring down, trying to move. Now he walked around to
the front of the house and kept going along the path as far as Helen
Murray's house. After going around to the back door, he stood for
a long time staring at the lighted window, hoping to see Helen's
shadow or her body moving against the light. He was breathing
deeply and smelling the rich heavy odors from the flower garden.
With his head thrust forward he whistled softly.
'Is that you, Michael?' Helen called from the door.
'Come on out, Helen.'
'What do you want?'
'Come on for a walk, will you?'
For a moment she hesitated at the door, then she came toward
him, floating in her white organdie party dress over the grass to-
ward him. She was saying, 'I'm dressed to go out. I can't go with
you. I'm going down to the dance hall.'
'Who with?'
'Charlie Delaney.'
'Oh, all right,' he said. 'I just thought you might be doing noth-
ing.' As he walked away he called back to her, 'So long, Helen.'
It was then, on the way back to the house, that he felt he had to
go away at once. 'I've got to go. I'll die here. I'll write to Dad from
the city.'
No one paid any attention to him when he returned to the house.
His father and stepmother were sitting quietly in the living-room
reading the paper. In his own room he took a little wooden box
from the bottom drawer of his dresser and emptied it of twenty
dollars and seventy cents, all that he had saved. He listened sol-
emnly for sounds in the house, then he stuffed a clean shirt into his
pocket, a comb, and a toothbrush.
Outside he hurried along with his great swinging strides, going
past the corner house, on past the long fence and the bridge and
the church, and the shipyard, and past the last of the town lights to
I
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