The Progress of Love

know?”
    Colin never heard how that boy knew. He was thinking howRoss must not get his hands on this gun, or, loaded or not, it would explode. To prevent such a thing happening, Colin grabbed it himself, and what happened then he absolutely did not know, or remember, ever. He didn’t remember pointing the gun. He couldn’t have pointed it. He didn’t remember pulling the trigger, becausethat was what he couldn’t have done. He couldn’t have pulled the trigger. He couldn’t remember the sound of a shot but only the knowledge that something had happened—the knowledge you have when a loud noise wakes you out of sleep and just for a moment seems too distant and inevitable to need your attention.
    Screams and yells broke on his ears at this same time. One of the screams came from Ross, which should have told Colin something. (Do people shot dead usually scream?) Colin didn’t see Ross fall. What he did see—and always remembered—was Ross lying on the ground, on his back, with his arms flung out, a dark stain spilled out from the top of his head.
    That could not actually have been there—was there a puddle?
    Not despising the world or help of adults anymore, one or two boys raced down the lane to Sylvia’s house, yelling, “Ross is shot! Colin shot him! Ross! He’s shot! Colin shot him! Ross! Colin! Ross!”
    By the time they made the people sitting around the table in the back yard understand this—some had heard the shot but thought of firecrackers—and by the time the first men, running down the lane, came to the scene of the tragedy, Ross was sitting up, stretching his arms, with a sly, abashed look on his face. The boys who hadn’t run to get help had seen him stir, and thought he must be alive but wounded. He wasn’t wounded at all. The bullet hadn’t come near him. It had hit the shed a little way down the lane, a shed where an old man sharpened skates in the wintertime. Nobody was hurt.
    Ross claimed he had been knocked out, or knocked over, by the sound of the shot. But everybody, knowing Ross, believed or suspected that he had put on an act on purpose, on the spur of the moment. The gun was lying in the grass by the side of the lane, where Colin had thrown it. None of the boys had picked it up; nobody wanted to touch it or be associated with it, though it was clear to them now that everything must come out—how they took it from the car when they had no business to, how they were all to blame.
    But Colin chiefly. Colin was to blame. And he had run.
    That was the cry, after the first commotion about Ross.
    “What happened? Ross, are you all right? Are you hit? Where is the gun? Are you really all right? Where did you get the gun? Why did you act like you were shot? Are you sure you’re not shot? Who shot the gun? Who? Colin!”
    “Where is Colin?”
    Nobody even remembered the direction he had gone in. Nobody remembered seeing him go. They called, but there was no answer. They looked along the lane to see if he might be hiding. The constable got into the police car, and other people got into their cars, and they drove up and down the strets, even drove a few miles out onto the highway to see if they could catch him running away. No sign of him. Sylvia went into the house and looked in the closets and under the beds. People were wandering around, bumping into each other, shining flashlights into bushes, calling for Colin.
    Then Ross said he knew the place to look.
    “Down at the Tiplady Bridge.”
    This was an iron bridge of the old-fashioned kind spanning the Tiplady River. It had been left in place though a new, concrete bridge had been built upriver, so that the widened highway now bypassed that bit of town. The road leading down to the old bridge was closed off to cars and the bridge itself declared unsafe, but people swam or fished off it, and at night cars bumped around the ROAD CLOSED sign to park. The pavement there was broken up, and the streetlight had burned out and not been replaced. There were rumors and jokes about this light, implying that members of the council were among those who parked, and preferred darkness.
    The bridge was only a couple of blocks from Sylvia’s house. The boys ran ahead, not led but followed by Ross, who took a thoughtful pace. Sylvia stuck close to him and told him to get a move on. She was wearing high heels and a teal-blue sheath dress, too tight across the hips, which hampered her.
    “You better be right,” she said, confused now about which