The Progress of Love

him. Why tell them this now? Truth or lies didn’t matter, or whether someone had kicked a dog or bled to death. What mattered was Miss Kernaghan’s cold emphasis as she told this, her veiled and surely unfriendly purpose, her random ferocity.
    Callie hadn’t stopped work for one word of the story. She had subdued but not entirely given up her singing. The kitchen was full of light in the spring evening, and smelled of Callie’s harsh soaps and powders. Sam had sometimes before had a sense of being in trouble, but he had always known exactly what the trouble was and what the punishment would be, and he could think his way past it. Now he got the feeling that there was a kind of trouble whose extent you couldn’t know and punishments you couldn’t fathom. It wasn’t even Miss Kernaghan’s ill will they had to fear. What was it? Did Edgar know? Edgar could feel something being prepared—a paralyzing swipe. He thought it had to do with Callie and a baby and what they had done. Sam had a sense of larger implications. But he had to see that Edgar’s instincts were right.
    On Saturday morning, they walked through the back streets to the station. They had left the house when Gallie went to do the weekend shopping, pulling a child’s wagon behind her for the groceries. They had taken their money out of the bank. They had wedged a note in their door that would drop out when the door was opened: “We have gone. Sam. Edgar.”
    The words “We have gone” had been typed the day before at the college by Sam, but their names were signed by hand. Sam had thought of adding “Board paid till Monday” or “Will write to parents.” But surely Miss Kernaghan would know that their board was paid till Monday and saying they would write to their parents would be a tip-off that they hadn’t just gone home. “We have gone” seemed foolish, but he was afraid that if they didn’t leave something there would be an alarm and a search.
    They left behind the heavy, shabby books they intended to sell at the end of term— Accounting Practice, Business Arithmetic —and put what clothes they could into two brown-paper bags.
    The morning was fine and a lot of people were out-of-doors. Children had taken over the sidewalks for ball-bouncing, hopscotch, skipping. They had to have their say about the stuffed paper bags.
    “What’ve you got in them bags?”
    “Dead cats,” said Edgar. He swung his bag at a girl’s head.
    But she was bold. “What are you going to do with them?”
    “Sell them to the Chinaman for chop-cat-suey,” said Edgar in a threatening voice.
    So they got past and heard the girl chanting behind them, “Chop-cat-suey! Chop-cat-suey! Eat-it-pooey!” Nearer the station, these groups of children thinned out, vanished. Now it was boys twelve or thirteen—some of the same boys who had hung around the skating rink—who were loitering near the platform, picking up cigarette butts, trying to light them. They aped manly insolence and would not have been caught dead asking questions.
    “You boys given yourself plenty of time,” said the station agent. The train did not go till half past twelve, but they had timed their getaway according to Callie’s shopping. “You know where you’re going in the city? Anybody going to meet you?”
    Sam was not prepared for this, but Edgar said, “My sister.”
    He did not have one.
    “She live there? You going to stay at her place?”
    “Her and her husband’s,” said Edgar. “She’s married.”
    Sam could see what was coming next.
    “What part of Toronto they live in?”
    But Edgar was equal. “North part,” he said. “Doesn’t every city have a north part?” The station agent seemed about satisfied. “Hang on to your money,” he told them.
    They sat on the bench facing the board fence across the tracks, holding their tickets and their brown bags. Sam was counting up in his head how much money they had to hang on to. He had been to Toronto once with his father when he was ten years old. He remembered some confusion about a streetcar. They tried to get onat the wrong door, or get off at the wrong door. People shouted at them. His father muttered that they were all damn fools. Sam felt that he had to hold himself ready for a great assault, try to anticipate the complexities ahead so they wouldn’t take him by surprise. Then something came into his head that was like a present. He didn’t know where it came from. The Y.M.C.A. They could go to the Y.M.C.A.