The Progress of Love

pretend-boy buy a ticket (to Toronto—Callie was guessing, and she guessed right) and walk out onto the platform without one word, one question. This contributed to the boys’ feeling, when they recognized her, that she was exercising powers that didn’t fall far short of being miraculous. (Maybe Edgar, in particular, felt this.) How had she known? How had she got the money? How was she here?
    None of it was impossible. She had come back with the groceries and gone up to the attic. (Why? She didn’t say.) She had found the note and guessed at once they hadn’t gone home to the farm and weren’t hitchhiking on the highway. She knew when the train left. She knew two places it went to—Stratford and Toronto. She stole the money for her ticket from the metal box under the hymn books in the piano bench. (Miss Kernaghan, of course, did not trust banks.) By the time she got to the station and was buying her ticket, the train was coming in and the station agent had a lot of things to think about, no time to ask questions. There was a great deal of luck involved—lucky timing and lucky guessing every step of the way—but that was all. It was not magic, not quite.
    Sam and Edgar had not recognized the clothes, and there was no particular movement or gesture that alerted them. The boy Callie sat looking out the window, head partly turned away from them. Sam would never know exactly when he first knew it was Callie, or how the knowledge came to him, and whether he looked at Edgar or simply knew that Edgar knew the same thing he did and at the same time. This was knowledge that seemed to have simply leaked out into the air and to be waiting there to be absorbed. They passedthrough a long cut, with grassy banks fresh on either side, and crossed the Cedar Bush Bridge—the same bridge where boys from town dared each other to climb down and cling to the supports under the ties while the train passed over their heads. (Would Callie have done that if they had dared her?) By the time they were across this bridge, they both knew that it was Callie sitting across from them. And each of them knew the other knew.
    Edgar spoke first. “Do you want to move over with us?”
    Callie got up and moved across the aisle, sitting down beside Edgar. She had her boy’s look on—a look not so sly or quarrelsome as her usual look. She was a good-humored boy, more or less, with reasonable expectations.
    It was Sam she spoke to. “Don’t you mind riding backwards?”
    Sam said no.
    Next, she asked them what they had in the bags, and they both spoke at once.
    Edgar said, “Dead cats.”
    Sam said, “Lunch.”
    They didn’t feel as if they were caught. Right away they had understood that Callie hadn’t come to bring them back. She was joining them. In her boy’s clothes, she reminded them of the cold nights of luck and cunning, the plan that went without a hitch, the free skating, speed and delight, deception and pleasure. When nothing went wrong, nothing could go wrong, triumph was certain, all their moves timely. Callie, who had got herself on this train with stolen money and in boy’s clothes, seemed to lift threats rather than pose them. Even Sam stopped thinking about what they would do in Toronto, whether their money would last. If he had been functioning in his usual way, he would have seen that Callie’s presence was bound to bring them all sorts of trouble once they descended into the real world, but he was not functioning that way and he did not see anything like trouble. At the moment, he saw power—Callie’s power, when she wouldn’t be left behind—generously distributed to all of them. The moment was flooded—with power, it seemed,and with possibility. But this was just happiness. It was really just happiness.
    That was how Sam’s story—which had left some details and reasons out along the way—always ended. If he was asked how things went from there, he might say, “Well, it was a little more complicated than we expected, but we all survived.” Meaning, specifically, that the Y.M.C.A. clerk, who was eating an egg-and-onion sandwich, did not take two minutes to figure out that there was something wrong about Callie. Questions. Lies, sneers, threats, phone calls. Abducting a minor. Trying to sneak a girl into the Y.M.C.A. for immoral purposes. Where are her parents? Who knows she’s here? Who gave her permission? Who takes responsibility? A policeman on the scene. Two policemen. A full confession and a phone