Runaway by Alice Munro Read Free Book Online Page A

inside. It’s true. If you ever went away, I’d feel like I didn’t have anything left in me.”
    The bright weather had continued. On the streets, in the stores, in the Post Office, people greeted each other by saying that summer had finally arrived. The pasture grass and even the poorbeaten crops lifted up their heads. The puddles dried up, the mud turned to dust. A light warm wind blew and everybody felt like doing things again. The phone rang. Inquiries about trail rides, about riding lessons. Summer camps were interested now, having cancelled their trips to museums. Minivans drew up, with their loads of restless children. The horses pranced along the fences, freed from their blankets.
    Clark had managed to get hold of a large enough piece of roofing at a good price. He had spent the whole first day after Runaway Day (that was how they referred to Carla’s bus trip) fixing the roof of the exercise ring.
    For a couple of days, as they went about their chores, he and Carla would wave at each other. If she happened to pass close to him, and there was nobody else around, Carla might kiss his shoulder through the light material of his summer shirt.
    “If you ever try to run away on me again I’ll tan your hide,” he said to her, and she said, “
Would
you?”
    “What?”
    “Tan my hide?”
    “Damn right.” He was high-spirited now, irresistible as when she had first known him.
    Birds were everywhere. Red-winged blackbirds, robins, a pair of doves that sang at daybreak. Lots of crows, and gulls on reconnoitering missions from the lake, and big turkey vultures that sat in the branches of a dead oak about half a mile away, at the edge of the woods. At first they just sat there, drying out their voluminous wings, lifting themselves occasionally for a trial flight, flapping around a bit, then composing themselves to let the sun and the warm air do their work. In a day or so they were restored, flying high, circling and dropping to earth, disappearing over the woods, coming back to rest in the familiar bare tree.
    Lizzie’s owner—Joy Tucker—showed up again, tanned and friendly. She had just got sick of the rain and gone off on her holidays to hike in the Rocky Mountains. Now she was back.
    “Perfect timing weatherwise,” Clark said. He and Joy Tucker were soon joking as if nothing had happened.
    “Lizzie looks to be in good shape,” she said. “But where’s her little friend? What’s her name—Flora?”
    “Gone,” said Clark. “Maybe she took off to the Rocky Mountains.”
    “Lots of wild goats out there. With fantastic horns.”
    “So I hear.”
    For three or four days they had been just too busy to go down and look in the mailbox. When Carla opened it she found the phone bill, some promise that if they subscribed to a certain magazine they could win a million dollars, and Mrs. Jamieson’s letter.
    My Dear Carla
,
    I have been thinking about the (rather dramatic) events of the last few days and I find myself talking to myself but really to you, so often that I thought I must speak to you, even if—the best way I can do now—only in a letter. And don’t worry—you do not have to answer me
.
    Mrs. Jamieson went on to say that she was afraid that she had involved herself too closely in Carla’s life and had made the mistake of thinking somehow that Carla’s happiness and freedom were the same thing. All she cared for was Carla’s happiness and she saw now that she—Carla—must find that in her marriage. All she could hope was that perhaps Carla’s flight andturbulent emotions had brought her true feelings to the surface and perhaps a recognition in her husband of his true feelings as well.
    She said that she would perfectly understand if Carla had a wish to avoid her in the future and that she would always be grateful for Carla’s presence in her life during such a difficult time.
    The strangest and most wonderful thing in this whole string of events seems to me the reappearance of Flora. In