The Runaway by Morley Callaghan is the story of Michael, a boy whose life is divided between the pleasures of childhood, the pangs of love and the problems at home. “Michael was younger than some of them [his friends] but he was much bigger, his legs were long, his huge hands dangled awkwardly at his sides and his thick black hair curled up all over his head.”
He feels trapped in a society where everyone knows everyone and a family where his father had constant arguments with his stepmother: “… Michael could hear them arguing; he could hear his father’s firm, patient voice floating clearly out to the street; then his stepmother’s voice, mild at first, rising, becoming hysterical till at last she cried out wildly, ‘You’re setting the boy against me. You don’t want him to think of me as his mother. The two of you are against me. I know your nature.’”
It is then not a surprise that Michael feels the need to escape, to run away from everybody and visit “places with beautiful names, places like Tia Juana, Woodbine, Sartoga and Blue Bonnets.”
And one day he does exactly that! Read the story to find out all the whys, hows and wheres.
Morley Callaghan was a Canadian reporter, novelist and short story writer. He was born in 1923 and died in 1990.
