In The Things They Carried, after his time with Elroy in "On the Rainy River," why does the narrator realize that Canada is not an option for him?

The narrator has spent some time trying to work up to
fleeing the country and thereby escaping the draft. Elroy Berdahl in this excellent
story strikes us as an incredibly understanding presence, who gives the narrator the
opportunity to flee, but then does not judge him when he is not able to take that
opportunity. The narrator tells us that what stopped him from crossing the border was
embarrassment. Even though he tried to leave, he tells us it just was not possible for
him to go:

readability="16">

All those eyes on me--the town, the whole
universe--and I couldn't risk the embarrassment. It was as if there were an audience to
my life, that swirl of faces along the river, and in my head I could hear people
screaming at me. Traitor! they yelled. Turncoat! Pussy! I felt myself blush. I couldn't
tolerate it. I couldn't endure the mocker, or the disgrace, or the patriotic ridicule.
Even in my imagination, the shore just twenty yards away, I couldn't make myself be
brave. It had nothing to do with morality. Embarrassment, that's all it
was.

Thus the narrator feels
shamed into staying, not through any emotion except through the shame and the feeling of
embarrassment of what people would say when they found out that he had missed being
drafted by fleeing the country. He was "embarrassed not to" go to the war, and this, at
the end of the day, became the conquering emotion that won out.