Low men in yellow coats by Stephen King

maybe not. What mattered was that she said yes — she even sent his mom a bouquet of flowers, and Liz was happy for the first time in weeks. Perhaps truly happy for the first time in years. What mattered was they were moving from Harwich to Danvers, Massachusetts.

They were going in August, so Liz would have plenty of time to get her Bobby-O, her newly

quiet and often glum Bobby-O, enrolled in a new school.

What also mattered was that Liz Garfield’s Bobby-O had a piece of business to take care of before leaving Harwich.

He was too young and small to do what needed doing in a straightforward way. He would have to be careful, and he’d have to be sneaky. Sneaky was all right with Bobby; he no longer had much interest in acting like Audie Murphy or Randolph Scott in the Saturday-matinee movies, and besides, some people needed ambushing, if only to find out what it felt like. The hiding-place he picked was the little copse of trees where Carol had taken him on the day he went all ushy-gushy and started crying; a fitting spot in which to wait for Harry Doolin, old Mr Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen.

Harry had gotten a part-time stockboy job at Total Grocery. Bobby had known that for weeks, had seen him there when he went shopping with his mom. Bobby had also seen Harry walking home after his shift ended at three o’clock. Harry was usually with one or more of his friends. Richie O’Meara was his most common sidekick; Willie Shearman seemed to have dropped out of old Robin Hood’s life just as Sully had pretty much dropped out of Bobby’s.

But whether alone or in company, Harry Doolin always cut across Commonwealth Park on his way home.

Bobby started to drift down there in the afternoons. There was only morning baseball now that it was really hot and by three o’clock Fields A, B, and C were deserted. Sooner or later Harry would walk back from work and past those deserted fields without Richie or any of his other Merrie Men to keep him company. Meanwhile, Bobby spent the hour between three and four P.M. each day in the copse of trees where he had cried with his head in Carol’s lap.

Sometimes he read a book. The one about George and Lennie made him cry again. Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. That was how George saw it.

Guys like us got nothing to look ahead to. Lennie thought the two of them were going to get a farm and raise rabbits, but long before Bobby got to the end of the story he knew there would be no farms and no rabbits for George and Lennie. Why? Because people needed a beast to hunt. They found a Ralph or a Piggy or a big stupid hulk of a Lennie and then they turned into low men. They put on their yellow coats, they sharpened a stick at both ends, and then they went hunting.

But guys like us sometimes get a little of our own back, Bobby thought as he waited for the day when Harry would show up alone. Sometimes we do.

August sixth turned out to be the day. Harry strolled through the park toward the corner of Broad and Commonwealth still wearing his red Total Grocery apron — what a fucking nimrod — and singing ‘Mack the Knife’ in a voice that could have melted screws. Careful not to rustle the branches of the close-growing trees, Bobby stepped out behind him and closed in, walking softly on the path and not cocking back his baseball bat until he was close enough to be sure. As he raised it he thought of Ted saying Three boys against one little girl. They must have thought you were a lion. But of course Carol wasn’t a lion; neither was he. It was Sully who was the Lion and Sully hadn’t been there, wasn’t here now. The one creeping up behind Harry Doolin wasn’t even a Wolf. He was just a hyena, but so what? Did Harry Doolin deserve any better?