Low men in yellow coats by Stephen King

Nor, it turned out, did Carol Gerber. ‘Sometimes I wonder if he’s on the run from

something,’ she said one evening as she and Bobby and S-J walked up the hill toward Asher Avenue.

They had been playing pass for an hour or so, talking off and on with Ted as they did, and were now heading to Moon’s Roadside Happiness for ice cream cones. S-J had thirty cents and was treating. He also had his Bo-lo-Bouncer, which he now took out of his back pocket.

Pretty soon he had it going up and down and all around, whap-whap-whap.

‘On the run? Are you kidding?’ Bobby was startled by the idea. Yet Carol was sharp about people; even his mother had noticed it. That girl’s no beauty, but she doesn’t miss much, she’d said one night.

‘”Stick em up, McGarrigle!”‘ Sully-John cried. He tucked his Bo-lo Bouncer under his arm, dropped into a crouch, and fired an invisible tommygun, yanking down the right side of his mouth so he could make the proper sound to go with it, a kind of eh-eh-eh from deep in his throat. ‘”You’ll never take me alive, copper! Blast em, Muggsy! Nobody runs out on Rico!

Ah, jeez, they got me!” ‘ S-J clutched his chest, spun around, and fell dead on Mrs Conlan’s lawn.

That lady, a grumpy old rhymes-with-witch of seventy-five or so, cried: ‘Boy! Touuu, boy!

Get off there! You’ll mash my flowers!’

There wasn’t a flowerbed within ten feet of where Sully-John had fallen, but he leaped up at once. ‘Sorry, Mrs Conlan.’

She flapped a hand at him, dismissing his apology without a word, and watched closely as the children went on their way.

‘You don’t really mean it, do you?’ Bobby asked Carol. ‘About Ted?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘I guess not. But . . . have you ever watched him watch the street?’

‘Yeah. It’s like he’s looking for someone, isn’t it?’

‘Or looking out for them,’ Carol replied.

Sully-John resumed Bo-lo Bouncing. Pretty soon the red rubber ball was blurring back and forth again. Sully paused only when they passed the Asher Empire, where two Brigitte Bardot movies were playing, Adults Only, Must Have Driver’s License or Birth Certificate, No Exceptions. One of the pictures was new; the other was that old standby And God Created Woman, which kept coming back to the Empire like a bad cough. On the posters, Brigitte was dressed in nothing but a towel and a smile.

‘My mom says she’s trashy,’ Carol said.

‘If she’s trash, I’d love to be the trashman,’ S-J said, and wiggled his eyebrows like Groucho.

‘Dojyow think she’s trashy?’ Bobby asked Carol.

‘I’m not sure what that means, even.’

As they passed out from under the marquee (from within her glass ticket-booth beside the doors, Mrs Godlow — known to the neighborhood kids as Mrs Godzilla — watched them suspiciously), Carol looked back over her shoulder at Brigitte Bardot in her towel. Her expression was hard to read. Curiosity? Bobby couldn’t tell. ‘But she’s pretty, isn’t she?’

‘Yeah, I guess.’

‘And you’d have to be brave to let people look at you with nothing on but a towel. That’s what I think, anyway.’

Sully-John had no interest in la femme Brigitte now that she was behind them. ‘Where’d Ted come from, Bobby?’

‘I don’t know. He never talks about that.’

Sully-John nodded as if he expected just that answer, and threw his Bo-lo Bouncer back into gear. Up and down, all around, whap-whap-whap.

In May Bobby’s thoughts began turning to summer vacation. There was really nothing in the world better than what Sully called ‘the Big Vac.’ He would spend long hours goofing with his friends, both on Broad Street and down at Sterling House on the other side of the park —

they had lots of good things to do in the summer at Sterling House, including baseball and weekly trips to Patagonia Beach in West Haven — and he would also have plenty of time for himself. Time to read, of course, but what he really wanted to do with some of that time was find a part-time job. He had a little over seven rocks in a jar marked BIKE FUND, and seven rocks was a start . . . but not what you’d call a great start. At this rate Nixon would have been President two years before he was riding to school.