Low men in yellow coats by Stephen King

‘I don’t know. But then, I don’t know why a man you just met would give you a birthday present in the first place.’ She sighed, folded her arms under her small sharp breasts, and went on looking out Bobby’s window. ‘He told me he used to work in a state job up in Hartford but now he’s retired. Is that what he told you?’

‘Something like that.’ In fact, Ted had never told Bobby anything about his working life, and asking had never crossed Bobby’s mind.

‘What kind of state job? What department? Health and Welfare? Transportation? Office of the Comptroller?’

Bobby shook his head. What in heck was a comptroller?

‘I bet it was education,’ she said meditatively. ‘He talks like someone who used to be a teacher. Doesn’t he?’

‘Sort of, yeah.’

‘Does he have hobbies?’

‘I don’t know.’ There was reading, of course; two of the three bags which had so offended his mother were full of paperback books, most of which looked very hard.

The fact that Bobby knew nothing of the new man’s pastimes for some reason seemed to ease her mind. She shrugged, and when she spoke again it seemed to be to herself rather than to Bobby. ‘Shoot, it’s only a book. And a paperback, at that.’

‘He said he might have a job for me, but so far he hasn’t come up with anything.’

She turned around fast. ‘Any job he offers you, any chores he asks you to do, you talk to me about it first. Got that?’

‘Sure, got it.’ Her intensity surprised him and made him a little uneasy.

‘Promise.’

‘I promise.’

‘Big promise, Bobby.’

He dutifully crossed his heart and said, ‘I promise my mother in the name of God.’

That usually finished things, but this time she didn’t look satisfied.

‘Has he ever . . . does he ever . . . ‘ There she stopped, looking uncharacteristically

flustered. Kids sometimes looked that way when Mrs Bramwell sent them to the blackboard to pick the nouns and verbs out of a sentence and they couldn’t.

‘Has he ever what, Mom?’

‘Never mind!’ she said crossly. ‘Get out of here, Bobby, go to the park or Sterling House, I’m tired of looking at you.’

Why’d you come in, then? he thought (but of course did not say). I wasn’t bothering you, Mom. I wasn’t bothering you.

Bobby tucked Lord of the Flies into his back pocket and headed for the door. He turned back when he got there. She was still at the window, but now she was watching him again.

He never surprised love on her face at such moments; at best he might see a kind of speculation, sometimes (but not always) affectionate.

‘Hey, Mom?’ He was thinking of asking for fifty cents — half a rock. With that he could buy a soda and two hotdogs at the Colony Diner. He loved the Colony’s hotdogs, which came in toasted buns with potato chips and pickle slices on the side.

Her mouth did its tightening trick, and he knew this wasn’t his day for hotdogs. ‘Don’t ask, Bobby, don’t even think about it.’ Don’t even think about it — one of her all-time faves. ‘I have a ton of bills this week, so get those dollar-signs out of your eyes.’

She didn’t have a ton of bills, though, that was the thing. Not this week she didn’t. Bobby had seen both the electric bill and the check for the rent in its envelope marked Mr Monteleone last Wednesday. And she couldn’t claim he would soon need clothes because this was the end of the school-year, not the beginning. The only dough he’d asked for lately was five bucks for Sterling House — quarterly dues — and she had even been chintzy about that, although she knew it covered swimming and Wolves and Lions Baseball, plus the insurance.

If it had been anyone but his mom, he would have thought of this as cheapskate behavior. He couldn’t say anything about it to her, though; talking to her about money almost always turned into an argument, and disputing any part of her view on money matters, even in the most tiny particulars, was apt to send her into ranting hysterics. When she got like that she was scary.