Low men in yellow coats by Stephen King

‘What’s Camp Winnie? What are you talking about?’

Bobby explained about S-J winning the free week at Camp Winiwinaia and how Mrs

Sullivan was going to visit her parents in Wisconsin at the same time — plans which had now been finalized, Big Gray Dog and all.

‘Damn it, that’s just my luck,’ his mom said. She almost never swore, said that cursing and what she called ‘dirty talk’ was the language of the ignorant. Now she made a fist and struck the arm of the glider. ‘God damn it!’

She sat for a moment, thinking. Bobby thought, as well. His only other close friend on the street was Carol, and he doubted his mom would call Anita Gerber and ask if he could stay over there. Carol was a girl, and somehow that made a difference when it came to sleepovers.

One of his mother’s friends? The thing was she didn’t really have any . . . except for Don Biderman (and maybe the other two that were going to the seminar in Providence). Plenty of acquaintances, people she said hi to if they were walking back from the supermarket or going to a Friday-night movie downtown, but no one she could call up and ask to keep her eleven-year-old son for a couple of nights; no relatives, either, at least none that Bobby knew of.

Like people travelling on converging roads, Bobby and his mother gradually drew toward the same point. Bobby got there first, if only by a second or two.

‘What about Ted?’ he asked, then almost clapped his hand over his mouth. It actually rose out of his lap a little.

His mother watched the hand settle back with a return of her old cynical half -smile, the one she wore when dispensing sayings like You have to eat a peck of dirt before you die and Two men looked out through prison bars, one saw the mud and one saw the stars and of course that all-time favorite, Life’s not fair.

‘You think I don’t know you call him Ted when the two of you are together?’ she asked.

‘You must think I’ve been taking stupid-pills, Bobby-O.’ She sat and looked out at the street.

A Chrysler New Yorker slid slowly past — finny, fenderskirted, and highlighted with chrome. Bobby watched it go by. The man behind the wheel was elderly and white-haired and wearing a blue jacket. Bobby thought he was probably all right. Old but not low.

‘Maybe it’d work,’ Liz said at last. She spoke musingly, more to herself than to her son.

‘Let’s go talk to Brautigan and see.’

Following her up the stairs to the third floor, Bobby wondered how long she had known how to say Ted’s name correctly. A week? A month?

From the start, Dumbo, he thought. From the very first day.

Bobby’s initial idea was that Ted could stay in his own room on the third floor while Bobby stayed in the apartment on the first floor; they’d both keep their doors open, and if either of them needed anything, they could call.

‘I don’t believe the Kilgallens or the Proskys would enjoy you yelling up to Mr Brautigan at three o’clock in the morning that you’d had a nightmare,’ Liz said tartly. The Kilgallens and the Proskys had the two small second-floor apartments; Liz and Bobby were friendly with

neither of them.

‘I won’t have any nightmares,’ Bobby said, deeply humiliated to be treated like a little kid.

‘I mean jeepers.’

‘Keep it to yourself,’ his mom said. They were sitting at Ted’s kitchen table, the two adults smoking, Bobby with a rootbeer in front of him.

‘It’s just not the right idea,’ Ted told him. ‘You’re a good kid, Bobby, responsible and level-headed, but eleven’s too young to be on your own, I think.’

Bobby found it easier to be called too young by his friend than by his mother. Also he had to admit that it might be spooky to wake up in one of those little hours after midnight and go to the bathroom knowing he was the only person in the apartment. He could do it, he had no doubt he could do it, but yeah, it would be spooky.