#low men

How could he run from the low men?

I have to remind myself that we were smaller then, small enough to live our brightly hued lives under the mushrooms, all the time believing them to be trees, shelter from the sheltering sky.

At first he lay in bed the old way, on his back with his heels spread to the lower corners of the mattress, but the old way no longer felt right. It felt exposed, as if anything that wanted to bag a boy could simply burst out of his closet and unzip his upturned belly with one claw. He rolled over on his side and wondered where Ted was now. He reached out, feeling for something that might be Ted, an there was nothing. Just as there had been nothing earlier, on Nasty Gansett Street. Bobby wished he could cry for Ted, but he couldn't. Not yet. Outside, crossing the dark like a dream, came the sound of the clock in the town square: one single bong. Bobby looked at the luminous hands of the Big Ben on his desk and saw they were standing at one o'clock. That was good. "They're gone," Bobby said. "The low men are gone." But he slept on his side with his knees drawn up to his chest. His nights of sleeping wide open on his back were over.