Free The Lime Pit by Jonathan Valin Page A

locked it shut.
    "O.K., Hugo," I said. "Let's go."
    The old man pivoted lightly on one foot and said,
"You don't have to stick around, Harry. I can find my way to the
bus."
    I smiled and shook my head ruefully. I'd known it was
coming; I just hadn't known what form it was going to take. Actually
I was a little disappointed that Hugo had thought he could get rid of
me so easily.

"Now Just a second," he said, as I tugged
him by the coat sleeve. "Just a minute, here."
    "It isn't going to work, Hugo," I said.
    "I ain't no damn kid," he said testily,
"that has to be watched over every second."
    I grabbed his arm firmly and picked up the straw
suitcase. "Let's go."
    "Now, Harry."
    I walked him to the loading area and he cursed and
muttered and fumed every step of the way. "You can't do this to
me. This is a free country.... I got my rights.... Damn it, Harry,
let go of my arm ... the way they treat old folks in this city is a
crime. . . ."
    When he saw that it wasn't going to work, Hugo grew
sly arid pensive looking. "I didn't call my damn son," he
said suddenly. "There ain't going to be nobody there to meet
me."
    "That's tough, Hugo. You'll just have to walk a
few blocks."
    "I'm recovering from a stroke," he whined.
"You ain't going to put me out in the hot sun and make me walk
till I keel over, are you?"
    "Yeah." I nodded. "That's what I'm
going to do."
    "You ain't got a drop of pity in you, Harry,"
Hugo said bitterly. "If I drop dead on the streets of Dayton, my
blood'll be on your head. Are you willing to live with that guilt?"
    "You'll be all right, Hugo," I said with a
sigh. "I called your son myself this morning. And he'll be there
to meet you."
    "You called Ralph?" Hugo said in a little
voice.
    I nodded. "This morning, Hugo."
    He shrivelled like a spent balloon. "Damn,"
he said, shaking his wispy white head.
    Hugo didn't say another word until the bus arrived.
As the passengers queued up beside the door, he got slowly to his
feet. "You'll be careful, now, won't you, Harry?" he said
in a forlorn voice. "You won't let nothing bad happen, now, will
you?"
    "No," I said, smiling at him. "Nothing
bad will happen."
    "And you'll call me once and awhile, won't you?
To let me know how things are?"
    "Sure I will."
    "About the money," he said, rubbing his
grizzled chin.
    "We'll talk about that when I've got Cindy Ann
back for you."
    Hugo patted his coat pockets and his pants pockets
and sighed. "Well," lie said, holding out his hand. "Looks
like I got everything."
    I shook his hand and said, "The key."
    "Huh?" Hugo looked at me uncertainly.
    "The key to your apartment, Hugo. I want it."
    Hugo blew a little air out of his mouth and cursed
violently.
    "You don't miss much either," he said,
clawing at his pants pocket. "Do you, Mister Harry Stoner?"
    "I try not to."
    "Well, just you keep it up," he said as he
walked up to the bus door. "You hear?" Hugo stepped up onto
the bus. "And try to make this quick, will you?" he called
out as the bus door sighed shut. "A few weeks with Ralph and
I'll be ready for the V.A. hospital."
 
 
    9
    ONCE I'D seen Hugo safely off, I walked up Fifth
Street to a pancake house at the corner of Elm and contemplated the
world over a plate of doughy waffles. From where I was sitting Elm
seemed to be full of girls in bright summer dresses, and each one of
them looked as if she had just stepped off the bus from Greenburg or
Sunman or Milan. Perhaps from as far away as Sioux Falls, wherever
the hell that was. Each of them had the same look on her face--that
dreamy, vacant look that comes when the eye is turned inward and
fully in love with what it sees. It was like an erotic daydream out
there on the blazing street, a predator's dream of ripe and easy
pickings, a world of Cindy Anns. I took a sip of bitter coffee and,
when I looked up again, the girls seemed to have grown a lot wiser.
It's not you, ladies, I said to myself. It's just me. Just me and a
handful of photographs that I can't get out of my mind. I