The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey Read online

  “Why she be so happy?” Li’l Pea asked.

  “’Cause she know that baby gonna be the love of her life, and that would be worf ten times the pain.”

  At first Ptolemy was soothed when he thought about his old friend and mentor. But then his thoughts drifted back to that last fiery dance, and then to little Maude Petit. And when he thought about his loved ones being lost to fire his heart thundered and he fell asleep to dream the dreams of the dead.

  Papa Grey?” a voice called.

  Ptolemy was in his coffin. It was pitch black and the worms were wriggling between his fingers and toes. He opened his eyes, expecting to see nothing, but instead he found himself in the white bathtub under brilliant light. Someone was knocking at the bathroom door.

  He remembered draining the tub and lying down in it the way Reggie was laid to rest in his pine box.

  “Papa Grey?” she called again.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s Robyn, Papa Grey. I took the keys to your front do’ but the bathroom do’ don’t have a key.”

  “Robyn?”

  “Yeah. Open the do’,” she said.

  The old man fumbled with the lock for a minute or more. He panicked once or twice, fearing that he was locked in, but he got the door open at last. Robyn was standing there in dark-blue jeans and a light-blue T-shirt. There was a yellow ribbon in her hair and big bone-white earrings dangled on either side of her jaw.

  “I died,” Ptolemy Grey said. “I died and was in my grave with worms and Coydog McCann. I was dead and gone like Sensie and Reggie and other names that I cain’t even remembah no mo’.”

  Robyn put her arms around Ptolemy’s neck.

  “It was a dream,” she said, cocking her head to the side and humming with the words.

  “No, no, no,” he said, pushing his savior away. “It wasn’t no dream. Come on out here in the room and I can prove it to ya.”

  “What’s this big plastic sheet out here, Uncle?” she asked. “It’s dirty.”

  “It don’t mattah,” he said. “Just push it aside and, and, and pull up some chairs.”

  Robyn did as he requested, frowning at the dust rising from the faded tarp. She sneezed and got his stool and her lawn chair set up in front of the door.

  “Mr. Grey, can I turn off the TV and the radio so I can hear you?”

  “Sure. I don’t care,” he said.

  They sat down facing each other. Ptolemy’s eyes were bright. There was a grin on his face. He took the child’s left hand in his and gazed deeply, even thoughtfully, into her eyes.

  Robyn stared back, seeing a face that she knew with a different man inside.

  “Some things,” Ptolemy said. “Some things is in the world and in our hearts at the same time.”

  He went silent, waiting for more words to come, the words and the ideas behind them that were coming slowly but steadily from his mind.

  Robyn nodded, her head like a pump priming a well.

  “I had a tarp,” Ptolemy said, “this one right here, over all the things in my bedroom. All the books and carpets and clothes and glass jewelry. That was Sensia’s room, the wife that I loved the most ...”

  Pitypapa Grey was aware of the silence in the room. The music had been hushed and the men and women talking about crime and killing were quiet at last. It occurred to him that before now, before this moment, the content of his mind was the radio and the TV, that he was just as empty as an old cracked pecan shell—the meat dried up and crumbled away.

  “Papa Grey?” Robyn asked.

  “Yeah, baby?”

  “You just sittin’ there.”

  “What was I sayin’?”

  “That some things is in the world and in our hearts at the same time.”

  He looked at her lovely young face and let the words wash over his parched mind.

  “Yeah,” he said with a smile. “That tarp. That tarp was like the pall in my mind.”

  “The what?”

  “The pall. It’s a shroud what undertakers put over the dead until they get put in the coffin.”

  “And this plastic sheet is like that?” Robyn asked.

  “It was over that room, and at the same time it was in my head, coverin’ up all the things that I done forgot, or forgot me.”

  The idea turned in on itself and Ptolemy lost his way. He brought his hands to his head and tried to remember. It was all there but not quite clear. Things jumbled together: Coydog’s funeral next to Artie and Letisha; the iron-banded oak box with its treasures and promises, its curses and death—hidden but still a danger; Reggie laughing and eating french fries in the sunlight through the restaurant window.

  Robyn took his hands from his face.

  “Look at me, Mr. Grey,” she said.

  There were tears in his eyes.

  “I got to get my thoughts straight, girl. I got to do sumpin’ before that damn pall is th’owed ovah me.”

  “When’s the last time you et?” she asked.

  Ptolemy understood the question but the answer was the white tail of a deer flitting through the trees. He shook his head and wondered.

  “First thing we gotta do is get you sumpin’ to eat, Uncle,” she said.

  “I had a can’a tuna day before, day before yesterday.”

  The cheeseburger tasted good, better than any food he’d had in a very long time. They sat in the window seat at the fast-food restaurant, watching the black people and brown people walking up and down the sidewalk, driving up and down the street. The faces didn’t confuse him anymore but he was still confused. Not so much that he’d get lost in Coydog’s lessons down near the mouth of the Tickle River, where they had alligators that would carry off little boys and girls sometimes. He’d remember the purple skies of fall evenings without getting inside them, but he couldn’t recall where he’d put the treasure; he couldn’t put words to the one lesson that Coydog taught that he needed to know.

  “What you do in school?” Ptolemy asked Robyn.

  “I’m not in school right now, Uncle.”

  “I know. I know that. I mean, what you gonna do when you go back again?”

  “Maybe be a nurse or a schoolteacher.”

  “Why not a doctor?” the old man asked.

  Robyn stared at her newly adopted relative.

  “Bein’ a nurse is good,” she said.

  “A doctor is a king and the nurse is like the five of hearts. You at least a queen, Reggie, I mean Robyn. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” she said.

  Robyn put her fingers on his forearm. “We got to bomb your house, Uncle,” she said.

  That day they went to the bank to cash two checks that Ptolemy had received in the mail. The old man was looking from face to face, examining each one.

  “You lookin’ for somebody, Uncle?”

  “Double-u ara eye en gee,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Double-u ara eye en gee. That’s a friend’a mines.”

  “If you say so.”

  They bought groceries at Big City and insect bombs at Harold and Rod Hardware. There were seven of them like Roman candles held up by Popsicle-stick crosses, which were bonded by rough dabs of white glue.

  “You only need one for every one and a half rooms in the house,” the salesman told Robyn.

  He was a redheaded young black man with pinkish-brown skin and big brown freckles. Ptolemy wondered how many white men had been that boy’s forefathers. This seemed very important to him, but then the thought got lost in the young people’s conversation.

  “How long before we can go back in?” Robyn asked.

  “Twenty-four hours, no matter what,” he said. “Then you go in an’ open the windahs, let it air out a hour or two and it’a be fine.”

  “You got windahs, Mr. Grey?” the girl asked.

  “Out on the back porch. Sensie an’ me’d open the back windahs and the front do’ in summah an’ it was bettah than air conditionin’.”

  “What’s your na
me?” the freckled clerk asked Robyn.

  “Chili Norman,” she said easily. “I live in that green house ovah on Morton.”

  “You gotta phone?”

  “Uh-uh,” she said coyly. Smiling as she did so. “I’ll take two’a those little electric fans you got on sale. And I’ma need some wide tape too.”

  “How come you don’t have no phone?” the goofy boy asked.

  “Money.”

  “Could I come by and knock on the door?”

  “Ain’t no law against that,” the lying child said.

  From there they went to Baker’s Inn on Crenshaw. It took three busses and more than an hour to get there. They had to walk six blocks at either end of the long ride. At first Ptolemy carried one of the three bags they had, but he started slowing down and Robyn took his load too.

  They paid for two nights at the motel in cash up front and left the groceries in the room. There was a small refrigerator for the milk and beer and butter they’d purchased.

  “You can stay here if you want, Uncle Grey. I just got one thing to do and then I’ll come back.”

  Ptolemy looked around the motel room. It smelled of chemicals, and the two beds looked like the slabs in the undertaker’s room where he swept up the dust that collected around the dead. The ceiling was low and he was again reminded of a coffin.

  “How long you be gone?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Couple’a hours at least.”

  “I’ll come with ya. No need just to sit in here. I don’t even know how to work the TV.”

  Robyn carried the fans and the insect bombs in three white plastic bags. She and Ptolemy didn’t talk much on the walk to the busses or on the rides. Young men talked to her. Older men did too. She smiled at them and told lies about her name and address. She gave them phone numbers but Ptolemy didn’t think that they belonged to Niecie.

  On the last bus a young man came to sit opposite them. He was dark-skinned and pretty the way young men can be. He was no more than thirty and could have passed for twenty-two.

  “Mr. Grey?” he said after staring for a moment.

  Ptolemy looked at the young man. His face was familiar, but that was nothing new; almost all faces looked both familiar and strange to him.

  “I’m Beckford,” the man said, “Reggie’s friend.”

  “I know you,” Robyn said then. “You used to come by on Thursdays when you worked on that fishin’ boat. You smelled bad.”

  “Robyn, right?” Beckford said. “The cute little girl Reggie’s aunt took in.”

  As the bus turned, the young man stood up and let the gentle centrifugal pull swing him across the aisle until he was on the seat next to Ptolemy.

  “Yeah,” he said as if someone had just asked him a question. “I was up in Oakland for the last two years or so. I remember one time me an’ Reggie went to your house, Mr. Grey, and you bought us a pizza. How is Reggie?”

  “He daid,” Robyn said, showing no emotion. “They kilt him in a drive-by not two blocks from his house.”

  “No,” Beckford said. “Who did?”

  Robyn shook her head.

  “Damn.” Beckford sat back in his seat. “Damn. Why anybody wanna kill Reggie? He ain’t in no gang. He ain’t mess wit’ nobody.”

  The bus driver hit the brakes and Ptolemy swayed into the young man’s shoulder. In that moment he was back in the little room that Coydog called home behind the colored barbershop. Coydog was talking and through Ptolemy the words came out. “Don’t worry, boy,” he said. “Man do sumpin’ wrong, man pays for it. There ain’t a surer truth on God’s green earth.”

  “Niecie still live at the same place?” Beckford asked.

  “Uh-huh,” Robyn said, and then she added, “We gettin’ out here.”

  She helped Ptolemy to his feet and they went toward the exit.

  “Nice to see you, Mr. Grey, Robyn,” Beckford called after them.

  The old man waved. Robyn was holding his other hand and watching his feet while negotiating her three bags and so did not speak to Beckford.

  That was a nice boy,” Ptolemy said as they walked toward his house.

  “Yeah,” Robyn replied, “we’ll see.”

  “Pete!” a familiar voice bellowed from across the street.

  Melinda Hogarth came at the man and girl like a freight train that had jumped its track at full speed. She had a broad grin on her face and her mannish hands were balled into big hammer-like fists.

  “Oh no,” Ptolemy whispered. His sphincter tightened and his chest ached. He didn’t run but he wanted to. He didn’t fall to his knees but his legs shivered.

  “That her?” Robyn asked when Melinda was half the way to them, roaring in the middle of the street like a wild beast that just caught the scent of blood.

  Ptolemy nodded and Robyn moved to stand between them. The teenager turned so that her left shoulder was pointed at the approaching juggernaut. Melinda was wearing blue jeans under a faded navy-blue dress that came down to her knees. She was two and a half times the size of Robyn, the color of a wild bull, and three sheets to the wind. Robyn could smell the alcohol when the woman got near.

  “Move out my way, heifer,” Melinda Hogarth cried, and then Robyn swung, starting from her hip. The bag holding both of the electric fans moved in a small quick arc, slamming the drunken mugger in the center of her forehead. The first blow set Melinda back a step. The second put her right knee on the ground. The big woman was on both knees and an elbow, screaming, by the fourth swing. That was when the bag tore open and the broken fans went flying.

  Robyn reached into her shoulder bag. Ptolemy put a hand on her forearm. He didn’t have the strength to stop her, but Robyn stopped anyway. She turned her face to the elder.

  At first sight she looked like a demon to the old man. The slants of her eyes were reminiscent of horns, and her teeth showed without making a smile. And then she changed. She was the sweet girl again, a mild worry showing in her eyes and on her mouth.

  “Don’t worry, Uncle,” she said. “I know what I’m doin’.”

  Ptolemy took a step backward and Robyn pulled out her six-inch knife.

  “Look up here at me, bitch!” Robyn commanded.

  The pile of quivering womanhood made sounds that were like the snuffling cries of a wounded animal.

  Robyn kicked Melinda Hogarth’s fat shoulder.

  “Look at me or I’ma stab you up,” Robyn promised.

  Melinda threw herself away from the threat, landing on her backside. Her eyes were wide with the fear and the possibility of death.

  “What’s your name?” Robyn said, moving closer.

  The prostrate woman was too frightened to speak.

  “Tell me your name or I’ma cut yo’ th’oat right here.”

  “M-m-m-melinda.”

  “Linda,” Robyn said. “Linda, if I evah see you talkin’ to my uncle again, if he evah tell me you even said a word to him, I’ma come out heah wit’ my girls an’ we gonna cut yo’ titties right off. You hear me?”

  Melinda Hogarth didn’t answer the question. She walked backward on her elbows and heels until somehow she was on her feet. Then she ran down the street, screaming high and loud like a woman miraculously transforming into a fire truck.

  After a long minute Robyn put her knife away. She picked up the fans. Now they were just blue and silver plastic pieces.

  “Damn,” she said. “Now we got to go back to that hardware sto’ an’ that yellah niggah gonna start slobberin’ on me again.”

  “I got a fan on my back porch,” Ptolemy said.

  “Why the hell didn’t you tell me that in the first place?” she said angrily.

  “You didn’t aks me, girl. I didn’t know what you was doin’.”

  With some effort Robyn smiled again and reached for Ptolemy’s hands. He took a step backward.

  “Don’t be scared’a me, Uncle,” Robyn said. “I just wanna make sure you can stand out on the street and not be beat down by that crazy woman.”


  Ptolemy’s mind was scattered over nearly a hundred years. His mother and father, Coy’s lynching, the one brief battle he fought in during World War Two. He saw Melvin Torchman fall dead in a barbershop in Memphis, and he was waking up again to Sensia dead in the bed next to him. And then a million bugs swarmed over her . . .

  “Uncle?”

  Robyn was holding his hands. He looked into her eyes and she was a friendly child again.

  “Don’t do that no mo’, okay, baby?” he said.

  Robyn kissed his big knuckle and nodded.

  After dragging the huge gray tarp out to the curb, Robyn cleared two places in each room and placed an insect bomb candle in each space. She only put one bomb in the bathroom.

  “You go wait in the hall, Uncle,” she told Ptolemy, “while I set these bad boys off.”

  He stood outside in the dilapidated marble-and-oak hallway. It was once a nice building that people kept up. That was in the old days, when black people came to Los Angeles to make a life away from the Jim Crow South. He hadn’t stood in that dark hall for many years. He’d walked down it ten thousand times; between two and a dozen times a day when he was younger. But he hardly ever just stood there.

  Once there was a young man stabbed and killed at the front door of the building. He’d pressed Ptolemy and Sensia’s bell, but when nobody responded to the intercom they went back to bed. He was already old and she was fragile by then. They’d been burglarized and had put up the chain gate on the back window and door.

  Hey, Mr. Grey,” Robyn said.

  She’d come into the hallway, dragging one of his pine chairs with a small suitcase lying in its seat. The slight scent of sulfur and smoke came with her. She also had a sheet of paper and the roll of masking tape they got from the hardware store. Using the chair to stand on, she put tape all along the cracks of the door. She put many layers of tape, one on top of the other, to make an airtight seal against leaking poisons. Then she taped the paper to the door.