The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

“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 name?” 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.”