The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

He sat down on the rainbow hammock of his stool and stared at the TV. He reached out and pressed the I/O button and smiled as some comedy show came into view. His fingers felt hot, alive. He could sense the old bones beneath his leathered skin. He could feel the air and smell the sour odor rising from his body. He looked around.

It had been decades since that room had been so clean and neat.

“Robyn?”

“Yeah, Uncle?”

“You are a gift from God, you know that?”

“Are you okay?” she replied.

“Nevah bettah, nevah once in all my years.”

“Yo’ skin is hot,” she said.

“Burnin’ bright,” he said with depth to his raspy voice.

“Maybe we should see a doctor.”

“We already seen the doctor,” he said. “What we gotta do is make things right, make things right ...” He stalled for a moment, then found the thread of his thoughts again. “Because there’s a lot to do for you and Reggie’s kids, for Niecie and black folks all ovah the world.”

“Like what?”

Instead of answering, Ptolemy looked at his child savior. She didn’t have the magic of Sensia or the deep, crazy accuracy of Coydog, but Robyn was the best of them . . . Ptolemy dawdled over this thought a moment. Here he was, sitting on a folding chair in his home after years of sadness and careless loss. His mind had fallen in on itself like an old barn left unmended and untended through too many seasons.

“What, Uncle?” Robyn asked.

“A gift from God,” he said again. “Without you I wouldn’t even be here.”

“Somebody else woulda come,” Robyn said, bowing her head.

“Yeah. They’da come, but I still wouldn’t be here. It’s me that’s the lump’a clay and you that’s the hand of God.”

Pitypapa!” Niecie exclaimed when Ptolemy and Robyn showed up at her door three days later.

He’d needed twenty-four hours to recover from the weakness four days in bed had put on him. The next day he bathed and pondered, read a book called Real Time, and listened to jazz on the radio. Then he went to a small men’s store on Central and bought a dark-blue suit with a deep-brown shirt and a yellow tie and black shoes.

“That the way you used to dress when you was a playah, Mr. Grey?” Robyn had asked him while he stood before the store’s triple dressing mirror.

“No, baby. That’s Coydog McCann I see in the mirror—the classiest man I evah knew.”

After donning his new clothes Ptolemy took Robyn to the ladies’ shop next door, and then to the taxi stand on Normandie. From there they went to Niecie’s home.

“Hey, Niecie,” the old man said in a tone he hadn’t known for decades. “How you doin’, sugah?”

Niecie stopped there in the desolate living room, cocking her head to try and get a bead on the voice she was hearing.

“I’m all bettah now, Niecie,” Ptolemy said. “Robyn done took me to a doctor near about killed me, but then he pulled me back from the night.”

“You can, you can think bettah now, Pitypapa?” Niecie asked, stumbling on her own tongue. “Like when you was young?”

“Mmmm,” Ptolemy said, smiling and nodding. “But I’m still old in my bones, so you gonna offah me a seat?”

After Robyn got the lemonade from the kitchen, big-bodied Hilliard came back from a run to the store with Letisha and Arthur in tow. The big thief frowned when he saw Ptolemy sitting there with his legs crossed and a glass of lemonade in his hand.

“Boy,” Ptolemy greeted. He wasn’t mad at the young man anymore.

“Name’s Hilly, not boy.”

“Hilliard, you will speak respectfully to elders in my house,” his mother said.

Hilliard glowered.

“Why you wouldn’t let me in your house when I come all the way ovah there to see about you, Papa Grey?”

“You know why.”

“’Cause you old an’, an’, an’ senile.”

“Hilliard!” Niecie said.

“It’s true.”

“Maybe I was a little forgetful,” Ptolemy admitted, “but I could still count up to three with the best of ’em.”

“You see, Mama? He talks crazy.”

The angry young man’s tone was aggressive. Robyn put her hand in her purse as Ptolemy smiled. The children huddled next to their auntie Niecie’s chair, staring at Hilly as if he were some dangerous stranger.

“I ain’t so crazy I don’t know how to make you listen,” Ptolemy said.

He put his hand inside his breast pocket and came out with a roll of twenty-dollar bills.

The sight of money hit Hilly like a slap.

“What’s that, Pitypapa?” Niecie asked.

“Yo’ boy took me to the bank with three checks, got my signature, but only gave me money for the one,” Ptolemy said. “That’s why he blusterin’, ’cause he feel guilty. But I had Robyn bring me ovah here to bury the hatchet.”

He leaned over, handing the roll of cash to his grandniece.

“That’s six hunnert dollahs, Niecie. I wanna make sure that these kids is gettin’ what they need. I’ma give you sumpin’ like that ev’ry mont’. Lucky I didn’t give yo’ son my passbook or I might not have nuthin’ left ta give ya.”

“My boy does not steal,” Niecie said, clutching the wad in her lap. “You gettin’ old, Pitypapa. You just made a mistake thinkin’ you give him three checks but it was only one.”