The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

“That’s how powerful you are, girl,” Ptolemy said, taking Robyn’s hand in his. “You pretty, but pretty alone’s not what people see. You the kinda pretty, the kinda beauty, that’s like a mirror. Men an’ women see themselves in you, only now they so beautiful that they can’t bear to see you go.”

“Uncle Grey, was you always thinkin’ all these things even when you couldn’t talk so good?”

“When you get old,” he said, and then he paused, thinking about Coy and Lupo, who were known in the colored community as the Dog Brothers. They ran together as young men, and when they got into their forties, old for men back then, they could sit together for hours, never saying a word and never getting tired of the company. “When you get old you begin to understand that no one talks unless someone listens, and no one knows nuthin’ ’less somebody else can understand.”

“And nobody was listenin’ to you, Uncle?”

“And nobody understood until you, child.”

“But what’s that got to do with Gladys Pine?”

“She nevah touched anybody outside’a herself. She was like I was when you met me—alone in her mind. And then she seen Sensie and reached out and my girl took her hand and helt it to her breast. You know, I almost cry when I think about it. It was beautiful, even though it was a blues song too. Some people might say it was love on one hand and a fickle heart on the other, but what would have come from them if they didn’t see and say and feel . . . and die?”

“You deep, Uncle,” Robyn said.

“No, baby. I’m just like everybody else—everybody else.”

That night Ptolemy woke from a dream about Coy’s death. He had a fever but didn’t wake Robyn. He thought that he might die if he stayed in the bed, so he got up and went to the bathroom, where he swallowed four aspirin and turned on a lukewarm shower.

The water soothed him.

After a while he hunkered down in the tub and let the cool water cascade over his bony form. He wondered what was in the Devil’s medicine that kept his knees from hurting too much.

In that position, in the tub, he was seventeen again, lugging the heavy bags of coin from out of Coy’s secret cave. He borrowed his cousin’s Terraplane car and drove to Memphis, where he secreted the stolen treasure for three years. Every time he touched those coins he felt the cold of that cave’s water and the chill of death.

When he began to shiver, he rose up under the spray, turned off the water, and dried himself with a big thick towel that Robyn had bought. After he was dry he stared at his head and torso in the water-stained mirror. He probably weighed less than the sleeping child in the next room, but he’d put on weight. His face was not nearly so wrinkled as some old people he’d known, but he could see the ninety-one years in his eyes. He could see the old confusion hovering above his crown, waiting to settle back on him like a venomless smothering snake around its prey.

“Uncle?” Robyn said.

She was standing at the door.

Ptolemy took the towel from the sink and wrapped it around his skinny waist, using his hand as the clasp. He stared at the girl but did not speak.

“You okay, Uncle?”

He nodded.

“What’s wrong?”

“I know how a man could lose his mind, but how do he find it again?” he said as she approached him.

“You’re cold.”

“I was burnin’ up there in my bed. I was thinkin’ about the river . . .”

“Where you and Coydog used to fish?”

“How much money we got in the bank now?” he asked.

“All of it. Forty-two thousand in the savings account an’ the rest in that deposit box. Come on, Uncle, you should go back to bed.”

“What’s that boy’s name? The one you seein’.”

“Beckford?”

“Yeah . . . him. You like him?”

“He all right.” Robyn looked away and Ptolemy knew for sure that she had made love to the handsome friend of Reggie.

“You said he live with three other young men?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Now that the money’s gone, you could bring him ovah if you want. You can sleep in the bedroom. I don’t care.”

“I don’t wanna talk about this, Uncle.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I mean, it makes me feel embarrassed.”

Ptolemy hooked Robyn’s chin with the index finger of his left hand and lifted her face to regard him. She was wearing just a T-shirt, and all that covered him was that towel. Ptolemy thought about that but he wasn’t ashamed.

“I love you, Uncle Grey,” Robyn said.

“’Course you do,” he said. “I’m like family.”

“Uh-uh,” the woman inside the child said. “I got family. I know what that feels like. No, Uncle, I could sit an’ listen to you for days. Even when yo’ mind was confused an’ you was scared, I still looked up to you. And you treat me with respect an’ you still be lookin’ at my legs an’ stuff. I don’t want Beckford in this house wit’ us.”

Both Ptolemys, past and present, heard the love in her voice; neither one had the words to answer back.

Where’d you put my toolbox?” he asked Robyn the next morning as he rummaged through the living room closet.

“I put it under yo’ bed,” Robyn said. She was lying on the couch that was also a bed, watching a show about strange fish in the deep ocean.