The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

“Why you wanna leave live ammunition out in the open where any child or fool could pick it up?”

“I knocked but you wasn’t there,” Hilly complained.

“You could’a called. You could’a taken the peanut can back home and called me and come ovah when I told you to.”

The young brute sighed through the line.

“That don’t make sense to you, boy?” Ptolemy asked.

“I know what you sayin’,” he countered.

“You do?”

“Yeah,” Hilly said. “But I didn’t wanna waste my time comin’ all the way ovah there again. You wanted the bullets and now you got ’em. I don’t see why you raggin’ on me.”

Ptolemy thought about what his great-grandnephew was saying. But it was as if they spoke different languages and came from different peoples far removed from each other by thousands and thousands of miles and many generations. Hilliard was a Catholic and Ptolemy a Hindu, or something else far removed from what his nephew believed in. He tried to think of how he could explain the great expanse of separation to the boy, but even the Devil’s injections had not made him that smart.

“You got Nina’s phone number somewhere around there?” Ptolemy asked after giving up on the young black man.

A familiar man’s voice came across the line. “Hello.”

“That you, Alfred?” Ptolemy asked.

“Who’s this?”

“Ptolemy.”

“Who?”

“The man Reggie used to look aftah. The one you met at Niecie’s house when you took Reggie’s wife away.”

“What you sayin’, man?” Alfred asked angrily.

“I’m sayin’, is Nina there?”

A few seconds passed before the receiver banged down and Alfred called out, “You bettah tell that mothahfuckah to be respectful.”

“Hello?” a feminine voice asked. “Who is this?”

“Ptolemy Grey . . . Reggie’s great-uncle.”

“Oh . . . Mr. Grey. Why you callin’?”

“I’m fine and how are you?”

“Oh, okay. Uh ...”

“How was the funeral?” Ptolemy asked, trying to repair the broken conversation.

“Very sad, Mr. Grey. The children were so sad. Reggie’s sistah come down from Oakland with her kids. What is it you wanted?”

“Did you bring Alfred to the funeral?”

“No . . . how can I help you, Mr. Grey?”

“I got everything I want,” he replied. “I don’t need a thing, thank you very much.”

“But why are you callin’ here?” she asked, beginning to lose patience.

“That Robyn is a miracle,” he said. “You know that?”

“She okay.”

“No . . . no, no, no. She’s a honest-to-God miracle.”

“I got to go, Mr. Grey.”

“When she come here to my house,” Ptolemy said, as if he had not heard Nina’s complaint, “she saw the mess and the junk and cleaned it all up from one end to the other. Washed and cleaned and threw out and poisoned the bugs too. And then, when she looked at me and seen that I was a mess, she took me to the doctor and got me the kinda medicine you people got out there today. Strong stuff, the kinda penicillin open up your eyes.”

“That’s, that’s wonderful,” Nina said. “You go, Mr. Grey.”

“Get off the phone with that old fool,” Alfred said in the background.

“I got to be somewhere, Mr. Grey.”

“So you know,” the old man went on, “when Robyn brung me to that doctor, that handsome Devil with the thick mustaches, I started to remembah things.”

“That’s nice but I—”

“One thing I just remembered was somethin’ Reggie wanted me to give you.”

“I said get off that phone!” Alfred shouted.

“Just gimme a minute, Al. I’ll be off in just a few minutes.”

“I’ma go wit’out you, Nine,” he threatened.

“Go on, then,” she said. “Go on an’ I’ll meet you there.”

Errant sounds came through the line for a time. This period was ended by a loud bang that Ptolemy thought was a door slamming.

“Mr. Grey? Are you still there?”

“Sure am. I hope I didn’t cause any trouble with your man.”

“Don’t worry ’bout him. He just get mad sometimes.”

Suddenly, and without apparent reason, Ptolemy had a startling memory. It was an afternoon that Reggie was visiting with him. It was back in the time when his mind wasn’t working right, but still he had a clear image of the young man showing him a photograph.

“These my kids, Papa Grey,” the old man remembered the young man saying. “Tish an’ Artie. Aren’t they beautiful?”

“Mr. Grey?” Nina was saying. “Are you there?”

“I don’t want that man’a yours to know about this,” he said.

“Okay. I won’t tell him. What is it? What did Reggie have for me?”

“I wanted him to have it,” Ptolemy said. “But he said that he wanted it for you and them beautiful chirren. Are the kids still stayin’ wit’ Niecie?”

“For a while longer,” Nina said. “Until I get myself together.”

“Uh-huh. You go and visit them?”

“On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, every week. Those are my days off from the department store.”

“Hm. That’s good. A mother should see her kids. They need to be seen by her. That way they know they okay. They know it by the look in her eye. You know, if your mother look at you an’ smile, then you know you doin’ all right.”

“What was it that you had for Artie and Letisha?” Nina asked softly.

“I don’t want that Alfred to know nuthin’ about it,” Ptolemy said again. “Reggie didn’t like him.”

“I won’t tell.”