Walter Mosley - The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

Now and then a curious roach would dart in and then scurry away again, daunted by the brightness of the room. Four times he went to the sink and turned the corroded spigots, just to see the water run. There was a leak at the base of the hot-water faucet, but the water dripped into the sink, causing no problem.

At midnight he took a shower. The nozzle could only muster a few sprays but it was enough to wash his body clean. He used an old T-shirt for a towel and another one for a bathrobe.

That night when he wrapped himself in the thin blanket under the south table Ptolemy had a feeling of giddiness that kept him up for what seemed to him like hours. He thought about Robyn’s ability to clean and polish and throw out things without hurting him or those things that he needed to keep. She was better than Reggie at understanding what was important.

A flute was playing on the all-night classical program and the newsmen and -women droned on. Ptolemy had trained himself not to listen when he was in his bed, but this night the background racket was a bother to him.

On other nights, before Robyn had come, Ptolemy shared space with the music and news. They were as much a part of the room as he was. His mind was like an open field over which these sounds and opinions passed unhindered. But on that night Ptolemy was thinking about the tragedy of Reggie and the blessing of Robyn. She was an orphan taken in and protected by, by, by Niecie. And the boy and baby girl were orphans too.

The flute scratched at these thoughts. The news commentators seemed to be trying to talk him out of the value of Reggie and Robyn, the boy and his baby sister. In the dimness he cursed the radio and the flittering shadows cast by the TV. Rage opened up in Ptolemy’s breast. The anger took over his mind like a swarm of biting fire ants. And then, when he was angry enough to break something, the passion ebbed away, leaving that old familiar open field.

It reminded him of a portal at the end of a long corridor behind the pulpit of Liberty Baptist Church. When he was a child and the minister’s sermon went overlong, he’d sneak away from the pews and walk down the long hall to that doorway. It was always ajar, emitting a cool breeze year-round, even in the summer heat. There was almost no light in there, but Li’l Pea could see the dim image of a white cross in the depths of the chamber. It was leaning against something dark and massive.

The child called Pity would walk up to the threshold of the sacred room and strain his eyes, trying to glean its tale.

Remembering this important, spiritual moment in his history, Ptolemy Grey drifted off into sleep.

In the dream he was trying to pull Reggie up out of his coffin, to shake his shoulders until the boy woke up. All around the casket were women seated in white folding chairs and dressed beautifully, mournfully, with hats and handkerchiefs and black gloves. Robyn and Niecie, Letta Golding and Shirley Wring and many others whom he knew but could not remember their names—all of them watched him. They hummed as he beseeched the boy to get up and walk and live. Beyond the casket was a window that looked out on a green lawn where the children Arthur and Letisha played. They laughed and chased each other. “Fall down! Fall down,” they sang.

In the morning Ptolemy ate one of the small pop-top cans of tuna that Robyn had brought back with the cleaning supplies. He visited his bathroom for over an hour, trying to think of how he could keep Robyn from going into the bedroom. He closed the bathroom door to keep out the sad viola solo and weather report. Then he sat on the commode, rubbing his hands and looking at the aqua walls.

Sitting there, he experienced what he called eternity. It was whenever he was in one place by himself and didn’t have to go anywhere else or answer to anybody.

“A moment like that,” Coy McCann had said, “like when you fishin’ or after you done made love with your woman and you smokin’ a cigarette while she sleep . . . that’s the kinda time that’s just so wonderful. That’s when you can think because you ain’t hungry or lustful or in it with somebody wanna waste yo’ time. You could be just sittin’ there by yourself and you see what you need to do, the way God do in eternity.”

These words came back to Ptolemy decades after Coydog was murdered and gone.

Ptolemy knew exactly what he had to do.

On the sink in the kitchen was the flimsy little box that held the plastic lawn bags Robyn used to throw out the detritus of Ptolemy’s bathroom.

When Ptolemy picked up the box a huge gutter-roach fell out and onto the sink. The black and brown and russet-red insect flipped from his back onto his legs and stood there on an old plate that Ptolemy hadn’t used or cleaned in over a decade. The old man slapped his hand down hard on the bug, but when he pulled back, the roach leaped in the air, spread his beetle-like wings, and flew toward the back of the kitchen.

Watching the strange bug flapping its way toward the towering boxes on his porch brought about a flutter in Ptolemy’s chest. His breath came quickly and he had to squat down so that he didn’t fall. He could feel the sweat sprouting on his brow and between his fingers. A painful burp brought the strong flavor of tuna up into his throat.

Ptolemy concentrated on the pain in his left knee.

“The great man say that life is pain,” Coydog had said over eighty-five years before. “That mean if you love life, then you love the hurt come along wit’ it. Now, if that ain’t the blues, I don’t know what is.”

The ache in Ptolemy’s knee felt deep and bloody. He ignored the quick breath and racing heart. All he knew was the pain and Coydog’s words.

“Why you always hang around that old man?” Titus Grey had asked his son on the porch one morning when the boy was going off to meet Coy to go fishing.

“He teachin’ me my ABC’s.”

“He don’t know no alphabet.”

“Yeah, he do.”

“Are you contradictin’ me, boy?” Titus asked.

“No, sir.”

“Then put down that pole and come on with me up in the woods. This is yam season and you don’t have time to be a fool.”

Hearing these words in his yester-ear, Ptolemy stood up straight. His knee and chest were fine. The huge roach was still flying, bat-ting its head against the small patch of window that was visible above the big boxes on the back porch. Music played and some man was talking about something far away, and Ptolemy went about searching for what he needed under the sink.

After a while he forgot what he was looking for. And so he went back to the living room and stood at the bedroom door, trying to remember what was so clear to him in the bathroom, before his war with the cockroach.

Finally he decided that the only thing to do was open the door to see if there was a clue inside.

The bedroom was dark, as it had been years before when he closed it up in order to forget about his life with Sensia. She was dead and buried but that room had been her memorial. She was put to rest in a whitewashed pine coffin like the one Niecie had for Reggie. Niecie’s mother, Ptolemy remembered, had gotten Sensie’s coffin and put her in the same room where they had Reggie for his wake . . .

There was a gray tarp covering the contents of Ptolemy’s abandoned bedroom. It loomed like a shifting desert under a cloudy, moonless night. Ptolemy stared at the fabric, remembering his true love. Thinking about her, he remembered what it was that he needed.

He went back into the kitchen and started pulling out furniture. Two small benches, a stone-top chrome-stalk table, a walnut tabletop and various boxes, bags, satchels, and one Hopalong Cassidy cowboy lunchbox that Reggie’s father had when he was a child.