Walter Mosley - The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

Robyn stared at the suitcase full of money and shook her head.

“Is this the treasure you always be talkin’ ’bout?” she asked at last.

“Naw,” he said. “That ain’t treasure. That’s just Social Security an’ retirement money. Nobody died for that. You know a pirate’s treasure have to be cursed with blood.”

Robyn moved as far away from the table as she could get. Ptolemy got to his feet and went over to her. He put his hands on her strong shoulders.

“What’s wrong, baby?” he asked.

“Why you wanna show me that?”

“You my girl. You my blood.”

“No I’m not. You don’t even know me. You don’t know what I did ’fore I got here. I could steal this money from you.”

“You want it?” he asked.

“What?”

“You want it? I could give it to you, baby. You know, I only need ev’ry fourth check an’, an’ once a mont’ or so I get a li’l bit from Social Security. That’s all I need. You could have this. You could, you could take it and buy you a bed.”

Robyn jumped away from her benefactor and ran to the door.

“No!” she yelled as she rushed into the hallway and out to the front door of the building.

By the time Ptolemy got to the threshold she was gone. He stayed there for a while but she didn’t return and so he went back to the ash table. He considered separating out the various denominations. There were a few hundred-dollar bills in there, he remembered. He wanted to stack all the like notes, but there was too much cash and so he closed the suitcase and locked it. Then he went to the TV to turn it on but he couldn’t remember which button did the job.

Finally Ptolemy Grey went to the bathroom and sat on the edge of the tub, trying to remember.

For a long while nothing seemed to work. All he could think about was how angry Robyn was. And she was so pretty in red. He wanted to tell her that by giving her the money. After all, it wasn’t a treasure, just some cash. His rent was set at $185 a month, and the bills, which Reggie had the bank pay, were low.

“Money ain’t the root of all evil,” Coydog had told the boy Li’l Pea, “but it get a hold on some people like vines on a tree or the smell’a fungus on damp sheets. They’s some people need money before love or laughter. All you can do is feel sorry for someone like that.”

“But money is what makes you rich, Uncle Coy,” the child said. “My daddy said that if he had enough money he’d be a rich man.”

“Rich man is the man live in his own skin,” the old thief countered. “Black as oil, white as cane sugah, yellah like gold—that’s riches for ya, boy. All the rest is jes’ wastin’ time.”

Ptolemy felt pain in his joints and weakness in his muscles. Robyn running away the way she did hurt more than seeing Reggie in his coffin. Or maybe it wasn’t more, but added on to Reggie’s death, Robyn’s departure was a weight too great to bear. He didn’t cry but he wanted to. He didn’t run out in the street looking for her but he would have if it wasn’t for Melinda and the fact that he got lost if he wandered beyond his own block.

“I got to think,” Ptolemy said clearly. “I got to get my mind movin’.”

With these words he stood up from the commode and went out into the newly ordered and cleaned living room. He brought his rainbow stool and sat it in front of the TV. Robyn had wanted to throw the stool away, along with a dozen other chairs that she put out on the street on trash day.

“No, no, baby,” he remembered saying. “This here is my move-anywhere chair. I could sit anywhere in the house or outside with this here chair. Whenever I get tired or need to get down and study sumpin’ close to the ground, this chair will work for me.”

“Okay, Uncle,” she’d said.

“You got to understand, this chair is like a extra leg or a tool I can have and carry anywhere. It’s light like a feather, and so it ain’t nuthin’ for a old man like me to pick up.”

“Okay, Uncle,” Robyn said again, “we can keep the chair.”

“Reggie got it for me,” Ptolemy continued as if he hadn’t heard. “An’ the minute I seen it I knew that it was mine and I could use it anywhere, for rest or to study sumpin’ close to the ground . . .”

Robyn took his wrists in her hands and moved her face close to his.

“I hear you, Uncle. You don’t have to keep on explainin’ it. I’m gonna do what you tell me to do.”

That was the clearest evidence to Ptolemy that he was losing his mind. Even though the girl had said yes, he still wanted to explain over and over why he needed that chair. All he could think about was how important that chair was; that and how much he wished he could stop that thought from going again and again through his mind.

So he set the stool up in front of the TV and stared at it—the green screen that bulged out some, and the flat buttons along the side. There was a box on top of it that had a red number in lights: 134. That was his station. That was where the news came from. He didn’t want to change that number, just get the TV to turn on.

He sat there for a long time, or at least what seemed like a long time. He didn’t want to push just any button. And he didn’t want to turn the TV on by mistake—he wanted to know what the right button was so that he knew that it was his mind that made the light. There were four flat, dark buttons. One said vol. and another said I/O . Two others had no letters to describe them, just symbols that made no sense at all.

“A, B, C,” Ptolemy said, “D, E, F, G, H.” He stopped there and wondered a moment. “I, J, K . . .”

The letters didn’t tell him anything. They were just sounds that had nothing to do with slashes or periods or letters that didn’t make words that he knew.

“Double-u, ara, eye, en, gee,” he said, and smiled. He knew those letters. He knew what they meant. But he couldn’t find Shirley Wring. He couldn’t find the bank or even remember the bank’s name to ask somebody how to get there.

“Uncle?”

Seeing Robyn in her red clothes brought an even broader grin to Ptolemy’s lips, brought him to his feet.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, meaning many things that he couldn’t say.

“Sorry for what?” the child replied, tears in her voice.

“For whatevah I did to make you leave. I just wanted . . . wanted you . . . I didn’t mean to make you mad.”

They fell together in an embrace that made them both shudder and cry.

“It’s okay, Uncle.”

“It’s okay, Robyn.”

“I ain’t leavin’,” the girl said.

“You could have my bed and I could sleep under the table again,” he said. “There ain’t no more roaches hardly and the mice is all gone.”

“You want me to turn on the TV for you, Uncle?”

“No, baby. No. I wanna figure it out for myself. I wanna use my mind again. I wanna remembah.”

“Remember what, Uncle?”

“I don’t know exactly, but it got to do with them babies and, and, and you.”

“You remembah me, don’t you?”

“But not what I’m meant to do.”

“Don’t cry, Uncle. You make me sad.”

“You was on’y gone for a hour or sumpin’,” Ptolemy said, “but I felt that I lost you like I lost Maude Petit in that fire.”

“What fire, Uncle?”

Robyn pulled up a chair next to the old man, in front of the silent and dark television set. She listened as he told her the broken story of a child stalked in the flames by a huge shadow and a man, or maybe a coyote, that danced on fire. There was a dead dog and a dead man in a tuxedo, the ABC’s that didn’t work anymore, and Reggie, hanging like an anchor from Robyn’s leg.

She didn’t question nor did she understand exactly what her aged friend had said. She held his hands and nodded now and then. He asked her questions that she had no answers to and told her stories that made him laugh and shake his head.