Walter Mosley - The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

Both men laughed.

“What happened to us?” Ptolemy asked.

“White man shined a light on us and we froze like deer in the road. After that we all went crazy and started tearin’ each other apart.”

Ptolemy frowned and sat back in his seat. Even the Devil’s fire couldn’t help him to understand why what both he and Hernandez knew was true.

Hernandez dropped him at Niecie’s door with a business card so that he could call if it was time to go home and the driver was off somewhere. The black man and the brown shook hands over the seat.

“Nobody evah put us on the news, huh, Hernandez?”

“What you mean, Mr. Grey?”

“Us gettin’ along ain’t news.”

Hernandez laughed and got out to open the door for his client.

Niecie cried happily and Ptolemy walked in the house. Nina was there with her children. Hilliard was on a couch in the corner, watching a small TV in a pink plastic case.

“Come ovah here and say hi to Pitypapa,” Niecie said to her son.

“Hey,” Hilly said, going so far as to turn his eyes away from the screen.

“Go on back to your TV, boy,” Ptolemy said, waving dismissively.

Niecie and Nina sat with their elder and talked and drank lemonade. Niecie was nervous, not wanting to ask for the money she had already come to expect, had already planned on.

They talked for a while about relatives that Ptolemy had only recently remembered. Many members of his family and his extended family had died. They stopped bringing him to funerals because he seemed to get upset during the services.

“That’s why I send Reggie ovah to your house in the first place, Pitypapa,” Niecie said. “You’d get upset and mad and you didn’t seem to know where you was at.”

Ptolemy appraised his grandniece’s attempt to convince him, and maybe convince herself, that he really owed her something, that she had been there to help him when he couldn’t help himself. He resented her trying to make him feel indebted, but on the other hand he did owe her what she said. She had sent Reggie, and Reggie had tried his best. She had sent Robyn to him.

“You know, one time Reggie lost his job at the supermarket because he wouldn’t come in because he had to take you to the doctor’s,” Niecie was saying. “I told him that blood was thicker than water and that we owed you somethin’. I told him that I’d put him up and feed him and the onlyest thing I expected was that he took care of you.”

“Do you have a checking account at the bank, Niecie?” Ptolemy asked.

“Wha?”

“A bank account. Do you have a bank account?”

“No. I mean, I know I should have one but they need you to maintain a three-hundred-dollar minimum, an’ some months here I cain’t even find three dimes in my coin purse.”

“I’ma get Robyn to go to the bank wit’ you an’ start a account with nine hunnert dollars,” Ptolemy said.

Hilly turned his head away from the TV to look at the old man.

“Then I’ma set it up to put eight hunnert dollars in there ev’ry mont’.”

“You only get two hunnert an’ sumpin’ a week from retirement,” Hilly said.

“That ain’t all I evah got, boy,” Ptolemy replied. “Maybe if you didn’t steal from me right off the bat, you’da learnt sumpin’.”

“How come you let Robyn do your business, Uncle?” Niecie asked. “You know that girl ain’t nuthin’ but trouble. I only took her in outta the goodness’a my heart. But she’s bad news. You cain’t trust her. An’ you know I’m the one sent her ovah there in the first place.”

Ptolemy saw trouble in Niecie’s eyes, trouble he’d lived with all through his life. He saw lawyers and lawsuits, maybe even threats and drive-bys coming from his one slip.

Ptolemy got to his feet, steadying himself by placing a hand on the back of the chair.

“Where you goin’, Pitypapa?”

“I’ma leave.”

“Don’t go.”

“Oh yeah, honey. I’m gone. I can see from talkin’ to you that there ain’t nuthin’ but trouble in the future. I’ma cut that off right here and now. I shoulda known that givin’ you a little sumpin’ would make you want everything.”

“No. I was just warnin’ you ’bout that girl.”

“Not another word, Niecie. Not one more word or I will cut you off without a dime, without evah speakin’ to you evah again.”

Niecie Brown saw the iron and the clarity in her uncle’s eyes. She saw the intelligence surging up in him, the certainty in his words, and even in the way he stood.

“I’m sorry, Uncle,” she said.

“Nina,” Ptolemy said.

“Yes, Mr. Grey.”

“Come on out on the porch with me,” he said. “Hilly.”

“Huh?”

“Bring me an’ Nina two chairs out there.”

The boy frowned.

“Do what your uncle tells you to do, Hilliard,” Niecie commanded.

Letisha and Artie could be heard from the inside of the house, jumping and shouting. The tinny speaker of the pink TV made unintelligible noises while adult footsteps sounded at unexpected intervals. Helicopters roved the skies over South Central L.A. as brown and black folks passed beneath the aerial scrutiny. Ptolemy saw Hernandez leaning against the hood of his car across the way, while little Mexican children played around him on a curbside patch of grass.

Ptolemy thought about the world he lived in. It seemed to him that he had died and was resurrected twenty years later in an old man’s body, but with the sly mind of a fox or a coyote. He was an ancient predator among great-bodied herbivores, under a desert sky filled with metal creatures that had passed down from man.

“Why you smilin’, Mr. Grey?” Nina asked.

“You know, Nina, you are probably the most beautiful woman I have evah seen in ninety years.”

Reggie’s lovely young widow smiled and looked away.

“Mr. Grey!”

“Oh yeah,” he said. “I had a wife named Sensia.”

“That’s a pretty name.”

“And she was a beautiful girl. But not as beautiful as you.”

Nina turned back to the old man, wondering with her gaze where he wanted to go with this line of flattery. “Really?”

“Oh yeah. And Reggie loved you too. He loved you so much that when he found out that some other man had caught your eye he decided to take you down to San Diego so that he didn’t have to share all that loveliness.”

Nina’s smile froze. Her head moved back an inch.

“What?” she asked.

“I got a trust in the bank,” Ptolemy said. “It’s set aside for my family. There’s money for your chirren’s education and their wed-din’ days.”

Nina’s expression changed again. Ptolemy wouldn’t let her get a bead on his intentions.

“Yeah,” he said. “And I made a gift for Reggie.”

He took an old gold coin from his pocket. The date on the coin read 1821.

“This here twenty-dollar gold piece. It’s worf five thousand dollars or more to a collector. I got twenty’a them for Reggie. He told me to hold them for you.”

Nina brought both hands to her mouth.

Ptolemy put the coin back in his pocket.

“But before I hand them ovah I got to know how my boy died.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I, I don’t know who shot him.”

“What about Alfred?”

“No.”

“Did you tell him that Reggie was takin’ you and the kids away?”

Nina tried to speak but could not.

Sirens blared and suddenly four police cars raced past Niecie’s house and on down the street.

“He couldn’t, Mr. Grey. My Al couldn’t do nuthin’ like that.”

“What was he in prison for?”

“No.”

“Was he wit’ you when Reggie was killed?”

“I’m a good woman, Mr. Grey . . . a mother.”

“Was Alfred wichyou when they opened fire on Reggie on the front steps of his friend’s house?”