The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey - By Walter Mosley Page 0,32
he said, relieved that she sounded like the nice girl he’d met.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“’Bout what?”
“Dancin’ around half naked in front’a you. I know I shouldn’t’a done that.”
“No. I mean. Baby girl, you are my angel. I, uh, I love you, you ...”
“What?”
“God done send you down here to me. He send you to help me save them chirren.”
“Letisha and Artie?”
“Yep.”
“How you gonna do that, Uncle?”
“With your help, baby. With your help.”
“What can I do?”
“You got to, got to . . . help me remembah what it is I’m thinkin’.”
For a while after that they lay in silence.
“Is that true, Uncle?”
“What?”
“Do you love me?”
“When I think about you my heart hurts and laughs.”
“That’s why you din’t wanna see my legs?”
“That’s why I don’t even wanna think about your legs.”
The next day they had breakfast at a diner and went to the La Brea Tar Pits park, where Reggie used to take Ptolemy sometimes.
“When Reggie was a boy he loved the dinosaur bones,” Ptolemy told Robyn. “The museum was on’y one buildin’ then and they had dinosaur bones in a buildin’ like a hole. When Reggie grew up he didn’t like this place no mo’ but I wanted to come so’s I could remembah ...” Ptolemy drifted off, staring at the large clouds passing overhead.
“What you remembah, Uncle?”
“What it used to be like in my head before things got confused.”
“What’s that like?”
“It’s like they’s a jailhouse in my mind,” he said, “an’ I’m in the prison an’ they’s all these people I know outside yellin’ to me but I cain’t make out what they sayin’.”
“Hey, girl,” a male voice sang.
Ptolemy swiveled his head to see a young black man in a red jumpsuit.
“What you doin’?” he asked. He had a sneer on his lips that had more anger than friendliness to it.
“Niggah, get away from me,” the other, angry, Robyn said. “Cain’t you see I’m takin’ care’a my grandfather?”
“Let me help you guys,” the young man offered, smiling and touching her shoulder.
Robyn jerked away from him and clutched her purse close to her breast.
“You gonna treat me like that?” he said as if he were truly insulted.
“Fuck you, niggah.”
Ptolemy could see that Robyn was ready to grab her long knife. He had known women like this before: wild and violent, sweet and loving. He’d never had a girlfriend like Robyn, but Coy had had more than one.
“A woman like that could turn on a dime,” Coydog McCann used to say.
The young man in the red exercise uniform sneered and took a step forward. Robyn shoved her hand into her purse and he stopped.
“Bitch,” he said, and then he spat on the ground.
Robyn stared death at him and he walked away across the lawn of the park.
“Come on, Uncle,” she said. “We should get back.”
They ate at the small diner again.
Ptolemy was exhausted from his day in the city. He lay down on top of the covers, falling asleep without even undressing. He felt Robyn take off his shoes and socks and fold the blankets over him.
There was no TV announcer, no classical music. He was in a coffin again and the earth was cold. He was dead and couldn’t move. He couldn’t even shiver against the chill.
“What you gonna do wit’ my treasure?” Coydog asked him suddenly, shockingly—out of nowhere.
“I’m cold.”
“I give up my life and my dignity for you,” Coy said.
“I’m dead.”
“You don’t even know what dead is. Dead is havin’ a noose around your neck an’ yo’ feet afire. You just restin’ while my treasure go to waste.”
“I cain’t, Coydog! I cain’t even see. If they catch me they gonna lynch me too. They gonna kill me too.”
The cold settled into Ptolemy’s bones like it must have in the old pharaoh after whom he’d been named. The chill hurt his joints and his marrow. He wasn’t breathing and instead of a heart there was a drum being played by a dimwitted monkey who couldn’t keep the beat any better than a drunkard.
Suddenly warmth enveloped him. It was as if he were lowered into a hot tub of salted, scented water. The heat went through him and Coydog walked away in disgust. Now only his hands and feet and nose were cold. He was floating in the Tickle River in late August.
“When the water runs as hot as the blood of a woman in love,” Coydog said as he walked from the tomb.
Ptolemy woke up held from behind by Robyn. He realized that he must have been shivering in the