The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey - By Walter Mosley Page 0,37
“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.
At one point he looked up and asked, “Why you run away like that, girl?”
Robyn heard this question and understood its meaning. She brought her hands to her throat and made a sound that had feeling but no meaning.
“I sleep on a sofa, Uncle,” she said. “Hilly try to be gettin’ up in there wit’ me almost ev’ry night he home.”