“It was over that room, and at the same time it was in my head, coverin’ up all the things that I done forgot, or forgot me.”
The idea turned in on itself and Ptolemy lost his way. He brought his hands to his head and tried to remember. It was all there but not quite clear. Things jumbled together: Coydog’s funeral next to Artie and Letisha; the iron- banded oak box with its treasures and promises, its curses and death—hidden but still a danger; Reggie laughing and eating french fries in the sunlight through the restaurant window.
Robyn took his hands from his face.
“Look at me, Mr. Grey,” she said.
There were tears in his eyes.
“I got to get my thoughts straight, girl. I got to do sumpin’ before that damn pall is th’owed ovah me.”
“When’s the last time you et?” she asked.
Ptolemy understood the question but the answer was the white tail of a deer flitting through the trees. He shook his head and wondered.
“First thing we gotta do is get you sumpin’ to eat, Uncle,” she said.
“I had a can’a tuna day before, day before yesterday.”
The cheeseburger tasted good, better than any food he’d had in a very long time. They sat in the window seat at the fast-food restaurant, watching the black people and brown people walking up and down the sidewalk, driving up and down the street. The faces didn’t confuse him anymore but he was still confused. Not so much that he’d get lost in Coydog’s lessons down near the mouth of the Tickle River, where they had alligators that would carry off little boys and girls sometimes. He’d remember the purple skies of fall evenings without getting inside them, but he couldn’t recall where he’d put the treasure; he couldn’t put words to the one lesson that Coydog taught that he needed to know.
“What you do in school?” Ptolemy asked Robyn.
“I’m not in school right now, Uncle.”
“I know. I know that. I mean, what you
“Maybe be a nurse or a schoolteacher.”
“Why not a doctor?” the old man asked.
Robyn stared at her newly adopted relative.
“Bein’ a nurse is good,” she said.
“A doctor is a king and the nurse is like the five of hearts. You at least a queen, Reggie, I mean Robyn. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” she said.
Robyn put her fingers on his forearm. “We got to bomb your house, Uncle,” she said.
That day they went to the bank to cash two checks that Ptolemy had received in the mail. The old man was looking from face to face, examining each one.
“You lookin’ for somebody, Uncle?”
“Double-u ara eye en gee,” he said.
“What?”
“Double-u ara eye en gee. That’s a friend’a mines.”
“If you say so.”
They bought groceries at Big City and insect bombs at Harold and Rod Hardware. There were seven of them like Roman candles held up by Popsicle-stick crosses, which were bonded by rough dabs of white glue.
“You only need one for every one and a half rooms in the house,” the salesman told Robyn.
He was a redheaded young black man with pinkish-brown skin and big brown freckles. Ptolemy wondered how many white men had been that boy’s forefathers. This seemed very important to him, but then the thought got lost in the young people’s conversation.
“How long before we can go back in?” Robyn asked.
“Twenty-four hours, no matter what,” he said. “Then you go in an’ open the windahs, let it air out a hour or two and it’a be fine.”
“You got windahs, Mr. Grey?” the girl asked.
“Out on the back porch. Sensie an’ me’d open the back windahs and the front do’ in summah an’ it was bettah than air conditionin’.”
“What’s your name?” the freckled clerk asked Robyn.
“Chili Norman,” she said easily. “I live in that green house ovah on Morton.”
“You gotta phone?”
“Uh-uh,” she said coyly. Smiling as she did so. “I’ll take two’a those little electric fans you got on sale. And I’ma need some wide tape too.”
“How come you don’t have no phone?” the goofy boy asked.
“Money.”
“Could I come by and knock on the door?”
