“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.
