“Aftah two days I called Dr. Ruben. He come an’ told me that you was dyin’ but he’d give you a shot anyways. He said he’d give you a shot an’ either you’d come back to the way you was, stay the way you was, or die.”
“Devil said that?”
Robyn nodded, a serious look on her face, giving her the aspect of a young child.
“How long?” Ptolemy asked.
“Nine days since we come home from Dr. Chin, and one week since the doctor give you the shot.”
“Damn. What kinda world is it we livin’ in where you got to thank the Devil for makin’ house calls?”
“He told me to call him if you passed, Uncle, but, you know, I wanna give you a proper burial.”
“When I die,” he said, “you call Moishe. He and me done made the proper plans for the funeral. He gonna give my body to Ruben, but aftah he finished with it you get it back for cemetery. And I wanna be cremated.”
“No coffin or nuthin’?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I lived a life afraid’a fire,” he said. “In the last I wanna give in to it.”
“How you feel now, Papa Grey?”
“You evah been to the circus?”
“Uh-huh. Mr. Roman used to take me when I was a li’l girl. He take me down early so we could go out back an’ see the lions in the cages and the elephants in their stalls.”
“Did you see the tightrope walker?”
“Yeah. But I’d look away sometimes ’cause I was so afraid that she would fall.”
Ptolemy nodded and smiled.
“What’s so funny?”
“It’s like you an’ me was the same,” he said, “like we was born on the same day at the start of everything. We learned to talk from the same teacher, went to the same circus. We ain’t related, but you my twin, and I’m smilin’ ’cause I know that.”
Robyn bit her lower lip and crossed her breasts with her arms.
A fly whizzed past, over her head.
“But why you asked me about the tightrope walker?”
“Because that’s how I feel right now,” Ptolemy said. “Like there’s a rope where there used to be a wide road home. It’s a thousand feet above the ground and it’s so long that you can’t see the beginnin’ or the end. I know I’ma fall off it sooner or later, but I keep on walkin’ because where you fall matters. Do you know what I mean, Robyn?”
She shook her head and took hold of his hand.
“I told you how Coy took them coins and they hung him and burned him, right?”
Robyn nodded.
“In that way he chose the time that he fell. He didn’t plan on it. He wanted to go north and start a new life. But he knew that he could fall right then and that didn’t matter because he had done his important thing in life.”
“Why didn’t he take that gold with him, Uncle?”
“Country boy don’t need no gold,” Coy and Ptolemy said as one. “Sun and soil, whiskey and women all a black farmer need. I’d give away everything I had for the sun on my face and you there next to me, girl.”
Ptolemy hoped the girl would kiss his lips again, but she didn’t. He smiled, though, as if she had.
“Can you go stay with Beckford for two days?” he asked.
“You might need me.”
“Call me every evenin’ at six. If I don’t answer, come on ovah and check on me.”
“Why?”
“’Cause I need to be alone for just two days. I need it.”
“Okay. If you say so. When should I leave?”
“In the mornin’, baby. Tonight I wanna go out with you and Shirley Wring. I want Chinese at a big red restaurant.”
When Ptolemy woke up in the morning, his mind was filled with the sound of dissonant flutes that played over and over at Len Wah’s Mandarin Palace. Shirley wore her emerald ring, and Robyn had on a tight black dress that was short, with spaghetti straps over her shoulders. They laughed and talked and drank cheap red wine with their meal.
For Ptolemy each story they told was a piece in a stone puzzle that made up the ground below his rope. His head was burning but he didn’t take the pill. His mind was soaring but he didn’t worry about a fall.
At their small table he felt that there was seated a multitude. Coy and Sensia flirting at the far end, Reggie and Nina arguing at each other. As he looked around he saw a hundred faces. It was like when he was in the bank with Hilly, only now he felt that he knew every name, every face . . .
Robyn was at the kitchen table, waiting for him in the morning.
