The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

AFTERWARD

Dear Robyn,

You are away for two days with Beckford and I’m sitting here in this apartment waiting to finally be a man. I have the Devil’s medicine burning in my veins and Coydog McCann whispering in my left ear. I have you in my life. That was something I never suspected, expected, or even dreamed about. I love you and I couldn’t be here right now if it wasn’t for you taking care of me. And if you were twenty years older and I fifty years less I’d ask you to be my wife and not a soul on this earth would have ever had better.

I want you to know that everybody in my family is counting on you. They might not like you. They might be mad that I made you my heir. But in the end they will all be better for your strength, my guidance, and Coy’s righteous crime so many years ago.

I’m sitting here waiting on the man with two names to come and tell me the truth. That’s all I ask for. I need to know what happened and why. Because even though I can remember as far back as I have years, ninety-one years, I still don’t know what happened. And a man has to know the truth and act accordingly—that’s only right.

So if something should happen and I don’t make it past this afternoon I want you to know how much I love you and I am in love with you. You deserve the best I can offer up and that’s why I’m sitting here with a pistol under the cushion and a gold doubloon on the coffee table. You might not understand. You might think that it don’t have a thing to do with you and you don’t want me acting a fool like this. You might say why live a whole life being careful and then throw it all away at the last minute?

But baby girl I should have run into that tarpaper fire when I was a boy. I should have run down with a rock or stick when Coy was dancing on flames. I should have walked out on Sensia and stayed away even though it would have killed me.

I have to do this baby girl because you gave me the heart and the chance and because when I saw you I knew.

I love you always,

Ptolemy Usher Grey