“You mean she ran,” Hilly said. “Not he.”
“Yeah. Yeah, right. I mean she. She ran. She sure did.” The old man giggled and patted the big boy’s shoulder.
“Do you wanna go to Big City?” Hilly asked again.
“I gotta go to the place first.”
“What place?”
“The place for in my pocket.”
Hilly noticed then that his uncle was holding on to something through the blue fabric of his pants.
“You got somethin’ in your pocket, Uncle?”
“That’s my business.”
“Do you want me to help you with that like I helped you with that bitch slapped you?”
Ptolemy snickered. He would hardly ever use a curse word like that, but he felt it, and the big boy saying it made him happy.
Laughin’ is the best thing a man can do,” his aunt Henrietta used to say back in the days after the Great War when all the black folks lived together and knew each other and talked the same; back in the days when they had juke joints and white gloves and girls that smiled so pretty that a little boy like Ptolemy (who they called Petey, Pity, and Li’l Pea) would do cartwheels just to get them to look at him.
“Do you want me to help you with what’s in your pocket, Papa Grey?” Hilly said again. He reached for Ptolemy’s hand but the old man shifted away.
“Mine!” he said protectively, shaking his head.
Hilly put his hands up, surrendering to his great-uncle’s vehemence.
“All right. All right. But if you want me to help you, you have to tell me where you want to go.”
“The place,” Ptolemy said. “The place.”
“The ATM?”
“No, not that. Not where they say amen. The place where, where the lady behind the glass is at.”
“The bank?”
When the old man smiled he realized that his tongue was dry. He had to go to the bathroom too.
“What bank?” his nephew asked.
This question defeated Ptolemy. How could somebody be so stupid not to know what a bank was? He’d been there a thousand times. And he was thirsty, and he had to urinate. And it was cold too.