“What’s it say?”

The child shrugged and looked back at the book.

“His name is Arthur,” Robyn whispered.

The boy looked up and said, “It got pictures of people with no skin an’ pictures of hands and feet and other parts.”

“Aunt Niecie was goin’ to nurse school for a while,” Robyn said. “It’s prob’ly one’a her schoolbooks.”

Arthur nodded solemnly and scratched his nose.

“Nina,” Robyn said then. “Nina, this here is Mr. Grey, the one that Reggie helped out.”

The woman raised her head from folded arms. Ptolemy could see that she was young, in her early twenties, no more. Her face was devastated and beautiful; far more lovely, Ptolemy thought, than Robyn. But he still liked Robyn better. He liked her way around him. She knew how to speak when he needed her.

Nina rose up and put her arms around Ptolemy. Again he felt lost in a soft hug. It was like sinking into a warm tub at the end of a hard day.

“He loved you so much, Mr. Grey,” Nina said. She smelled sweet from perfume. Too sweet.

“What happened to him?” the old man asked, pulling away as he spoke.

When Nina fell back on the bed the toddler whined and Arthur put his hand on her cheek. She embraced her brother’s fingers with her head and shoulder. This gentle show of affection seemed to make the room clearer to Ptolemy. It was as if he was seeing something the way that minister had, in front of his white church so long before.

“They shot him down,” Nina said.

“Who shot him?”

“Drive-by.”

“Who’s that?”

“Nobody knows,” Robyn said. “Somebody jes’ shot him when he was sittin’ on a porch of a friend’a his.”

“But they say his name was Drivebee.”

“No. The men drove by in their car and jes’ shot him.”

The little girl was crying. Arthur lay down behind her and put his arms around her shoulders.

“Why?” Ptolemy asked.

“Nobody knows.”

Ptolemy squinted, trying to see with his mind’s eye the reasoning behind Reggie’s murder. He remembered his hidden box and a promise he’d made Coydog before the old man was dragged off and killed like some wild animal. It was something that happened to colored men and boys ever since they left the land of Ptolemy, father of Cleopatra.