The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

Moshe comes to the Ringing Rocks ice skating rink for a place to think. Chona is in a hospital in Reading, and the doctors don’t know if she’ll ever awaken from her coma. The state has taken Dodo. The three visited Ringing Rocks together once, and Chona had said that feeling the rocks’ vibration helped Dodo.

The previous night, the two bands scheduled to perform at his theater fought over who should be the headliner. In the end, Mario Bauzá and the Afro-Cubans agreed to go onstage first. The crowd’s raucous excitement for Mario’s Latin music and tepid response to the swing music performed by Lionel Hampton’s band teaches Moshe that times are changing in the entertainment world. Moshe pens a letter to Malachi, who has settled on a chicken farm in Poland. He tells his friend about Chona and Dodo and concludes, “The old ways will not survive here. There are too many different types of people. Too many different ways. Maybe I should be a cowboy” (164).

Three weeks later, Moshe receives a tiny pair of cowboy pants in the mail. Moshe decides to extend the prank by sending the pants back to Malachi in a container that’s been soldered shut. He asks for Nate’s assistance with this and then tells Nate that he wants to talk about Dodo with him, Addie, and his cousin Isaac. Nate answers that Dodo’s fate is in God’s hands now, but Moshe can’t see the “dark, murderous rage” (166) in the man’s eyes.

Fatty Davis owns a jook joint on Chicken Hill, and he is so anxious about Nate Timblin drinking glass after glass of moonshine that he considers calling the police to raid his own establishment. Fatty served two years in Graterford Prison, where he learned that Nate was also incarcerated there years ago under the name Nate Love. The other prisoners described Nate Love as “a story, a wisp, a legend, a force, a fright” (178). Together, Fatty and a young man named Rusty gently persuade Nate to stop drinking and let them bring him home. Nate tells the young men, “Differing weights mean differing measures. The Lord knows ’em both” (82). Fatty realizes they must break Dodo out of Pennhurst, or there will be serious trouble.

Big Soap’s mother, Fioria Carissimi, visits her friend, Pia, who tells her that Doc Roberts is “a nasty worm” and “put his fast hands” (186) on her. Fioria has heard similar rumors about the doctor in the past. She becomes convinced that something happened at the grocery store with Chona and Roberts and that her son is somehow mixed up in the trouble.

Fatty and Rusty try to calm their friend’s irate mother by explaining what they know about the situation with Dodo, whose birth name is Holly Herring. Fatty explains that Chona was found “with her clothes…kind’a tore off her” (195). Rusty adds that Addie was the first to arrive on the scene and is likely the only person besides Dodo who knows what happened. Fioria marches off, telling the young men that God is watching them.

Isaac pays for a private room for Chona in a Reading hospital, and the nurses resent the frequent visits of their patient’s Jewish husband and Black friends. Four days after the incident at the store, Nate and Moshe come to visit Chona together. Addie, who has scarcely left her friend’s side, is already there. The Timblins give Moshe some privacy with his wife.

Addie saw Doc Roberts assault Chona, but Nate urges her not to say anything: “Goddamnit, you’ll sport real trouble fooling with these white folks’ lies. Stay out of it. Can’t nothing be done!” (201). The conversation turns to their nephew. Nate took off work to visit him, but he couldn’t bring himself to go to an institution that seems so similar to a prison, and he went to Fatty’s jook joint instead.

The Timblins wonder if anyone they know could help get Dodo out of Pennhurst. Nate suggests Reverend Ed Spriggs, but Addie suspects that the reverend is the one who told the state where to find Dodo. Nate reaches a similar conclusion, and “the grim glow in his eyes” (205) alarms Addie. She entreats him to follow his own advice about staying out of white people’s business and to go see Dodo.

A large bullfrog is discovered in the mikvah, the women’s bathing pool at the shul. A wealthy new congregant insists that a new mikvah be built and pledges a hefty donation for this purpose. At the resulting chevry meeting, Rabbi Feldman explains that his late predecessor, Chona’s father, hired Shad Davis to run a water line from a nearby dairy to the shul. The town government was not consulted about this arrangement due to their vehement antisemitism and repeated refusal to run pipes to Chicken Hill at the time. The new congregant, Mr. Hudson, sums up the shul’s situation: “We are stealing water from a town run by a goy who hates Jews. We could be prosecuted” (218). Rabbi Feldman insists they can’t be held legally accountable, but Mr. Hudson still wants the shul to relocate away from Chicken Hill.

Chona awakens a week after the assault, and the first words she speaks are the Barukh She’amar: “Blessed be the One who spoke the world into being” (221). Moshe is asleep beside her, and he looks so careworn that she feels overwhelmed with love and guilt. Addie, Nate, Bernice, Isaac, Rabbi Feldman, and the Skrupskelis twins are also gathered to see her.

Chona thinks she smells a hot dog, and she’s confused by Dodo’s absence, indicating that her memory and senses are not fully alert. She becomes overwhelmed by sudden pain in her head and stomach, and Moshe ushers everyone out of the room. Feldman tries to talk to Isaac about the letter he sent to the wealthy theater owner regarding the shul’s water situation and about Doc Roberts, but Isaac sternly answers, “I never received any letter. And I never heard that name” (229). Moshe’s inconsolable sobs inform the group that Chona has died, and they slowly shuffle back toward the hospital room.