59 pages • 1 hour read
James McBrideThe Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 3, Chapter 25-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “The Last Love”
Part 3, Chapter 25 Summary: “The Deal”
Marvin Skrupskelis goes to see Isaac in Philadelphia. Gus Plitzka recently came to see him about shoes, and Skrupskelis learned that Plitzka is indebted to a Philadelphia mob boss named Nig Rosen. Skrupskelis also informs Isaac that Plitzka runs the town’s water department while secretly getting the water for his dairy factory for free. He suggests that someone “put the squeeze on him, so he can put the squeeze on Doc Roberts” (319).
Isaac counters that exposing Plitzka would also reveal the shul’s water situation. He asks Skrupskelis to find two trustworthy Jewish men to meet Dodo on a train out of Pennhurst. Skrupskelis says he can do so easily because the Jewish union members working on the railroad loved Chona for her generosity and passionate writings about justice. Isaac assures him that the “water fix is already in the works” (322).
Part 3, Chapter 26 Summary: “The Job”
On Memorial Day, Fatty asks Big Soap to help him and Rusty go down an old well near the dairy factory and rearrange a few water pipes that night, promising he can earn $35 for a few hours’ work. Complications arise when Nate wants Fatty to drive him to Hemlock Row that night for a meeting with Bullis, the egg deliveryman. Fatty explains the situation to Nate, who agrees to find his own way out to Hemlock Row and let Fatty pick him up around midnight.
Fatty also tells Nate about the note and the money in the Bible Bernice gave him. Nate realizes that “Mr. Isaac’s running this thing from the back” (333) and that the $400 that was separate from the rest of the money in the Bible is meant for Dodo. He instructs Fatty to deliver the money to Addie at once, and Fatty complies.
Part 3, Chapter 27 Summary: “The Finger”
Dodo’s casts come off, and he is shuffled to the day room and cafeteria with the ward’s adult residents for the first time. The non-disabled patients flock to Son of Man, and the other attendants defer to him. The man winks at Dodo in the day room. Back in his crib, the boy wonders why his aunt and uncle haven’t come to visit him and reaches a despondent conclusion: “Because of me [...]. I did wrong. I attacked a white man. I am in jail. I am here for life” (337). He says as much to Monkey Pants, who vehemently disagrees and distracts Dodo from his misery by challenging him to hold his finger for as long as he can. The boys keep their fingers interlocked for hours, even ignoring their dinners.
About an hour after the lights in the ward shut off for the patients’ bedtime, Monkey Pants lets go of Dodo’s finger. Son of Man moves the boys’ cribs apart and presses a pillow over Dodo’s face. Dodo feels “cold salve being rammed between his butt cheeks and then an explosive hot burst of pain” (342), which suddenly stops. Monkey Pants throws his feces at Son of Man and then has a seizure. This draws the nurses’ attention, and the ward’s lights are turned on. A doctor comes to administer medicine to Monkey Pants and notices the odd distance between the cribs. When the lights are extinguished again, Dodo is terrified that Son of Man will return and that he’ll be trapped in Pennhurst forever. Monkey Pants soothes him by holding his finger again. When Dodo awakens in the morning, his friend is dead.
Part 3, Chapter 28 Summary: “The Last Love”
Anna Morse, owner of Morse’s Funeral Home and Nate’s former employer, readily agrees to give him a ride to Hemlock Row. Nate is supposed to meet with Miggy and Bullis, the egg deliveryman, at 11:30 p.m., but there is still no sign of him by 3:00 a.m., so Miggy informs Bullis that something must have happened to Nate. Bullis is relieved that he won’t have to assist Nate, whom he distrusts, and sets out for Pennhurst. He notes that his old horse is struggling more than usual to haul the egg cart. When he reaches Ward C-1, Son of Man greets him with an eerie smile, accuses him of trying to help a patient escape, and beats him.
Nate emerges from the egg cart, seizes Son of Man’s wrist, and stabs him in the heart with a kitchen knife. Nate’s family moved from South Carolina to Hemlock Row when he was a child. At age 13, he killed his father for beating his mother to death and became the last Love on Hemlock Row. The orphan survived by begging and stealing and later earned a living “by laying suffering on any human for a price” (359). He was sent to a penitentiary for murder. After his release, he met Addie, who “drained [his heart] of every evil and refilled it with love and purpose” (360). Nate fears that his hard-won redemption is now forfeit.
Part 3, Chapter 29 Summary: “Waiting for the Future”
The narrative moves back in time by several hours. Some of Pottstown’s Jewish business owners, including the Skrupskelis brothers, are expected to store, repair, and organize the costumes for the annual Memorial Day parade for free. However, this year, the costumes arrive in a state of disrepair and disarray.
As a result of this disorganization, Gus Plitzka and Doc Roberts, who are parade marshals, mistakenly wear the red coats of British officers. Plitzka is meant to find them blue Continental Army coats, but he is distracted when a man named Henry Lit approaches him. Lit implies he’ll reveal that Plitzka is stealing water from the town unless he repays Nig Rosen soon. When Plitzka says he doesn’t have the money, the man replies, “We’ll talk later, Gus. Maybe at home. Tonight. After the parade” (365). Plitzka finds only one blue coat, and Roberts keeps his red one.
That night, after the parade, Roberts leaves his red costume on and drinks with the local fire company. Just two blocks away, Fatty and Big Soap remove the old well’s cement cover, which snaps in half and falls in. When the men climb down and examine the plumbing, Fatty realizes that Plitzka’s dairy is getting free water from the town. Fatty and Soap have to release some water from the reservoir pipe, and the well fills up to their necks before they can shut the water off again. They move the shul’s pipe so that it can draw water from the reservoir for free. Rusty still hasn’t arrived with the materials they need to replace the well’s cement cover, so Fatty and Soap separate to gather some materials and look for him.
The now-intoxicated Doc Roberts rants about America’s decline. Thinking with indignation on Chona’s rejection of him, he fumes aloud, “Didn’t she know who I was?” (376). This prompts the firefighters to tell Roberts to go home, and he decides to take a shortcut through the lot across from the dairy factory so that he can dispose of the mezuzah there. Henry Lit mistakes the red-coated Doc Roberts for Plitzka and breaks his jaw with brass knuckles. Roberts falls into the open well. Fatty and Big Soap do not see the body when they return and pour a new cement cover for the well.
Epilogue Summary: “The Call Out”
Two Jewish railroad workers help Nate and Dodo board the train out of Pennhurst and take them to Berwyn. There, a pair of Pullman porters give the railroad workers $40 and a note from Marv Skrupskelis promising them free shoes. The porters guide Dodo and his uncle to a train headed for Philadelphia, the next stop on their journey to South Carolina. Nate resolves never to see Addie again because “[h]e did not deserve what she had to give” (384), but she later joins him.
Years later, Isaac, Moshe, and some of their colleagues establish Camp Chona for children with disabilities. Using the money from Isaac, Dodo buys a farm in South Carolina. He marries and has two daughters and three sons. His memories of Pennsylvania fade away, except for those of Chona and Monkey Pants, who offered him love and solidarity when he needed them most. Dodo changes his name to Nate Love II in honor of his uncle. Nate Love II dies on June 22, 1972, the very day that Hurricane Agnes strikes Pottstown. His last words are, “Thank you, Monkey Pants” (385).
Part 3, Chapter 25-Epilogue Analysis
Justice is served, community triumphs in the novel’s final section, and the theme of The Balance Between Mercy and Justice is foregrounded. Chapter 25 asserts how much Chona meant to the Jewish community of Pottstown by showing the Skrupskelis brothers’ determination to win justice for her. The Jewish railroad workers loved Chona as well. Their devotion to her is largely due to the brave way she lived by her ideals: “They’re all swelled up with the whole bit about American justice for one and all. They know about Chona, the letters she wrote, the crazy things she did” (321).
In her life, Chona was a champion of justice, and her community rallies to secure justice for her and Dodo after her tragic death. As Nate astutely infers, Isaac funds and organizes many of these plans behind the scenes. While Isaac strives to ensure justice is served, he also reflects on mercy and the past. To him, his gentle cousin, Moshe, is a paragon of grace: “Principle [...] when he and Moshe were children, running for their lives from the soldiers and starving, that was the one thing that Moshe never gave away. He never hated anyone. He was always kind” (321). Isaac doesn’t possess Moshe’s capacity for mercy. Instead, he acts as his cousin’s protector in adulthood, just as he did in their tumultuous childhood.
Chapter 27 brings major developments for the plot. When Son of Man attacks Dodo, Monkey Pants stops him. His intervention becomes an act of self-sacrifice; the boy goes into a seizure and dies as a result. His end is similar to Chona’s in that he gives his life to protect Dodo. In addition, his death is a terrible loss to Dodo because his friend was “the only safety he’d known” (341) in Pennhurst. Thus, Monkey Pants’ sacrifice shields Dodo and leaves him more vulnerable than ever.
Dodo’s uncle plays a major role in this section’s plot and themes. Chapter 28 and Part 3 as a whole are both entitled “The Last Love,” which refers to Nate Love. Chapter 28 develops the theme of Survival and Recovery From the Past by revealing Nate’s hidden history. When he and his family moved from South Carolina to Hemlock Row, they discovered that “justice and freedom had as little currency in the new land as it had in the old” (359). Mercy was as absent from Nate’s past as justice was. He became the last Love on Hemlock Row after murdering his father to avenge his mother.
Part 3’s title holds another layer of meaning as well: Nate fears that the love Addie placed in his heart will be lost forever if he “unleash[es] the evil poison in him” (358) and kills again. Nate’s past as a hired killer foreshadows Son of Man’s death just as the horse’s struggle to pull the egg cart hints that Nate is hiding inside.
Chapter 29 also utilizes themes and foreshadowing to wrap up one of the novel’s major storylines. For example, Chapter 1 establishes that the skeleton discovered in Chapter 1 was dressed in “a red costume or jacket” (3). In an act of protest against the town’s white leaders for failing to bring Doc Roberts to justice, the Jewish residents of Pottstown, who typically organize and repair the costumes for the Memorial Day parade, leave them in disorder. As a result, Doc Roberts wears a red British coat rather than the blue Continental coat he was supposed to, and the red costume causes Henry Lit to mistake Roberts for Plitzka.
The mezuzah, which serves as a motif for the theme of justice, draws the intoxicated doctor toward the lot with the well because he seeks to dispose of it there. While the case of mistaken identity and the open well’s placement may seem like nothing more than convenient accidents, from another angle, they become the work of karmic or divine justice.
The epilogue details a happy ending for Dodo and brings the novel’s themes to fulfillment. In a powerful example of recovering from the past, Nate is not the last Love after all. Instead, Dodo is reborn as Nate Love II, a patriarch in his own right with a “full and very fruitful life” (386). Nate’s return to South Carolina brings the story full circle. He left the state as a boy, and he, his wife, and his nephew ultimately find freedom and joy there.
After a lifetime of merely surviving, Nate at last heals from his past. Mercifully, Nate’s nephew also heals from his painful past. Nate Love II’s only memories of his first 12 years are of Chona and Monkey Pants, “the woman with the shining black hair, sparkling eyes, easy laugh, and magic marbles” and “the friend who thrust his finger out and held it in the dark like a beacon” (386). In the end, all that remains of his time in Pennsylvania are acts of mercy and the life-changing connections he forged across cultures.
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By James McBride
