In the epi­logue of *The Heav­en & Earth Gro­cery Store*, we revis­it Hir­shel Kof­fler and his broth­er Yigel, Jew­ish refugees from Aus­tria, who are embark­ing on their lives in Amer­i­ca. Just six weeks into their new life, they become brake­men for the Penn­syl­va­nia Rail­road­’s freight train, the Tanker Toad, which trans­fers coal from Berwyn, Penn­syl­va­nia, to the Pennhurst hos­pi­tal. This par­tic­u­lar Memo­r­i­al Day week­end in 1936 presents them with a puz­zling sit­u­a­tion: a tall, lanky Negro hold­ing a cry­ing child in their freight car, a scene that feels strange to the broth­ers who are still adjust­ing to the nuances of Amer­i­can cul­ture, includ­ing the food, lan­guage bar­ri­ers, and indus­tri­al land­scapes.

Under orders from their union boss, Uri Guzin­s­ki, they do not engage with the man and instead fol­low the direc­tive to escort him and the child to Berwyn. As they arrives at the freight yard, two well-dressed Negroes meet them, accept­ing a lit­tle boy and hand­ing over an enve­lope that con­tains forty dol­lars and an invi­ta­tion for free new shoes, signed by M. Skrup—a ges­ture made pos­si­ble by indi­rect com­mu­ni­ty sup­port that ties back to a past meet­ing involv­ing the broth­ers’ home­town com­mu­ni­ty.

As the nar­ra­tive unfolds, it inter­weaves the his­to­ry of Nate Love, a man who helps get the boy to free­dom and a bet­ter life in Charleston, South Car­oli­na. The boy, known as Dodo, learns to adapt to new sur­round­ings, devel­op­ing skills like farm­ing and com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment, while mem­o­ries of his past fade, the pain from Pennhurst dis­si­pat­ing over time. Nate Love resolves him­self to nev­er see­ing his beloved Addie again but remains hope­ful, reveal­ing the endur­ing con­nec­tion between love and loss.

As Dodo grows, he becomes a fam­i­ly man, rais­ing chil­dren in the South, yet one mem­o­ry lingers fiercely—the woman with shin­ing hair who offered him friend­ship when he need­ed it most. Dodo’s jour­ney cul­mi­nates in his trans­for­ma­tion into Nate Love II, a lega­cy reborn through his fam­i­ly. At the end of his life, as mem­o­ries of his past evoke mixed feel­ings of joy and sor­row, he utters a cryp­tic farewell, “Thank you, Mon­key Pants,” sug­gest­ing bonds that tran­scend even the deep­est rifts of time and space.

You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

H
Epi­logue
The Call Out
irshel Kof­fler, twen­ty-two, and his broth­er Yigel, twen­ty-four, had only
been in Amer­i­ca six weeks when they were hired on as brake­men for
the Penn­syl­va­nia Rail­road freight train known as the Tanker Toad, which
shut­tled coal from Berwyn, Pa., to the Pennhurst hos­pi­tal. For these two
for­mer Aus­tri­an rail­road men, Jew­ish refugees, Amer­i­ca was a land full of
sur­pris­es. There was the lan­guage, of course—incomprehensible. Then
there was the food, nonkosher and some­times deli­cious. And final­ly, the
grind­ing, churn­ing smoke of the great fac­to­ries as peo­ple moved about the
towns and cities in large num­bers. But noth­ing they’d expe­ri­enced in those
first weeks was as strange as the sce­nario they found them­selves in that
Memo­r­i­al Day week­end in 1936: star­ing at a tall, lanky Negro seat­ed in the
cor­ner of their emp­ty box car cradling a weep­ing child in his arms as their
freight train rolled out of Pennhurst toward Berwyn. In a land of sur­pris­es
and mys­ter­ies, this one was a top­per.
They did not speak to the man, for their orders from the union boss, Uri
Guzin­s­ki, had been clear. Uri was a fel­low Yid, also a rail­man, from
Poland, who’d been in Amer­i­ca sev­en­teen months, and while Uri was terse
and his Eng­lish was not great—though he spoke it bet­ter than the two
broth­ers combined—Uri always showed them kind­ness. He even gave them
his lunch­box that morn­ing, since today was some kind of strange Amer­i­can
hol­i­day and the kosher store near their Berwyn flop­house was closed.
“Memo­r­i­al Day,” Uri had called it. Memo­r­i­al for what? they won­dered.
Still, they did not ask, for Uri’s direc­tions that morn­ing as they stepped
aboard their 5:20 a.m. train for their first run to Pennhurst had been
explic­it and in Yid­dish: “Put the Negroes on the train and drop them at
Berwyn and hand them over to a Pull­man.”
Nei­ther Hir­shel nor Yigel had any idea what a Pull­man was and were
afraid to ask. Nor were they sure what he meant by “lunch­box,” for he’d
uttered that word in Eng­lish. Still, Uri was the boss. So as the Tanker Toad
slow­ly churned into the Berwyn yard at 6:05 on sched­ule, and as dawn
crest­ed over the glo­ri­ous Penn­syl­va­nia sky, the two anx­ious­ly looked up at
the sig­nal tow­er win­dow for Uri and spot­ted him nod­ding at two tall,
impec­ca­bly dressed Negroes in white shirts, ties, shined shoes, and dis­tinct
Pull­man porter hats who were stand­ing at the far end of the freight yard.
The two Negroes strode to the freight car, hand­ed Hir­shel and Yigel an
enve­lope with­out a word, took one furtive glance about, then hus­tled the tall
Negro and the young­ster across the rails to the near­by pas­sen­ger ter­mi­nal,
where the 6:14 Sandy Hill was steam­ing up to make its run to
Philadelphia’s 30th Street Sta­tion.
The two had no idea who those two pas­sen­gers were, and they would
nev­er know, but when they opened the enve­lope, they found forty dol­lars for
their “union job” and a note bear­ing the words “Come see me about your
free new shoes.” It was signed “M. Skrup,” who had a Pottstown address.
As they watched the train pull away, Yigel, hold­ing the lunch­box, said to
his broth­er in Yid­dish, “Remem­ber that minyan?”
“Which one?”
“The one in Pottstown. At the shul. Where they fought about the frog in
the mik­vah?”
Hir­shel chuck­led and nod­ded.
“You think this gift comes from that?” Yigel asked.
Hir­shel shrugged. “Why would it?”
“They spoke of Negroes there.”
Hir­shel waved his hand in dis­missal. “Don’t be stu­pid. There are
thou­sands of Negroes in this coun­try, Yigel. Why would this mon­ey come
from that?”
But that, too, was one of the many won­ders of Amer­i­ca. For the gift did
come indi­rect­ly from the minyan at that shul. The promise of shoes, of
course, came from Marv Skrupske­lis, whose twin broth­er, Irv, was at that
meet­ing. The mon­ey came from Moshe’s cousin Isaac, who placed it in the
hands of Ber­nice, who placed it in the hands of Fat­ty, who placed it in the
hands of Nate’s wife, Addie, who passed it to her hus­band, who placed a bit
of it in the hands of Paper, who took that bit to two of her Pull­man porter
friends, who arranged with Uri to meet the two and fer­ry them along, from
one Pull­man porter crew to the next, from Berwyn to Philadel­phia first,
then to the Gen­er­al Lee, a south­bound express train inside a first-class
Pull­man sleep­er car to ride back to Charleston, S.C. The Low Coun­try.
Nate’s home.
Nate would nev­er see Addie again. He felt sure of it. And as the train
made its way south out of Philadel­phia, Nate resolved him­self to it. He did
not deserve what she had to give. But for­ti­tude and love’s rea­son have many
a sea­son, and one day she would return to him. He did not believe it then.
As far as he knew, he was the last of the Loves. There would be no more.
As for Dodo, the mem­o­ry of Uncle Nate’s arms cradling him, lift­ing him
out of bed in the ward and car­ry­ing him through the base­ment, the bumpy
cart ride to the open air of free­dom, the feel­ing of being lift­ed into the arms
of the two Jew­ish brake­men who han­dled him with the gen­tle­ness of an
infant as Uncle Nate clam­bered aboard the freight car, that would be
for­got­ten. As would the train ride all the way to Charleston—in a first-class
sleep­er with Pull­man porters dot­ing on him the whole way, feed­ing him
rice, ham, chick­en, cake, and ice cream, as much as he want­ed. All that,
too, would be for­got­ten. For the haze of drugs took weeks to fade, and the
mem­o­ries of Pennhurst and the sad events that put him there bore the boom
of how­itzers blow­ing off in his brain, which, giv­en his dis­abil­i­ty, would not
have both­ered him so much. For the fact is, after Pennhurst, he was done
with sound. He didn’t need it. He had his own sound now. It was sound sung
to him as the sight, smell, and feel of the beau­ti­ful Low Coun­try. And as the
years passed on his South Car­oli­na farm—bought with three hun­dred
dol­lars, care of a Philadel­phia Jew­ish the­ater own­er named Isaac, who
would one day with his cousin Moshe and sev­er­al oth­er Jew­ish the­ater
own­ers cre­ate a camp in the Penn­syl­va­nia moun­tains for dis­abled chil­dren
like him called Camp Chona, a camp that last­ed long after every one of
those Jew­ish immi­grants had died—the boy became a man who raised
crops and milked cows and attend­ed church three times a week; a man who
learned how to “shout dance” with­out cross­ing his legs; a man who taught
his chil­dren how to patch a roof, and cane a chair, and boil meat in iron
pots, and wan­der through Span­ish moss in sum­mer; a man who watched his
chil­dren learn from their great-uncle Nate how to build a horse-drawn mill
to grind sug­ar cane, and from their great-aunt Addie how to thresh rice and
grind meal, and from his beloved wife how to grow aza­leas and his favorite,
sunflowers—sunflowers of all col­ors and sizes. All life in Penn­syl­va­nia was
erased in his mind and his heart and his mem­o­ry.
Still …
As hard as he tried, he could not erase the mem­o­ry of the woman with
the shin­ing black hair, sparkling eyes, easy laugh, and mag­ic mar­bles; he
could not for­get the friend who thrust his fin­ger out and held it in the dark
like a bea­con, all night till the sun came up. The mem­o­ry of that fin­ger, that
one soli­tary white fin­ger, reach­ing out in friend­ship and sol­i­dar­i­ty, shone in
his mem­o­ry like a bright, shin­ing star. The mem­o­ry last­ed until the end of
his full and very fruit­ful life, so that when he died, he was not Dodo of
Pottstown but rather Nate Love II, the father of three boys and two girls.
Nate was not the very last Love after all. There would be more. They
sur­round­ed him as he died, his chil­dren and their chil­dren. He died on June
22, 1972, the same day Hur­ri­cane Agnes wiped much of Pottstown off the
face of the earth and a day after an old Jew named Malachi the Magi­cian
van­ished for­ev­er from the hills of south­east­ern Penn­syl­va­nia.
And as he fad­ed to eter­nal slum­ber, sur­round­ed by loved ones, just feet
from the sun­flow­ers and sum­mer moss that had helped wipe away the
tumult of his first twelve years of life, he would offer four words in his final
mur­mur­ings that were for­ev­er a puz­zle to all that knew and loved him and
sur­round­ed him in his final moments of life, save for one who was not there,
who was far beyond them all, now liv­ing in the land where the lame walked