# Read the first page of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride Read the opening of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride free, no signup. A buried skeleton stirs a 1920s mill town. - Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/the-heaven-and-earth-grocery-store-james-mcbride - Genre: Literary fiction - Year: 2023 - ISBN: 9780593422960 - Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9780593422960&s=read-page - Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9780593422960 - Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9780593422960 ## The opening There was an old Jew who lived at the site of the old synagogue up on Chicken Hill in the town of Pottstown, Pa., and when Pennsylvania State Troopers found the skeleton at the bottom of an old well off Hayes Street, the old Jew's house was the first place they went to. This was in June 1972, the day after a developer tore up the Hayes Street lot to make way for a new townhouse development. We found a belt buckle and a pendant in the well, the cops said, and some old threads—from a red costume or jacket, that's what the lab shows. They produced a piece of jewelry, handed it to him, and asked what it was. A mezuzah, the old man said. It matches the one on the door, the cops said. Don't these things belong on doors? The old man shrugged. Jewish life is portable, he said. The inscription on the back says “Home of the Greatest Dancer in the World.” It’s in Hebrew. You speak Hebrew? Do I look like I speak Swahili? Answer the question. You speak Hebrew or not? I bang my head against it sometimes. And you’re Malachi the dancer, right? That’s what they say around here. They say you’re a great dancer. Used to be. I gave that up forty years ago. What about the mezuzah? It matches the one here. Wasn’t this the Jewish temple? It was. Who owns it now? Who owns everything around here? the old man said. He nodded at the immense gleaming private school seen through the dim window. The Tucker School. It sat proudly atop the hill behind wrought-iron gates, with smooth lawns, tennis courts, and shiny classroom buildings, a monstrous bastion of arrogant elegance, glowing like a phoenix above the ramshackle neighborhood of Chicken Hill. They been trying to buy me out for thirty years, the old man said. He grinned at the cops, but he was practically toothless, save for a single yellow tooth that hung like a clump of butter from his top gum, which made him look like an aardvark. You’re a suspect, they said. Suspect shuspect, he said with a shrug. He was well north of eighty, wearing an old gray vest, a rumpled white shirt holding several old pens in the vest pocket, a wrinkled tallit around his shoulders, and equally rumpled old pants, but when he reached inside his pants pocket, his gnarled hands moved with such deftness and speed that the state troopers, who spent most days ticketing tractor-trailers on nearby Interstate 76 and impressing pretty housewives during traffic stops with their bubble-gum lights and stern lectures about public safety, panicked and stepped back, their hands on their weapons. But the old man produced nothing more than several pens. He offered the cops one. No thanks, they said. They milled around for a while longer and eventually left, promising to return after they pulled the skeleton out of the well and studied the potential murder scene some more. They never did, though, because the next day God wrapped His hands around Chicken Hill and wrung His last bit of justice out of that wretched place. Hurricane Agnes came along and knocked the power out of four counties. The nearby Schuylkill River rose to a height of seven feet. To hear the old black women of Chicken Hill tell it, white folks was jumping off their rooftops in Pottstown like they was on the Titanic. All those fancy homes down there were swept away like dust. That storm killed everything it touched. Drowned every man, woman, and child that come near it; wrecked bridges, knocked down factories, tore up farms; that thing caused millions in damages—millions and millions—that’s white folks language, millions and millions. Well, for us colored folks on the Hill, it was just another day of dodging the white man’s evil. ## Books with a similar feel - [The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-heart-is-a-lonely-hunter-carson-mccullers.md) - [After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell](https://uncovered.ink/read/after-youd-gone-maggie-ofarrell.md) - [The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-bonesetters-daughter-amy-tan.md) - [The Gathering by Anne Enright](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-gathering-anne-enright.md) - [Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout](https://uncovered.ink/read/tell-me-everything-elizabeth-strout.md) - [The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-vanishing-half-brit-bennett.md) --- Source: Uncovered (https://uncovered.ink). A short sample shown for reading and discovery. Rights holders can request removal at https://uncovered.ink/takedown.