CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The small wooden house fell quiet. A few children shifted, and the floorboards beneath them creaked. Elliot had forgotten about the spider just long enough for it to crawl over his shirt and onto his neck. He tried frantically to flick it away.
Professor Fauna cleared his throat. “Dr. Thomas,” he said, “would you mind, now, telling us about the Devil?”
“WHAT?” Miss Vole squealed. Everyone clapped their hands over their ears. Somewhere, a very old dog had a minor heart attack. “Professor Fauna! That is not an appropriate subject! In fact, this whole field trip has been inappropriate! I don’t know what you were thinking, bringing these children to this place, but . . .”
“Miss Vole.” Professor Fauna sighed. “I meant the Jersey Devil. The animal.”
Miss Vole stopped speaking. “Oh.” She paused. And then, very dismissively, she said, “But that’s just a myth.”
The professor fixed Miss Vole with a dark stare. “Children, your teacher is one of those ignorant people who believe that just because something is a myth, it cannot also be true. I have decided that you should not listen to your teacher.”
The children gasped. Miss Vole tried to reply, but her mouth merely moved, and no sound came out.
The professor turned to the old doctor of the Pines. “Dr. Thomas, if you please.”
The children leaned forward.
“My family,” Dr. Thomas began, “has been full of doctors as long as anyone can remember. My mother was a doctor, and her mother was a doctor, and her mother before that. Now, in the old days, it wasn’t easy to get training at a medical school as a woman from the Pines. We never had a lot of money, and we’re mixed race, and everyone always expected a doctor to be a man. That’s changing now, though not as fast as you’d think.
“Anyway, my great-great-great-great-great-grandmother, Beulah Thomas, was one of these self-taught woman doctors. She had a patient called Mrs. Leeds. Mrs. Leeds had twelve children. Twelve! Well, after Beulah delivered Mrs. Leeds’s twelfth baby, Mrs. Leeds said, ‘I won’t be having any more children. I’d rather have the devil than have another child.’ Well, she shouldn’t have said that. Because less than a year later, she was giving birth again, and my great-great-great-great-great-grandmother was called, and that thirteenth baby wasn’t a baby at all. It was a strange creature, and it went screeching out of Beulah’s arms and straight through the window, leaving shattered glass all over Mrs. Leeds’s floor.”
The mouth of every child hung wide-open.
“Ever since then, the Jersey Devil roams these Pines.”
“Tell us,” Professor Fauna cut in, “what it looks like.”
“Oh, they say the Jersey Devil’s about the size of a deer. ’Bout the same shape, too. But it has wings, like a bat. It’s got claws in front and hooves behind. And sharp teeth. Oh yes, and he’s blue. A furry blue all over, with red wings.”
Elliot and Uchenna stopped breathing.
The floorboards creaked as Dr. Thomas shifted and collected herself to continue. Before she could go on, Elliot very slowly raised his hand.
Uchenna hissed, “Not now.”
But Dr. Thomas said, “Yes, darling?”
Elliot swallowed hard. Everyone was staring at him. He said, “Are you sure it’s the size of a deer? Could it be . . . smaller than that?”
Dr. Thomas furrowed her brow and stuck out her chin.
“Well,” Professor Fauna cut in, with his deep, gravelly voice, “the story Dr. Thomas told is just that—a story.”
“It doesn’t exist!” Miss Vole exclaimed. “I knew it!” She sounded very relieved.
“Quite the contrary, Miss Vole,” Professor Fauna replied. “It does not exist. They do. The story about Mrs. Leeds and her thirteenth child is poppycock, I am sure of it. But the Jersey Devil is a real animal. Not recognized by most scientists, perhaps. But phylum Chordata, class either Mammalia or Reptilia, superorder perhaps Dinosauria? Its social structure resembles that of mountain goats, where the males are solitary, and the females travel in small groups.”
“Why do they call it a devil?” Elliot asked. He had dispensed with the formality of raising his hand now that Professor Fauna was speaking his language—the scientific study of animals.
Dr. Thomas said, “Well, parts of it look like a deer, like I said. But other parts look like a bat. Its fur is like a weasel’s. And its colors are like a bird’s. In other words, it’s kind of a medley. Like the people of the Pines. And for years and years, people didn’t like medleys. They were scared of us. That’s why they called it a devil.” Dr. Thomas put her bony hands on the floorboards and leaned forward. “But you listen to me: The Jersey Devil is the most American creature that ever lived. The bald eagle shouldn’t be on the dollar bill. No, no, no. The Jersey Devil should be. The Jersey Devil should be. The Jersey Devil should be.”
