Chapter Thirty-Three

THE NIGHT OF the Jersey Devil program, it poured so hard the streets started to fill up as the drains stopped working. The sound of rain pounding on the roof was all Nan could hear in the library, but she ignored it and continued to set up chairs in the meeting room, every single folding chair they owned.

The first heart-stopping moment was when the speaker, the author of a book on the Jersey Devil, turned up only five minutes before the program’s start time, apologizing profusely for his lateness. He’d had to drive at a very slow pace on the expressway because of all the accidents.

Her second crushing fear, now that he had made it, was that no one else would show up. The room was still full of empty chairs, and it was almost time to begin.

This was the worst part of giving library programs for adults. If it was just her, no problem. She could chalk it up to the weather and something good on TV and call it a night. But if a speaker drove there in terrible weather, the very least they should get for their trouble was a full house. The very worst-case scenario was when only one person came to a program. Then, she’d have to let the program proceed. If no one came, she could cancel it, give the author his check, and go home early to drink heavily.

When Chuck and Mr. El came in, shaking off rain like a pair of wet dogs, Nan wanted to hug them. When Lolly came in with her three oldest children, Nan made sure they got special Jersey Devil bookmarks. When a bus pulled up from the senior center and ten bedraggled elders spilled in, she collected all their wet coats and umbrellas and escorted them to front seats. When vans pulled up full of Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, Nan felt like cheering. The door kept opening and opening, the meeting room was full, and now people were standing in the back of the room. But when Joe and Immaculata came in, Nan thought she might faint from shock.

“What are you looking at?” Immaculata asked. “I told you I’d leave the house if there was something I wanted to see in this town. I never seen this before.”

The only one missing was Jeremy. He had initiated the whole idea that night at dinner and had talked of nothing else for the whole month. Where was he? Maybe the crowd was so big, Nan just couldn’t see him.

Nan and Dunkan raced to drag in chairs from other parts of the library. It was a miracle. She’d never seen the place this full. She was so nervous, hoping the author could project his voice loudly enough that everyone could hear. They didn’t own a microphone, had never needed one before.

She thanked the crowd for coming, then introduced the speaker and the format of the program, with the author talk for the first part and the storytelling for the second part.

“Our speaker tonight is collecting more Jersey Devil stories, so your story might become part of his next book,” she explained.

This was the biggest crowd she’d ever addressed in her whole career. Her voice sounded eerily like her annoying sisters, as if Regina and Franny were inside her head and she couldn’t separate herself from them. She had the wholly disconcerting feeling that her mouth was opening and closing, but she had no idea what words she was actually saying.

Please let me make sense. Please let me sound smart, welcoming, friendly. Please let me pull this off.

The author, a fey young man from Philly, queer if Nan’s gaydar was working, had spent many weekends camping out in the Pine Barrens hoping to have his own encounter with the Jersey Devil. The creature had been described by eyewitnesses since the 1800s as winged, hairy, much taller than a human, with a horselike head, goat haunches, and a tail. The author started with a history of sightings and the panics they’d caused over the decades, including a famous one all the way up in Philadelphia in 1909 that had the Philadelphia Zoo offering a $10,000 reward for the creature’s capture.

“I never saw it myself,” he confessed. “I want to, so badly. I did find evidence though.”

He showed photos of footprint tracks that were like no other species ever found. He played a recording of an eerie inhuman scream he’d recorded deep inside the Pine Barrens forest. The pièce de resistance was a photograph of dead pigs, ripped apart in a frenzy of destruction, attributed to an extremely hungry Jersey Devil.

When the author invited the audience to share their encounters, there was a long silence that seemed to Nan to last a whole hour. She didn’t know what to do. All these people were waiting, but no one was speaking up.

Finally, a young man dressed in a work uniform with an HVAC company logo stood up and cleared his throat nervously.

“Last year, I was driving my work truck, and I decided to take a shortcut home on one of the dirt roads through the Pine Barrens because it was so late, and I knew I could cut off a half hour or so. I was dying to get home. It had been a long day, full of problems and delays. I was so tired I could hardly see straight, but I hadn’t been drinking, and I wasn’t so sleepy I couldn’t drive safe.”

He spoke looking straight at the author. He was shy, Nan realized. He was afraid to look around him and see how many people were turned in their seats listening to him.

“My truck stalled out all of a sudden. I lost power; my headlights went out too. I got out, looked under the hood, trying to see what was wrong. But it was so dark—there’s no lights out there. My flashlight could only do so much against that kind of darkness. So then…”

Nan felt the whole audience lean toward him.

“So then, my head still under the hood, I heard this sound over my shoulder, a sound like nothing I’ve ever heard before. It was a flapping, like the biggest bird you could ever imagine was over my head, coming at me. And I smelled the strangest smell, like nothing I’ve ever smelled before.”

Joe and Nan looked at each other. His face lit up as if he was saying See, I told you. I’m not crazy, I smelled the Jersey Devil too.

The man hunched his shoulders and ducked his head to reenact the encounter. “I kept my head down like this. I was afraid the thing was coming at my head. Flap flap flap—it kind of hovered over me. It seemed like it lasted forever but probably a few minutes, and then it went away.”

The man sat down quickly. No one asked him a question. No one waited to see if he wanted to add anything. But he had opened a floodgate. Three other people stood up, racing to tell the next story, then two more, then three more.

Nan’s favorite was the farmer who started with a litany: “Now, I know foxes, I know bears, I know coyotes, I know bobcats. I know all the predators around here. I know raccoons that pull the legs right off rabbits in hutches. I know foxes that love a fat duck for dinner. But I do not know what this animal was that I passed on my farm road. I do not know an animal that stands that tall. I do not know an animal with haunches like a goat. I do not know a head like a horse and wings like a bat. That is what I saw that night. If it wasn’t the Jersey Devil, then I’ll be damned.”

The program went on and on. No one wanted to go home. Finally, Mona signaled to Nan that it was time to close, and Nan led the crowd in a round of applause for the author. There was no time for him to sign books, but he sold out that night, with people grabbing a copy on their way out and handing him money.

Joe drove Nan and Immaculata home. The truck smelled of a million oil changes and many rides given to Joe’s farmer friends and their dogs. Nan leaned back, so exhausted she literally couldn’t speak.

“You did good.” Immaculata patted her hand.

Joe didn’t say anything, but his head bobbed like he was saying Yes Yes Yes as he turned down the gravel driveway to home.

Before Nan fell asleep, she pictured Jeremy’s face when he talked about the Jersey Devil, the way his eyes lit up with amazement at such a good story.

She hoped he was there. But if he was there, way in the back of the crowd, why didn’t he stay behind and talk to her afterward? He should have been hanging out near the author or helping put chairs away. He should have been the last one to leave.

*

WHERE WAS JEREMY? As suddenly as he had appeared in the library every day when Nan was the new Town Librarian, he disappeared just as quickly. It had been four days since the Jersey Devil program that he missed, almost a week since he’d camped out in his favorite spot in the Reference Room, half hidden by the stack of books he always had arranged around him.

Nan grew more afraid with every day that went by. She stopped at the middle school office, but no one would tell her anything. He always came by himself to the library, so she didn’t know his school friends to ask. Amo had been helping him look up colleges and scholarships, but he didn’t know where Jeremy was either.

Finally, she drove out to the address he had listed on his library card application and asked to speak to the woman who had signed it. She didn’t work there anymore, and everyone was gone, the man who answered the door said.

“Can you help me? I’m looking for Jeremy Murphy. I’m the town librarian. You can tell me. Is he okay?”

The man shook his head and shut the door.

In desperation, Nan went to see Pip. She explained how close the boy had gotten to Immaculata and Joe, how unusual it was for him to disappear from the library with no notice, how she really needed to find out where he was and if he was okay.

Pip listened without saying a word. He pulled a file from a drawer and opened it. Then he picked up a pencil and laid it down on the paper pointing to a section. Finally, he put his finger to his lips and left the room.

So that she could read the paper. So that she could absorb the fact that Jeremy had been transferred to another school district, all the way up north to Newark. So that she could know the truth without Pip breaking confidentiality and probably a million other legal restrictions he’d just violated in order to help her out.

Her pain at the news was equal to her relief at knowing he was okay. Jeremy was gone. Now, all she had to do was break it to Joe and Immaculata.

*

THEY WERE QUIET when Nan explained. All three of them sat on the front porch in a sad little row. Immaculata nodded, sighed, and got up to put on hot water for tea. Joe didn’t say a word as he rocked and rocked. Nan stayed with them for a while. Life felt like an unending series of losses sometimes. She tried to remember that meeting Jeremy was a gain; he wasn’t dead, just moved away. Oh, what was the use. When you lost someone, no matter how, it hurt.

*

A WEEK LATER, Immaculata got a letter in the mail from an address in Newark, addressed to Nan, Joe, and Immaculata in small, precise, cursive handwriting. That kid—even his handwriting was on a college level. They sat down at the kitchen table, Immaculata reading the letter out loud.

Dear Immaculata and Joe and Nan,

I am fine. How are you?

I am very sorry I did not get to say goodbye to you. They came late at night and moved me. I didn’t know they were going to.

But Cleo (my new foster lady) helped me look up your address so I could write to you.

Guess what? You won’t believe it. Here I am in a big city, but I still have a garden. Hey, Joe, I am practicing everything you taught me. Me and Cleo belong to a community garden two blocks away. It’s really cool, all lit up at night with fairy lights so we can grill and have picnics there. There’s other kids my age that hang out there too. Our garden has tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers (Did you know cucumbers can turn into pickles? We are growing a ton because Cleo loves pickles. She’s teaching me how to cook them.) and a bunch of other stuff.

My new school is gigantic. We even have a school librarian. She saves books for me. Guess what, Nan, she’s real, not a volunteer. She lets me read anything I want. On Saturdays, I get to go to the public library. You wouldn’t believe how huge it is. It’s the biggest library in the whole world, I think. Nan, you should come see it. I could give you a tour. I know the whole building already.

I miss making pizzelles with you, Immaculata. I miss everything (except that other place I was in, I’m glad they shut it down). But I am writing to let you all know I am fine. It’s just me and Cleo here, and the house is very quiet, which I appreciate. Cleo is cool. She reads practically as much as me. Please write back. Please.

Your friend forever, Jeremy.

P.S. I love you too.

“Good.” Joe touched the letter as if he were patting Jeremy’s hair.

Immaculata cried. Joe held on to her, rubbing her back. She cried until she choked. She cried until the tears streamed down her face and ran all the way down to her chest. She cried so hard she gasped for breath.

“Why are you crying? It’s all good news.” The sight of the old woman in tears shocked Nan.

“The boy likes it up there, honey,” Joe said.

“I’m not crying,” Immaculata said.

“What do you call that water on your face?” Nan asked.

“I was cutting up onions.”

Nan held out her arms to Immaculata, who swatted them away. That was more like it. That was more like the valiant Immaculata she knew and loved.

“You big old crybaby,” Nan said.

“Get out of here before I stab you with a fork.”

“Not if I get to you first.”

Immaculata laughed, wide-mouthed, eyebrows raised, pretending to be shocked. “You’re getting the hang of it.”

The hang of what? How to live with loss? How to make a joke out of pain? How to laugh at sadness and start over? How to manage the mixture of grief and joy that was life? Whatever Immaculata meant, Nan was absurdly happy at the compliment.

*

“CAN YOU PICTURE Jeremy’s face when he gets this?” Nan took one last look inside the care package they had put together for him.

She’d wrapped up the Jersey Devil book from the library program he had missed. Immaculata packed a huge batch of pizzelles and his other favorite, thumbprint cookies, with her homemade blueberry jam in the middle. Joe went to Chuck’s hardware store and bought a small toolbox, then packed it full of shiny new tools: a hammer, all kinds of screwdrivers, pliers, and wrenches, and a retractable measuring tape in a solid silver shell that made a satisfying zip when it rewound itself.

They included a thank you card to Cleo. How inadequate, Nan felt, but it was the best way they could express their mass of emotions that Jeremy was safe and happy with her. Especially because Cleo had cared enough to keep Jeremy in contact with people who loved him. He had lost enough in his short life; Cleo must have recognized that and actually done something about it.

To Jeremy, they each wrote separate letters so he’d have a lot to open up. It figured, Immaculata’s letter was three pages long, flowing out of her with the same velocity as her words did. She wrote about the tracks she’d found in the backyard, which she was certain were a bobcat’s, even though they were so rare in South Jersey. She recounted a new Jersey Devil sighting, very coincidentally on the very same night as the library program, and how she was suspicious of the timing and the motives of the storyteller (who was known to be a jokester). But she wrote down every detail to tell him anyway, just in case.

Nan sent a photo of Immaculata and Joe laughing, standing in front of their sunflowers, along with a list of books and authors Jeremy might like. He always wanted reading suggestions. Charles Dickens and Jules Verne would keep him busy for quite a while. But she put five stars next to The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, hoping he would start there, now that he knew there was no such thing as a boy book or a girl book.

Joe wasn’t much of a writer, but he made a little drawing of each tool and noted what to use each one for. “Oh boy. He’s going to be so happy.” His eyes were lit up with a joy that radiated so strongly Nan pictured it reaching all the way to Jeremy’s new home.