“It is a nineteen forty three copper cent, Mrs. Hall,” Mr. Abbott said, and his voice shook, so softly that I had to lean in to hear. “In that year, the mint made all its pennies from steel, to save copper for the war. A few copper blanks were left in the machines by accident. Fewer than twenty of them are known to exist.” He laid the little penny on a square of green felt, as gently as if it were a sleeping bird. “Mrs. Hall, I have been in this business for fifty one years. I have held perhaps two of these. Your husband carried one in his pocket for years and put it in a jar with the grocery change.” He sat down slowly. “Do you know what it is worth?”
I said I had no idea. I said that if it was worth a few dollars, we could order a pizza. Emma, my granddaughter, was gripping my arm so tightly that I could feel her fingernails. Mr. Abbott took off his glasses, wiped them on his shirt, and put them back. “Mrs. Hall, a coin like this, in this condition, has sold at auction for more than two hundred thousand dollars.” I did not say anything. Emma began to cry, quietly, with a hand over her mouth. I patted her. I said, “Hush, child. It is only a penny.”
Then Mr. Abbott picked up the remaining coins in the tray, one after another, with his tweezers, and he looked at each under the lamp. There was a nineteen fifty five doubled die cent. A nineteen fourteen D. Two Indian head cents in beautiful shape. A silver dollar from the eighteen seventies. He worked for nearly an hour while Emma and I sat on two creaky stools and waited. When he finally looked up, his face was wet. “Mrs. Hall,” he said, “this was only one jar of six. I need you to call your family. Tonight. And I need you to tell them to be very, very careful.” I said, “Careful of what?” He said, “Of the ones who threw things away.”
One penny held under a lamp turned a jar of pocket change into proof that a baker driver had quietly built a fortune.
It was Emma who had the courage to call. She phoned her mother Patty from the car, on the speaker, and told her, in a trembling voice, that Grandma had a few coins that might be valuable. Patty laughed, an indulgent laugh. “Emma, Grandma has pennies. Please do not get her hopes up.” There was a long silence on the line. Then Emma said, “Mom, there are five more jars. I hid them in my closet. You told Grandma you threw them out.” The silence stretched. I could hear her breathing. At last Patty said, in a small, strange voice, “Where are you? Do not do anything else. I am coming.”
She arrived at the coin shop within twenty minutes, with her husband Rick behind her in his good sales jacket. Mr. Abbott laid the whole matter out for them on the felt, calmly, with great courtesy. The appraisal of the first jar alone was three hundred forty thousand dollars. The other five, he thought, would double that, perhaps more. Patty sat down on a stool without speaking. Rick stared at the coins, his lips moving silently. I watched my daughter, fifty six years old, with the chin of her mother and the stubborn forehead of her father, and I saw what was in her face. It was not greed. It was grief.
“Mom,” she said, finally, “I threw out the boots of Dad. I threw out the good dishes. I told you I had thrown out the coins, too.” She wiped her eyes. “I did not do it to hurt you. I was so tired. You were forgetting things, and I thought, if it is all gone, you will not worry. I thought I was making it easier.” I took her hand. “Patty, I never forgot a thing. I only forgot the things that did not matter.” She began to sob. He said gruffly, “Bessie, I apologize for the comments about the jar.” I said, “Rick, I forgive you. But it is not you I was waiting on.”
Over the next two months, the coins were carefully sold through a respected auction house in Chicago. The nineteen forty three copper cent brought three hundred twelve thousand dollars all by itself. When the last hammer fell, the total came to just over eight hundred seventy thousand dollars. After taxes and fees, it was still more money than Lloyd and I had ever seen in our lives together. I sat at the kitchen table of the house of my daughter, with Mr. Abbott and a lawyer, and signed my name on a great many pages. Then I put down the pen and told them what I had decided.
“Half goes to my family,” I said. “Patty, Rick, Emma, and my other grandchildren. Divided fairly. Half I will keep for myself, to live on, and to leave. And one hundred thousand dollars of it goes to the bakery on Eldorado Street where Lloyd worked, for a scholarship in his name, for any young delivery driver who wants to go to school.” Mr. Abbott beamed. Patty laid her head on her arms and wept. Emma, at eighteen, was already planning her fall classes at the state university, and I told her it would be paid in full, to the last dollar. She threw her arms around my neck and nearly knocked me off my chair.
I did one more thing. I called the manager of Heritage Manor, and I told her I would be keeping my room, but that I wanted to hold a party. The next Saturday, forty residents gathered in the dining hall for a pizza party that I paid for, the best pizza in Decatur, with Emma and her friends handing out slices. I told the story of Lloyd and the jars to anyone who would listen. They did.
That night, back in my room, I took out the last penny, the one Lloyd had pulled from his pocket and I had not sold. It was an ordinary penny, nineteen sixty one, worn and brown. I set it on my windowsill, in the light of the streetlamp. I thought of him coming home each evening with flour on his sleeves and emptying his pockets into the jar, whistling, never knowing. Maybe he knew, deep down, that small things add up. Maybe that was the point of the jars. I held the penny to my cheek. It was cool. Thank you, Lloyd, I said, to the quiet room. For everything. Even the pennies.