The Gold Coin

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who learned very early not to ask for things.

She lived in the piney woods of East Texas, where summer heat did not politely stay outside. It came right through the open windows and settled into the house with you. We had no air conditioning, only fans that pushed the same hot, rancid air from one side of the room to the other, as if moving it around might somehow make it cooler. It didn't.

At night, I would lie in bed listening to the woods through those open windows. Cicadas screamed from the trees. Frogs called from somewhere beyond the yard. Dogs barked in the distance, sometimes setting off another dog and then another until it seemed the whole countryside had something to say. Every so often, something rustled through the leaves close enough to the house that I decided I was better off not knowing what it was.

I was hungry a lot back then, but hunger wasn't something you announced. My little ears had heard there isn't enough so many times that eventually no one had to say it anymore. I knew. There wasn't enough money. There wasn't always enough food. There certainly wasn't enough for things you simply wanted. So I became very good at wanting things quietly. I also became very good at finding ways around wanting.

Books were one of those ways.

At school, I discovered a girl named Nancy Drew. Nancy was clever and curious and brave. She solved mysteries, followed clues, went places I could not imagine ever going and seemed certain there was always another answer if she just kept looking.

But if I am being truthful, the mysteries were not the only reason I loved her.

Nancy's father adored her. He listened when she talked. He trusted her judgment. He thought she was smart. He worried when she was in danger and believed she was capable of figuring things out. There was something about the way that father looked at his daughter that fascinated me.

I think I read those parts a little more slowly.

I had only one Nancy Drew book, The Secret of the Old Clock. Book number one. I read it over and over until I knew what was coming, but somehow that didn't matter. When I reached the end, I could always return to the beginning and experience it again. There was the mystery and the adventure, of course, but there was also that father who looked at his daughter as though she were something precious.

In the back of the book was a list of the others. Number two, number three, number four, and on they went. I would run my finger down those titles and imagine all the stories waiting beyond the only one I had. Every title sounded like another door, and I wanted to open every single one.

One summer day, when the East Texas heat had become almost unbearable, my siblings and I decided a trip to the public library sounded like a fine idea.

It was five miles away.

Five miles sounds like a long way for a little girl to walk, but I don't remember it feeling quite so far when I was headed toward Nancy Drew. My feet may have been walking beside the highway, but my imagination was already solving mysteries. I wondered how many Nancy Drew books the library might have. Maybe five. Maybe ten. What if they had twenty?

The sun beat down on us, and heat rose from the pavement as though the road itself had caught fire. Cars came flying past, fast enough to make our clothes flutter. Normally you wanted to stay as far away from those cars as possible, but on those summer walks there was one tiny reward for every car that passed.

A breeze.

For one glorious second, the air moved across my sweaty skin. Then the car disappeared down the highway, and the heat closed around us again.

There was a convenience store along the way called Mac's Super Stop, and by the time we reached it, my stomach usually had plenty to say too. My mouth would water just thinking about a hot dog in a bun. Nothing fancy. I didn't need chili or cheese. I didn't even need the wiener to be hot.

Which was fortunate, because it wasn't.

My Granny was always saying it was so hot outside you could fry an egg on the sidewalk. I remember looking at that blazing pavement and wondering why the same principle wouldn't work with a hot dog wiener. If the sidewalk could cook an egg, surely it could cook a hot dog. The science seemed perfectly sound to me.

The only real problem was that I didn't have any money.

My sister and I had stolen food from Mac's before. There isn't a pretty way to say that, and I don't want to make one. We knew stealing was wrong. We had been taught that much. But hunger has a way of arguing with what you know.

That day, we took a package of wieners and some buns and started toward the door. I remember the cold plastic package pressed against my stomach as I walked. After being outside in that heat, it actually felt wonderful against my skin. For a fleeting second, I wondered if my body heat might warm the wieners up a little. Not that I intended to wait long enough to find out. I was way too hungry for that, and I still had Granny's sidewalk cooking method as a backup.

We were almost out the door when I heard Mac behind us.

"Hey! You two stop right there."

I froze. Suddenly, the cold package against my stomach didn't feel nearly as refreshing.

We were caught.

In the few seconds it took me to turn around, I imagined everything that was about to happen. Mac would take the food back. Maybe he'd call the police. Maybe he'd call someone at home. I was certain of one thing. We were not getting those hot dogs.

Mac walked toward us, but instead of reaching for the food, he held something out.

Mustard.

"Don't you girls want mustard with those hot dogs?"

I didn't know what to say. He knew. Of course he knew. He probably had known for a while.

But Mac didn't call us thieves. He didn't humiliate us or demand an explanation. He simply told us that we didn't have to steal food from his store. If we were hungry, we could ask him. He would feed us.

Then he gave us the mustard.

I wish I could tell you I understood what Mac had done for me in that moment. I didn't. I was a hungry little girl holding stolen hot dogs who had just discovered she wasn't going to jail. But I understood how it felt to prepare myself for punishment and receive kindness instead.

We left Mac's and kept walking toward the library.

The first thing I remember about finally stepping through those library doors was the air. Cold, beautiful air. After five miles in the East Texas heat, air conditioning felt like something only rich people and libraries had figured out. My skin was damp from walking, so goosebumps popped up on my arms almost immediately. I loved every single one of them.

Then came the smell.

Libraries have a smell all their own. Paper and dust, old bindings and wooden shelves, something a little musty and a little sweet, like thousands of stories had somehow left their scent behind.

I walked slowly between the rows, taking it all in. There were tall, skinny books and short, fat ones. Faded cloth covers sat beside shiny new covers. Red spines leaned against blue ones, green against yellow, brown against black. Some had gold letters stamped into them. Others had titles printed sideways that made me tilt my head to read them. There were books everywhere.

For a child accustomed to hearing that there wasn't enough, the library was astonishing.

Here, there was more than enough. There were more stories than I could possibly read. Somewhere among them, I hoped, was Nancy Drew.

I finally approached the woman behind the counter and asked if she could help me find the books. Her name was Mrs. Cooley, and Mrs. Cooley smelled like roses. Not the kind of perfume that entered the room before the person wearing it. Hers was soft. I just knew that whenever I stood close to her, I smelled roses.

When I asked about Nancy Drew, her face lit up. Of course she could help me. Then she told me something I could hardly believe.

She had all of them. All 175. One hundred and seventy-five Nancy Drew adventures.

I had spent so much time staring at those titles in the back of The Secret of the Old Clock, wondering what was inside them, and now I was standing in a building that held every one. I wanted to take them home, but children couldn't check books out without an adult.

So I did the next best thing. I read them there.

During that summer, I went back again and again. Five miles there and five miles home. The heat, the highway and the cars with their precious one-second breezes didn't seem quite so important when I knew what was waiting at the other end.

Mrs. Cooley began to recognize me. Her eyes would twinkle when I walked through the doors because she already knew exactly what I wanted. But before Nancy Drew, there was usually water.

I would arrive so thirsty my tongue felt too big for my mouth. The library had a water cooler and those awful little paper cups that seemed to hold about three swallows before becoming soggy in your hand. Mrs. Cooley had something better for me.

A special cup. A real one.

She would walk me over to the water cooler and let me fill it all the way up. Even better, she let me carry it back to the table with me. You weren't supposed to have drinks at the library tables. I knew that, and I'm pretty sure everybody else knew it too, but Mrs. Cooley let me.

I would carry that cup carefully to my spot, sit down with Nancy and take the longest drink I could manage. The water was so cold I swear I could feel it travel all the way down to my toes, cooling me from the inside out. Then I'd drink some more. And some more.

This created another problem. I had to go to the bathroom about every ten minutes.

It's a miracle I ever found out what happened to Nancy at all. I'd read for a while, race to the bathroom, come back and find my place, drink more water, read some more, and before long I'd be making another trip. Mrs. Cooley never seemed bothered by my constant parade back and forth.

I don't know whether she realized what that special cup meant to me. Maybe she simply saw a hot little girl who had walked a long way and needed more than three swallows of water. But when you're a child who has learned not to ask for things, there is something extraordinary about a grown-up noticing what you need before you have to ask.

She gave me the cup, and then she gave me Nancy.

I worked my way through those books one at a time. Finishing each one felt like an accomplishment. I would close the cover and sit there for a moment, still halfway inside whatever mystery Nancy and I had just solved together. Then almost immediately, I'd start wondering about the next one.

On the walk home, I imagined it. At night, I'd lie in bed with the windows open and that old fan pushing hot, rancid air across my skin. The cicadas would scream, the frogs would call, dogs would bark in the distance and something would inevitably rustle through the darkness outside. Instead of thinking about the heat or my empty stomach, I could think about Nancy. What would happen in the next book? Where would she go? What mystery would she solve? What would her father say when she figured it out?

The next morning, there was another adventure waiting five miles away. Until summer ended. I dreaded school for more reasons than one, but now I had another to add to the list. I couldn't go to the public library every day anymore. I would have to wait until Saturday.

Saturday suddenly felt like a very long way away.

Every Saturday I could manage it, I went back. Mrs. Cooley would see me coming and smile. I would get my water in my special cup, settle into my spot and open the next Nancy Drew.

One Saturday, I looked at how many books I still had left to read and got impatient.

"Should I just skip to the last one?" I asked her.

Mrs. Cooley told me no. I needed to read them in order, she explained, because otherwise I would miss watching Nancy's life evolve. With every story, Nancy learned a little more about life and a little more about people.

Then Mrs. Cooley looked at me with that familiar twinkle in her eyes. "And so will you."

I didn't believe her. "No," I told her. "I'm not like her at all. I don't have anyone who thinks I'm smart."

I remember the sadness that came over Mrs. Cooley's face. She reached for something and placed it in my hand. It was a little gold coin. It wasn't real money. I knew that. But it was beautiful, and she had given it specifically to me. There were words on it:

Believe in Yourself, to Believe in Others.

I turned the coin over in my fingers. I didn't really understand what those words meant, but I understood how it felt to have Mrs. Cooley hand them to me. When you've spent much of your childhood learning not to ask for anything, being given something you didn't ask for feels enormous.

For a moment, I felt special. I kept that coin, and I kept going back to the library. Then one Saturday, Mrs. Cooley wasn't behind the desk. Another woman was sitting in her chair. I asked where Mrs. Cooley was, and the woman told me she had passed away.

I was horrified. Mrs. Cooley hadn't looked sick to me. There had been no warning, at least none that a little girl had noticed. I hadn't known the last Saturday was going to be the last Saturday. There would be no more walks together to the water cooler, no special cup waiting for me, no twinkle in her eyes when I came through the door and no soft smell of roses when I stood beside her.

There had been no goodbye.

I grieved Mrs. Cooley for a very long time, and I never went back to finish the Nancy Drew collection. For years, I suppose I thought I had stopped going because Mrs. Cooley died. It took growing up to understand something that little girl couldn't have put into words.

I guess it wasn't only the books I had been walking those five miles for.

It was the woman whose face lit up when I came through the door. It was being remembered. It was having someone know what I liked without having to ask. It was a proper cup of cold water waiting for a thirsty little girl. It was the feeling that someone thought I could learn things and that perhaps I was smart after all.

Life went on, as it does, and Mrs. Cooley turned out to be right about something. I learned a great deal about life and people. I also made plenty of wrong turns. There were times when I didn't feel particularly smart and years when believing in myself was much harder than holding a little gold coin that told me I should.

But I never forgot her.

When I felt especially bad about myself, I would think about Mrs. Cooley and the words she had placed in my hand.

Believe in yourself, to believe in others.

I thought about Mac too. There weren't many adults in those early years who truly saw me, but there were a handful. I didn't understand then how much those few people mattered. They couldn't change where I lived or make the hard things disappear. They couldn't walk the road for me.

They simply gave me something good to carry while I walked it.

Years later, I found myself in youth ministry, sitting in rooms filled with young people who were trying to figure out who they were and where they belonged. Some were confident. Some were hurting. Some were very good at making sure no one knew the difference.

I loved those kids. Somewhere along the way, I began telling them something again and again. "You have to believe in yourself so you can believe in others."

I had carried Mrs. Cooley's words for so long that they had become part of my own language. Then one day, a new student walked into our youth group. Her name was Alisha Cooley. Her last name caught my attention immediately.

"Cooley," I said. "I knew a wonderful Mrs. Cooley once."

Alisha smiled and sat down.

We had several new students that day, so we sat in a circle and did something simple to help everyone get acquainted. Each person shared one thing about themselves. When it was Alisha's turn, she told us she had recently moved, and then she mentioned that she loved reading Nancy Drew.

She was on book number twenty-nine. I smiled and asked how she had learned about Nancy Drew. "My Granny loved them," she said. "She left me a whole set to read."

Her grandmother had passed away.

I told her how special it was that her Granny had left her something she loved so much. Then I told her I had read Nancy Drew as a little girl too. I told her about walking to a library and reading the books there, and I mentioned the wonderful librarian I had told her about earlier.

Mrs. Cooley. Alisha looked at me. "My Granny was a librarian."

I stopped.

"Really? Where?" "East Texas." "Where in East Texas?"

"Huntsville."

For a moment, I wasn't sitting in a youth room anymore.

I was walking beside that highway again, with the East Texas sun beating down on my head. I could feel the heat rising from the pavement and the quick breeze of a car rushing past. I could smell old books and roses. I could hear the hum of the library air conditioner and feel cold water traveling all the way down to my toes.

I could see Mrs. Cooley smiling at me from behind the desk. After class, I went to get something I had carried with me for all those years. The little gold coin.

I showed it to Alisha and told her that her Granny had given it to me when I was a little girl. The words were still there.

Believe in Yourself, to Believe in Others.

Alisha stared at it for a moment. Then she reached into her own pocket and pulled out a coin identical to mine. We looked at each other, amazed.

Of all the things I had imagined while lying in that hot bedroom dreaming about Nancy Drew's next adventure, I could never have imagined this chapter.

Mrs. Cooley had once told me not to skip to the ending because I needed to see how Nancy's life evolved. She said Nancy would learn a little more about life and people with every story, and so would I.

It had taken me years to understand what she meant.

There were things I could not possibly have understood in book number one. I had to live number two and three and twenty-nine. I had to make mistakes and take wrong turns. I had to meet people who hurt me and people who helped me. I had to discover that sometimes the people who change the direction of our lives never get to see where the road eventually takes us.

Mrs. Cooley never got to see the woman I became. She never knew I would one day sit in a circle with young people and repeat the words she had given me. She certainly could not have known that one of those young people would someday be her own granddaughter.

But something she started kept moving.

She believed in a little girl who didn't know how to believe in herself yet. That little girl carried her words through years when they were sometimes easier to hold in her hand than in her heart. Eventually, she began giving those words to other young people. Then one day, all those years later, the road somehow curved all the way around, and I found myself holding that gold coin beside Mrs. Cooley's granddaughter, who was holding one of her own.

I had spent so much of my childhood believing there was never enough. Yet somehow, the things that mattered most had multiplied.

Mac's kindness did not end when two hungry little girls walked out of his store with hot dogs and mustard. Mrs. Cooley's belief did not end when another woman took her chair at the library. The things they gave me traveled with me, quietly becoming part of the way I would someday treat someone else.

Maybe that is how a life moves forward. Not always through giant leaps or perfect decisions, but sometimes five hot miles at a time. One book at a time. One Saturday at a time. One person who feeds you when you're hungry. Another who gives you cold water and lets you break the library rules just enough to carry it to the table. Someone who looks at you differently than you've learned to look at yourself.

Sometimes it is a little gold coin whose meaning you won't fully understand for years. You simply carry the good things people place in your hands until one day you realize they were never meant to stop with you.

So I suppose Mrs. Cooley was right all along. There was no reason to skip to the ending. There were far too many adventures in between.

Until next time…I’ll leave the light on.

PJ Hamilton