The Unstruck Coin: A Parable of Selling, Surrender, and Starting Over

Austin, 1994. Gold has been dead flat for a decade and Frankie Trahan is selling it out of a phone book on straight commission, three months behind on her rent, in a business that has never once been glad to see her. On the floorboard of her truck is a coffee can of her pawpaw's silver dollars - the only thing her family ever trusted. She has been driving around with it for sixteen days trying to decide whether to spend a dead man to keep an apartment she does not even like. The old dealer on Burnet Road will not buy it. He offers her something else instead, on terms she does not understand and cannot afford to refuse. One coin at a time. Thirty days apiece. Read out loud, morning and night, before the next one. There are nine of them, and he does not explain a single thing about them. A story about selling, and about everything selling puts a person up against - humility, patience, telling the truth about yourself, and what you can still answer for on Monday morning.