From the Novel Call It In the Air
The Blemish
By: Gregory Light - Jun 03, 2026
Sarah's 1936 penny had not aged a day during the intervening quarter-century since she had purchased it. She had not let it. The meaning it held for her was still as clear as it had been on August the twenty-sixth, the day she bought it, brand spanking new, a souvenir of her eleventh wedding anniversary which fell on that day. She had been buying anniversary pennies for eleven years; every year since she and Joe Senior had married. Every year, on the same day in August, she'd go down to Jake Whittaker's News Stand on Main Street in her home in southern Manitoba, and every year on that day Jake would wait for her with three or four examples of his newest pennies.
'I know a whole year has passed when Sarah Edwards comes by,' Jake would say, 'it's like New Year’s Day, ‘cept it's in summer,' and he'd chuckle. But he meant it. To him, the day was an annual event that he marked down in his diary. Ever since the first August in 1926 when this very pretty woman with long dark hair pinned neatly back stepped shyly into his shop.
'I'd like to see your new pennies, please,' she said.
'What year would you be interested in?' he asked her.
'You mean to say that you have new pennies for years that haven't come yet?' she inquired.
'No ma’am. I mean to say I have new pennies for years that have come and gone. Brand new shining pennies back to and including 1920.' Jake was warming up his sales pitch. There wasn't much call for pennies of any year; not wrapped in delicate light brown paper; not in southern Manitoba in 1926.
'Well, I don't see how any penny from before this year could be called new,' Sarah said. 'I'd say they were at the very least a year old anyway.'
'New in so much as they've never been touched,' said Jake, restraining the comparison in his mind with the timid, young lady, innocent as a new blade of grass, standing before him. But his eyes and smile revealed the thought to Sarah.
'Just one of this year’s new pennies, please,' she said uncomfortably, shifting her eyes away from Jake. 'That's all I'll be needing.' Immediately her cheeks flushed.
Jake didn't pursue the imagery. 'One moment.' He ducked into the comfort of his backroom, happy to find another customer when he returned with a few samples of the year's "mint condition" pennies.
Sarah took the pennies to one side of the shop, near a small window where the sun was spilling in. She quietly examined them and about fifteen minutes later approached Mr. Whittaker. She handed him back the pennies.
'Do you have any others? These are not quite right.'
'They're all the same,' he replied. 'Your average 1926 Canadian penny with George the Fifth on one side and a Maple Leaf on the other.' Sarah didn't respond or couldn't for a moment. 'Well, I guess you know what you want,' Jake finally said and disappeared once again, re-emerging a second later with another example, 'it's the last one in mint condition I have left.'
Sarah took it without hesitation. She slipped it into her bag, paid with two older, lustreless pennies, and left.
From that year forward, every August 26th, she and Jake went through a similar ritual. He would have several freshly minted and carefully wrapped one-penny coins ready for her to inspect. She would take them to one side and inspect them for what seemed like ages and then return to enquire if he had any others. As always, she would claim that none of the ones he'd let her examine were just right. And, as always, Jake would say that he wasn't sure if he had any others but would have a look in the back room. Then he'd slip out and pick up another mint-perfect penny. Returning, he would hand it to her and say, 'You're in luck again this year, Sarah. I had one more left in there. Here it is, shiny as the morning sun on Goose Lake. You won't find a better one in the entire province.' He always said the same thing.
'She might be a bit strange in this matter,' he'd tell some of his other customers, 'but she's about the most regular customer I have.' And so, late in the evening on every 25th of August for the past ten years, he had specially placed a newly issued penny on the top shelf in his backroom for Sarah. He knew that she would spend half an hour or so with the others and then ask him if there were any more. It was easier to indulge her in this request than to argue. Besides, he had come to respect and enjoy the ritual.
Sarah knew perfectly well that Jake had put a penny aside for her. And she knew perfectly well that the penny he eventually brought out and the one she eventually bought was no shinier, no more exquisite, and no different than the others she had spent the last half hour examining. But, if the penny was important to her—a very special, personal, and untarnished symbol of her marriage—the time she spent choosing it was just as important; and she retained the half-hour by the window for prayer, barely looking at the pennies in her hand. She asked God for the strength and love to keep her marriage as unblemished as the penny she was about to buy.
For the 1936 penny, her prayer had been tearful. Even Jake noticed the damp edges of the paper surrounding the pennies when she returned them. He didn't say anything. He knew both she and her husband Joe and was aware of their circumstances. The previous year had been particularly hard. It was the depression and difficult for just about everyone, but the incomprehensible cruelty of Spring had been more than harsh on Joe and Sarah. It had taken the life of their daughter, Elizabeth. She was the youngest of their children and only a few weeks earlier, celebrating her second birthday, she had seemed in fine health. Then suddenly—neither Doctor Massey from the town nor the specialist in Winnipeg was able to diagnose the exact cause—she was dying. Nothing could be done. Out of work for practically the whole of the last six months, Joe blamed his daughter's death on himself. As if the link between his joblessness and her illness was inexorable. Since the funeral, the frustration and desperate feelings of powerlessness he experienced while she was dying had swelled and deepened. They had kindled a deep silence within him that drenched Sarah's life. Body and soul. This year she barely glanced at Jake as he handed her the penny.
'I don't have any money today, Jake,' she said, 'would it be all right if I paid you—'
'Next year is soon enough for me,' he replied. 'No use in spoiling people’s habits. I'll see you next August.'
'God bless you, Jake.'
'Aren't you even going to look at it, Sarah? Could be a fake.' He smiled as she turned towards the door.
'No, I trust you. It would be a silly thing not to after ten years.' Sarah quickly stepped out the open shop door and into the street. It wasn't until she was out in the hot prairie sun, her own August day spilling around her, that she took a few seconds to inspect the penny. What she saw made her stop still, a short inaudible gasp filling her lungs with warm air. There was a small imperfection under the date. A small unexplained dot. She flicked at it gently with her fingernail, but it remained.
Sarah's body had already half-turned back towards Jake Whittaker's shop, but she stopped. She didn't dare take any steps. She couldn't face him again. After all, she hadn't even paid for the coin. To ask to exchange it was impossible. Somehow, she thought, God had wanted her to choose this penny. It was meant to be. If the dot was a blemish and if that meant a blemish on her life with Joe, then there was nothing she could do to remove it. It occurred to her that all the pennies may have had this dot, but she couldn't remember it on any of the others. Secretly, she hoped it might be a good sign.
Two days after Jake had given her the penny, Sarah came home from shopping for bits and pieces and found Joe sitting at the kitchen table, his body shaking helplessly. He was crying. He sat there bent over, his large frame trembling with uncontrollable sobs. She leaned down and touched him. When he turned around to her, she saw the moist eyes and the wet cheeks. She had not known his face like this; damp and soft. He hugged her, his large arms swallowing her tightly. Her own body shook with his in a way she had never experienced before.
That evening they talked. They spoke together for what struck Sarah as the very first time. Joe had never been much of a talker. He was a quiet man who had lived his whole life in the prairies. He knew very little else and had little interest in what words brought in from the outside. Even at their wedding, he had only managed a few sentences. They had been kind and well-intended but always insufficient and emotionally limited. Now a wondrous crop of sounds made their way out; often just an emotion with no meaningful word attached to it. He talked about his family, about little Elizabeth, about their sons, William and Frederick, about Sarah, about his parents. He gulped at his life, turning its syllables in his mouth, eventually finding an imperfect understanding in his words, and a stillness. Listening and talking and sobbing with him, holding him as dawn arrived, Sarah clutched tightly onto the penny still in the pocket of her dress, unaware that she did so.
It was the last time she was to see Joe weep. She knows he did so again, at least once, but she hadn't been with him. He wrote about the incident in a letter he had sent to her from occupied Germany just after their surrender ended the Second World War.
I don't know how to say what I seen here, Sarah. Long ago she had memorized the letter. Every word, knowing full well that there was so much more he hadn't been able to communicate because much of his vocabulary didn't have a written form. I can tell you it brought back our Elizabeth to me and that doctor fellow from Winnipeg saying he didn't know why. Because I don't know why, Sarah, and nobody I asks, no one knows why. Everything here, all the people have just been mashed up so bad, like they was burned and rotting for so long you can't distinguish the one from the other. Not even a child from a man. The other day I was crying again like I was with you that day. I wished I was with you. So, help me God, Sarah, I wish I was with you. I don't ever want to see anything like the pain of this place again. Those few lines she kept as her private witness to events that terrified her.
When she read the letter a second time, Sarah purposely dug out her spotted 1936 penny for comfort. Holding it against her cheek, she wept for Joe and for what he had seen; for what had caused his body to tremble and crumble again. She prayed but refused to ask why. She doubted an answer was possible. She was simply grateful for Joe’s life. His tears were a bonus – a kind of hope for change. And there was change. A change she could live with.
In 1950 Sarah pulled out her penny again: it was November, after Joe had died. Unlike Elizabeth, his death had been sudden. He had been watching a hockey game in the town arena, an event he liked to attend every Saturday night. In the third period, he had quietly slumped forward and was dead. Of a heart attack. He was still relatively young. Sarah had only collected twenty-five pennies. She brought out the eleventh of these pennies for the funeral and held it tightly between her fingers, deep in the darkness of her coat pocket. Later she held it to her breast, her hand shaking while the coffin was being lowered into the grave. She almost flung it in with the first shovels of dirt but held back when she noticed the pregnant belly of her daughter-in-law on the other side of the open grave. Quietly she slipped the penny back into her pocket.
Later that winter when Joey was born, she decided to give him the penny for his eleventh birthday. Maybe it was overly symbolic—to give him her eleventh-anniversary penny on his eleventh birthday—but it aroused something in her. Inheritance. But more a notion than a thought. She hoped that she would be passing on something special she had shared with his grandfather. She wrapped it in the same paper it was wrapped in when she first bought it at Jake Whittaker's. Surprisingly, she found it very easy to let the penny go, experiencing a kind of quiet elation when she handed it to Joey.
Sensing Joey's disappointment, his parents attempted to whip up some enthusiasm for beginning a penny collection. Gramma's gift was the perfect start, they insisted. 'And we'll buy you the books to put the coins in tomorrow.' But Joey was not interested in any more books. He already had Probability Made Simple and that was more than enough.
'Can I try out my new bike?' he asked.
'After dinner,' said his mother.
Before he could complain, the telephone rang. It was Gary. He wanted to know what Joey got for his birthday.
'A new three-speed. Now, I bet I can beat you anytime.'
'We'll just see,' Gary said. 'So, what did you get from your grandmother and uncle?'
'Oh, just things. I'll tell you when I ride over after dinner to see you. I got to go now. Bye.' He hung up.
Later he did ride over to Gary’s, but he didn’t mention the penny or the math book. They were both "fred" presents. He wanted to forget about them both as fast as possible.
Uncle Frederick, however, was not about to let his chance to instil some knowledge in Joey pass by. 'You know, you can always toss your penny in the air,' he told Joey the minute he returned from Gary's. 'See which way it comes up.'
'Big deal,' Joey said. He didn't see much excitement in that. 'That's a real fred thing to do.'
"Pardon?" said Frederick.
'Nothing.'
'There's a one in two chance that you'll toss a head.'
'How do you know? I could flip it twice and get two heads. I've done that before. Everybody's done that.'
'Yes, but if you flipped it a large number of times, half would turn up heads and half would turn up tails,' said Uncle Frederick, picking up Probability Made Simple. 'Read the book.'
'I don't have to,' Joey shouted and stomped off. But later that night when he got into bed, he opened the book, and that's when he read that the occurrence of a head or a tail is called an "event". Furthermore, if one flipped a coin long enough, then half the time it would turn up heads and the other half, tails. But it had to be a large sample. Many, many times. Joey was astounded. It didn't make any sense. It sounded like so much ‘adult talk’ to him. He figured, then and there, that flipping the penny a million times was enough to show once and for all that Fred and his dumb book were wrong.
He picked up the sparkling penny Sarah had given him and whispered a short prayer. 'Thanks, God, for getting Gramma to give me this penny for my birthday.' Then he flipped it into the air eleven times; eleven because of his new age. Seven tails and four heads. Just as he expected. He smiled. It was a good start. Then he thanked Sarah. Just like last year, she had known the exact right present to give him.