The lucky coffin

It begins as a joke, or so the narrator insists: a plain pine coffin arrives in a small town, and its elderly owner unexpectedly recovers from a supposedly incurable illness. When the coffin is sold to another desperately ill resident, the same astonishing thing happens again. Soon the townspeople are whispering about a “lucky” coffin, while its owners discover that a mysterious object can be worth far more than wood and nails.

Watching these events unfold is the narrator, a bank clerk with urgent reasons to hope for a fortune from his ailing Uncle Sim. Practical enough to understand money and temptation, yet close enough to the strange happenings to feel their unsettling power, he finds himself caught between skepticism and belief. As the coffin changes hands and the town’s curiosity grows, his personal troubles—and a visit to his longtime sweetheart, Meg—draw him deeper into a mystery where good health may have a price.