Let Us Remember Lora May Harry
Twitter Fiction Festival Flash Fiction #4. Epitaph by @karasw and @michelledaug. Fiction by Jennifer Wilson.
Lora May Harry was a teacher, a writer, a lover of books; tho sadly not fast enough to outrun evil crooks.—@michelledaug
They called her the lady in gray.
She swished to the country school every morning, wire-rimmed glasses on the tip of her sharp nose: she was a reader in a town of farmers. An air of class followed her everywhere. Unfortunately, no air of warmth or welcome, and she was alone when she returned from the schoolhouse to start her small warming fire to eat her supper of bread and cheese, maybe some tea on the weekends or a particularly cold day. But tea was rich, and a spinster was not.
Her buttons were so shiny, and her gray flannel dress pressed and tidy. Her grandmother willed the house to her, forseeing her smart little favorite lonely and poor. Because the young ones didn’t remember that, she’d gotten a reputation for being well-to-do.
When the men knocked, she answered.
They found nothing but a bookish woman and her tea. They took one and dumped the other in the Raccoon River. Those who remembered her teaching mourned. But mostly, people don’t remember much.
Still, on cold nights, when the bums build their trash can fires under the bridge, some say they still see Lora May in gray, tall like a post near the warming fire, a dainty flowered cup full of river water in her hand.
Join me @WriterJenWilson Sunday Dec. 2 at 12pm-1pm EST (11 CST) and you’ll be featured on the Twitter Fiction Festival Page– four grave images per hour and you tweet the epitaphs. Use the #TwitterFiction hashtag. Let’s make stories together … and tweet the dead.
