In Memory
Miss Janey May was a small woman, frail and slightly hunched over, like each year of her life had added invisible weights to her back. Her long, gray hair was always pinned up in a delicate clip made of silver and etched with filigree. The wrinkles and lines around her eyes and mouth told every stranger that she had a past and had been more than this fragile-looking woman she was now. Having lost her husband years ago and her five children all grown and mostly spread across the country, she lived alone in Wachapregue, a small Virginia town, populated by fewer than three hundred.
Wachapregue was the type of town where everyone knew everyone else, and they knew their own family, as well as everyone else’s back at least six generations. Days were routine, where Monday or Thursday was hardly distinguishable unless it was Sunday. In which case, the town was all piled into the one church, leaving every other building empty from the sheriff’s station to the diner.
Trip’s Diner was owned by Gregory James Hewett III, or, as everyone called him, Trip. His nickname, Trip would tell newcomers and strangers, was a clever one, adapted from the three lines at the end of his name. Hewett, and all but a handful of town residents, were that clever. In fact, Hewett’s classmates started calling him Trip during elementary school. Each recess, he would run out to the playground ahead of everyone. There was a section of the sidewalk that was awfully uneven. An oak tree’s roots had crept under and pushed up one of the large concrete squares. In Hewett’s excitement, he paid no attention and proceeded to fall flat on his face. This happened so much during his first time through kindergarten that, not only did his classmates start calling him Trip, but the town council embarrassed, had to call in a contractor from a neighboring town to redo the entire sidewalk.
Trip’s eldest daughter, Susan, began working at her father’s diner as a waitress when she was fifteen. During her five years of waitressing, she had only dropped trays two different times. The first tray Susan ever dropped was on her first day of work. Miss Janey May had taken a seat at her usual morning table, tucked away in the back corner near the window. As Susan passed Miss Janey May, arms full with a tray that could have almost outweighed her, Susan watched the old woman snap open her handbag and pull out a handkerchief. Instantly, the loud clatter of porcelain shattering on wood floors interrupted the early morning chatter.
Miss Janey May’s handbag was a deep navy clutch with a silver clasp etched with filigree, much like her hair clip. The bag was worn and the stitching had begun to fray near the bottom, but Miss Janey May carried it every day. She brought her bag into the diner, to her friends’ homes, to the annual elementary school play, to church every Sunday morning, and to Bingo night, which was every other Tuesday of the month, and held in the church basement. It was only in her own home, people who visited would report, that Miss Janey May didn’t keep her bag clutched tight in her hands.
When Miss Janey May’s husband, Stephen passed, his will specifically divided his money between his five sons. The last line, however, read:
All my assets in my bedroom closet go to my wife, Janey May, except my gun, which goes to my oldest son, Richard, ‘cause he asked.
Almost the second the lawyer finished the sentence, each son, except Richard, stood up as a group, raged. They shouted and argued and protested. The lawyer slowly opened the lockbox set in front of him on his desk, carefully removed the gun, and handed it to Richard. The cool feel of the barrel hardly registered to Richard before he took one look at his mother, and solemnly handed her the Colt.
All of Wachapregue knew the story, and they all knew just exactly what Miss Janey May kept tucked away in the navy handbag.
The only other morning Susan dropped her trays of coffee mugs and plates, happened to be the same morning Miss Janey May didn’t come into the diner. Every weekday, Miss Janey May would come in for her usual order of grits, apple jelly on wheat toast, and orange juice, which was always accompanied by her obligatory handful of pills and vitamins. By noon, everyone in town knew Miss Janey May had not had her diner breakfast, had not gone to get her mail or newspaper, and certainly had not been out in her front garden.
Sometime after supper and after the dogs had all been fed, Sheriff York and Doctor Collins headed over to Miss Janey May’s home. Wachapregue was, by no means, the type of place where locking a door was necessary; however, out of habit after she began living alone, Miss Janey May locked her front door every evening. Being that the town was so small though, the sheriff and the doctor, as well as the five year old boy next door could tell anyone that Miss Janey May kept a spare key tucked under the flower pot on her porch railing.
Sheriff York opened the door, calling out to the woman that he and the doc were coming to check on her. Slowly, they made their way to the back of the house toward her bedroom. Neither man was surprised by what he saw. Sheriff York nodded knowingly and muttered something about finding the phone book to call her boys. Doctor Collins said nothing, but headed toward the bed where Miss Janey May lay. Her skin was paler than usual, almost gray, and she looked incredibly calm. Her long hair wasn’t pulled up in a clip, but instead draped over her shoulders. Her nightgown, modest and aged, just as she was, was a pale pink but seemed so vibrant against her skin and the white sheets of the bed. The doctor felt no real need to do so, but knowing the answer, reached his hand toward her neck in search of a pulse. With a sigh, he shook his head, and carefully moved his hands toward hers. He peeled the ribbed handle of the old Colt from her hands, his thumb resting over the engraved horse near the trigger. Maybe it was slightly disrespectful, but curiosity got the better of him. With a click, he opened the gun, and nodded his head evenly seeing that it was empty.
