My genius brother sat down and dreamed up 170 titles for novels he might write, every one intriguing. I took one of his titles and wrote a short story. Take heart- it’s a REALLY short, short story. The title I chose was THE TRIP WIRE.<\/p>\n
THE TRIP WIRE<\/p>\n
I never really knew my Dad.\u00a0By the time\u00a0I was three he was gone.<\/p>\n
\u00a0My mother passed away twenty years ago. A few times after it happened she would gather us kids together and show us the wire.<\/p>\n
\u00a0SUE<\/p>\n
I WANT TO GO UP THERE AGAIN\u00a0\u00a0 STOP\u00a0 \u00a0TELL THE KIDS I\u2019LL BE BACK BY THE WEEKEND\u00a0\u00a0 STOP<\/p>\n
\u00a0I LOVE YOU, SAM\u00a0 \u00a0STOP<\/p>\n
\u00a0My father was an adventurer- what now they call a survivalist. He was an ex – marine, and tough. He loved the deep woods, the silence, the self-reliance. He even loved that these wilderness valleys might present some danger, for lesser men. He left in early November. They found him in the Spring.<\/p>\n
Sam got deep into the mountains of West Virginia, where no human had been but a few\u00a0Shawnee and the odd\u00a0hillbilly jacking deer. He\u2019d camped three days in lean-tos he hacked out of dry-leaved saplings. Out here there was nothing but the wind in the trees and the bird calls, he was free. He thought about Sue, of course, and the kids, how they all depended on him. He even thought about giving it up\u2015what if something should happen?<\/p>\n
\u00a0But it wouldn\u2019t. He had his skills, his knife, and the instincts he\u2019d acquired in that truly risky business- war. After combat, if you were good, you just knew<\/span>. Which was what was bothering him now. He had this creepy feeling, this\u00a0thought that wouldn\u2019t go away, that he was not alone.<\/p>\n \u00a0He looked down, just for an instant,\u00a0and his boot caught the wire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My genius brother sat down and dreamed up 170 titles for novels he might write, every one intriguing. I took one of his titles and wrote a short story. Take heart- it’s a REALLY short, short story. The title I chose was THE TRIP WIRE. THE TRIP WIRE I never really knew my Dad.\u00a0By the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chuckpaine.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chuckpaine.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chuckpaine.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chuckpaine.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chuckpaine.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1530"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.chuckpaine.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1532,"href":"https:\/\/www.chuckpaine.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1530\/revisions\/1532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chuckpaine.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chuckpaine.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chuckpaine.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}