Strong Women and the Men Who Love Them

By Pete Able

Escape into this collection of short stories of various genres where women bring mystery, adventure, peril, and wisdom to the worlds of men who love them.

Lumasi - a young boy learns the delicate art of fly fishing and other life lessons from a mysterious girl in the Colorado Rockies.
Life in the Long Run - a woman must defend her farm and her honor against a greedy railroad baron in 19th Century Missouri.
Free Derry - a brother watches his sister join, then lead an Irish rebellion that culminates in Bloody Sunday.
One Night in Paris - a girl agrees to give a one night tour of Paris to a seemingly lonely man, but things get complicated.

These and other stories echo that strange, wonderful music of love lost and love found.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pete Able
• Release date: Sep 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310218019

Pete Able

Pete lives in Woodway, TX with his wife, Melissa, daughters Joanna and Lila, his feisty German mother-in-law, and his “breath of death” dog, Higgins. Strong Women and the Men Who Love Them is his first short story collection. He writes screenplays in addition to short stories, many which had advanced in major competitions such as PAGE, Scriptapalooza, Austin Film Festival, New York Television festival, among others.

Book preview

Strong Women

And The Men Who Love Them

Short Stories by: Pete Able

Copyright 2014 Pete Able

Smashwords Edition

Table of Contents

Introduction

Lumasi

The Transfer

One Night in Paris

Voodoo Daddies

Madclaw and Hally

Lance Has Some ‘Splainin’ To Do

Life in the Long Run

Summer Memory

Free Derry

Daughters Be Warned

A Beautiful Creature

Jack Be Nimble

A Brotherhood of Martyrs

Author Bio

For M, J, and L.

The strong women in my life.

Introduction

I suppose it takes a certain kind of over-confidence to title your collection Strong Women, when you are, in fact, a man. How do I know what qualities compose a strong woman? Who am I to make such a declaration? Aren’t there plenty of strong, independent female biographies such that we don’t need another handful of fictional representations? Fair enough.

I admit. I don’t know the answers to these questions. In truth, many of these stories feature the perspective of a man. Write what you know, they say. I simply wrote stories my daughters could someday read and appreciate, not because their father wrote them, but because they can escape into these small, encapsulated realms where a woman plays an integral role, even the integral role. Because they make them feel alive, connected, capable conquerors of challenges our not-so-subtle masculine world presents.

To you, the grown daughters and sons of the earth, I hope you hear the strange, wonderful music of love within these stories, of love lost and love found. And with it, I hope you win the hearts of all God’s creatures.

Many of the stories herein were first published in the online literary journal Bohemia. Some stories have been altered to better fit the collection. You can find out more about Bohemia’s guidelines at www.bohemia-journal.com.

Lumasi

Thaw comes like a sunrise. At first imperceptible, the dark branches of a few spruce and pine trees peek out from underneath their frigid, cotton-white quilts, much as the sun’s first rays are only known by a subtle lightening of the sky’s black canvas. Stare and it will stay night forever. Look away for but a moment, and when your curious eyes return God’s finger has drawn a pink line across the horizon.

The mountains, frozen and majestic, let loose their waterfall tears upon the white meadows below, and the fishermen know the capillary creeks that carve through this region will be singing again soon. Ages before, when the great glaciers slithered down Forest Canyon, they bullied the landscape, scraping trees clean, spreading out and finally melting, leaving behind thousands of tons of debris to fill the valley floor.

Moraine Park, its vast expanse ringed by mountain ridges and peppered with gigantic boulders, carved in two by the Big Thompson river - itself fed by streams and lakes hidden for months underneath winter’s blanket - comes alive with the crackling ice and the steady whistling of a brave angler’s fly rod tracing the air between ten and two o’clock positions.

Most trout in Moraine Park rarely exceed 14 inches, but given that their home for six months of the year lies in 34 degree water, insulated as it were by the ice above and below, we can forgive them the meager growth spurt. All varieties thrive; Rainbow, brown, brookies and cutthroats, each with their own color-scheme and temperament, each with appetites fluctuating as rapidly as the weather on summer afternoons, when thundershowers routinely surprise the hundred or so campers vacationing there each day.

The trick of course is finding the right fly, the right bait, at the right time and in the right location. To those who know these waters, this combination remains elusive but obtainable. To strangers, it can be downright impossible, and many without proper patience, without the sustainable love that drives a man or woman to obsession, leave the park with broken spirits.

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Colton sloshed into the Big Thompson. For the first time in his nine years on the planet, he sensed a stoppage of time, a primordial response to the rush and dull roar of the frosty stream and the elusive creatures that made it home. Despite his youthful passions, or possibly because of them, he hesitated, allowing awe to take hold. His father treated the river with reverence, but practice casts in the meadow could not replicate the wonder of waters.

Farther upstream he glimpsed his father’s rod disappearing behind a large family of chokecherry bushes at the stream’s edge. Finally, he could practice in peace, an art form that could ever and only be crafted to catch fish from the heart of the mountains.

All other pursuits are vain, his father warned. Colton agreed, but he was too young to know why, and he had not yet mastered the calmness of spirit required to draw heavenly pleasures from such an earthly, unorthodox motion. He had much to learn.

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The girl surprised him.

Ahead, her body divided by the low-hanging branches of a maple tree, she sat on a trapezoidal boulder jutting out over a wide face of the river. He saw her reflection first, or rather the rippling shadow image of one long arm swaying back and forth in perfect rhythm before resting on the surface.

Straight lines, he heard his father say countless times. You are point A. The fish are point B. The quickest way to the fish is through a straight line. He could still hear his father’s voice, feel his rough hands take hold of his forearm, guiding it with firm, sure strokes. The girl’s rod bent forward, and to his amazement she promptly pulled in a good-sized trout.

He splashed his way to her, the river pushing him along, pounding against his thin frame in the over-sized waders. Suddenly self-conscious, he pulled up short as she unhooked the healthy trout from the fly line. She was squatting now, not sitting, wearing blue jeans and a cream colored, buttoned shirt with a curved collar, un-tucked. Her light brown hair dangled near the crease in her pants at her waist, the tips disappearing behind the fabric. She turned to face him, fish in hand, and her steady, hazel eyes with the soft batch of freckles on her nose sent his pulse racing.

He raised his left hand shyly. She set the fish loose and it vanished beneath the quick flowing torrent, likely headed for less troubled waters, at least for the day.

What’d you do that for? he asked.

I let them all go.

Why?

I just like to catch ‘em. I don’t want to keep ‘em.

He noticed for the first time she did not have a satchel.

That was a real beaut. A brookie I’ll bet.

Rainbow.

That ain’t no rainbow trout.

Yes it was.

No, it wasn’t. My dad showed me pictures.

Pictures can’t tell a damn thing.

Her curse unnerved him.

Well, it looked like a brookie to me.

You’re just a kid, and you don’t know a damned thing, either.

She slid down the boulder and stood to her full height. He noted with displeasure she was taller than him by a good three inches. It unnerved him even more. Still, the gall calling him a kid.

You ain’t any older than me, I’ll bet.

I’m ten. How old’er you?

Ten, he lied. Colton had no idea what compelled him to add one year other than he did not want to get beat by a girl at anything, including an age war.

You don’t look ten, she replied, miffed. What’s your name?

Colton.

Well Colton, I can tell you’re not from around here. I suppose you’re camping?

We drove up from Texas yesterday. We’re here a week.

The girl nodded imperceptibly.

You can have this spot. I’ll move downstream a’ways.

She turned, rested the rod on her shoulder, and seemed to glide over the surface of the water like some nymph spirit straight out of a fairy tale. The sun broke from behind a strand of clouds and turned the river to diamonds, while the brightest jewel receded beyond a clump of wild rose bushes. Colton swallowed hard and gathered his wits.

Hey! What’s your name?

Lumasi! she yelled.

Lumasi? What kinda name is Lumasi?

But she was gone.

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Pretty sure that was a brookie yesterday.

Colton wiped sweat from his brow. His work on the new clinch knot Lumasi had demonstrated was painstakingly slow. She had readied her dry mayfly with a few strands of her incredible hair. In that same amount of time he managed to complete his second loop and secure a decent hold of the line without having it all unravel in his Neanderthal fingers. The sun was setting, and the mountain air