She puffed heavily with every step up to another branch. She moved slowly, determined to reach the top. Sweat chafed between her chubby thighs. Maybe, if she actually got to the top of the tree, they'd let her play with them instead of just tag along.

As she reached for the next branch, she heard Bud and Jasper talking.

"You going to let her play Statues with us if she makes it up?"

Concentrating on her next step, she felt the hard shock of a shoe against her shoulder. She started falling as Jasper's laughter rang out.

"When pigs fly!"

Still waters run deep

Sardonic, capable Joe was a good boyfriend for a girl just figuring out the whole male-female thing. No expectations, simple pleasure in exploring the basic variants, no significant emotional engagement.

A late night TV movie with a father raging against his son's death in Vietnam. Suddenly Joe is crying in my arms, talking about helping to tip choppers off carrier decks, about friends who came back in pieces or not at all.

Suddenly I understand how a woman brings comfort to a man.

Ailleann, Sail, and connie, you all sent me reeling in different directions, first thing in the morning.

Wrod.

Aileann, Sail, connie, those were amazingly powerful, as Cindy said, in different directions.

Sail, yours especially hit home.

Susan, I like your drabbling through your rocky bit, too.

I hadn't thought about Joe's mini-breakdown in years, then there was a brief newsclip about Nam and they showed the footage of the helicopters being shoved off the carrier decks as they were evacuating Saigon. I thought, "Joe was there," and it all came back.

Susan, I like your drabbling through your rocky bit, too.

Thanks! It's a tricky set of scenes, because while Jack and Anna are running on something close to pure adrenaline (and are in enough danger that they don't have time to pause for reflection), it's too long and too fraught with story significance for me to write it as sheer action. The trick is to weave in the brain/heart/gut stuff without slowing the pacing.

This is a great topic, Teppy--very fertile for excellent drabbling.

connie, these days, whenever I see someone else getting bit in the ass by an unexpected memory, I twing in empathy.

I still need to get started...

It's a pretty good memory, all told. That night kicked me partway out of my ignorance and isolation. People I knew could be affected by big things, it wasn't just something that happened on TV.