With apologies to Tim O'Brien:

The Things She Carries

Anna carries the clothes on her back, plus one change of dress and two of linen. She carries letters from her brother and her Great-Aunt Sophia, raked into her satchel at the last minute as she prepared to flee. In a little purse she carries coin, Spanish and English, for bribes and tips and better food and beds en route. She carries the horror of having killed a man, accident or no, and the memory of his ruined dead face. And though she won’t realize it for a few days yet, she carries a child, conceived under the stars four weeks ago.

Susan, that's gorgeous, especially those last two sentences.

One fix: "She carries a letters" Plural? Singular?

Good catch, Deb. It changed from a letter to letters mid-thought, so that slipped in.

Oh, so love the Tim O'Brien tribute. I teach that book, and it never fails to make me cry.

There's an excerpt of it in a writing book on my shelves. I've always loved it, and it's in the "show, don't tell" section, so it seemed appropriate.

I'll have to do one for Jack, too. It'll be both easier and harder, since a straight listing of all the gear he's schlepping around Spain would consume over 100 words by itself.

My little drabble is feeling unloved. t /whiny pouty needy writer

It's funny isn't it? The one I slave over, people are "Eh." But something I toss up out of boredom or delirum and people just don't get enough Your secret agent tries to be prepared for everything, Connie. I have no idea what to write.

(blinking)

(going back to look)

connie, yours came up last before a flurry of posts, and I didn't even see it.

I like that. Having met the young woman in question, it sketches her out quite nicely, thanks.

Happy whiny needy pouting writer, now.

She leaned against the sink, scrabbling in her purse for the pill bottle at the bottom. She poured the contents into her hand and picked through the multicolored pile, choosing a red-and-white capsule and two white pills, one oblong and one round, and washing them down by tipping back the bottle of Maalox. She rearranged the purse's contents to try to get the bottles back in, shifting the Kleenex package, Swiss Army knife, glasses case, Jennifer Crusie novel, cell phone, pens, bottle opener and notebook, plus the folded-up printout with the information for the EMTs and the emergency contact numbers.