I don't know why there aren't any mosquitos. It is hot and it is dusk in Nebraska. The electric pot is sitting empty on the picnic table in the rest area. We ate all the dirty rice. I love dirty rice. Maybe it's the grease from the ground beef and linquisa.

You and I sit on the seat and turn our back on the table itself, the rest-area-art rises up behind us and past that is a little bridge that divides us from the main buildings. Tip noses the outskirts and then comes back to lie down in front of us. He looks over his gray and black shoulder and catches my eye. He holds the contact.
Tip is the only dog I have the experience of watching beauty register in his face.

The first time I saw Tip he was humping another dog at the pound. When I brought him home he bit my son two times. Tip is a dog with three badly healed broken ribs. Right away I started taking him places. He'd lie down on the grass in the Skyway park. His head was high watching the leaves blow, the grass ripple. He would shift his sight to take in everything. Then Tip would look with a sparkle directly at me before he'd look back.
Now, in Nebraska Tip lies on the grass in front of us and looks over his shoulder with his eyes sparkling. We are headed west. Sitting like this we face north. It is getting so dim our faces are shadowed. You and I don't say much. The quiet is welcome. We look out at where the grass ends and row upon row of corn picks up. The corn not only picks up but it travels in a steady wave as far as I can see.
Half an hour ago the black birds were dancing. Now, with the dark, they settle. I think everything is going to settle. I am wrong.

A tiny yellow flash of lightning bugs. They start here and there. They start close to the ground. They pick up the tempo. As you and I watch they twinkle higher on the corn stalks. Pretty soon they are above the corn. They enter the air. You and I look at each other. We look forward again. Millions of lightning bugs. We have never seen so many ever as they rise through the corn, rising into the air and thinning up to sky.

I want to hold on to this. I want to die with this in my eyes. This, the whole arch and roll of earth twinkling and sparkling as far as I can see.