James Sallis - Salt River

"Good seat for the show," she said.

"Best in the house."

So here we are. The air is charged, electric. I think back to Lonnie's plane, that moment just before the ground lets go. That's what it feels like.

Takeoffs. Landings. And the lives that happen in between.

"Thought I might stick around a while, if that's all right," J. T. says.

"Probably ought to be my line." We both laugh. "Though from the look of things…"

"Who knows. Could be I'll spot my first airborne cow."

"There you go, Miss City Dweller. Having your fun at the poor rural folks' expense."

Cabbages and kings don't come into it, as I recall, but, sitting there on the bench, we touch on close to everything else: J. T.'s childhood, my old partner on the MPD and my prison time, genealogy, where the country is headed politically, a novel she'd recently read about smalltown life, the day Kennedy died, beer for breakfast back in Nam, third-strike offenders, Val.

Then we sit quietly, for an hour, maybe more, as black thunderheads roll in. Initially we see the jags of lightning and hear the muffled rumbling only through the dark screen of clouds. Then it breaks through. The rain, when it comes, is sweet and stinging.

A heavy metal trash can rolls down the street, driven by wind. "City tumbleweed," J. T. says, and when I look at her there are tears in her eyes. I reach and touch her face, gently.

"I'm not crying because I'm sad," my daughter says. "I'm crying because we're here, together, watching this, I'm crying because of friends like Doc Oldham, because I have had the chance to get to know you. I am crying because the world is so beautiful."

As should we all.