Oisín wouldn’t have thought so, but yes, there was a photo of a fat rattlesnake taken right there in the shade of the tree. So many photos of couples, families, everyone exuberant, as if overcome with delight to have come across such a strange and unexpected thing.

Oisín looked up, the jars of rain turning slightly amid all the jumbling of the children, the light passing through the water to paint the tangled branches in pale blue and green.

“Another one!”

The mushroom boy gave Rebecca a second set of photos; he’d found it in a wooden birdhouse hung from a high bough. She placed her first stack back in its plastic and they gorged on the second. It was much the same as the first, except the photos were older. These were faded, water-damaged, but the faces had the same expressions of—was it relief?

The faces all seemed relieved to find the world as good as they’d hoped.

Rebecca paused on a photo of a bald woman and her bald daughter, both grinning, eyes bright.

Oisín knew what it likely meant, that the daughter, no more than fifteen, had lost her hair to cancer and the mother had shaved her head in solidarity, that they’d come to the Museum of Rain on purpose or by accident. Oh Jesus, Oisín thought. He didn’t want to explain it to Rebecca, not now. But her eyes lingered longer on the mother and daughter, and he was sure she knew.

The sun was letting go. To get back before dark they’d have to hurry. Oisín had the kids pack the photos into the plastic bags and return them to the birdhouse and the hollow of the tree. After that there was a complicated process of figuring out whose walking stick was whose, but eventually they all emerged from the tree and into the air and light of the dimming valley.

“Aren’t we going to take a picture?” Rebecca asked, and everyone laughed. They’d almost forgotten.

Oisín arranged the children in front of the manzanita and took two pictures, the disposable camera clicking weakly each time.

“Don’t you want to be in one?” Rebecca asked. Oisín’s impulse was to say No, no, no. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had taken a picture of him. Years. Five, ten. There was never an occasion, never a reason.

But now, here and with these children, this was different.

“Okay,” he said. He was embarrassed how badly he wanted it.

“I’ll take it,” said a voice. It was one of the miserable two. She took the camera and stood where Oisín had stood, and Oisín gathered into the mess of squinting children, and in the lavender light, with his arm around Rebecca, he proved that he’d been there.

Acknowledgments

DAVE EGGERS’s recent books include The Monk of Mokha and The Parade.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS