Oisín turned to find a new boy, with close-set eyes and hair like a black mushroom. His mouth was full of chips.

“Who told you that?” Oisín asked.

Rebecca looked up at Oisín. With his answer, her idea of him would either be enhanced or dashed. Though he did indeed sit in rivers naked—his river, behind his cabin, all alone, ten miles from the next human, never seen by anyone—he decided to temper the truth.

“In a bathing suit, yes,” he said.

Rebecca’s face relaxed.

“I sit in a chair, and the river rushes to me. My doctor told me to do it.” He looked down at Rebecca and winked. They walked on, the kids in pairs and clumps, picking up rocks and throwing rocks, examining scat, stopping to empty their shoes of pebbles and dust. A tiny boy was assembling a wildflower bouquet for his mother. Oisín was debating whether to tell him that the beautiful orange flowers that dominated his bunch were California poppies, illegal to pick, when he saw the coyotes.

“Hold on,” Oisín said.

There were three of them, about seventy yards away, high on a rounded hill, basking on a wide flat stone. Oisín pointed them out to the children, and soon they were all crouched close to him, whispering and trying to stay still. It had been decades since Oisín had seen coyotes like this, at rest in the sun. This was the closest he’d been to a group—they were so rarely seen in groups. And during the daytime, this was extraordinary.

“What do we do?” asked the boy with mushroom hair.

“Nothing,” Oisín whispered. “Just watch. What do you see?”

“They’re so skinny,” a girl said. Her hair was the color of a pumpkin seed, and she wore rubbery eyeglasses.

“They are, aren’t they?” Oisín said. “When we think of coyotes, don’t we think of them as fearsome? But they’re wiry, smaller than you.” He put his hand on the tiny head of the girl with goggle-glasses. It fit perfectly in his palm, like a cantaloupe.

“But it’s bigger than the fox,” the mushroom boy noted.

There had been a fox the night before, fascinated by the fire, intrigued by the prospect of food scraps. It had circled, casual and confident, for hours.

“The fox was so tiny!” Oshie said.

One of the coyotes lazily raised itself, stretched, and looked in their direction.

“Does he see us?” one of the miserable two asked. She seemed content now that something was happening.

“Probably,” Oisín said.