The Rain Barrel in a Dry August

The rain barrel under the downspout is empty, and it has been empty for most of August. Its lid is a round cap of sun-faded plastic, and the screen that nests in the opening is covered with a fine dust that no rain has washed away. The downspout, a length of white metal, ends an inch above the opening, pointing straight down. A hot pocket of air sits between the lip of the barrel and the ground.

The barrel is a large plastic drum, ribbed around its sides like a cooling tower, its colour gone to a pale sage that no one chose. A brass spigot is threaded into the side a few inches above the bottom, and the handle is turned closed. In August the spigot comes open once a day. The handle turns, the barrel gives a dry sigh through the nozzle, and the hand that came for water turns the handle back. Nothing runs out. Nothing has run out since the last rain left a few inches in the bottom, and those inches evaporated over the weeks that followed.

The barrel's purpose is to catch what the roof cannot keep. In a month that behaves itself, every thunderstorm sends a rope of water down the downspout, across the screen, and into the darkness under the lid. But August has been a dry month, the kind where clouds pile up in the afternoon and then pass over without letting go. The downspout's mouth is dry. The screen is free of leaves because there is nothing for leaves to stick to.

Near the top of the barrel, on the side facing away from the house, a threaded fitting for an overflow hose points at the ground. The hose that once covered it has come off, and the opening is plugged with a grey rubber stopper. In a wet month, this is where extra water would escape; in August it is a closed vent, breathing nothing.

Inside the barrel, the water line has fallen in stages. It is at the bottom now. A ring of mineral stain circles the wall a third of the way up, and below that a second, fainter ring sits near the floor. The floor itself is bare plastic, covered with a thin dust. A single brown leaf, not much bigger than a thumb, lies against one curved side. It blew in through the screen during a windy afternoon and dried there, and every day it lies in the same position because nothing moves it.

Around the base of the barrel, the grass on the sun-facing side has gone yellow. The barrel blocks the light and no overflow has spilled from its rim to moisten the ground beneath it. The soil is cracked into a small mosaic. A spider has anchored a web from the downspout to the barrel's rim; the web hangs in the still air, and the spider waits in the centre of it for an insect that is as scarce as rain.

The barrel is built to receive. It has an opening, a screen, a spigot, and an overflow, all arranged so that water can pass through and be stored. In August it stores nothing. The man who attached it to the downspout in the spring checks the barrel each morning, turning the spigot, then peering through the opening with the lid tipped back. He sees the dust, the leaf, the dry walls. He lets the lid fall and walks away.