Jess plunked down the bucket of milk she’d fetched from the springhouse and addressed her question to the room at large. A room much fuller than it had been when she’d left it a few minutes ago. Something struck her as strange, a sort of untraceable tension that told her someone was up to something. She eyed the three people shooting looks at each other and revised her assessment. They’re all up to something. But what can it be? Whatever their plan, she deduced that it centered around the hulking black man with the blinding smile—Ralph, she remembered from meeting the men with Desta. That night, seeing him sitting down in a dimly lit room, his girth seemed immutably large—and largely immovable. Kind of like a big boulder that’d rolled farther than expected, adding interest to the landscape where it settled. Now, seeing him standing so close, his sheer size struck her anew. Ralph held his arms tight against his sides and kept his chin tucked low as though trying to fold himself into a normal-sized person—a feat at which he failed extravagantly.
