But after breakfast there descended upon the Bluefield farm not the one or two neighbor girlfriends of Fawn’s he’d been led dimly to expect, but two girlfriends, five of their sisters, four sisters-in-law, a few mutual cousins, and an indeterminate number of mothers and grandmothers. They were like a plague of locusts in reverse, bringing quantities of food with hands that produced and put in order instead of consuming and laying waste. They talked, they laughed, they sang, they—or at least the younger ones—giggled, and they filled the house to bursting. The male Bluefields promptly fled to the far corners of the farm. Dag, fascinated, lingered. For a time.

Being introduced to the young women wasn’t too bad, even though he mainly garnered either intimidated silences or nervous titters in return. The bolder ones, however, observing Fawn’s aid to him, wanted to try their hands at it too, and he was shortly ducking being fed and watered like some strange new pet. Fattened for the slaughter, he tried not to think. An even more giggly troop, albeit led by a sterner matron, along with Fawn, who refused to explain anything, cornered him with strings and proceeded to measure various parts of his body—happily for his shredding equanimity, not that one—and floated away again in gales of laughter. Nattie’s weaving room, ordinarily a quiet refuge, was jammed, and the kitchen was not only crowded but intolerably overheated from the busy hearth. By noon, Dag followed the men into self-imposed exile, although he lurked close enough to listen to the singing floating out through the open windows. With all the males gone, some of the songs grew unsurprisingly rowdy; this was to be a wedding party, after all. He was glad Fawn was not to be deprived of these flourishes due to her strange choice of partner.

The female help left before supper, although with plans to return again in the morning for the final push, but it wasn’t till afterward that Dag found his thinking time. He settled by himself on the front porch, dangling his legs over the edge and watching the quiet river valley turn from gold-green to muted gray as the sun set. In the eaves of the old barn, the soft, tawny mourning doves called in their soft, tawny voices. It was Dag’s favorite view on the whole farm, and he thought whoever had originally sited this house must have shared the pleasure. He felt strangely unanchored, all his old certainties falling behind, and no new ones to replace them. Except for Spark. And she made an unlikely fixed point in his spinning world, because she moved so fast he feared he’d miss her if he blinked.