rub down

From the very beginning, they were, she writes, “rubbing down the hatches and the gunwales with sandpaper, our hands becoming dry and coarse themselves. It was horrible work.”

This meant rubbing down a sweating horse after it had raced or had a workout.

She describes rubbing down the tenderloin of a mule deer with homemade white bean and wild rose miso, and then hanging it above an open fire.

Then: “Can you feel when I rub down your arm?”

The women are rubbed down into featureless nubs, the men deflated caricatures — popped balloons.