supper at the best table: the face working like the body works
The chewing makes overlapping plates of muscle all the way up one side of his face and crew-cut scalp bulge and roll. [...] The crew cut lends his head an anvil-like aspect.
Context
Even Stice eating is a display of the athletic body's machinery. Chewing sets "overlapping plates of muscle all the way up one side of his face and crew-cut scalp" bulging and rolling, the head "anvil-like" — the same worked, plated, faintly grotesque physicality the gift-body has below the neck, surfacing in something as small as a bite. Wherever you look at Stice, it's musculature doing visible work.