The chapter opens with a man being stabbed during a fight, and people scrambling to pack the wound with brown sugar, which was thought to stop the bleeding:

This was the life Charlie had delivered Ava unto, a place where people still lived shrouded by the trees, where the local sheriff was a deacon who meted out justice based on the season, because all the roads in and out of the backcountry were dirt and his old Model T was bad to sink up to its axles in the mud. Here, the people knew, a man sometimes just needed killing, and if it was more or less unanimous, the kilt man was buried quietly and no one ever saw any reason to call the law (67).

Charlie and Ava live in the woods on the river, with all kinds of creepy crawly bugs, wild animals, and water creatures just beyond their door. The people in this area are religious and superstitious, believing in God as much as they believe in fortune tellers. Charlie spends a lot of his free time on the river, fishing and drinking, and Ava picks cotton to help supplement the family income. Although Charlie never expresses an interest in learning how to read, they sit together at night, and Ava reads to him.