Once a year, all of Orienne goes down to the Quiet Blocks to whitewash the tombs and say the names of its dead out loud. Archie Plume on the lime, the everlastings, the Naming at sundown, and what the Ward believes happens to a name nobody says.

Two knives found in the roots of a drowned cypress in Blackwater, wrapped in oilcloth. One was the knife. The other was lagniappe. Now they come when Archie Plume calls, and he has his suspicions about where they wait.

A bayou reach of the lower Delta, thirty miles below Orienne, where the water runs dark as steeped tea. Archie Plume was raised there. This entry has been started four times.