Content Warning: This section of the guide contains graphic scenes of violence, sexual assault, and rape. Additionally, the source material uses offensive terms for rural and disabled people, which are replicated in this guide only in direct quotes of the source material.

Ed Gentry and his friends Lewis Medlock, Drew Ballinger, and Bobby Trippe are at a bar in an unnamed Georgia city looking at a map of northern Georgia. Lewis marks an area roughly 50 miles long where a river runs through the mountains. He says that a dam being built near a town called Aintry will flood the entire valley through which the river flows. Lewis tells his friends that they should all go to this wilderness area before it is sold as lakefront real estate.

Ed thinks to himself that if Lewis claims that the river is “good,” then it must be so. Bobby Trippe observes that he has heard that middle-class people are sometimes gripped by a desire to do adventurous things, but in reality, most don’t follow through on their impulses. Lewis responds by issuing an ultimatum to Bobby and Drew, saying that they have a rare chance to go down a river that very weekend, and that he (Lewis) and Ed are going for certain.