Chapter 24I am not certain when I first felt the thing within me, but I saw looks of consternation on Otter’s face long before we spoke of it.
“What is it, Joseph Otter?” I demanded one day.
“Why are you not eating? You are losing weight.”
“I don’t know. I have no appetite…except for you.”
“Hush, the children will hear you.”
“You are becoming a prude, Otter.”
“There were not whites in the house before. Now we have a white woman tending our Cuthan’s manly needs, and we have three muddied little things that can’t decide whether to grow up looking like their handsome father or their pretty mother. And it is not proper to speak of such things to your servant.”
“Oh, Otter, I wish I could stand on the walls of the fort and proclaim how dear you are to me.”
“You cannot, so don’t talk fool
