"Otis Lee had tried to steer Knot, just as he had tried to steer his older sister, Essie, who had left home to go north. She was in New York passing for white. Who Essie’s white father was, Otis Lee never knew, and he didn’t care. He had known his own father and he still missed him dearly. He’d drowned in the canal when Otis Lee was a child."