In the days of toteminovidia, they called me “found,” and when, at 19 years old and three cases, they revealed my fragile body and rendered a verdict, they began to believe them. My name is Thomas Bowmont Callahan. I am 19 years old, and my body has always been a crime—a collection of bones and muscles that never formed properly. Born prematurely in 1840, two months premature, during one of the coldest winters Mississippi has ever seen, I was taken away. My mother, Sarah Bowmont Callahan, unexpectedly went into labor during dinner; my father is a thoughtful mother to visiting judges and planters. The midwife, who is her principal, a slave to the administrator, Mama Ruth, who is received among the white children at the front door, pointed at me and shook her head. “Judge Callahan,” he told my father, “this baby won’t survive the night. He’s too small. His breathing is shallow.” But my mother, delirious with fever and exhaustion, refused to accept that prognosis. “He’ll survive,” she whispered, cradling my tiny body to her chest. “I know he will. The sound of his heartbeat. It’s faint, but he’s fighting.” She was right. I survived that first night, the next, and the primary one. But survival isn’t the same as flourishing. At one age, I weighed a mere three kilograms. At six months, the others don’t share their own heads. One year, when other children are already solid, and some steps are taking them, I’m barely accessible. The doctors my father brought in from Nachez, Vixsburg, and even from as far away as New Orleans, all say the same thing: premature birth stunted my development in a way that will affect my entire life. My mother died when I was six, a result of the fever that swept through Mississippi in 1846. I remember her lying in bed, her skin stained by old parchment, her eyes yellow and unfocused. As punishment, she sent me to bed the day before her death. “Thomas,” she whispered, her meaning barely audible. “You’re subject to challenges throughout your life. People will ignore you. Death the next morning. And I won’t fully know its words until years later. My father, Judge William Callahan, was a man in every way I was. He stood six feet tall, had a broad ridge, and a voice that could silence an entire courtroom with a single word. He built his fortune from scratch. Starting as a poor Alabama lawyer, he married into the family’s modest Bowmont plantation, and through shrewd investments and strategic land acquisitions, he transformed those 800 acres into an 8,000-acre technology empire.

I understand. Thank you, Dr. Harrison. I will send the payment to your office.”

After the doctor left, my father poured himself three fingers of bourbon and stared out the window at the river.

“Father, I’m sorry,” I said quietly.

He didn’t turn around. “For what? For being born prematurely? For being sickly? For being…” He paused and took a long sip. “It’s not your fault, Thomas, but this is our reality.”

But my father wasn’t satisfied with a single opinion. A week later, Dr. Jeremiah Blackwood from Vixsburg arrived. He was younger than Dr. Harrison, more aggressive in his examination, and more brutal in his treatment of my body. But his conclusion was identical: severe hypogandism with concomitant infertility. The condition is permanent and incurable.

The third doctor arrived from New Orleans in March. Dr. Antoine Merier was a Creole physician who had studied in Paris and spoke with a thick French accent. He was the most gentle of the three, apologizing for the invasive nature of the examination.

But his verdict was the same: “Only we, but your son, cannot father children. Development is arrested. Nothing can be done.”

Three doctors, three tests, three identical conclusions. Thomas Bowmont Callahan was sterile, unable to reproduce, unable to continue his family line.

The news spread through the Mississippi Planters’ Association with the speed and accuracy of gossip among people who had nothing better to do than discuss their business dealings. My father made no attempt to keep it a secret. What would be the point? Any woman who agreed to marry me would have to know. Better to be honest now than to face accusations later.

The Hendersons immediately withdrew their daughter from consideration. The Rutherfords, who had expressed interest in introducing me to their younger daughter, politely declined. The Prestons, the Montgomerys, the Fairfaxes—all the prominent families who might have ignored my physical weakness for the sake of the Callahan fortune—suddenly found reasons why their daughters were unsuitable as wives or were already promised elsewhere.

But it wasn’t just the private rejections that hurt. The public comments hurt as well.

I overheard Mrs. Harrison at church in April. “It’s a shame about that Callahan boy. The judge has so much wealth and no legitimate heir to leave it to. It makes one wonder what this is all about.”

At a party my father hosted in May, one of the guests, drunk on my father’s excellent whiskey, said loudly enough for me to hear from the hallway, “That’s nature, isn’t it? Weak individuals shouldn’t breed. It keeps the herd healthy.”

A Louisiana grower who visited me and inspected a horse my father was selling commented, “Good animal. Strong lines, good condition, proven stallion. Not like your son, eh? Sometimes breeding just fails.”

Every comment felt like a stab in the back, but I’d learned not to react. What would be the point? They were right in terms they understood. I was a defective commodity, a failed investment, a blind branch on the family tree.

My father withdrew into himself during the spring and summer of 1858. He continued to manage the plantation with his usual efficiency, continued to serve as county judge, and continued to attend social gatherings. But at home, he became increasingly distant, spending long hours in his study with bourbon and legal papers, working on something he refused to discuss with me.

I escaped into the world of books. My father’s library contained over 2,000 volumes, most of which I had read by the age of nineteen. I especially loved philosophy and poetry. Marcus, Aurelius, Epictetus, Keats, Shelley, Byron. I found solace in the words of those who contemplated suffering, mortality, and the human condition.