“What are they doing up there?” the governor jealously asked, looking in the direction of upstairs. “What in thunder are they up to? Who’s sneezing?” he demanded as his wife smeared her lipstick a bit and mussed up her stiff hair as she made her way back downstairs.
Andy posted his next essay, which he had finished early that morning. The timing could not be better, and he got up from the desk just as Regina lumbered into the parlor and demanded to know what he was doing.
“Mama’s all messed up like you two were making out,” she delicately offered. “And it’s just a good thing Papa can’t see what she looks like!”
“She wasn’t messed up a minute ago,” Andy replied. “She just showed me to the computer and left. And she looked exactly as she did when we were all at the dinner table.”
“What are you doing in here?” Regina’s tiny eyes were bright with suspicion. “I bet you’re Trooper Truth, aren’t you!”
“What a thing to think,” Andy said.
“Prove you’re not!”
“It’s rather difficult to prove a negative,” Andy replied as Regina squeezed her way past him and sat before the keyboard.
She logged on to the Trooper Truth website and made a startled sound when she noticed there was a brand-new essay. She clicked on it immediately.
“See,” Andy said. “You tell me. Is it possible Trooper Truth could be off writing a new essay and yet be here with the First Family for a light supper at the same time?”
“Well, I guess you’re right,” Regina said as she eagerly began to read.
A WORD ABOUT ANNE BONNY
The Most Notorious Female Pirate Who Ever Lived
(Note: Many authorities on pirates differ in their accounts of Anne Bonny.)
By Trooper Truth
Her story begins with her birth in County Cork, Ireland, on March 8, 1700, the illegitimate daughter of a successful Irish lawyer named William Cormac and his wife’s maid, whose name never made it into the records. When the scandalous tryst was revealed, William had no choice but to flee from Ireland with his new family and settle in Charleston, South Carolina, where he no doubt befriended Blackbeard and corrupt politicians. Soon enough, William became a very wealthy merchant and lived on a plantation just outside the city.
Not much is known about Anne as a child, except that she was a beautiful redhead with a ferocious temper that prompted her to kill one of the servant women with a carving knife after the two of them squabbled. By the time Anne was old enough to pick out her own clothes, she began to dress like a man, and many male admirers began to call on her. Uninvited sexual advances were met with such violence that one suitor ended up bedridden for weeks.
(Note: I pause here to emphasize to you, the reader, that Anne’s behavior almost from the start would indicate that she was a sociopath with bad genetic wiring that, unfortunately, she would pass down through the generations to present-day Virginia, where one of her direct descendants is currently employed in a position of great influence and power.)
When Anne was sixteen, she continued on her blighted path by getting tangled up with a poor worthless sailor named James (Jim) Bonny, who was determined to have her family’s plantation for himself. He decided the easiest way to do this was to marry Anne, whose attire he either didn’t notice or didn’t seem to mind. Anne’s father did not approve of Jim Bonny, and the newly wed couple did not get the plantation or even a decent room should they have wished to stay with Anne’s family.
The young couple left Charleston in a huff and sailed off to New Providence in the Bahamas, where Anne soon became fond of a local establishment called the Pirate’s Lair, which was exactly what the name implied. Jim was a weak, pitiful example of manhood and courage, and he began to rat on various sailors he didn’t like, accusing them of being pirates, even if they weren’t, while his dissatisfied, psychopathic wife spent increasingly long hours at the Lair.
Many of the rough seamen who became her drinking buddies were ex-pirates and bored. One day, Anne, who the ex-pirates thought was a man, was slugging down rum and complaining about the nasty, mean-spirited sister-in-law of Jamaican governor Lawes, who had told Anne she wasn’t worth knowing. What isn’t clear from the records is whether the woman made this rude comment when Anne was disguised as a man or dressed normally. But it is well documented that Anne’s response was to knock out two of her teeth, which was much more serious in the eighteenth century than now, since there were no dentists or prosthodontists to speak of and a gap-toothed smile was irreversible.