"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.

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.

"I should have knocked out all her teeth," Anne boasted to the ex-pirates as they drank in the Lair. "Then tied her to a tree and gave her neither bread nor water and let a myriad of fiery stinging ants swarm over her nekkid body."

"Yay, ye should have." Pirate Captain Calico Jack nodded in agreement. "Would ye have her all nekkid, including her privities?"

"All nekkid," Anne replied." 'Tis better not to cover her privities, making the stings of the ants more fiercely painful."

"Yay, 'tis better."

Anne and Calico got very friendly with each other and she finally made certain he knew she was a woman by unbuttoning her man's shirt one day. He offered to buy her from her spineless husband, Jim, who instantly snitched on both of them to South Carolina Governor Rogers. Anne was ordered to show up for a flogging and then return to her rightful husband, so she and Calico decided they would slip into the harbor, both of them dressed like men, and steal a sloop and begin their lives together as a pirate couple.

Over the next few months, Anne and Calico Jack raided many ships and shore installations. Her gender remained a secret to all but him, until they captured a Dutch merchant ship and recruited a number of its sailors from the crew, including a strikingly handsome, blue-eyed, blond young man. Anne took a liking to him and unbuttoned her shirt to reveal her true identity. The man then unbuttoned his shirt and showed that he was Mary Read. It is not known if both women were disappointed to discover that neither of them was a man, but they became a pirate duo, skilled with rapiers and pistols, and fought bravely whenever their boarding crew stormed onto unsuspecting merchant ships.

Anne and Mary loved being pirates and became well-respected, bloodthirsty buccaneers who swung their blades and boarded ships with more daring than any man. They became pregnant at the same time, and in 1720 suffered a stunning defeat when a pirate turned pirate-hunter raided them while the crew was drunk and hiding below deck, leaving only Mary and Anne to fight furiously in thick cannon fire.

"If there's a man among ye, ye will come out and fight like the men ye are thought to be!" Anne shouted as she furiously swung her cutlass and fired her pistols.

The men below did not answer back, and all were captured and hanged except for the two pregnant pirates, who went to jail. Mary died of a fever inside her tiny damp cell and Anne is believed to have been granted a pardon. She disappeared from the seas and historical records.

My theory of what became of Anne Bonny is based on reviewing written accounts of her life, and then reaching a conclusion that is within the realm of possibility. We can be certain that Anne would not have been welcome back in the West Indies, nor was she likely to return to her husband or to the life of an active pirate. I suspect she had her child and decided on a compromise of breaking the law while avoiding the traditional life of a woman, and doing so in a place that was a safe harbor and agreeable to her need for adventure. She would have known that Blackbeard and other pirates frequented Tangier Island and regularly traded with the Islanders, and that if she continued dressing like a man, she could be a waterman and at least get out in a bateau and teach her child the ways of weather, the bay, and fishing.

This child, I suspect, was a son, and I believe it is from this cutthroat lineage that one certain governmental official descended. And if the governor is reading this essay, I ask him to think back on all of the times a certain disloyal, despicable individual has given him a sweet that is soon followed by an explosive gastric attack.