3

A year passed.

Wilson wanted to forget everything he knew about Cricket and Africa, then suddenly he wanted to remember every detail. This was just about the time news of the British attack on Quatre Sables leaked to the press. Wilson turned on the television one Wednesday evening and saw Acting Captain Worthington on CNN from London: Worthington and a few of the officers of the Gadfly had been cashiered out of the navy for their roles in the affair, but the true extent of the slaving operations at Quatre Sables had become known, and there was a public outcry, and the men were recalled to duty. Worthington and Lieutenant Peavy, the newscaster said, had just been awarded the Navy Cross and were going to be reassigned to a Blockade Squadron expanded to six ships of the line.

Wilson turned off the television set after the report, a tingling like electric currents running through his body. He took out a sheet of white paper and a fountain pen and wrote the following sentence: “Many strange stories have come out of the civil war in Bupanda; this is one of them,” and he kept writing all night and by morning had sixty-five pages. He stopped doing temporary office work and borrowed money from Andrea and locked himself in his apartment for the next four months and wrote a book about what had happened to him in Africa, as his famous ancestor had done. The book—To the Dark Continent: An Account of My Experiences with the Pirates and Slavers of the Brotherhood of the Coast, Including Details of a Journey from the Sea to Lake Tsuwanga and Back Again—made the New York Times Best Sellers list and was optioned by TrueSteel Pictures in Hollywood for a small fortune.

Though Wilson was wary of stepping over the broom a second time, his success left him little choice. He married Andrea the following June. With the money from the book and a good piece of Andrea’s savings, they bought a restored farmhouse in Warinocco County about fifty miles north of the city, on a rise with a good view of the Potswahnamee’s dark waters. The old place had been built in 1790 of sturdy fieldstone, and its six and a half beamceilinged bedrooms, Andrea said, promised plenty of room for a big family. Soon, there were horses in the old stables, a few fields planted with winter corn, and the cool leafy evenings of early fall, frost on the grass in the morning. Andrea set up a studio in the converted barn; Wilson was asked to teach a course on Africa at Jerome Martin Community College and afterward accepted the chairmanship of the International Committee for a United Bupanda, or ICUB, which seeks to put an end to the exploitation of that unhappy nation, where—alas!—the war continues.