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Instead of a handshake, a business card. “Sergeant Brisebois,” he said. “I’m with the city’s Traffic Response Unit.”

His card read Sgt. Matthew Brisebois, TRU. She wanted to circle the typo, add an “e.” But no, not a typo. Something much worse.

“I deal with traffic fatalities. I’ll be overseeing this investigation. I’m very sorry about your father.”

No, you’re not. Without traffic fatalities, you’d be out of a job. “Thank you.”

The Oil Men run pipelines above ground directly through our villages, they are flaring gas in the midst of human habitation, they are leaving oil spills to seep into the groundwater, are expropriating farmlands willy-nilly. Gas flares sour our air. The flood plains are ruined. Crops have been razed, and hardwood forests have been clear-cut with impunity. Poisoned seas and burning skies. ENOUGH!

The mix-and-match assortment of containers used to transport the bunkered fuel had given way to zeeps—square stackables made of plastic, easy to fill and easy to load. Speedboats soon sprouted second motors, and their drivers became increasingly reckless, weaving in and out, swamping those few canoes still casting nets along the currents.

Unlike the salary he’d drawn from the oil company, the kickbacks Nnamdi received from the bunker boys was adjusted for inflation, rolls of bills bigger than his fist could hold. He bought his mother another fridge, and another. She stocked it with bottles of beer and flats of Fanta, and she lorded it over the older market women who’d kept her in her place for so many years.

It is nothing more than theft!” yelled the priest from his pulpit.

“They are the thieves, not us!”

“Thieving from a thief is still thieving!”

“And what of our forests? They is clear-cuttin’ those as well!” The oil companies had leased their land concessions to lumber companies to clear for them, and the lumber companies had been stripping the hardwood forests bare and shipping the prized wood to Europe and America. “Where it’s made into mahogany toilet seats!” someone shouted. “So that the oyibos can shit right through us!”

“It is still theft!” shouted the priest. “Thou shalt not steal!”

“Not theft, payment owed!”

But it was theft.

And payment owed.

the illegal bunkering of the Delta, where mosquito crews tapped into pipelines to suck out the oil, filling up barrels scaled with rust, filling jerry cans and plastic jugs, even emptied tins of cooking oil.

Shirtless young men fuelled by anger and gin.

he campaign had an unforeseen effect, the Law of Unintended Consequences being one of the constants of military action. As refugees fled the attacks, they poured into Nnamdi’s village. Welcomed at first, and then resented, these new arrivals built their settlements on the mudflats outside the village, in shantytown camps that smelled of excrement and despair. The riverbanks were pocked with feces, the children naked and round-bellied, steeped in dysentery.

Through attrition more than anything, Nnamdi’s village had become the central settlement in the outer creeks. On market days, goods from Portako appeared as though conjured, and the bags of rolled naira Nnamdi had amassed on the pipelines were soon almost worthless. Prices soared as a glut of currency continued to arrive, stuffed into suitcases and pillowcases. Nnamdi’s mother had to charge tenfold now for her Fanta and bitter greens. Even then, the thin slice she took as profit had narrowed to a razor’s width.

The oil companies pulled back behind secure facilities, closed down remote posts, sealed off several pipelines, and placed their foreign workers under “house arrest” in living compounds behind high walls in the restricted zones of Port Harcourt. Workers were airlifted to safety as oil production in the Delta squeezed shut like a constricted aorta, driving production down. The price of oil spiked on the world market. On the other side of the globe, tar sands operations rumbled back to life, began chewing up the oil-rich soil again. From Laura’s window, she could see the cranes turning faster and faster.

Crude oil had been spilling into the creeks beyond the lagoon for more than a week, spraying a mist of fuel that slicked the water’s surface, light and sweet. A faulty valve, heat from a circuit, and the river burned for days, burned even after crews had managed to reroute the flow. You could see the flames against the underbelly of sky, the black wall of smoke spilling its ink across the sun. The river burned and burned, and when it was done burning, only blackened stumps and charred mangroves remained. Bodies, too.