Card Sharks

front of me. Another was in the process of completing the trap to my rear.

I had a strong sensation their motives weren't friendly, so I let fly with both hind feet, and caught the opening car door just below the handle. One of my kicks generates a lot of power. I heard a yell and a curse in something that sounded suspiciously like raghead chatter from the driver of car number two as the door slammed back and caught his leg and hand as he tried to exit. That still left me with two assailants. And there was no doubt now they were assailants. They were brandishing tire irons, and I sure as hell knew I didn't have a flat.

There was a high fence on my right, and beyond those walls I could see the tops of trees. I clumsily threw my suitcase at the two men in front of me. They easily dodged, and I felt a strong sense of ill use. This kind of thing always works in the movies my dad produces. My attempt at Rambo having failed, I opted for flight, and bolted across the hood of their Mazda. My hooves didn't do much for either the body work or the paint job. My agility seemed to surprise one guy. He just gaped as I went clattering past. His partner was less impressed. He swung the iron, and caught me high on the left shoulder. It hurt like a motherfucker, but I was down on the sidewalk again, and with the width of a car between them and me.

Grimly clutching my tote and my medical bag I galloped for the gate some fifty yards ahead with the two guys running and shouting in pursuit. I heard a lot of Allah's and Nur al Allah's going past as I yanked open the latch, and raced through. It was a park. Beautiful, pristine, peaceful. Later I found out I'd entered the Nairobi National Park. One hundred and ten kilometers of virgin wilderness almost completely within the confines of a major metropolitan center.

Wilderness … complete with wild animals.

Like lions.

It was not a good afternoon. I dislike being regarded as lunch almost as much as I resent being regarded as a monster. Let's just say I finally reached the peaceful shores of that paean to modern civilization — the Hilton Hotel.

***

My welcoming committee in Nairobi should have prepared me for the realities of Kilango Cha Jaha, but as I was waved through the gates by a pair of Kenyan military guards I couldn't help but wonder if the fences were to keep the jokers in as much to keep the fanatics out.

Kilango was your usual third world shit hole, and as I drove I ruminated bitterly on the irony of the village's name — Kilango Cha Jaha, Gate of Paradise — yeah, right. There was a small river meandering through the mud and thatch huts, and a pall of cook smoke hung like a memory of a bad hangover across the entire village. Children, many of them completely normal, frolicked in the dusty streets, or paddled in the river. Somewhere a radio was blasting out Somali rock and roll.

I wondered at the lack of adult jokers. Were they all hiding shyly in their huts venturing out only at night when darkness could disguise their deformities? Did they all have jobs (unlikely), and were at work? Jokers tend to fall into two categories — the ashamed, who keep so low a profile as to be almost invisible, and the flaunters, who delight in shocking the normal world which surrounds them. I'm unusual (or at least I pride myself that I am) because I don't fall into either category. I just do my thing, and hope things don't get too uncomfortable in return. Still, I was bothered by the missing jokers.

Easing the van to a stop I called out in my halting Swahili to a nearby urchin. I must have picked one of the forty other ethnic groups which inhabit the country because I might as well have been speaking, well … Swahili, for all the good it did me. Fortunately another child understood, and ran up, and chinned himself on the van window. I repeated my request for directions to the health clinic.

'Sure, boss,' he said. 'Gimme a ride and I'll show you.'

I nodded my assent, and he raced around, and clambered in the passenger side. From this position of moral and physical superiority he gazed down on his fellows. Now that he was closer I wasn't liking what I was seeing. His lymph nodes seemed enlarged, and there was a swelling in his joints.

'You sick, boss?' he asked after indicating the direction with an errant flip of the hand.

'No,' I said.

'Yes, you are. You're a mwenye kombo.'

My mind supplied the translation: crooked person, i.e., joker. 'That doesn't mean I'm sick,' I explained patiently. 'It just means I'm different.' My guide seemed unconvinced. 'I'm a doctor,' I added. That got him, but it wasn't the reaction I'd hoped for. His eyes became suspicious slits, he stiffened, yanked open the van door, and hopped out. I jammed on the brakes, terrified he'd fall, and my first act at Kilango would be squashing a hapless urchin.

Backing slowly away from the van he called out to me, 'Just keep going that way, boss, you'll find it,' and he was gone, vanishing in a twinkling of bare brown legs among the bare brown huts.

***

The clinic was what you'd expect from a public health facility in a joker village in the third world. It was a squat, ugly cinder block construction on the western outskirts of the village. Its position, huddled against the barb wire fence, seemed totally appropriate. It looked less like a place of healing than a sound proofed barracks where state enemies recant their sins. I parked, backed the length of the van until I could slide open the door, and jumped down. Medical bag firmly in hand, I pushed open the glass doors ready to begin my first stint as a real live doctor.

The tiny lobby was filled with squalling babies and their tired mothers. In one small corner a group of elderly jokers had carved out turf for themselves. There was one old guy with human faces covering his body. The sibilant whispers from all those mouths set an odd contrapuntal line to the soprano baby wails.

It's an odd quirk of the wild card virus, or maybe of the human psyche, that we end up with so many fuzzy animal jokers. I tease my mom occasionally that she shouldn't have had Dad take her to that re-release of Fantasia just before my birth, but I realize that ultimately my condition was selected and molded by me.

The next largest joker variety are the warping of normal human physiology. Finally, we have the monsters from the id — shapes so grotesque and disturbing that you have no idea where the fuck they came from. This room was mostly sporting the fuzzy animal variety, which wasn't surprising given the cultural importance of animal spirits in African mythology.

There was a Clairol red-head, crisp in nurse's whites, behind the desk. She looked up at the sound of my hooves on the stained linoleum floor. Once I got a good look at her face, and mentally scraped away a couple of hundred pounds of make-up, I put her around fifty-five. She still had a pretty good body, but this was clearly one of those beautiful women who cannot accept the judgment of nature, years and gravity.

'Yes?' she asked, and I was surprised to discover she was an American. I figured Faneuil would have a French staff. As a sub-species of humanity the French take the cake for arrogance and xenophobia. Then I realized Faneuil had hired me, and my mental French-bashing went by the wayside.

'Doctor Bradley Finn,' I hurried to say. 'I'm the new Peace Corps …' There was something in her ironic smile that had the words dying in my throat.

'Ah, yes, we have been expecting you … since yesterday.'

I felt like a ten year old caught playing hooky. I shuffled my feet, which is a lot of shufflin', and muttered my excuse about needing a car.

'Of course, you are an American.'

The tone in which that was said made me want to start singing the 'Star Spangled Banner.' I resisted the impulse because my singing voice sounds a lot like frogs fornicating.

'Uh, yeah, well, you might want to get home, get your passport punched, eat a cheeseburger, go to a ball game, remember what it's like.' Her face had gone red in that mottled way that only true red-heads can achieve, which told me the color wasn't wishful thinking, it was just fond remembrance. 'Now, could you tell Doctor Faneuil I'm here?' I added in my best Doctor Voice.

'I will inform Doctor,' she replied in her best Great Man's Assistant Voice. I was pleased at my acuity, but depressed by the prospect. Great Men's Assistants are always unmarried ladies who have devoted their lives to 'doctor,' and always referred to him without the buffering article. They are always a pain in the ass to any other doctor who happens around. 'Doctor is presently with a patient,' she concluded as if fearful I'd think he was out on the links.

'Yeah, I sorta figured. Well, could I wait in … Doctor's office? I'd like to get with a patient as soon as