Card Sharks

The first time I vaccinated a child I was in worse shape than the screaming kid. See, nobody makes reusable needles anymore, and even if they did no one knows how to use a whetstone and sharpen them. We use disposable needles which are sharper than sons a bitches — once. The second, third time, fourth time around, the patient feels like we're excavating with a pick ax. It hurts, kids cry, and I get crazy. I also assumed I had solved the mystery of the resentful, suspicious urchin from my first day. I was wrong, and it just goes to show you that kids can be a hell of a lot smarter than so called adults.

But we had to re-use needles because there wasn't money to keep us supplied in disposables. Don't misunderstand me, we weren't (or at least I wasn't) a bunch of quacks and incompetents preying on the hapless natives. We took all possible precautions to avoid contamination, but if it's a choice between re-using a sterilized needle, and not getting a kid vaccinated against diptheria — well, you try to make that choice.

Our procedure was elaborate. The used needles were first placed in a steel tray with tiny prongs over which we slid the base of the needle. The tray was then immersed in a bath of soap and scalding water. Next it went into a bath of hot water and Clorox, and finally into a special dip which had been concocted by Dr. Faneuil, which Margaret was quite brayingly insistent that we use. I thought it was probably overkill, but living saints have a tendency to be just full of funny quirks; you make allowances because they're living saints.

Anyway, three months into my tenure, I finally couldn't stand it anymore, so I hauled ass into Faneuil's office for the obligatory Young Whippersnapper Doctor to Older, Wiser Doctor talk. Faneuil was making notations in a file. When I entered he capped his fountain pen, closed the file, and folded his hands atop it as if protecting something precious.

'Sir, it's this needle situation … and the blood plasma situation, and the three in one vaccine — we're almost out, and half the kids in the village haven't received it. And can't the government get us a decent anesthesia unit? Sometimes I think it'd be safer to just hit 'em on the head with a brick bat. And our x-ray equipment….' I made a disgusted sound. 'I'm surprised the nuclear regulatory commission hasn't waded in, and declared us a nuclear power.'

Faneuil bestowed a soft, kindly smile on me, but there was a waggish light in his pale eyes. 'Bradley, as long as you're listing wants how about a CAT scanner, or an MRI, or a dialysis machine? Money, Bradley, money, all those things cost money, and we haven't got any.'

I licked my lips nervously, and plunged in. 'Well, that's the thing, sir. My dad's a rich Hollywood producer. He's got a lot of friends who are other kinds of rich Hollywood parasites. They just love to get together over rubber chicken at some benefit dinner and raise the money. They do that real well. So, how about I get my dad to put together a plane load of goodies for us?'

'Sounds lovely, Bradley. You must coordinate it with the Kenyan government, the International Red Cross, and the World Health Organization.'

'Why?' I blurted. 'I mean, would I have to involve the U N if I wanted a box of chocolate and condoms for me?'

'Ah, but this isn't just for you, Bradley. Bureaucracies must fiddle, it's a law of nature.'

'More like the jungle,' I muttered, but I surrendered to the realities. 'Okay.'

I turned to leave, but was arrested before I exited by him saying, 'Bradley, you have a good heart.'

I felt myself blush. 'Thank you, sir.' Recovering I added, 'It's just the rest of me that's a little weird.'

So, I had managed to impress Faneuil, and I was hangin' with J.D. and Mosi, but friends inside Kilango continued to elude me. There is enormous distrust of whites by Africans (understandable). Enormous distrust of hospitals and doctors by native people. (Also understandable. Hospitals are where you go to die.) The fact I was a joker helped, but one out of three ain't so good. I decided the kids were where I needed to apply the wedge, and I proceeded in my usual shameless manner — I bribed 'em.

A call to Mom, and I soon had a supply of frisbees, soccer balls, baseballs, bats and gloves, dolls, crayons and coloring books. Ironically these were a lot easier to obtain then my plane full of vaccines and needles. Dad was whacking through a jungle of red tape, but it was all taking a lot longer than I wanted. But you know Americans — if there's one thing we don't do well, it's wait.

Anyway, once I got the toys, I organized teams and started a scout troop. I'd hoped Margaret Durand would handle the girls, but she gave me that 'you must be kidding' smile, told me she was too busy (and implied I ought to be too busy), and declined. I combined the boys and the girls, and figured what the parent organization didn't know wouldn't hurt them. Faneuil laughingly called my kids the Pony Tail Irregulars, which I admit bugged me a little, and made some crack about Americans and our unnatural appetite for sports. I got him back by referring to Frenchies and their unnatural appetite for snails.

You like to think that a group of people to which you belong, whether it be based on race, religion, nationality, profession, whatever, are good and decent people. That the flaws you see in Them, we never have. Unfortunately that ain't the case. Underneath it all we're human, and not too long out of the trees.

I had been invited up to Faneuil's for lunch, but I had a broken arm to set, and it was twenty past one before I folded my stethoscope into the pocket of my lab coat, and checked my watch. When I saw the time I put it in overdrive. My hooves rang hollowly on the hard packed earth, and dust rose behind me as I galloped up the winding road toward the farmhouse that Faneuil called home.

Back in the nineteen twenties the land that currently cradled Kilango had been a not-very-successful coffee plantation. All that now remained was a dilapidated irrigation system and the colonial owner's home. It was a low, rambling wood affair, with a screened veranda, and a cupola on one corner. In my wilder moments I could picture the ghost of the imperialistic asshole who built the structure standing in that cupola, binoculars raised, watching the happy darkies toiling in the fields below. Now it was happy jokers who were singin' and workin' in the sun.

As I ran I suddenly heard the shrill voices of children in the underbrush off to my left, and my stomach formed a tight, hard ball, for I know that hunting pack ululation. I had heard it enough when I was a kid. I hung a looie, and followed the noise.

In a dusty depression eight children were flinging stones and beating with sticks a ninth child who huddled inside this circle of torment. He had flung long skinny arms across his head, and there were already a few smears of blood on the boy's dark skin. All eight of the tormentors were jokers, and five of them were in my scout troop. It depressed the shit out of me that some of my kids were involved. I went flying through them like a bowling ball through nine pins, and they fell back before my furious onslaught.

The ringleader of this little gang of journeymen torturers was Dalila, an impossibly tall figure with a two foot long neck, and ear lobes which brushed at her breasts. At fifteen she had scorned my overtures, and dismissed our activities as 'childish.' There was a lot of anger in this girl, and she viewed any kind of accommodation with nat society a sell out. She gestured at someone, then indicated me, and a child whose form was basically human came hissing and undulating across the dirt toward me. His body was twisted sharply into curves, and his legs were fused into a single limb, and when he opened his mouth I saw a single big tooth which looked suspiciously hollow to me. I reared, and brought my forefeet down near his head. He got the hint, and withdrew.

The bleeding boy lifted his head to look at me, and I realized he wasn't a nat — he had eyes like a chameleon — and I had an explanation for the impromptu torture. Kenyans hate and fear chameleons.

I assumed my best daddy attitude, and daddy voice, and asked in my somewhat stilted Swahili,

'Okay, now what's going on here?'

Tube Neck stepped forward, and indicated the shivering boy with a flick of a hand. 'He's ugly — '

'Well, there aren't any of us who are going to win any beauty contests,' I interrupted. 'You're pretty damn funny looking too, Dalila.'

'He is evil,' lisped Snake Boy. His palate had also been warped by the virus, and it was really hard to understand him.

'To have him here will bring bad luck on all of us,' Dalila added piously, and I could have slapped her. She wasn't a superstitious rustic, she had been born in Mombasa. This was just a way to reassert control over her peers.

'There's death and evil everywhere — I'm looking at a little of it right now. Now listen up, you leave this kid alone, or I'll come by and stomp your intolerant and ugly joker asses into the ground.' I turned to the kid on the