Card Sharks

he didn't need this kind of aggravation.

'I'm going to get that goddam plane to Africa if I have to put it on a raft, put a rope in my teeth, and tow the sonofabitch!' I held the phone away from my ear. 'Somebody with a lot of power doesn't want your plane to fly. Damned if I know why, and damned if I know who, but … well, you be careful, Bradley.'

He never calls me Bradley unless he's really worried, and not much worries my dad. It was then I felt the first presentiment of danger. I shivered.

'Pop, I love you,' I said. He grunted; overt emotionalism always embarrasses him, and I had the nasal buzz of the dial tone.

I hung up the phone, and stood staring blindly down at the carpet. Suddenly I felt small warm hands sliding around my waist. I looked back over my shoulder. Daudi hugged me tighter. It's a wonderful thing with children. They never try to analyze, they just offer comfort in their simple, visceral way. I laughed, and hooked a thumb over my shoulder.

'Hop aboard. I'll give you a ride.' He smiled shyly, and climbed on. I cantered once around the bedroom, took careful aim, gave a hitch of my hindquarters, and bucked him onto the bed. His giggles followed me into the shower.

Three days after our return to Kilango his mother died. The next morning I found Daudi waiting for me on the steps of the clinic when I arrived for work. He didn't even cry when I administered the shots.

One night, late, as I lay on my mattress and read by the light of a kerosene lantern, I experienced a hideous epiphany. I was perusing the latest issue of the Harvard Medical Review (latest is a relative term. It was actually several months out of date, but my professional mail was getting forwarded through my parents, and then to a P.O. Box in Nairobi, and all of this took time. I also wasn't exactly overloaded with spare time to read) when I hit the article on the new antibody test for the HTLV–III virus — more commonly known as AIDS.

This was 1985, and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome was not well understood. I was losing people to a whole host of gastrointestinal parasites, the most common opportunistic infections in our region, and about as unusual in Africa as fleas on dogs. So while I grieved and cursed, I initially didn't think too much about it.

Now this article had burst across the old brain pan, and I got a cold prickly feeling all along my scalp. Scrambling awkwardly to my feet, I dug like a frenzied dog in search of a prize bone through back issues of the review for anything I could find on AIDS. It wasn't much. The traditional medical establishment was leery about writing much about the 'gay disease,' and Rock Hudson hadn't collapsed yet in a hotel lobby in Paris and been forced to shed his square-jawed leading man image.

I read until three A.M. I then drove to Nairobi, and called Dad. I wanted a lot of those antibody kits. I wanted them fast. And I sure as fuck wasn't going to tell the International Red Cross and WHO, so they could tell me how careful we all had to be.

No, my antibody kits would come in with a Care package of Mom's chocolate chip, raisin and oatmeal cookies, and the lastest Ed McBain novel.

***

The final chemical solution washed across my tray of tiny, dainty beads. They turned a lovely purple. I stared at them, and began to cry. Of the fifty people I had tested, all carried the HTLV–III antibody in their twisted bodies. And now the significance of all those patients dying from what the Africans had dubbed the 'slimming disease' came clear. AIDS had invaded Kilango like the Germans entering Poland.

Our new deep water well, all the vaccinations against diptheria, and typhoid, measles, weren't going to make a damn bit of difference. Death had become a permanent resident in the village.

A part of me, the heedless, spoiled kid from Hollywood, didn't want to know the extent of the infection. The wiser part, the doctor, had to know so we could plot strategies to control the spread of the disease. I hadn't told Faneuil what I had done, what I was continuing to do. I figured I'd give him the bad news all in one dose. There were times when I cursed him, and named him a fool. How could he not have seen the virological evidence before him? But I had missed it during the first five months of my tenure at Kilango.

But he's been here years!

Great men can have their little blind spots, my small excusatory voice whined.

Pretty fucking big blind spot!

Because of the seven thousand two hundred and forty-nine people living in Kilango five thousand fifty-six were infected, or displaying the symptoms of full blown AIDS.

I went to Faneuil. He was at the house, resting during the worst heat of the day. I had sweat patches on my chest and flanks, partly from nerves, partly from the stultifying heat which seemed to run like warm syrup across the body.

He offered me a lemonade saying, 'Only mad dogs and Englishmen — ' He broke off abruptly once he took a good look at my face. 'Bradley, what is wrong? What is it? Are you ill?'

Suddenly I was in tears, my hands pressed hard against my face as if the pressure of my fingers could hold back this unmanly display. He got an arm around my shoulders, maneuvered me under the big ceiling fan which was turning lazily. A few minutes, and the gulping sobs had been reduced to sniffles. Faneuil pressed a handkerchief into my hands.

'Here, Bradley child, here. Now what is wrong?'

I told him. He sat very still, a wax effigy on the sofa, then his anger broke across me.

'How dare you! How dare you take this action without consulting me! I deny this test. I deny its validity. I have never heard of this test!'

Rage propelled him to his feet, and his long legs scissored as he paced the length of the room, and back.

My first shock and chagrin was giving way to an anger every bit as white hot as his. It was Old Fart Doctor Syndrome. If they haven't heard of it, it's not worth shit, and of course they never hear of it because they stop studying.

'You're like fucking King Canute and the waves,' I bellowed back. 'You can rant and rail, and deny all you want, but they're still going to die, and a word from the mighty Faneuil isn't going to prevent it! You don't want to believe me … fine! Try the CDC, the NIH, talk to some other Froggies. Montagnier at the Pasteur Institute, they isolated the goddam virus! The test has been designed as a screening mechanism for world blood banks. I used it, maybe wrongly, as a diagnostic tool, but God, we had to know. We've got to do something.'

He was trembling, his nostrils pinched tight as he said, 'The first thing I am going to do is get you out of my hospital. Out of my village. You have no ethics.'

'I love nats. Your village? This is a joker village. And I'm a joker, and I think I have more fucking right to be here than you do. You contact the Peace Corps. I'll reveal what I've discovered here. You got lazy. You got complacent. That's bad, but it's not criminal. You ignore this, and it will be criminal.'

He collapsed onto the sofa, and he began to cry. My anger cooled as if doused by the rain of his grief. I felt sick … for his pain and guilt, for our dying patients. 'I'm sorry, Etienne.'

He lifted a tear-streaked face, shook his head, and waved a hand helplessly. 'No, no, Bradley, you were right to shout. I was being a stubborn old fool. But the time for tears is past. Now we must act.'

***

They were fine words, but they were just words. For those already infected or into full blown AIDS all we could do was ease their deaths, and try to educate them to keep them from passing the disease to the few healthy members of our community.

The question which tormented me in those dark weeks was the how? How had the disease ran with such ease through the community? Even assuming ten or twelve infected jokers arriving in the village, it could not have spread this comprehensively. Each night I continued my research.

Blood transfusion? Unlikely. We didn't do that much surgery at the clinic, we weren't equipped for it, and certainly no procedure that would require a large amount of blood. We sure as hell didn't have a large gay