They’re calling from the hospital, because I kept Susan overnight: “Where is Susan?” “She’s watching Days of Our Lives,” I say as I shove the .357 into a top drawer next to the phone book. “Is she taking her Stelazine?” “Yes,” I say. “Absolutely. Thanks for your concern. Now, goodbye!”

Just then the doorbell rings, and what I’ve got is a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I’ve seen enough of them on the Dark Continent to overcome an instinctive dread, since they seem to be genuinely content, proportionately—like, if you measured a bunch of them against the general population they are very happy people, and so pretty soon we’re drinking Sanka and Susan comes out and they are talking about Christ’s Kingdom on Earth where the lion lies down with the lamb, and Susan buys every word of it, ’cause it’s like that line “Unless they come to me as little children…” Susan is totally guileless and the two Witnesses are without much guile, and I, the king of agnostics, listen and think, How’s a lion going to eat straw? It’s got a G.I. system designed to consume flesh, bones, and viscera—it’s got sharp teeth, claws, and predatory instincts, not twenty-seven stomachs, like some bovine Bossie the Cow or whatever. And while I’m paging through a copy of Awake!, I see a little article from the correspondent in Nigeria entitled “The Guinea Worm—Its Final Days.” As a doctor of tropical medicine, I probably know more about Dracunculus medinensis, the “fiery serpent,” or Guinea worm, than anyone in the country. Infection follows ingestion of water containing crustacea (Cyclops). The worms penetrate the gut wall and mature in the retroperitoneal space, where they can grow three feet in length, and then generally migrate to the lower legs, where they form a painful blister. What the Africans do is burst the ulcer and extract the adult worm by hooking a stick under it and ever so gently tugging it out, since if you break it off the dead body can become septic and the leg might have to be removed. The pain of the Guinea worm is on a par with the pain of gout, and it can take ten days to nudge one out. The bad part is they usually come not in singles but in multiples. I’ve seen seven come out of an old man’s leg.