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S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S • 59 new head. It would probably grow a new head. It was that sort of animal. Anyway, he hoped it would. He had come to like it. He was glad to be heading back to Africa. New York had gotten boring in the past few years. Everybody whined, or snuck around behind your back. Even the muggers were yellow. They cut first and took your money afterward. But they didn't bother him because he was too much of a slob. Only the grungiest of whores would have anything to do with him. He used to be a good-looking guy, but now he was getting fat and he didn't care about anything anymore. The job bored him: It was games. Politics put him to sleep. He liked to read, but he could do that anywhere. He carried his own music inside his head. His movies, too. In Africa everything was strong and it changed all the time. Everything bit. He knew that inside his fat and his lethargy there was a thin, eager young man waiting to be unzipped. The Guinea worm had told him. He knew that once he got to Africa, the man inside would jump out and go running over the game plains, buck naked, with the Guinea worms waving a weird dance around his ankles. He could see the buffalo bull ahead of him through the heat haze, its huge black head shining, shimmering, waiting. n Editor's Note: This article is from A Roaring in the Blood— Remembering Robert F. Jones, published by Sporting Classics in 2006. Copies of the 205-page book are still available. Call (800) 849-1004 or visit www.sportingclassicsstore.com. his pistol and crouched on the hardwood floor, clearing a space for his shoes in the sawdust. He held the pistol in a double-handed grip, his elbows locked and lying across his knees, the muzzle far enough away from Bucky's bare leg to avoid flash burn. Clancy poured a shot for Bucky and another for Riordan. The Irishman shrugged it away. He wanted to be dead calm. Silence fell over the saloon, apart from the odd hiccup—Maynard the onetime bicycle racer. They heard a siren go up Eighth Avenue. They heard two hookers giggle down the avenue. Flaherty, who had flown 36 missions as chin-turret gunner in a B-17 during World War II, struggled to stifle a beer fart. They waited. The Guinea worm poked its head out of Bucky's knee. It swayed in the dim light, retreated a bit, then emerged slowly. It came out like a cobra from a fakir's basket, weaving to a music beyond the range of human ears. It was actually quite beautiful— slim, sinuous, graceful almost, a nearly translucent red, like a living thermometer. It hypnotized them with its dance. Riordan shot. They all jumped at the bark of the revolver. Bottles shivered on the bar. The clouded mirror shifted an inch to the left. Clancy's black leather bowtie took a ride on his Adam's apple. Flaherty cut his fart. The Guinea worm, minus its head, whipped back into Bucky's knee like a snapped rubber band. Later, walking up Eighth past the porno houses and the hooks and the muggers, who paid him no attention because of the blood and beer stains on his clothing, Bucky thought that the Guinea worm would either die inside his leg and rot there, or else grow a