A Handicap of the Devil? by Allen Lyne

Author:Allen Lyne [Lyne, Allen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Books Unbound
Published: 2012-07-07T06:15:43+00:00

Chapter 16

Sampson, Old Crone and Cowley

The dwarf, Old Crone, Cowley and Sampson met at a drop in centre for dropouts. Like the dwarf, each person there had a story to tell—some sadder than others—but all sad for one reason or another.

Sampson had been born without a nose and with a toothless hole for a mouth. He was battered and abused by his parents as a child, to the point where he hit the streets at a very early age and remained there. His body was big and strong, and he got casual labouring work from time to time in places where people could stand his looks.

Old Crone had lived a reasonable life in various homes for the intellectually handicapped after her parents rejected her. Then a conservative government decided to close all of the places of refuge for such people and ‘integrate them into society'. This meant the expenditure of much less money, which was the ultimate aim, but led to much social dislocation and much pain. Intellectually handicapped people had major ‘accidents’ or minor ones like sitting all day in the burning sun because no one told them to go inside. Some suffered sunstroke and massive burns to every part of their bodies exposed to the hot Australian sunshine. Old Crone lost both of her sunburnt legs when she walked under a train at a crossing. She got about after a time of rehabilitation on two artificial legs with the assistance of a walking frame or crutches.

Cowley, who was born without ears and with a hump on her back, had loving parents who were both killed in a road accident. She became welfare dependent at an early age and got into drugs. Cowley was surprisingly well read for someone who left school at the early age of fourteen, and she made a point of reading the Bible as part of her search for understanding. She was an agnostic, who considered questions of God and the universe as beyond her comprehension, and beyond the comprehension of any mere mortal.

So these four diverse people, whom society considered handicapped, met at a drop in centre connected to a council Health Service. They got along famously. The binding thing they had in common was their love of dope. They smoked whatever they could get and even grew their own when they found a squat they were able to remain in for five months. They had been together for just over a year before Jonathan blundered into their world, and had just found the house with the ceiling and shed full of drugs. This seemed to them like manna from heaven.

Now the four of them were out in the cold, clear air on the deck of the houseboat. They were attempting to clear their heads of the drug fumes and trying to work out the veracity or otherwise of what they had experienced in the cabin. The four of them also had decisions to make.

"I don't know,” said Cowley. “I just don't know. What

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