The Ravens Fed the Prophet

 

On my first day as a volunteer with Meals on Wheels, the supervisor—a fat retired bloke—told me, “You’re delivering to Mrs Sampson: good luck with that!”

I searched for some clue to his meaning in his florid face. He smiled but did not elaborate.

My Meals on Wheels partner, Bryan, explained: “Mrs Sampson’s house is a mess, and she’s a religious nut. She takes a bit of getting used to.”

We drove to her house first. It was a simple weatherboard cottage with a corrugated iron roof and wooden-framed windows shaded with fibro awnings. The front gate squeaked as I opened it, the rusty hinges like the starting gun for the start of a dachshund race: three little dogs lined up at a hole in the front screen door and burst through it one at a time. But they didn’t bark or snarl; they circled us wagging their tails and escorted us to the door.

I have a rule of thumb with dogs: they reflect their owners. A dog owned by nasty people is likely to bite you; the dog of crazy people is usually uncontrollable; and a dog that belongs to sweet people is reliably affectionate. Mrs Sampson’s dogs were so affable and well-behaved that I reached down and tickled their soft, floppy ears.

Bryan knocked on the door. “Meals on Wheels, Mrs Sampson!” he bellowed into the house.

A figure emerged from the shadows of the hallway.

“You don’t have to yell: I’m blind, not deaf!” a skinny old woman said, and she opened the screen door.

Her eyes bulged with glaucoma; she had the disfiguring red rash of psoriasis on her neck, scalp and hands; she had jowls of thin, sagging flesh; a white moustache over her downturned mouth, and greasy hair. She wore old pink slacks and a flannelette shirt under a filthy cardigan. She stank of urine.

Bryan glanced at me to see my reaction. He was grim-faced.

I looked around the house as she led us to the kitchen. Her house was a shambles: the front room, bedroom, hallway and kitchen were strewn with toppling piles of newspapers, junk mail, clothes, cardboard boxes, shopping bags, medicine bottles and tablet packaging. Ants feasted on the meaty residue in empty pet food cans. As she walked—her steps a tentative shuffle—she trailed a hand along the wall to navigate and to steady herself.

I paused to look at a framed wedding photograph of a short, stern bride beside her tall, black-suited groom. Even on her wedding day, Mrs Sampson had been a plain girl, and now, old and unkempt, she was ugly.

I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket and held it over my mouth and nose as we neared the back of the house. Cats appeared—I counted five—and curved their bodies around our legs. On the bathroom floor, three trays of breath-halting kitty litter sat clumped with half-buried faeces, the litter and the faeces overflowing onto the tiled floor. Nuggets of cat droppings were squashed flat, most likely by Mrs Sampson as she made her way to the toilet. Front and back screen doors had holes torn in them; I hoped so the dogs could go outside and empty their bowels.

In the kitchen stood a wire cage the size of a refrigerator; in it a large sulphur-crested cockatoo sidled along its perch towards us. The bird’s big curved beak looked like it could crack your finger in two. The bottom of the cage had a mound, as high as my knee, of crap and sunflower seed husks.

“The ravens have come to feed the prophet!” Mrs Sampson announced to the cockatoo.

The cocky bobbed up and down. “Pray Gawh! Pray Gawh!” it squawked.

“Yes, praise God,” Mrs Sampson repeated.

“That’s Elijah—the parrot,” Bryan said, seeing me staring at the bird.

Mrs Sampson stuck a fragile finger, knobby with arthritis, into the cage. The cockatoo leaned its neck against her finger and Mrs Sampson caressed it; the bird closed its eyes and stretched upwards so her finger stroked the length of its flank.

“What prayer needs have you got, young man?”

I was momentarily confused because Mrs Sampson asked it with her bulging blind eyes turned towards the cocky and because she said “young man” and I’m sixty-five.

Bryan smiled at me, waiting for my response.

It was a question I’d never encountered before. Finally I said, “My grandson’s going for his P-plates. I’d like him to get them.”

She turned her face towards me and spoke to the air above my head.

“I’ll pray that he gets ’em when he’s good and ready. You don’t want him killing himself or someone else in a motor car.”

She continued to caress the breast of the ecstatic cockatoo, but gazed in Bryan’s direction.

“How’s your mother?” she asked him.

“She’s good. The hip replacement went well.”

“No infections?”

“No, no infections. And she’s walking again.”

“Thank you Jesus for healing the crippled!” she exulted, and she clasped her hands together and lifted them heavenward.

Elijah’s crest unfurled upright like a tongue of yellow flame. He bobbed up and down. “Pray Gawh! Pray Gawh!” he squawked again.

“You’re a wise one,” Mrs Sampson said to the bird.

I put her meal on the kitchen bench in one of the few spots not covered with food slops or papers.

“Here’s your meal, Mrs Sampson,” I said, and I patted the plastic container so she could locate the meal from the sound.

“What’s your name?”

She edged towards me. I drew back.

“Alan,” I said.

“Alan whose grandson is learning to drive,” she summarised.

Bryan gestured for me to head for the door; it was time to go.

“We’ll see you next week, Mrs Sampson,” he said. “Don’t forget; your lunch is on the bench.”

She directed her sightless eyes towards Bryan.

“I heard him when he told me the first time,” she said. She pointed a bent finger at me, but I’d moved and she was indicating the kitchen cupboards.

“Just checking,” Bryan said. “I’d hate the food to go to waste.”

She laughed a crusty, phlegm-throttled laugh. “You think the food’d be wasted with this lot around?” And she pointed to the floor and in that whirlpool of pets circling her feet it was hard not to point directly at either a cat or a dog.

“What’s her story?” I asked Bryan when we were in the car.

“She’s a widow; her husband died, oh, twenty years ago. They had a property near Binnaway. When he fell off the perch, she sold the farm and bought the house in town: lived there ever since.”

“Did they have kids?” I asked.

“Yeah, two boys. They left home as soon as they could: embarrassed by their parents, I think. Both of them live in Sydney.”

“Do they know how their mother lives?”

“I’d say so, yeah. They pay a kid to mow her lawn and a woman to do some cleaning for an hour or two each week.”

“That place gets cleaned?”

“Sort of cleaned. She empties the cat trays, vacuums around the piles of junk and scrubs the toilet and bath. She does a load of washing, changes the sheets—stuff like that.”

I pitied the cleaner.

“What church did they go to?” I asked. I could imagine the sufferings of their minister under the weight of their relentless enthusiasm.

“They had a home church. Half-a-dozen people’d gather at their farm each Sunday; they’d meet under a big pine tree. They asked me to go once. I said no.”

We finished our deliveries and I was relieved to see that none of the other housebound folk lived in conditions as squalid as Mrs Sampson.

A week later, Bryan and I again took a meal to Mrs Sampson. I swung open her squeaking front gate and again the dachshunds burst through the hole in the screen door to escort us to the house where we weren’t ready for what we saw. Mrs Sampson was bald; only an uneven stubble of grey hair rose above the angry, red rash that covered her scalp. She looked like an old man who looked like an old woman. Bryan and I stood in her hallway and stared. I thought maybe the mangled haircut was a result of some psychotic episode.

Bryan was first to recover from the shock. “Mrs Sampson, have you joined the army?”

She turned towards him.

“I took a vow—a very solemn vow—to pray every day, morning, noon and night—until I die. I cut my hair as an outward sign and symbol of my commitment. Same thing that Saint Paul did.”

“I wouldn’t add fasting to your prayers,” Bryan said.

“I’m fading quickly enough without fasting,” she said as she led us farther into the house. She asked me, “Did your grandson get his licence?”

She had remembered. She certainly wasn’t senile.

“He failed the test,” I said. I held a folded handkerchief over my mouth and nose: the smell in the house, especially the stink of urine surrounding Mrs Sampson, was like an intimate, poisonous cloud.

“That’s because it wasn’t right for him to be driving yet,” she told me.

“Maybe. He’ll try again next week.”

“Well, I’ll keep interceding for him.”

I put her meal down on the kitchen bench.

“Your meal’s here, Mrs Sampson,” I said, and I patted the plastic container.

She stepped towards me and tilted her alarming head up to me as if I was very tall.

“I hear from your voice, you’re holding something over your face,” she said. “The Spirit is here but he doesn’t displace anything natural. The flesh is corruptible, but my soul is renewed every morning.”

I didn’t say anything. Bryan saw my discomfort. “Where’s Elijah, Mrs Sampson?” he quickly said.

“Yesterday, a flock of cockatoos visited me and I could hear how excited Elijah was so I opened his cage and the back door and he flew away to glory. Just like the prophet.”

Bryan shook his head.

“So you let him go?” I said.

“Yes, I let him go. I’ll miss the conversation.”

“Has the nurse been today?” Bryan asked. I noticed new bandages covering her ankles and feet.

“Yes, she’s a lovely girl.”

“And the cleaning lady?”

“Can’t you tell?” Mrs Sampson laughed. “I’m the one that’s blind!”

“Well, the dishes are done and there’s washing on the line,” Bryan reported.

“And she’s vacuumed the floor and cleaned the bathroom,” Mrs Sampson said.

That was the other strong smell: bleach. The cleaner must’ve used bottles of it.

“Then you’re all organised,” Bryan said. “We’ll see you next week.”

On a sideboard near the front door I noticed a packet of disposable incontinence underwear. I supposed the community nurse had given them to Mrs Sampson. I hoped she’d start wearing them.

We got in the car.

“Her sons should be horse-whipped for not looking after her! I could hardly breathe in there!” Bryan said.

“There was a packet of incontinence underpants there, but it hadn’t been opened,” I said.

“Strangers have to care for her! It’s pathetic!” Bryan said, and he made the gearbox suffer as he drove away.

When Bryan and I next made our deliveries, I squeaked the front gate open but no dachshunds came to greet us. The front door was closed. I knocked but there was no answer.

“Could she be in hospital?” I asked Bryan.

“Usually they tell us so we know not to deliver.”

Bryan banged on the door. There was a scurrying of dogs’ feet inside the house and then a chorus of barking from behind the door. Bryan and I looked at each other. It was the first time I’d heard the dogs bark.

Bryan tried the door-knob; it was locked. He walked around the house to the back door.

I looked in the front window. I saw the dogs race down the hall as Bryan tried the back door. The cats hurried after the dogs. Piles of newspapers, cardboard boxes overflowing with empty pet food cans, discarded underpants and dresses, egg cartons and opened but forgotten loaves of bread were scattered around the front room. That was normal. The dogs barking was not.

Bryan returned to the front porch. “I’ll call the office and see what they know,” he said, and pulled his mobile from his pocket.

I walked around the house, looked through the kitchen window, and saw an unopened Meals on Wheels container on the table. There was no sign of Mrs Sampson.

I moved to the bathroom window. It was small and high. I stood on my toes and peered inside. The smell of faeces slapped my face. I gagged and stepped back from the window. I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket, held it over my mouth and nose, stood tall and looked again through the window. The shower curtain had been torn down and lay crumpled on the floor. In the hallway, near the bathroom door, there was a pile of dog droppings.

A milk crate holding two shrivelled pot plants lay nearby; I tipped them out and stood on the crate to get a better view. I opened the window as wide as it would go and that was when I saw Mrs Sampson below me. She was sitting on the toilet. I didn’t speak to her. Her head had fallen forwards; her shoulders, neck and head had turned a peculiar bluish-yellow as if extensively bruised.

Bryan came around the house as I was stepping back from the window.

“Find anything?” he said.

“Yeah. She’s on the toilet. I think she’s dead.”

Bryan stood on the crate and peered in the window. He jumped back from the sight and the smell.

“We’d better call the cops,” he said.

I left him to make the call and walked around the house. There was no indication of forced entry. I could hear the dogs barking as they ran from the front door to the back door, to and fro, again and again.

I went to the gate and waited for the police.

Bryan joined me. “I wish the dogs would stop barking,” he said.

“The poor things are distressed. She’s probably been like that for days.”

A paddy wagon soon arrived. A policeman and a policewoman, both young, got out and came towards us.

“You made the call to triple O?” the policeman asked us. He was tall, with the lean frame of a teenager, and a narrow, spotty face.

“Yeah, I did,” Bryan said. “We’re with Meals on Wheels. The house was shut up so we looked through some windows and found Mrs Sampson in the bathroom. We think she’s dead.”

We led them to the bathroom window. The policeman stood on the milk crate, scanned the room and quickly stepped back. He gestured to the policewoman to have a look. She was petite and her black tactical belt, crammed with equipment, appeared too big for her narrow hips. She had to elevate herself on her toes to see inside. She leapt back from the window.

“Yeah, she’s there, deceased.”

The policeman spoke on his radio.

“What’s happening?” Bryan asked the policewoman.

“We need to call detectives in case there’s been a crime committed. You’ll probably need to come to the station and make statements.”

She walked over to join her colleague.

The dogs kept barking.

My mobile chirrupped twice. It was a message from Alex, my grandson. I read it: “Hey Pop. I got my P-plates!” I thought for a moment. “Well done, drive safely,” I texted back.

The policewoman took our names and contact details. There was nothing left for us to do at Mrs Sampson’s house. Bryan and I got in the car.

“Who takes care of the body: the police or the ambos?” I asked Bryan.

“Neither,” he said. “They have contractors in Dubbo who come out to do that.”

Before we drove away, I saw the policeman once more on the milk crate. Again he fell back from the window and retreated from the house to suck in lungfuls of air untainted by corruptible flesh.