Kipp The Kid Read online

“Stay? Ummm, not a good idea. Too cold. Yes it’s very cold, isn’t it Nip?”

  “Woof!”

  “Besides. You’re a girl and I have rules,” he said, wondering if she even felt the cold in her nighty and dressing gown.

  “Well, I see you have a fire.” She wasted no time in making herself at home and sat down on his rock. Kipp rolled his eyes and Nip cocked his head and barked. She had found the rest of his chips too and was already chomping them down.

  Kipp was not really all that good with girls. It wasn’t that he wasn’t interested enough to talk to them, more that they didn’t talk to him, unless it was to tease or run a hand over his head to see if his hair really was as wiry as everyone said. But Jane, for all her flaws, the biggest being she was a girl, was the best of a bad bunch. She was two grades lower than him and still in primary school. He’d seen her around at school and had unsuccessfully pretended not to know her. He had observed she didn’t have many friends and had, deep down, secretly, felt sorry for her.

  If he had thought about it more, he would have decided she was not the worst person to join him at his camp. She was certainly better than his cousin Jack, who thankfully only visited rarely and she was better than the Skinner sisters a couple of properties up the road from where he lived. They used to walk their Dobermans past his gran and grumps house every afternoon in summer and during holidays, stopping to call out to him from the gate. They were twins and the loudest, screechiest, most annoying creatures on the planet. Even his pet cocky Sam was not a patch on them for the noise they made.

  “Kipp? K-I-P-P?” They would call out to him, but he hid inside until they gave up or their dogs got restless. Nip would run out to the gate, stopping half way, barking bravely. But the stupid black things would bark back and he would run back to the porch and half hide under the deck.

  But Jane, she was quiet, at least for a girl. He didn’t really know a heck of a lot about her, even though they had been neighbors for as long as he could remember. But two things he did know. She spent a lot of time inside and she had flaming red hair that flowed low over her back, almost to the hips.

  He’d spied her more times than he would admit, in her back yard, playing with her toys or in the cubby house, or with her cats. He had rarely seen visitors come to the house and had only known her to have one friend over, another girl her age, but he didn’t know for certain if she was related or just a friend. She certainly hadn’t come from their school.

  And here she was, standing, rubbing her hands fiercely over the fire. Such a delicate and slender little thing. She looks like she would snap in a sharp breeze. Kipp had never compared girls to girls, but now that he had time to observe, he subconsciously graded her according to the scale of Kipp. Everything was graded that way, his grandparents love for him, his absent father’s…absence, his love for his dog Nip. His gran and grumps scored a reasonable six out of ten. His father, who he had not seen since he was four, got a half a point, just for being his dad, but that’s it. His mum, if she were still here, would have scored a nine. Nip was a certain ten and Jane? She fell neatly at a very respectable seven. If he had been honest with himself he would have scored her higher, but he was too embarrassed to admit it even to himself.

  Chapter 3: The kipper way

  Jane had not brought anything with her, except a hastily packed bag of not very warm looking clothes, some snacks and her toothbrush. She had no bedding and apart from his swag, Kipp only had a coat he always brought in case the weather turned nasty. If it had been the middle of winter and not late spring, he would have to have marched her straight back home. As it was she had begged him to let her stay even on pain of freezing to death.

  So she stayed. Kipp did his best to keep her warm and comfortable. If he had been a gentlemen, or even knew what one was, he would have offered her his swag and rolled up next to the fire in his coat. But he didn’t. He felt that if he made it too comfortable for her, she would want to come back again. It was a fine line he was treading, way up on the tightrope of relationships and the rope was wobbling like jelly.

  Kipp reasoned that he had already made too many concessions. To make up for it, he gave her some canned soup, which she scoffed down like a poor child in a Charles Dickens novel. When she was finished, Kipp made up some hot chocolate and the two of them sipped quietly away, sharing the rock as a seat, which only had just enough room for the two of them. Kipp’s bum got sore from sitting nearly on the sharp edge, because he didn’t want his bum to come into contact with hers. Jane, on the other hand, seemed not at all fussed about it and actually leant in a little, every time Kipp adjusted his position to move. But despite his discomfort, he wasn’t about to give up his rock, even for a girl he only barely tolerated, let alone liked.

  Kipp never dreamed. At least, not dreams he remembered. Only once had a dream been so real that he woke up expecting to see his Mum standing there and was genuinely surprised when she wasn’t. But on this cool night something inside him had stirred and he had a dream so vivid, so strange and so real that the vision of it stayed with him long into the next week.

  He’d been down to the mines, as he always had. It was a warm night and there were bugs everywhere. The campsite was just as he had left it the last time he was there. But there was an eeriness, an unease that seemed to penetrate the place. The stars shone down brightly, sparkling like heaven’s jewelry in the black box of space. Even the fire he made took on a ghostly glow and cast strange beams of light out into the mist that had somehow rolled in from above the chasm. Odd, he had thought, wrong time of year for fog.

  But just as Kipp was wondering about the strange mist, a voice suddenly cried out in the dark and a white figure appeared at the end of the chasm. It called out his name and the sound echoed off the stone walls, making it sound much louder than it would normally. Then, the strange figure, who he did not recognize, held out both arms and let out a howl.

  Kipp woke to his dog Nip howling at the Moon, whose crest had only just started to appear above the chasm. It did not occur to Kipp straight away that Nip had rarely howled, not at the Moon, not at thunder, not at anything except when the Rooster crowed early on some mornings.

  It took Kipp some time to adjust to the still cool air of the night. He checked his watch. It was not even three. He looked over at Jane who had somehow managed to fall asleep, curled up uncomfortably in his coat. Her feet poked out one end, her white socks dirty from the red dust. The fire was almost out, only the smallest glow of embers to warm the air. He decided to stoke it and throw some more sticks on. He watched as the sticks slowly smoldered until the fire finally flickered back to life.

  He sat there for a long time, watching the fire and wondering about the dream. He tried to picture the figure, too large to be a girl and too small to be his mother. But it was definitely female. It wore a long white gown, old looking and frayed. She had dark hair, that much Kipp remembered. But he dared not look across the chasm into the dark cleft, lest something sinister appear.

  Jane stretched out to reveal a screwed up face poking out from in front of the nape of Kipp’s jacket, squinting in the morning light. Her hair was all over her face. A cheeky eye gazed at him.

  “Is it morning?” she asked matter-of-factly.

  Typical, thought Kipp. Always stating the obvious. In his experience, girls always did that. His mother had done it. His gran did it often. “Get some clothes on. It’s freezing,” she would say, as if Kipp couldn’t feel cold until the magic of her words made it cold.

  He would tease her sometimes about it. “Gee, is that soup?” and “Wow, you have blue hair.” But his gran seemed to not get the joke. “Well of course it’s soup,” she would answer, a rebuking tone in her voice. The same tone she always used when calling out to grumps. “Stan, you have to get the chickens in. Stan, come in off the porch before you catch pneumonia. Stan, the neighbor’s goats are loose again.” Then she would grumble to herself because he hadn’t heard her.

  Kipp was tempted to tease Ja
ne but thought better of it. “Yes, it is…morning, I mean.” Jane shot him a curious glance and then smiled much more warmly than he had anticipated. He returned a weak, uncomfortable smile. I hope she didn’t notice I was perving, Kipp thought and wondered whether she could read his mind. He must have turned red, because Jane started giggling.

  “Do you have a girlfriend?” Kipp’s grumps had asked out of nowhere one afternoon as he sat rocking on his chair on the porch.

  “Not for another twenty years Grandpa”, Kipp answered politely and then rolled his eyes when grumps wasn’t looking.

  “Well, there’s plenty of time for that.” As he said it Kipp’s gran could be heard calling out to him from the kitchen.

  “Stan, you have to get the chickens in…and get me some eggs while you’re at it or we’ll be eaten stale bread with nothing on it for tea.”

  “Do you have a girlfriend?” asked Jane suddenly and the image of his grumps rocking on the porch replayed in his mind. He thought about giving the same reply, but decided to lie instead.

  “Yes. Yes I do as a matter of fact. Though, she’s older than you and taller too.”

  In his short years on this planet, Kipp has struggled to understand the women in his life. The only exception was his mother. He had understood her perfectly well. But the twins who walked their dogs were like aliens and his gran was a whole other beast. His girl cousins (Jack’s sisters) only ever complained about how hot it was whenever they visited for Summer. So he hadn’t yet learnt there were certain things you should never do. One is complain about a woman’s mood and two is that the heart of a girl is fragile and easily broken.

  The warm smile which had so easily formed on Jane’s face was just as soon gone. It left as easily as the water squelching down the drain when you empty the sink, only faster. Jane got up and pretended to play with the smoking sticks in the fire pit. He could tell her mood had changed, but hadn’t quite put his finger on why.

  “Does she have a name?”

  “Umm…no…I mean, Noelene.”

  “Noelene? That’s an odd name. How old is she?”

  “How old?”

  “Yes, you said she is older, so how old?”

  “Um…ahhh…sixteen.” Kipp gulped when he realized how stupid it sounded. But he was committed.

  “Sixteen? But you’re only twelve.”

  “Thirteen,” he stated proudly. “Just last month.”

  “Wow, you are almost old enough to be her…her baby brother,” she said, teasing him. Then a weak smile returned as she was beginning to realize he was fibbing.

  Kipp said nothing in reply. He was busy packing up the camp and clearing away the rubbish. By now he’d usually be down one of the shafts or scaling the engine house to see the view of the ocean. Not many kids he knew could climb the five story engine houses dotting the district. He only knew of one other kid that claimed to have, but nobody ever saw him do it. But Kipp could, though he had to scale the broken corner, which had bits of brick and stone protruding in a kind of jagged ladder for part of the way up. Then there was some steel reinforcing mesh someone had attached to keep the stone from falling out.

  “What do you do here…when no one else’s around, I mean?” She asked as she waited for him to finish. Kipp rolled his eyes and then turned to face her. He couldn’t make up his mind whether she was always this chatty. At home, next door, she always seemed preoccupied with her little area in the back yard, out by the Aleppo Pines. Someone, he assumed her father, had built a cubby house consisting of several staggered platforms and half walls. It looked like it had been there for a while. He sometimes watched her climb the rope ladder gracefully, her hair dangling down behind her like Rapunzel in the old fairy tale.

  “I climb,” he said, boasting.

  “I can climb,” she answered quickly.

  “This aint no cubby house.”

  “Aint it?” she answered, mimicking him and then giggled. “You don’t normally talk like that. Much more proper, like…like an adult.”

  He wanted to end this game, but didn’t know how. “Did you bring decent shoes?”

  “Only these.” She pointed to her sandals.

  “I figured. Well, that’s it then, you can’t come.”

  “Why not? It’s because I’m a girl, isn’t it.”

  “No, it’s because you don’t have climbing boots.”

  “I can get some.”

  It was getting tedious and Kipp decided he had had enough. “Look. You just can’t come. Now, I let you stay the night. I let you camp. I gave you food. But that’s it.” Seeing the sulky look on Jane’s face he decided to soften his tone a little. “Won’t your parents be worried?”

  “It’s just dad and me now.” She was scowling, as if it was information Kipp should have known. He did know, he had just forgotten.

  “Won’t your dad be worried then?”

  “Yeah, I wish. He’s probably crashed on the living room floor—” She stopped herself short of a complete thought. She had already said too much. Kipp saw a different expression now, much more troubling. He didn’t know what to make of it. Suddenly her whole mood changed, as if she had just remembered she had to be somewhere else. “You’re right. I better be off. I have to go.” She made to turn around and then swung back to face him. “Which way is it again?”

  She found her way here, but can’t find her way home, Kipp thought. Oh brother. He had no choice now. His day was ruined. He would have to take her home. Gran and grumps would see him and give him a list of jobs he had to do and by the time he would be finished there was no way he’d be able to get away again. Camping would have to wait. The girl had done it. She had spoiled his plans. She was the only one who ever had.

  To say that he was annoyed is to say the sky is blue. As he escorted his stowaway companion, he barely spoke to her the whole way back. It didn’t stop Jane talking though, almost the entire way. Not that Kipp remembered much of what she said. He just wanted to be rid of her, as much as anyone wanted to be rid of someone.

  Chapter 4: Kipp’s contract

  A few nights later, as Kipp was getting ready for bed, he heard yelling next door. That was not so strange. He knew Jane’s father often came home drunk and there was usually some loud noises, the clanging of the gate, the slamming of the front door, the loud thumping as he stumbled through the house, some orders barked at his daughter and that was about it. But lately, these incidences had been more common and this night Kipp was alarmed to hear what sounded like Jane screaming at someone, then something smashed and was followed by loud sobbing. He peered out through his upstairs bedroom window. Across a small paddock he could just see the silhouette of Jane as she entered her room. She went to her window, held his gaze for the briefest of moments, shoved the window hard shut and ripped the curtains across with such violence that she almost tore them.

  Kipp was worried. He had never seen her angry before. She always struck him as a quiet, unassuming, sensible little girl. Now, for the first time, he saw something quite different, someone he was beginning to care about—much to his own surprise—was hurting. He felt suddenly ashamed at ignoring her and being annoyed. She only wanted his company, after all. She was the only friend apart from Nip he had in his entire world. Spending the night with her had been difficult, but thinking back, he had secretly welcomed the company.

  After a very restless sleep, Kipp got up early, before the sun rose and had all his chores done before his gran woke. When she saw him she began barking a list at him.

  “Have you fed the h-”

  “Done.”

  “What about the ch-”

  “Done.”

  “And the g-”

  “Also done.”

  His gran stood there, her hands on her hips, looking at him. “And what about your h-”

  “Also done,” he said grinning. Before his gran could ask too many more questions, he was out the door, bag and swag with him. But as he passed by next door, he happened to look up at Jane’s window to see
her quickly disappear behind her curtains. Before she did though, he thought he saw something on her face. Not chocolate, too early, he reasoned. Not mud, it hasn’t rained. Not makeup, she never wore it. Then a thought came to him that stopped him dead in his tracks.