The Bonegilla Kid by Stefan Michael Klepiak

Author:Stefan Michael Klepiak
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: ReadOnTime BV
Published: 2014-07-16T00:00:00+00:00

The kid’s first year at high school was over. He and his friends all passed. The kid even got high marks in science, algebra, arithmetic and geometry; he just passed English. He was twenty-three days absent from school that year. He signed the report book himself — his parents never saw it.

As the new high school was built in stages, only Forms 1 and 2 went there. Forms 3, 4 and 5 still went to the old school. The kid was now separated from his two mates, as they were going into Form 3. He was having problems with a few new teachers and he soon just took the bus to school and then hitched a ride or took the train to Wangaratta or Melbourne for the day. He’d come back on the mail train, arriving back at Wodonga at ten in the evening, and hitch a ride to Bonegilla. He never told anyone where he was going or when he’d be around, just appeared when it suited him: exactly like he did when he was five years old back in Germany.

He soon found his way to St Kilda and Luna Park, where he got himself a job on Friday nights and all day Saturday and Sunday working on the dodgem boats for ten shillings a day. He’d catch the tram to the city, sneak on the mail train and return to Bonegilla ready for school by Monday morning. The kid would sleep at his boss’s house while he was in Melbourne; his wife liked the kid and took good care of him. They knew he came from Bonegilla and he would tell them that he would be back next Friday. This went on for almost a year with nobody knowing.

One day the kid got a lift and was dropped off in a residential area of St Kilda. As he was heading toward Luna Park he took a wrong turn somewhere and got lost in acres and acres of houses … When a police car drove past him they stopped, as the kid was in his Wodonga High School uniform, wearing his maroon school blazer with the Wodonga High School emblem. They questioned the kid as to where he was going and where he had been; they thought he was a runaway as he told them he was going to his brother’s place but couldn’t give them an address.

They took the kid to headquarters and the kid’s father turned up the next day to take him back to Bonegilla. The police gave his father the four pounds and loose change the kid had on him. His father never said one word to him all the way home, just staring at the kid sometimes and shaking his head, followed by a few Polish swear words. But his father counted the money a few times before he pocketed it, glancing at the kid with a slow smirk.

The kid expected to get a major beating, but when they arrived at Bonegilla his father just went directly to the club and the kid to his friends.

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