Gibbs
The Early Years
A short story by
Wayne Marinovich
First published 2014 in Great Britain by Umduzu Publishing
Copyright © Wayne Marinovich 2014
This book is copyright under the Berne convention.
Version 2014-01-15
The right of Wayne Marinovich to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages
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Edited by Geoffrey West
Proofread by Julia Gibbs
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action adventure, thriller, teenage abuse, abusive relationships, substance abuse, abusive parents, running away from home, Kyle Gibbs, teenage mischief, Drunken abuse, teenage angst
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Excerpt from Celt
Notes from the author
Other books by Wayne Marinovich
Acknowledgements
Author Bio
Chapter 1
Stonehaven, Scotland, UK—2004
'If we get caught, and it gets back to your old man, he will beat the crap out of us,' the one boy said to the other.
They huddled against a moss-covered, dry-stone wall. The darkness comforted the two boys as they lurked just beyond the clutches of the amber street light. One of the boys lifted a hand to his mouth, and the end of his cigarette burst into life as he took a long draw. The smoke filled his young lungs and calmed his nerves as he looked up and down the street once again.
A loud rasping cough further down the road made the boys freeze. A man, dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, walked out of his house with a small mongrel of a dog and stood on the pavement, urging it to complete its business with a nearby lamppost. One of the boys started to move towards the cover of a nearby alley, but the reassuring grip of his friend’s hand stopped him.
‘Gibbs, look. The light has just come on,’ the smaller of the two boys said, a grin appearing on his freckled face.
‘Let’s go,’ Kyle Gibbs replied and joined his hands together to fashion a stirrup. Jaime Byrne slipped his shoe inside and was boosted up onto the sharp jutting stones on top of the wall. He swung his other foot up and disappeared over the top. Gibbs glanced in the direction of the dog owner to make sure he was gone then pulled himself up. He landed silently on the wet grass.
The room they were targeting was well lit by a pink ceiling light, and the natural gradient of the adjacent garden brought it within eye level of the seated boys. They looked straight inside at the double bed covered in its pink and white bedding with red pillows leant against the wooden headboard. Next to that was a tall white cupboard which had both doors open. A pair of blue jeans hung over one of them.
Jaime took out one of his rolled cigarettes and started to light it when Gibbs slapped his shoulder and pointed to the room. The tall, slim woman they had been waiting for walked in. She was in her early twenties with shoulder-length brown hair and a pretty pixie-like face. She walked over to what Gibbs had guessed was the bathroom, because of the white towel that was hanging over the door, then she disappeared from view.
‘Told you so, squirt,’ Gibbs whispered to his stunned friend. ‘You owe me a fiver.’
A minute later the woman walked back into the room and headed over to a small white dressing table. Leaning against it, she slipped off both her Converse trainers then turned towards the mirror and, in one graceful movement, lifted her red jumper over her head. She unbuckled a leather belt and wiggled from side to side as her denim jeans reluctantly slipped down her hips on their way to the floor.
Gibbs swallowed hard and felt the excitement grow as he looked at the beautiful woman standing in her underwear. He glanced across at his friend and nearly burst out laughing. Jaime stared at the woman with his mouth open, the unlit cigarette dangling from his lips.
He sensed Gibbs looking at him and lifted up his hand with the middle finger extended. Gibbs chuckled then looked back the room to see her walk towards the bathroom, her bra dropping to the floor to reveal a side view of one of her beautiful large breasts and before they could blink, she glided into the bathroom and out of sight.
‘Bloody heck,’ Jamie whispered. Gibbs nodded and smiled.
‘You keen to wait until she comes out again?’ Gibbs said.
‘Of course, I am you, muppet. Nothing could tear me away,’ Jaime said, lighting his cigarette and taking a long draw on it. He passed it across to Gibbs, but before he could lift it to his lips the bushes to the right of them rustled, and the bald head of a snarling man appeared out of the dark.
‘Oi, what the hell are you two doing here?’ he shouted, with a rough Scottish accent.
The boys sprang to their feet and launched themselves through a hedge in the opposite direction of the man, taking off like greyhounds out of a starting trap.
‘Hey, stop right there!’ the man shouted, after making an unsuccessful grab at where Gibbs’s tracksuit top had been a nanosecond before.
The boys ignored him and ran as fast as they could, scraping their shoulders against the stony house wall. ‘Move your fat arse!’ Gibbs shouted at Jaime.
Within a few seconds, they’d made it around the corner of the granite house then ran straight into a dead end. Gibbs looked on in dismay at the large wall blocking their getaway.
‘We’re stuffed,’ Jaime said.
‘Quick,’ Gibbs said and knelt down on the ground. ‘Get on my shoulders. I’ll lift you over.’
They heard their pursuer swear out loud as he stumbled through the garden in the dark. Gibbs groaned as he stood upright, lifting Jaime with all his might. The young man rose to the top of the wall and pulled himself up, just as their pursuer arrived and grabbed hold of Gibbs. The hulking figure made a last-gasp effort to grab Jaime’s trailing leg. Gibbs lifted his foot against the wall and thrust his body back against the man. They both fell over, sprawled out on the grass with a thud.
Lying on the ground, Gibbs suddenly felt the knot in his stomach, and his mouth dried up. This is not going to end well, he thought.
‘Come on. Up on your feet, you filthy little prick,’ the man said, dragging Gibbs upright. ‘I’ll teach you to play Peeping Tom on my daughter.’
The woman’s father, a tough oil rig worker with a physique as large as Gibbs’s own father’s, kept an iron-like grip on Gibbs. He squeezed his neck as he marched him along the small footpath towards the front door of the house. Pushing it with his foot, he shouted, ‘Rachel…Rachel, get down here now.’
The man shoved Gibbs up against the hallway wall. ‘You’re Cameron Gibbs’s boy, aren’t you?’
‘No, sir,’ Gibbs replied.
‘Don’t lie to me, laddie,’ the man said, coming closer to him. ‘It will only make things worse. I’ve seen you with him before.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Gibbs said, looking down on the floor.
‘What’s your bloody name
then?’ he snapped.
‘People call me Gibbs, sir.’
‘That’s better, son. So, what’s the other lad’s name then?’
Gibbs looked down at a recent scar on his hand and just shrugged his shoulders.
‘What is it now, Dad?’ a languid female voice said. ‘Were you bloody shouting and screaming outside?’
Gibbs looked up to see Rachel gliding down the stairs in nothing but a white towel, her long wet hair and naked shoulders glistening in the stairway light. He was awestruck and only broke his gaze when her father punched him in the chest and pinned him to the wall once more. ‘Eyes front, boy.’
Gibbs coughed as the pain radiated outwards from his chest.
‘I caught young Gibbs and a mate playing Peeping Tom in our garden,’ the older man said. ‘How many times have I told you to close your bloody curtains, girl?’
The woman stopped when she got to the last step, not taking her eyes off Gibbs. She frowned at him. ‘So, you’re the little shit that I have seen hanging around our street. Spying on people is a bit creepy, don’t you think?’
Gibbs looked into her warm eyes before a wave of embarrassment flowed through him, and he averted his gaze, aware of his reddening face.
‘Bloody perverted is what it is. Who was the other lad with you? You had better give me a name, son,’ Rachel’s father said, his dark eyes narrowing.
Gibbs shook his head. He tried to take a deep breath to quell the rising panic that he felt, but his chest just tightened even more.
‘You’re going to take the fall for him, are you? Decided to be the hero and take his punishment as well as your own?’
‘Don’t be too hard on him, Dad,’ Rachel said. ‘I have seen him messing about in town. He’s always with some skinny lad, and they’ve followed the girls and me around the shops on the odd occasion. It’s just some harmless teenage crush.’
Gibbs blushed a little. He looked up at her beautiful face and winked.
The slap to the side of his head was so quick that Gibbs didn’t even have time to react. ‘Hey. There’ll be none of that, lad. I said eyes front,’ her father said.
‘It was probably just a little bit of harmless fun, Dad. There is no need to hit him like that,’ Rachel said.
‘You’re right,’ the man replied. ‘I’ll leave that for Cameron to sort out.’
‘I’d prefer to take my punishment now, sir,’ he said.
‘I am sure you would, laddie, but it’s not my place,' the man said. 'Come on.’
They left the house and walked up the path to the road outside. It had started to drizzle again as they made their way through the streets lined with hundreds of quaint granite-bricked homes. The dark and dreary atmosphere of the route started to affect Gibbs’s bravado as they neared the harbour. He knew what waited for him at home.
‘I’m glad to see that you haven’t tried to run away and are planning to face up to your punishment,’ Rachel’s father said to him. ‘That’s a good quality, lad. It doesn’t matter what mistakes you make in life, and hell I should know, I’ve made many myself. Always take your medicine like a man.’ He grabbed Gibbs playfully by the neck.
They reached the harbour and turned right to walk along the frontage. Two squawking gulls pestered each other as they sat on the harbour wall, before flying off as the two humans got nearer. Gibbs and the man stopped in front of a whitewashed building with the black and white sign above the door—The Ship Inn. The eight small tables, which afforded a view out over the small harbour, were all occupied with drunken revellers and tourists. Gibbs looked up at his captor once more before he turned and walked through the door.
Rachel’s father strode into the bar lounge and nodded a greeting to a few regular drinkers who were in their usual chairs, slouched over the dark wood bar. One of the retired fishermen mumbled an incomprehensible greeting as they passed, and Gibbs stopped in front of the counter where his dad was pouring a whiskey. The big oil worker looked up, grunted, and then frowned when he saw the man standing behind his son.
‘Angus?’ Cameron Gibbs said, a puzzled look on his face.
‘Hello, Cameron,’ Angus replied.
‘What has he done now?’ Cameron asked, and glanced down at his son.
‘I caught him and a mate hiding in my garden, watching my Rachel through the window while she changed,’ Angus said.
Cameron Gibbs sucked in a deep breath through his yellow-stained teeth, looking up at the ceiling as he took a step backwards, anger and embarrassment written across his face. Some of the drunken regulars burst out laughing but went quiet when Cameron threw the bar towel down on the counter and sent the glass of whiskey flying.
He glared at them and then slowly walked around the edge of the bar counter to the customer area, stopping in front of his son, ‘You’ll pay for this.’
Cameron looked across at the other man. ‘My apologies, Angus. You and your daughter should not have had to go through this embarrassment, never mind having to bring this little shit down here.’
‘That’s okay, Cameron. I know you’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again. No harm was done,’ Angus replied.
‘I can assure you it will be taken care of. May I offer you a drink by way of an apology?’ Cameron said, stepping back behind the bar.
‘Whiskey,’ Angus said and pulled out a barstool.
Cameron Gibbs walked back around to the other side of the bar. ‘Boy! Get your arse upstairs.’
Chapter 2
The six feet four inches of storming Celtic aggression staggered into the room and took a long swig from the almost empty vodka bottle in his hand. He looked around, his gaze unfocused and drifting, totally unable to see the fourteen-year-old boy standing in the centre of the room. ‘Where the fuck are you, boy?’ he screamed and staggered backwards into the wall.
‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ Gibbs shouted.
Cameron Gibbs's focus narrowed in on the small figure in front of him. He took a step closer. ‘You embarrassed me, you little prick. I am going to knock the living shit out of you.’
He threw the glass bottle. It flew past an escaping boy, showering him with the clear liquid as it smashed into the wall behind him. Gibbs lost his balance and stumbled backwards for a second before righting himself. As he turned to face his dad, a punch smashed into his mouth.
It jarred his young body, and the metallic taste of blood gushed into his mouth. He lifted his hands up to his face to ward off the next punch. Nothing came.
The teenager stepped back, holding his bleeding mouth. He was about to turn and run when he realised that his father had lost his balance and was sprawled out on the carpet, shouting incoherently as he tried to push himself upright. The fourteen-year-old screamed with pent-up rage and kicked at the drunken figure with all his young might. He caught his father just below the ribcage, and the prostrate man groaned loudly with pain.
Gibbs ran down the passage and into his small bedroom, slamming the damaged white door behind him. He locked the deadbolt and slipped the large latch at the top of the old plywood panelled door. Next, he grabbed a one-inch-thick square tube that he and Jaime had cut a few weeks before, and placed it across the width of the door, slipping the one end of it into the hole in the brick wall they had painstakingly chiselled out for this very purpose. The other end of the metal tubing slotted into a thick metal cradle they had fashioned into a suitable shape and screwed securely onto the door frame.
Gibbs jumped as his father crashed into the door from the other side. The timber creaked again under the big man’s weight as he threw his shoulder against it a second time, then a third. The topmost hinged part of the door splintered a little, but the metal tube held against the crashing weight of the swearing man.
The scared young man got onto his bed and prepared himself for an anxious wait. Dawn was a long way away.
• • •
Gibbs awoke with a start. He’d drifted off to sleep. He took the earphones out of his ears and listened to the silence from dow
n the passage. Wincing with pain as he touched his cracked lip and was relieved to find that the swelling wasn't too bad. It certainly wouldn't be bad enough for their nosey old neighbour to comment on, as she usually did. That angered his father even more.
The bright red numbers of the old clock radio showed five-thirty in the morning. Lying back down, he looked at the music track playing on his mobile phone. The song, Easier to Run, by the band Linkin Park, blasted into his headphones. There was a lot of truth in that.
He wasn’t sure if it was the third or fourth time he’d replayed the song when his mobile phone began to vibrate. The incoming text read—downstairs numbnuts, why the hell must I always wait for you. Gibbs smiled, grabbed his rucksack and climbed out of the window, sliding onto the slippery ledge.
The sky to the east was getting light, so he didn’t need his torch to find the footholds alongside the old gutter pipe that ran down past his window. Jaime had taken a few iron brackets from his dad’s workshop and, under the pretence of cleaning the gutters for pocket money, he and his friend had bolted them next to the vertical gutter downpipe on a day when Gibbs's father was out.
A few minutes later, the two boys, dressed in waterproof jackets pulled over their shirts and tattered jeans, walked along the large harbour wall, laughing and breathing in the fresh morning sea air.
They reached the end of the stone wall, prepared their fishing rods with fresh bait, and threw a few long casts into the calm water. Satisfied with the locations they'd cast into, they leant the rods against the wall and lit up a home-rolled cigarette.
‘Did it hurt when he punched you?’ Jaime asked, eyeing up Gibbs’s cracked lip.
‘Not that much. I think he was too drunk to get his body weight behind it this time. He lost his balance after he hit me and went down like a sack of spuds. I managed to get a kick into his ribs.’
‘No way!’ Jaime said, looking at his friend. ‘You kicked your old man in the ribs? He must have gone bloody mental.’
‘Did he ever. I thought he would smash right through the door he was so angry, but that metal bracket worked a treat,’ Gibbs replied. ‘We might have to replace the hinge again, though.’
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