RE: Trailer Trash 61 pt 1

    Deb and Mike’s ‘DaM’ Good Wings was the familiar places to eat for Mr. Moore, sandwiched in between a nail salon and a tax accountant in a strip mall just four blocks down from their trailer park. The place was a restaurant only in loose terms—Deb wasn’t shy of telling her customers that their small business only survived by clinging onto one of the few liquor licenses Springton was willing to mete out. They sold cheap beer, they dispatched greasy as hell wings and fries in cheap styrofoam containers, and the decor inside was so dated that ashtrays were still sitting on every table. It was the closest a little town like Springton had to a dive bar—because this was a semi-dry county, the nearest real bar was way out in the sticks, halfway to Sandboro.

    Been a while, hasn’t it? Mr. Moore thought to himself as he pulled open the grimy door and stepped inside.

    The smell of unfiltered fryer grease was strong, all of the tabletops here looked sticky, and the walls featured football posters and various Budweiser and Miller Lite neon signs. This late in the evening quite a few of the tables were full—mostly the younger local crowd, Alan only recognized one guy who was apprenticed under one of the plumbers he knew—and then off in the corner was Ricky Davis. Ricky was in his early forties, fat and balding but had big, expressive features that made him seem more charismatic than he had any right to be.

    Always was tryin’ to make himself out to be like a redneck John Belushi, Mr. Moore remembered. Hell, for YEARS and years he was tryin’ to rock them big shades all the time like he was a Blues Brother. Hah!

    “Alan! Hey man how ya doin’?” Ricky called, raising a beer. “Good to see you, man. Good to see you. Been a while, huh?”

    “Yeah, damn,” Mr. Moore nodded. “Few months already, huh? Thanks for comin’ out and meetin’ me on such short notice.”

    “Hell, gives me an excuse to come out here an’ drink,” Ricky laughed. “So, what’s been happening, man?”

    While Alan wouldn’t go so far as to call him a friend, a decade or so back they had both been under the same local construction company—before the steady work dried up. Most of their other acquaintances from back then had moved on to either take lucrative welding jobs in Sandboro, or hopped onboard LG&E Electric for new jobs when Kentucky’s utility industry restructured. Alan got certifications and started up his own work as a general contractor, while Ricky had wound up as some sort of handyman for the local school district.

    The usual catching up pleasantries were exchanged—how old is your little girl, now? Damn, FOURTEEN, already? Wow, where’s all the time even gone?! Along with some new anecdotes about Ricky’s most recent divorce, which all sounded to Alan quite a bit like Ricky hadn’t learned much from his last two. One of Deb’s acne-faced teenage sons came out and took Mr. Moore’s order for a beer and some fries, and in the casual atmosphere of DaM Good Wings Mr. Moore eventually steered conversation towards what Ricky was doing now.

    “I mean hell, twelve, thirteen years? You should be runnin’ the place by now, I figure?” Mr. Moore teased.

    “Nah, nah, nothin’ like that!” Ricky waved off the praise with a smile. “Hey—I’m still just same old custodian, different fancy title. Ten years. Still jus’ doin’ honest work, y’know? The schools ‘round here, hell. I got a whole table full o’ cronies in suits above me who’re ‘in charge’ an’ don’t know a damn thing ‘bout actual maintenance—but at the end of the day, they ‘ventually do gotta delegate the actual work to someone who knows what the hell they’re doin’.”

    “Oh, I’ll bet,” Mr. Moore gave the man a firm nod and took another swig of his beer.

    “Shit. E’ry one o’ ‘em’s total waste o’ space. I got this district superintendent above me? Boy—he’s dumber’n a sack o’ shit. Got his masters in administration somehow out in Col-y-ra-do, sat on his thumbs in some school district out there ‘til a better post popped up. Turned out to be here—just our luck! Year he gets in, I think… ninety-six? He starts blowin’ through the budget, tryin’ to change up every l’il thing over to how the Col-y-ra-do schools do things, insteada learnin’ how we do things ‘round here. So, most o’ the operating budget basically gets flushed away on all this remodeling hoo-ha for no reason, ‘cause all this fancy Col-o-ra-do BS he’s used to? S’useless as a pecker on a pope. Out there, they’re ranked Sixth in the nation for education. Kentucky? We’re just ‘bout dead last. Hell, our kids here are barely even readin’ in the first place. Whatever’n it was he was tryin’ to pull off, it didn’t work, and our test scores here didn’t change a damn bit.

    “So he gets hisself in, he swaps out the locals under him for his kinda white collar suckups and ass-kissers. Shit, everyone ‘bove me but Roger Gunn got themselves retired or relocated. So this new bunch, they packed ‘em in with fancy titles that don’t mean nothin’—like hey, instead of ‘custodians’ we’re now 'maintenance managers.’ Same pay. Same duties—jus’ now we got a whole board room o’ pencil pushers who don’t know their assholes from their elbows. Offices. An’ they spend all day fussin’ ‘round sendin’ each other emails, an’ spreadsheets, an’ settin’ up meetings to pat themselves on the back ‘bout how great a job they’re doin’ of tellin’ Roger’n me how to do our jobs, so they can justify a paycheck somehow.”

    “No kiddin,’” Mr. Moore nodded along.

    “Ayhup. You got like our Springton ‘facilities director,’ now this bitch is a politician, through an’ through. Real big on makin’ all sorts of big bullshit pretty promises. If’n’s up to her, we’d have a big ol’ billboard with her face on it, letters ten foot high sayin’ how she’s the one who’s goin’ through and makin’ big change in our Kentucky schools here, how she’s the one who’s fixin’ up all the grandstands in the middle an’ high schools here with them nice new ‘luminum ones.

    “Yeah, okay—them things’re nice as shit. O’course they are, they’re brand spankin’ new! But we’ll be payin’ ‘em off for the next, nine, ten years after she’s long gone, that can’s gettin’ kicked on down the road for whatever sucker winds up takin’ her seat after her. They’re gonna have those payments eatin’ up all our budget for years, Al. I’m talkin’ like more’n a damn decade. And did we need fancy new grandstands? No, hell no. S’all so Marta Dellinger gets the credit for gettin’ ‘em installed, like she’s the second coming of the Almighty ‘round here. But no matter what, end of the day—s’the district’s payin’ for it. Not her! She’s just fluffin’ up her resume, gettin’ some nonsense’ll look good for her push for lieutenant governor, or some big city mayor position, some state official bigshot seat inna couple years. Like I said—politician, through an’ through!”

    “No kiddin’,” Mr. Moore shook his head in disbelief. “And—what was all that hoo-haw I was hearin’ from Travis, ‘bout that busted main, right towards one of the bus loop areas? Where was that, Springton Middle? My l’il girl went to the other one, Laurel.”

    “Aw shit, don’t even get me started on that mess,” Ricky guffawed, eager to find someone to retell his story to. “Started last year—you know it, soon as that dumbshit from Col-y-ra-do throws a buncha money at resurfacin’ the front loop there, puttin’ in that fancy new sidewalk an’ everything? Well hey, we get that same freeze thaw cycle like we do, and that damn near fifty-year old line they got buried ‘neath all that finally shits the bed. We hadta go in an’ tear everything up. An’ hoo-boy, I mean everything. I mean, un-be-lievable. Do they not have freeze thaw cycles out thar in Col-y-ra-do? Isn’t fuckin’ Colorado cold as shit, nine times outta ten in the year?!”

    “Think what probably happened was all his lines out there in Colorado were already new,” Mr. Moore reasoned. “So he’s not used to havin’ that certain… leeway you gotta have for some of this older stuff. You know, leavin’ yourself some elbow room for ‘em on the books, accountin’ for what all’s gonna maybe kick the bucket next. I know a kid out from Albuquerque an’ their road crews, where all the stuff there is brand new? He comes over here towards the east coast and could not believe the state o’ things they ‘spected him to work with, here. The state of our roads. Said it was unbelievable.”

    “Unbelievable,” Ricky agreed, sipping his beer. “Ayhup. That’s about right.”

    “So, that whole front area turned into a big mess?” Mr. Moore prompted. “The school loop.”

    “Well yeah, the whole front area o’ Springton Middle that dumbshit was so set on prettyin’ up turned into this, this flooded fuckin’ swamp bog we had blocked off with tape, had the backhoes and piles of crap everywhere so the buses could barely squeeze in past. Hadta put one o’ the deans out there like Lassie every school day just to keep an eye out an’ make sure little Timmy didn’t poke around or get too curious and fall down the well. Hah! Damn lucky this was the Middle School and not the Elementary, or we’d’ve had a damn hard time ‘splainin’ to all the parents why they kids comin’ home every day lookin’ like they were playin’ in a mud pit. You know how corralin’ the real young ones can be. We’d’ve had to put up a big ol’ fence to keep ‘em out! They was talkin’ ‘bout it.”

    “Yeah, Travis was tellin’ me some of that,” Mr. Moore chuckled. “Damn waste. He said you guys hadta go through them new flower beds an’ everything, that the damn line—”

    “Yee-up, had to rip everythin’ right up,” Ricky let out a belch and then took another long draw from his Miller Lite. “Dumbshit had fancy floodlights rigged through to light up his pretty new school sign there an’ everything. Whew-buddy, them brand new hedges? With them nice flowers, all his nice new lights? Hah. Dumb fucker had a photo-op with the papers an’ stations over ‘em an’ everything back then. Roger had to go in with the excavator and tear everything up, right on through, an’ whole time, Dumbshit superintendent, he’s losin’ his fuckin’ marbles at us. Yeah? WELL? You want running water at your damn school, Dumbfuck?!”

    “Holy cow,” Mr. Moore remarked.

    “See, them old water mains out this way had this big ol’ split, was corroded all to shit in the first place, none of the patches that‘re already there are sealin’ to it like they used to—Travis had to fuckin’ sit down in fronta Dumbshit and explain it to ‘im. Listen here. This old main is originally from like the late nineteen fuckin’ forties—s’been fixed a time ‘r two too many since then, an’ yer either gonna rip it ALL up now and replace it, or from now on we’re gonna be diggin’ all this crap back up EVERY DAMN SEASON to go through this same ‘xact fuckin’ bullshit!”

    Truth be told, Alan had heard all of this from Ricky before. In all honesty, he’d heard the story back in the day first hand from Travis… several times. It was one of their favorite yarns to spin when either of them got to drinking, and it didn’t cost Mr. Moore much to indulge them by listenin’ in and asking just the right questions to draw out their favorite bits of the story. Granted, the story was starting to snowball a bit into a tall tale over the years—Mr. Moore didn’t remember anything about a chaperone being posted over the work site last retelling—but, that was okay, too.

    Travis was a miserable old cuss quite a few years their senior, and Ricky had a particular bad eye for women and got himself into one messy marriage after another. Both of them were regulars at DaM good wings here in town, both of them were good for the local tradesman gossip or occasional know-how. Just like Mr. Moore they weren’t educated, they weren’t all that good-looking, and the whole world sometimes seemed fit to just dump the world’s problems on them, expecting them to figure out how to fix things without much in the way of gratitude or thanks.

    They were occasional drinking buddies rather than friends, really, but they’d been there for Alan back then. Back in the day, Alan Moore had been the legend turned cautionary tale for his incredible luck landing the Shannon Delain—as Springton went it was like a supermodel had fallen right down from heaven and into his lap—but, it was a whirlwind romance so fleeting that passions ran cold almost right away. For damn near a decade, Mr. Moore had come home to a frigid wife and a daughter he couldn’t understand, and all he could do was try to do right and make the best of things.

    Unlike Ricky, Alan had never entertained the notion of being unfaithful or fooled around with any of the gals around town—he only had eyes for his wife. After all, there was no woman more beautiful or perfect than Shannon, and if he couldn’t carve out happiness with her, there was no way he could even consider trying to the same with someone else. His Shannon was still in there, deep down, and it was no one’s fault but his own that things had been so difficult.

    “So damn, whatcha been up to, Al?” Ricky burped again, a low, deep one that came from the back of his throat. “Damn, you get all this shit with your sister-in-law sorted out? Or no?”

    “Hell,” Mr. Moore chuckled. “S’outta my hands, she got herself put into custody. They’ll figure it out, somehow. We’ll maybe get my brother’s old clunker back from impound, maybe not. Don’t even got the title or registration, but I think the officers there know and’ll give it to me ‘at auction’ with a wink an’ a nod for a couple bucks. They’re good people.”

    “Yeah, good to you, hah,” Ricky took another swig. “Can’t say I’ve had much all a uhh, a good ‘sperience with cops. Local or not! Well, you know what I mean.”

    “Hah, heard that a time or two,” Mr. Moore chuckled. “But, I mean. What was it, you and Jim was stealin’ shingles? I mean, c’mon now—”

    “Roofing slate, and it weren’t stealin’ exactly—” Ricky argued. “They was all just leftover an’ gettin’ junked anyhow. Wasn’t any kinda crime, ‘til the cops rolled up!”

    “Yeah,” Mr. Moore grinned, taking a swig. “Never is, is it?” 

    “Damn straight. I’m just sayin’—and hell, didn’t your brother get booked in for a whole damn pallet of electronics? Leftover roofing slate’s one thing, but that…” 

    “Wasn’t even the half of it,” Mr. Moore admitted with a sigh. “Guess word is, him and that crew he was runnin’ around with? Bluegrass Movers? Out of Sandboro? Those boys were gettin’ into heroin.”

    “No shit?” Ricky’s eyebrows went up. “Dope dealin’, in Sandboro?”

    “Yeah, no shit,” Mr. Moore gave a sober nod. “So, my brother, his wife—yeah. Guess I just was never able to uhh, to connect the dots. I mean, who woulda thought?”

    “Yeah, hell,” Ricky shook his head in disbelief. “Fuckin’ A. Goddamn, I’ll havta tell my cousin Jim. Here he’s goin’ all the way over to Ohio for his fix! I mean not for real, but we do like to fuck with ‘im.”

    “Pssh,” Mr. Moore said. “Fuckin’ A is right. Anyhow, shit—you got me way off track. I was fixin’ to ask you in the first place—you know anyone ‘round here who’s got a commode? Bowl and tank, whole skedoodle. Need one, but I dunno if I can swing a couple hundred bucks for a new one.”

    “A commode?” Ricky screwed up his face as he tried to think. “Maybe… actually, yeah? Roger’s got a buddy pullin’ all sorts of old fixtures out from estate sales, renovations and shit. You need an old as shit commode, a sink or whatever? Hell, won’t be pretty, but the price’ll be right. You blow out yer toilet? Hell, Alan.”

    “Nah, s’actually you all s’busted your toilet,” Mr. Moore couldn’t help but laugh. “My daughter just rung me up ‘bout it, the other night. Sayin’ their girls locker room only has one workin’ commode, the boys there’ve got none. At one of yours—Springton High.”

    “Ah? Ahhh. Ahhh,” Ricky took a last swig and plunked the bottle back down. “I know ‘xactly what you’re talkin’ about. Springton High—those damn locker rooms, those ‘uns all got fucked up to hell an’ back, kids standin’ on ‘em or fuckin’ around. Whole boys side is a damn mess, we just pulled all their drainage shit out… last year? Maybe year ‘fore last? From what I remember, they got another restroom, though—right in their under the bleachers, same building. Edwards said fuck it—they can’t take care of things, they don’t get to have nice things. S’privilege, and all that. They wanna keep fuckin’ up all the fixtures, they can walk on down the hall a ways and use the other restrooms.”

    “Anyone gonna say anything if I sneak in and install one?” Mr. Moore challenged. “Over at Springton High.”

    “Hah,” Ricky chuckled, considering it for a long moment. “No? Probably not. Lemme talk to Roger, he can probably getcha in and sort out whatever’n it is you wanna do on his work logs. Me? I haven’t been over that way since we pulled out that nasty fuckin’ drainage line. Too much other shit pilin’ up everywhere else.”

    “I hear that,” Mr. Moore nodded.

    “Y’know I figgered we’d be gettin’ calls in ‘bout those lockerrooms someday, but—hah, hell I thought for sure it’d be one of them old PTA broads barkin’ at us for it. Not you!”

    “Well, hell,” Mr. Moore shook his head and let out an honest chuckle. “You know I’m not fixin’ to make a fuss over nothing, I’m not the type. But hell, Ricky. If I’d known you were practically some bigshot head honcho way up there in Education now, I’d of had you on the horn from get go! I mean—‘Maintenance Manager?’”

    “Hmm,” Ricky considered it. “Actually? I’m mostly up and down doin’ shit all throughout the Middle and Elementary this whole next week. Think I’ma give you Roger’s phone number—he’s our other ‘Maintenance Manager,’ an’ like I said, he’s the one that knows a guy with a back shed fulla ivory thrones and whatnot he’s tryin’ get rid of.”

    “Sure, man,” Mr. Moore nodded agreeably. “Sounds good.”

    * * *

    Bright and early the next morning, Mr. Moore called Roger and they agreed to meet up at the gas station just above the trailer park before starting their work days. Roger was a stout man with a sleazy mustache hopping out of a Ford F-150 with a familiar contractor rig rack, and he exchanged greetings and a firm handshake before settling his hands on his hips and getting down to business.

    “He said forty bucks, take it or leave it,” Roger said.

    “Well damn—can I at least take a look at it, first?” Mr. Moore complained, glancing over and seeing no toilet in the rear bed of the man’s pickup. “Need to know the damn thing works alright.”

    “S’in great shape, barely used,” Roger promised. “Some old lady had it in her upstairs for whenever ‘er kids or grandkids’d visit. Bad knees herself, couldn’t even get up there to use it.”

    “Uh-huh,” Mr. Moore couldn’t help but let out a skeptical laugh. “Heard that before. Hell, Ricky—”

    “Alright, alright, gonna level with you,” Roger chuckled. “S’a bit old. It works, yeah, s’in great shape, sure, but well—it’s old. Ever since they changed up them federal standards back in, what? Ninety-two? S’gotten real hard to get rid o’ these old ones, unless someone’s in a bit of a pinch an’ just needs themselves a damn toilet right now, standards be damned.”

    “So—” Mr. Moore raised his eyebrows. “You’ve got an illegal toilet.”

    “So, yeah, I got an illegal toilet,” Roger grinned. “S’a real hot seat. EPA? Bastards’d blow a gasket if they knew people were still shiftin’ these around on the sly. I’m riskin’ doin’ real hard time, here! Nah, I’m kiddin.’ Inspectors come around and don’t like the look of it, some bum old toilet out by athletics? Won’t even be in the first coupla pages of shit they’re tryin’ to cite us for. I mean, what’re we gonna do, though? Budget’s stretched real fuckin’ thin, and seems like s’stretchin’ thinner every day. Heard them sayin’ by next couple years, a quarter of all the classrooms in the area’ll all be those damn portables. I can’t retire soon enough.”

    “What’re they s’posed to be at, now?” Mr. Moore tried to remember. “Toilets. Gallon and a half per flush, they’ve gotta be? Thereabouts?”

    “Yee-up,” Roger said. “This un’s an old bessy—you’re flushin’ away five, six, seven gallons a go. So—forty bucks.”

    “Thirty bucks,” Mr. Moore bargained. “And—”

    “Deal,” Roger’s grin widened and he shoved his hand out to shake on it. “Thirty bucks.”

    “And you help me get the line in there shut off so I can get it installed,” Mr. Moore clasped hands with the man. “I’m not tryin’ to get in any kind of trouble with the school.”

    “Gimme a call on uh, Saturday,” Roger gave him an agreeable nod. “No one’ll give a damn, believe you me. I’ll swing by his place and get the commode up into my truck an’ ready for ya.”

    “Take it the seller uh, wasn’t real firm on forty?” Mr. Moore shook his head in dismay.

    “Bill? Fuck no, he’s just happy to get rid of ‘em,” Roger admitted. “These’re ugly sumbitches. But I mean—hey, they work, they work fine, but they ain’t up to EPA code anymore on efficiency, and that ugly fuckin’ salmon-colored porcelain? Salmon? Jesus H. Christ, I’m no Martha Stewart er nothin’, but it’s not the sixties anymore. Commodes ought to be nice an’ white, y’know what I’m sayin’? Them old vintage fixtures in the different colors? Yellow? Pink? Salmon? Nah buddy, no way, not in my house. No sir.”

    “Hah,” Mr. Moore shook his head. “So long as it works. High school girls’ll just be happy to have somethin’ in there. An’ if’n it doesn’t work—you realize s’gonna be your problem to deal with? I know them older commodes flushed a hell of a lot harder’n these newer ones. You have somethin’ blow out, ‘cause of—”

    “Not worried about it,” Roger waved off his concerns. “Worse comes to worst, we just shut off the damn line again. Edwards asks where in the hell this mystery toilet came from? We’ll shrug and say hey—maybe one of the fuckin’ kids smuggled it in. State inspector fucks’ve seen worse. Dumbfucks over on the boys locker room side? Ricky tell you ‘bout all that? They had a buncha old shirts n’shit, jammed the whole way down their drain line, blocked it all up an’ had the whole fuckn’ place flooded with this muddy fuckin’ shitwater. Calf deep. Those boys all thought it was just a hoot, too! We ever find out which o’ them hoodlums did it, shit. I don’t care if he’s a just a kid—I’ll call Ricky up, we’re gonna beat the fuckin’ stuffing outta whichever one of them boys was involved. Sock with a bar o’ soap in it, you get me?”

    “Ah, they’re kids,” Mr. Moore waved him off. “I’m sure you did worse when you were their age.”

    “Damn right I did,” Roger grinned. “Got the tar beat outta me for it, too. Well hell, I gotta get goin’—but, great to meet you.”

    “Here,” Mr. Moore said, fishing out his wallet. “Thirty bucks.”

    /// A bit torn on this one, too! On the one hand, I could probably merge Ricky and Roger into the same character for the sake of simplicity... on the other hand, I kind of want to send readers with Mr. Moore on a ridiculous extended journey through different blue-collar Springton scenes in an Attack of the Clones sort of whacky adventure. You know, like when a Sith Lord hires a bounty hunter to hire an assassin who hires a droid who hires venomous centipedes to carry out a mission to take out a Senator. Except this will be a quest to install the Pink Throne of Springton Cheerleading.