RE: Trailer Trash, 66 pt 4 (Patreon)

    “Roger?” Coach Baylor called. “Are you in there? The double doors weren’t locked.”

    She could have sworn she’d heard the droning whine of Roger’s weed trimmer going in the distance when she was hobbling out here to the athletics building—so who the hell was rummaging around in the girl’s locker room, of all places? If this was a pervert or hooligan of some sort, or if she caught any of the girls in here somehow attempting to vandalize Tabitha’s locker—Coach Baylor was fully prepared to tear someone a new asshole today.

    “Hello?” An older male voice called out—it was not Roger. It didn’t sound like anyone she was familiar with, and that wasn’t acceptable.

    Pushing herself to limp her way a bit faster around the banks of lockers and into the shower area at the back, her bad knee protested with each step. There, Coach Baylor discovered—she actually had to pause and blink for a few moments to process what she was seeing. The third restroom stall which was typically closed and taped shut with her hand-written warning, because she did not want the girls in there, was now open. Instead of the familiar toilet with its broken bowl from that Saunders girl trying to stand on it a year or two back, a whole new commode was installed; a residential style one with a tank, the porcelain a jarring salmon color which was a stark contrast against the cinderblock behind.

    In the open middle stall just beside it, an unfamiliar man was on one knee wedged way back in between the stall divider and the toilet itself, with the toilet’s pipe assembly partially disassembled.

    “Um,” Coach Baylor felt her brain stall out. “Hello?”

    “Howdy,” the man grunted. 

    “We’re finally going to have these all working again?” Coach Baylor asked, taking a step closer to the far stall to inspect the man’s handiwork. “This one over here doesn’t look like one of the normal ones?”

    “It’s uh,” the man chuckled. “Well, it’s an old one, so. Not exactly up to code anymore, but it flushes. So, better than nothing. Alan Moore, I’m an old friend of Ricky’s. Roger has me uh, helpin’ out some today.”

    “Moore?” Coach Baylor asked, immediately stepping back around to see the man’s face. “Any relation to—Tabitha Moore?”

    “My daughter,” The man confirmed, the ghost of a smile appearing and then vanishing a moment after. “She said you were havin’ some plumbing problems here, and from the looks of it, whew yeah she wasn’t kidding.”

    “Hah, yeah,” Coach Baylor said, forcing herself to relax a bit. “That middle one there, for a few months it would just run and run, and then it stopped flushing at all entirely.”

    “Well, that’s figured out,” Mr. Moore said. “Roger or Ricky or somebody came in and shut it off here at the valve, so you guys weren’t just running water all the time. The reason it’s running water all the time—well, looks like the little bypass hole here in the rubber diaphragm got blocked up by something coming down through the intake line there. Mineral scale, rust, I dunno. Sediment of some kind. Pipes’re old. Stopped the pressure from equalizing, kept the valve open so it was just always gonna be running.”

    “Oh,” Coach Baylor said. “That’s—good? We can get it unclogged or whatever, and it’ll work?”

    “Hmm,” Mr. Moore frowned. “Well honestly no, think it’s gonna need a whole new rubber piece. But, the kit I brought with me was a residential one, for that other commode there. Roger might have some commercial parts sittin’ around somewhere, but I’m not about to go rooting through all your school district stuff. Not my place. So, just gonna shut this one back off at the valve again, for now.”

    “Okay,” Coach Baylor nodded.

    “Unless you know whereabouts they stored whatever broken toilets they pulled out from the boys side?” Mr. Moore looked up from his work—now that Coach Baylor paid attention he appeared to be in the process of reassembling that fixture. “Might be that one of them had this same exact rubber part we need.”

    “I… do not, no, I’m sorry,” Coach Baylor admitted with a wince. “Roger, Ricky, Coach Cooke, they were all messing around with the stuff on that side. I don’t know anything about what they did with any of it. It was… a mess. Wanted nothing to do with it.”

    “Hah, so I’ve heard,” Mr. Moore nodded. “Well, until then? You’ve got two commodes working, and that’s better than one. Maybe if Roger knows he just needs to swap in this one specific rubber piece, he’ll move it up his to-do list.”

    “Well, thank you,” Coach Baylor said. “Really—thank you. Um, did any of them say anything about…that?”

    She turned and gestured at the far wall where several of the shower heads were capped off with PVC.

    “I asked,” Mr. Moore said with a sigh. “Roger said we’d need to open up the wall, there. No clue what’s going on there, but not anything I’d mess with without explicit permission from the school board or whoever head honcho they’ve got in charge of it. I’m uh, technically not supposed to be in here helpin’ out today. And, if an inspector comes through askin’ which bozo installed a residential toilet in here, you’re all gonna have to shrug say don’t know, no clue, maybe one the kids did it.”

    “Um,” Coach Baylor paused as she took a moment to process all of that. “This is—it’s safe to use, right?”

    “Oh yeah,” Mr. Moore answered with confidence. “Just uses more water than it should. If you guys’d had a spare tankless one to install, I woulda just done that, or if you’d had all the parts from the ones you took out, I maybe coulda rigged one back together. But, have to work with what we have. Roger had that pink one there stored out in a shed somewhere with a buncha other ones from estate sales, they’re not up to EPA code on water efficiency no more, s’one of his.”

    “Pink?” Coach Baylor blinked. “Isn’t it more of a… salmon color?”

    “Oh, don’t even start,” Mr. Moore laughed. “It’s pink. I said so, and that’s final.”

    “Well, I’ve been wanting to get them fixed for forever,” Coach Baylor crossed her arms in front of her. “But, after the mess on the boy’s side, Edwards and them didn’t want to throw good money after bad. He said we could hire contractors to come assess things strictly with our athletics budget, and—well. We just really can’t. I’m hah, well I’m frankly terrified to ask, but how much do we owe you for your work today?”

    “Pro bono, don’t worry about it,” Mr. Moore grunted. “Anything I can do to help out my little girl, I will. I can leave you my number. You talk with your administrators about permission, and then you can give me a ring about openin’ up that wall and messing with the pipes in there for your showers. But, uh. That’s a bit bigger of a job, and if we don’t have time to seal the wall back up proper ‘fore the next weekday, you’d want to either close this area off for a bit, or—well, I dunno. School’s business how they handle things, there.”

    “Of course, of course,” Coach Baylor nodded. “I really appreciate it. You said this new toilet isn’t up to code? Would we be fined for that, if an inspector did come through?”

    “Ahyup, you would,” Mr. Moore admitted. “But, in your case—s’not any kind of big deal. Broken toilets, missing toilets like you’ve got—pretty sure that’s all already a violation of municipal code here in Springton. So, they’d mark you down ‘bout the same for having an old non-compliant toilet, as they would a broken one. You’ll get your citation notice first, with however many weeks or months warning before they’ll actually fine you. Heck, might be you have those piling up already, just sitting in someone’s office around here.”

    “I’ll find out,” Coach Baylor promised. “And. Really, thank you again. If you really can open up the wall and get the showers fixed, I’ll see about getting together some money for your time, at least. Coach Cooke and I sell donuts to the kids in the mornings to help get our department budget up to where it needs to be.”

    “Sheesh,” Mr. Moore chuckled. “I was gonna say—your guys’ whole accounting side seems like a mess. Ricky was saying how your facilities supervisor was basically robbing Peter to pay Paul when it came to financin’ your fancy new aluminum bleachers out there. Hell, I paid Roger thirty bucks for that porcelain I just installed there. Said he’s got a whole shed of them, he couldn’ta just. I dunno, donated some of them into the school, soon as he knew you all were having problems? But, instead he just—ah, I don’t know. Forget it.”

    “I will get you that thirty dollars reimbursed, at the very least,” Coach Baylor promised, feeling her blood chill. “Am I. Am I understanding that you paid our maintenance man for a fixture, so that you could do his job for him?”

    “Well, I mean I also get it,” Mr. Moore sighed. “He probably didn’t want to be liable. Ricky said you’ve got a whole office of pencil pusher types, always second-guessing everything they do ‘round the district. Roger’s probably tired of being the fall guy for that kind of nonsense, don’t want blamed for bringing things in that aren’t up to code, since then that’d be on him. Shouldn’ta said anything, sorry. Not my place!”

    “No, it’s just—well,” Coach Baylor blew out a long, tired sigh. “Frustrations all around, there. The liability and blame-gaming. Trying to keep my girls safe and out of trouble. Fighting for every little scrap of budget. Back when I first started here, the previous dean actually suggested we have Cheer do car washes to fundraise. Said that’s how they’d always done it. Fifteen-year-olds in bikinis. With all sorts of random men leering at them, making rude remarks—or worse. Yeah, I know that’s how they did it, because that’s how we had to do it, back when I was in school. It wasn’t okay then, and it only seems that much worse now that they’re my girls I’m in charge of. It’s just not happening.”

    “Hah, yeah I don’t want my Tabby doing a car wash in a bikini, no thank you,” Mr. Moore said. “Sellin’ donuts like you said is good. Matter of fact—my wife just started up at the Food Lion here, and she just said something the other night ‘bout them stickin’ her over in the bakery.”

    “That’s—that’s literally where we buy our donuts from,” Coach Baylor stared hard. “The Springton Food Lion, right there in town. We pick them up at three dollars a dozen, and then sell them individually at twice that—fifty cents each. I um, I admit it was Coach Cooke who came up with the idea. It was a good idea, though.”

    “Hm,” Mr. Moore grunted. “He might’ve already tried, but I can ask my wife—might be that you can get the store there to just sponsor you the donuts at cost, or even free, if you’re lucky. Looks good on their end, and think they get some kinda tax knockoff for doin’ it. Charitable contributions, or somethin’. I’ll get you our phone number, and you can talk to my wife. She’d be the one to go to about it.”

    “Please,” Coach Baylor said. “That would… help enormously. Thank you. I will make sure we get you reimbursed for the uh, the plumbing help, here.”

    “No, no, don’t worry ‘bout it,” Mr. Moore shook his head. “I gotta do what I can. Haven’t been able to make things right with Tabitha, and… honestly, I’m not good for too much else. This is all I know how to do, so yeah, I’m gonna do whatever I can.”

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