The Clean Up Spot

By J.A. Flowers

Coming off his best season in five years in the Minor Leagues, Ty Burke thinks he's punched his ticket to be a September call-up for the Milwaukee Brewers. But his life's dream turns into a nightmare when he's told he failed his steroid test. Cut from the team, humiliated, and broke, he drives back to Bandling, Texas, knowing that all that awaits

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pecan Leaf Press
• Release date: Sep 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9781735526102

J.A. Flowers

J.A. Flowers writes contemporary fiction that feature character-driven plots and showcase the struggles people overcome through their relationships with others. His works take life's moments- the good ones and the bad ones- and strips them down to how people change in light of them. Woven through his stories are redemptive moments that reveal life's precious moments and our paths to create them. J.A. Flowers grew up in Dallas and lives in Waco, Texas. His Lone Star roots influence his writing, characters, and language. He is an avid baseball fan, particularly of the Texas Rangers, so he understands suffering.

Book preview

1

The power of the semi-trucks shook Ty Burke from his daze as he sat in his truck, idling on the shoulder of the highway.  He turned the wipers to a faster interval, his blood shot eyes tracking the monotonous back and forth as they pushed aside the mud and rain, making way for the next drops to take their place. For the second time in less than twelve hours, he felt the euphoria that comes just before a person tries to stave off death.  He lifted the ball cap off his head and feathered his fingers through the long brown hair that fell to just above his eyebrows.  

The feeling is called the death rally, that period of time the body makes one last plea to fight whatever it is that will bring the inevitable end.  For some it can last days; for others, merely minutes, but whatever the instances, it only gives false hope of recovery.  If the first death of his night came unexpectedly, at least it was swift.  The second one would drag out to what most called torture.

The first euphoric moment that evening came as he rounded the bases after hitting his second home run of the game, a two-run shot to straight-away centerfield.  He didn’t know that less than an hour later, his baseball dreams would flat line.  The second feeling came as his heart rate spiked when he read the sign from the First Baptist Church welcoming him to his hometown, population less than the number of fans who cheered his name every night.

His thick, muscular legs twitched under the worn denim from withholding the urge to slam the truck into reverse and head back to San Antonio to defend his name from the false accusation that he had somehow not become a top prospect by just his natural talent and hard work, but he redirected the surge upward through his arm and slammed his hand down on the Major League Baseball logo embossed on the black folder lying on the console.

The night’s events were different. To minor league baseball players, time is measured differently than in any other career.  The adjectives used before a player’s name indicated which rung he was on and how patient a club would be with the player to show he had the goods to make it to the show.  Potential meant you were on the bottom rung, with a few years left on the clock.  Promising meant a notch above, but you better show something quickly. And a prospect meant the pressure to perform had never been higher.  For Ty, tonight’s performance elevated him to a prospect. And he thought he was on his way when he saw the two folders on his manager’s desk.  One sent a player to Milwaukee to join the Brewers for a run at the pennant; Ty’s sent him on an unscheduled road trip back to Bandling, Texas; the second agonizing death.

Baseball had been his life since he was nine years-old, an assiduous student of every aspect of the game.  The day after graduation, he left for class A ball with $500,000 in the bank from his signing bonus and a hangover.  Now, five years later, he was returning to his hometown with $500 in the same bank account and in need of a drink.

In the past half hour, he’d yet to decide which brought the acid up from his empty stomach— the echo of Wimberley’s gruff voice reading the terms of his unconditional release, as if Ty couldn’t read them himself, or from this high-beam headlights shining on the fading paint slapped on the limestone that rose from the swollen ground, a silhouette of a baseball player hitting a fastball. That shadow resembled another person now as the sky only brightened to a sullen gray from the low darkness he’d driven through.  

He looked into the rearview mirror and shifted from the uncomfortable position he was in.  The hem of his short sleeves stretched across the baseball-shaped biceps when he bent his arm and returned to form as the arch in his horseshoe-shaped triceps straightened.  If the changes in his body would help disguise him in a place all too familiar, the starburst of green spreading through the blue in his irises were a dead giveaway.  He lifted his boot off the brake and onto the accelerator. An eighteen-wheeler dodged his lethargic entrance onto the road, swerving over two lanes to avoid slamming into Ty’s truck.

He managed to fight his urge to continue driving by forcing a right turn into a dimly lit parking lot.  The Sidewinder Café stayed open all night for the truckers coming and going from the nearby concrete plant. It was just after six in the morning, but it was busy when Ty walked in from the parking lot. The café was longer than it was wide, shotgun style. All two hundred plus pounds of Darla de la Rosa, co-owner of the greasy spoon, spun an order on the rack suspended between the counter and the kitchen.  When she looked toward the door to greet her newest patron, Ty glanced down at his boots as if he was concerned about where he was wiping his feet.  He saw the familiar sign next to the hat rack- Leave Baggage Here.  If only he could, he thought.

Find you a seat, sweetie.  Anywhere is fine.  Her words meshed together so it came out, Fine-chew-a seet.

Ty spent an extra second scanning the place even though he could close his eyes and navigate his way to the back booth where Coach Harold was sitting. There were five tables running down the middle of the diner, covered in stereotypical red-checkered vinyl tablecloths. A long Formica counter top ran along the left wall, book ended by two swinging saloon doors separating the kitchen and the dining room. Loners could pick any of the eight stools to either eat in solitude or spin around and converse with friends and neighbors sitting at one of the nearby tables.  Ty always preferred the last of the four booths nuzzled up against the grease-smeared windows. 

At six-foot-four, two hundred-thirty pounds, Ty was accustomed to garnering attention when he entered a room.  Broad shoulders tapered to his waist in a V-shape.  Quads snuggled against his jeans.  That untamable air of arrogance that good ball players carried preceded by a lazy smirk. But he was hoping for an anonymous entrance, and so far he got it.

As a nervous habit, he pumped his fist repeatedly as he walked toward the back wall, revealing the striations of muscles in his forearms, veins popping from the influx of blood. Ty slid into the booth, his large frame sank deeper than he remembered it would, making him feel even more awkward to be sitting across from his old high school coach.  

Did it rain the entire trip? Coach Harold’s voice, still soft- spoken, eased Ty anxiety momentarily.   

Picked up near San Marcos and didn’t let up the whole way in.

Coach Harold stirred his coffee, not the least bit uncomfortable with their meeting. He had the same copacetic look on his face as he had the last time Ty had seen him five years earlier. At an average build, his large hands were his most dominant feature. His face was tan, making his brown eyes stand out from his slender, elongated nose. The only thing Ty noticed that was different about the man was how short and gray his hair was.  Cut close to offset his receding hairline, he pulled off a Sean Connery look of volcanic wisdom— patiently staying silent until an eruption of advice was warranted.

This rain spell has been nice around here. There’s talk that we’ll get over five inches in three days.  

Ty’s ears reddened. That’s what they’re talking about?  The rain?  Ty had no interest in the forecast, but with a deep breath, he gave an honest testimony of concern because of who was sitting across from him. I remember how the high school would leak when it rained like this.  You would get the team out of class to help with putting trash cans around the school to catch the water.  We’d clean up exploded ceiling tiles for hours.  

Oh, yes.  Probably will have a crew of students on clean up duty tomorrow matter of fact.

Ty continued incredulously, It’s still not fixed?  

Of course not.  What else would people talk about when it rained? Coach asked, winking at Ty.

The nature of Coach’s statement had turned Ty’s four hour drive up from San Antonio into a six hour haul.  When he cashed his signing bonus check at eighteen years old, he kissed his mom on the cheek and sailed out of town like he had abandoned a diseased people, waving the only vaccination that inoculated him against their pathetic lives, hope’s ticket out of town.  If all they had to talk about was the rain, he didn’t want to think about what conversations this latest news about him would bring about.   

His eye brows gave away his thoughts, and Coach Harold followed their lead, Don’t worry, Ty.  News might travel a little slower here than you’re used to, but people will catch wind about this soon enough.

I didn’t juice.

The saloon doors broke open and a young waitress with small breasts purposely propped up to give the illusion a fuller size walked listlessly toward the two men.  She took a wide step around a small pool of water Ty had tracked in from the rain. Ty recognized her immediately, and he tugged the bill of his hat down to the top of his bushy eyebrows.  

More coffee, Coach?

When you have a chance, Julie.

She passed her eyes to Ty.   They were friendly but hardened, as if the past five years had worked double time to etch their mark.   And for you?

Ty bent his neck unnaturally to shield a direct view into his eyes. Coffee is fine, thank you.  He hated coffee, he thought, but at least she was gone before she could make a big deal over him being back in town.

She’s a sweet girl. You remember Julie Haynes, don’t you?  Got a little boy who plays tee-ball.  He’s sure got an arm on him.

Ty turned to look back at Julie pouring the coffee he’d ordered, and his eyes drifted to the cobwebs hibernating on the pictures hanging above the kitchen. Coach Harold caught him looking at the picture of his senior year hanging between Lance Armstrong and Roger Clemens.  Coach Harold eyed Ty’s body.  He must have put on twenty-five pounds of muscle since he’d last saw him.

That was a great ball team.  Best I ever coached.  You know, winning that state title made me retire from coaching.  There was no way to equal what you and that group of boys accomplished that year.

So you became the principal?  You always said you’d rather go work at the concrete plant than move to the dark side on the desk.

Yeah, well, to be honest, the talent pool became quite shallow after y’all graduated, and you know how much I hate losing, so I decided to take the easy job.  He sipped his coffee and refocused the conversation to Ty.  So they just gave you your unconditional release?  I thought a suspension was the usual consequence for failing a steroid test.

Typically is, Ty said, but when have you known anything typical to happen to me?  My guess is that if another team will pick me up then I’d get around a fifty game suspension, should get that information tomorrow, I suspect, first time offender rule, but I can’t imagine what team would want someone who’d just have to sit out a third of the season before showing if he’s even good enough to stay on a minor league roster.

Maybe not, Ty knew a silver lining was about to be painted. But with the season you were having, surely, you were turning some heads.

Ty’s chest flexed into two rigid mounds of striped muscle. He bounced his head forward slightly as if he was catching and throwing back whatever it was he wanted to say.  Briefly, as the sound of blood flushed through his ears and settled at the base of his neck, he almost forgot to whom he was speaking, but, by swallowing for the last time whatever it was that was causing his neck to jerk, he gathered himself.

Coach, I didn’t do it. I didn’t take steroids? 

Of course not, son. I know you too well to even consider it.  You’re too cocky to try that stuff because you know you’re good enough to make it without it, but I can see why you would be targeted.  Big numbers out of nowhere from a kid who’s coming off an injury.

I was having a hell of a season, wasn’t I?  I was there, Coach.  September one and I would have been called up.  I saw the folder on the desk.  Somebody else went instead of me, he trailed off as he noticed Coach’s eyebrows lift.

"I’m sorry, Ty.  Do you have any recourse to defend yourself?  

I haven’t heard from my agent yet to know what I can do.

Have you talked to your father yet?

Ty pulled a sugar packet from the white bowl they were wedged into.  He tugged the packet too hard and tipped over the bowl, causing every packet to fly out onto the table.  

Don’t you think you ought to?

I suppose.  Just got to get myself ready for the sanctimonious bullshit he’ll rattle at me.  I’m sure he knows about it already anyway.  The omniscient Dr. Weston Burke.

Julie returned to the table with Ty’s coffee. Ty suddenly felt the pang of hunger.  He hadn’t eaten since around 4:00 the previous afternoon.  He was reluctant to look up at Julie, but his stomach convinced his eyes to glance her way.  He grabbed the mug with his left hand and held the menu with his right.  Instinctively, Julie took her pen from her shirt pocket and stood at the ready.  She had a look on her face.  It wasn’t a look of irritation or worry, more like boredom, Ty thought.  How could she not be, still living here?

What’ll it be, gentlemen?

The normal for me, Julie.  How’s Aiden, by the way?

She scribbled on her notepad.  Growing up too fast. He still talks about you teaching him how to hold the bat the right way.  I’m staying in shape chasing whiffle balls all over the yard.

You tell him to keep it up and he’ll be slamming that ball over the fence in no time. 

She smiled at Coach Harold and for a brief moment, when her brow lifted away the complacency and her eyes took note of the attention, she looked pretty again, the way Ty remembered her.

I’ll have four egg, scrambled, three slices of bacon, hash browns, on a separate plate, please, and two buttermilk pancakes, Ty regretted his curtness.

Coming right up, Ty.  Good to see you.  She took a few steps before Ty called her name.

Julie, can I get a Coke?  I hate coffee.

She straightened her posture, springing to life her pushed up breasts.  Extra ice, too, right?

Ty nodded.

Coach Harold rubbed his over-sized hands together, Ty, I met Lefty Grove once.  Hall-of-Famer, right?

I know who he is, Coach.

Lefty had a live fastball, didn’t need nothing else for most of his career.  When he needed to gas it up, he’d just throw it by a hitter.  Won a lot of games with that approach, but toward the end of his career, when his arm started to wear down, he learned a curveball, but he’d save it as a two-strike out pitch.

Coach Harold leaned forward, placing his hand flat on the table as if he were readying to push himself upward.  His voice got softer, But the story Lefty loved to tell had nothing to do with his fastball or curveball.  In a game against the Senators, he had a three-two count on Heinie Manush, winning run on second base.  Lefty had thrown two straight curves to try to get Manuch to roll-over, but he kept fouling them off.  Manush thought he’d seen all Lefty had to throw and knew a fastball was coming.

He paused.  Ty circled his index finger as he now leaned forward to hear the end of the story.  And…

Coach Harold sunk back into the booth with a grin on his face.  Manuch just about broke his bat across his back swinging at a fork ball, the first one Lefty had even thrown in a game.

Wow, Ty responded, those guys back in the day were ballsy!  To throw a pitch he’d never thrown before in a situation like that.

It wasn’t the first time he had thrown it, Ty.  He’d worked on it in the bullpen for months, waiting for the perfect situation to use it.

Ty nodded, catching the point the old man had hoped he would.  Their plates arrived, brought by another waitress Ty did not recognize, a teenage girl, around seventeen.

After sliding the eggs onto the plate of hash browns, he mixed them together into a mountain that oozed with ketchup. Ty filled his mouth with a fork full, So you mentioned you had something I need to consider?

Yes, I do.  Depends on what you have in mind to do now though.

Ty placed his fork down. I’m gonna fight this thing.  Get a lawyer, I guess, and prove I’m innocent.

Yeah, that’s a good plan. It’ll take time and money to get that ball rolling, don’t you think?

Seems like I’ve got more of one than the other right now.

There’s a group of boys who’ve gotten together this ball team, and they need a coach.  Couple of them got some decent talent, but they need some instruction that’s not coming from their daddies, you know what I mean.

You want my job to be baby-sitting some losers with holes in their swings whose daddies are reliving the past through their kids? 

That’s not the pitch you need to be working on in the bullpen, Ty.  It’s that attitude that made your enemies in this town in the first place.

Ty lowered his head.  Coach Harold could put him in his place better than anyone.

Why don’t you do it?

Me? Coach laughed, I’m too old. This is a group of freshmen that I thought playing some fall tournaments might help them gel.  Who knows, they have a shot at state in a few years. They really could use you, and it keeps you around the game.

What’s it pay? Ty asked.

No pay. I want you to volunteer some time to work on their skills, maybe see if you can lead them away from thinking their future can only be at the concrete plant.

Ty took a drink of his Coke to buy some time.  He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and pressed his lips together. Coach, I appreciate it, but I don’t think I’m staying around here long enough to commit to you or a bunch of snot-nosed kids.  Plus, I doubt these people want me around their kids, let alone teaching them to play baseball.

Coach Harold leaned closer to the table.  His winkles deepened, and Ty could see each white whisker bristled in his goatee.  

How about I tie a job to it, pay you a grand week.

Ty’s eyes opened at the sound of this.  That’s more than I make, made, at double-A, he corrected himself and his new normal.

You coach the team, he paused, and do some cleaning and other odds and ends at the high school for me, and you’ll earn some cash.  Season is only August to November.  Give you a chance to figure out what you really want to do.

Ty’s neck tightened.  His lats spread like a cobra ready to strike.  Janitor? You want me to be the janitor of the high school?

Yes. Mine got caught stealing shoes from the girls’ locker room.  Had to fire her on the spot.  Chief Cain finally got to use his handcuffs, although I don’t know how necessary it was to do so.  Anyhow, the job is yours if you want it.

Ty laughed and pushed his plate to the side. So that’s the forkball, huh?  You know, Coach, I appreciate the offer and the breakfast, but I think I’ve had enough humiliation for, um, I don’t know, a lifetime.  I’ll pass.  His enormous thighs slid out of the booth.  He pulled his hat lower, and he walked out the door.

2

The rain had let up but Ty still had to turn on his wipers to the delay setting as he pulled out of the Sidewinder’s parking lot.  The early Sunday morning breakfast crowd had been joined by the second wave of locals making their weekly stop to pick up Darla’s cinnamon rolls, which were only baked on Sunday mornings.  Her contribution to the Church, she called them since she vowed to never step inside a church after her first husband left her for another man, a deacon at a Methodist church in Waco. Brown sacks filled by the dozen were hauled into the church, complementing the aroma of coffee and disinfectant. As a six year-old Ty would dart between the hems of denim dresses and sans-a-belt polyester pants, sneaking bites from the leftover rolls sitting on the damp brown bags on the tables near the doors of the Sunday school rooms.  

As he exited the parking lot of The Sidewinder, Ty wanted to avoid the main drive that led onto Old Main Street, so he put his truck into reverse and trolled around the cinder block wall jutting out the side to the building and made his way to the back of the restaurant.  Under the awning, Julie, the waitress, sat on the steps, knees pulled to her chest, a cigarette in one hand, and her cell phone on the other. She looked up to see Ty drive by and took a drag from her cigarette and waved to him.  Her wave was friendly; his return was half-hearted.  See you around, Ty thought.

Did Coach really ask if he would accept a job as the janitor of the high school just to be able to help some kids with their swings? Ty mumbled as he wheeled off the asphalt onto the caliche road tucked behind a cotton field.  He had driven through the night to get help from the only person he trusted, and that’s the life line he got?  Ty wanted to get out of town as fast as he could without being seen by anyone else.  He knew which direction to drive.

***

In the middle of May, 1934, Sheriff Sid Pillar mowed down a narrow path through a nondescript portion of his 511 acres of cotton.  The turmoil this caused among the men’s coffee drinking at the Main Street Bistro and the Ladies’ Bible Study held at Miss Shirley Whimple’s modest home brought back to light the suspicious behavior the sheriff had displayed ever since his sister came from Dallas to visit him a few months earlier.  

The scene in front of his house began a string of rumors that included him being involved in organized crime to having a hit on his brother-in-law for abusing his sister. She left her brother’s house crying, red-nosed and puffy-eyed after just a two hour stay. Some volunteered that all he could say to her was, I’m a lawman, for Christ’s sake.

Only a few days after the mowing incident, it was Miss Whimple who noticed the attractive young lady in Mott’s General Store. The girl, no older than twenty five, made her way through the narrow aisles, obviously not trying to draw attention to herself.  Miss Whimple, who was gathering party supplies to decorate the graduates’ table at church, made no attempt to be clever about her discovery of the pretty young lady. She stayed with her aisle by aisle.  No fewer than six items had been smuggled into the waistband of the girl’s dress, but Miss Whimple did not say a word and let the thief walk right out the front door, cross the street, and get into  Sheriff Pillar’s Ford, driven by a handsome, but overly skinny man. Thirty minutes later, she got out of her new flathead Ford V8 and knocked on the sheriff’s front door.

The next morning, a Wednesday, Miss Whimple wanted to be the first to Ladies’ Bible Study so she could set up the graduation table with the decorations she bought the afternoon before. That way she could tell the rest of the ladies about confronting Sheriff Pillar’s niece, Bonnie, and her blatant robbery of Mott’s. She couldn’t wait to detail how Bonnie’s boyfriend, Clyde, a boy from Dallas, was all nervous and slick with his words, talking too fast for her to understand what he was saying. 

But when she came out her back door to head out to the carport, she stopped at the base of the steps staring into an empty space, broken glass surrounding her decorations set neatly on the oil stained concrete.

Bonnie and Clyde were seen in the flathead Ford V8 headed east. The witness said the car barreled out of a freshly mowed path in a corn field, the opening just wide enough for a car to fit.

***

Ty turned left on the same path, now a caliche road nicknamed Shotgun Alley, also trying to escape the eyes and mouths of Bandling, only he wasn’t guilty of theft or murder.  He wasn’t guilty of anything.  The road’s legend grew after the connections were made as to why the sheriff had mowed its path and how the famous criminal couple used it to have the straightest, fastest back road out of town. Straight out of town, Ty thought, as he accelerated through the rain water-filled potholes, neglecting the worn surface and the makeshift rapids flushing down the channel on the south side of the road.  

The attention the cotton field received after the abrupt end to the Bonnie and Clyde episode shaped the history of Bandling.  Sheriff Pillar continued as the local law enforcer for another decade and capitalized on the popularity of the story.  He plowed and developed the field, paved the straight path, and sold plots for houses.  Even the name of the high school’s mascot was changed to the Bandling Bandits.  

Upscale houses were built by a man from California, but when the sheriff was gunned down outside a Downtown Dallas pizza parlor, the fascination became a reality that the town was involved in the underbelly of the sheriff’s world.  In the mid Sixties, new land was purchased near Interstate 35 for the development of a newer concrete plant facility, the livelihood of the families living in the houses along Shotgun Alley. This developer hired a few blacks to begin walking the neighborhood, while he spread rumors that blacks were looking for work from Dallas and Ft. Worth and were wanting to move to town.  So the underhanded system of blockbusting began the flight of the white families on Bandling to build newer homes on the nicely developed plots nearer the concrete plant.  The blacks never moved in, but the same developer bought the houses on the cheap, and began renting them to the truckers who worked from the hub of the concrete plant.  The stretch of asphalt became eroded as its edges sloughed off, weeds grew through the cracks, and its uses all but forgotten.

A quarter mile in front of Ty, a gray horizon darkened as if a spirit were transforming into something more ominous than his future.  As he moved closer to the blanket of haze, large drops of rain thumped sporadically on his windshield; he drove ahead into the storm.  Then, as if the bucket was positioned perfectly above the door, the deluge fell as he drove through a threshold of water. He twisted the knob to put his wipers into high gear and took his foot off the accelerator.  He could see just past the front of his hood, but what he saw shocked him. The road began to bend. Impossible, he thought.  He’d driven this road hundreds of times and knew it was the straightest road in the county.  

He leaned forward, chest pressed against his steering wheel.  The noise of the rain drops drowned out the engine’s hum as it calmed down from his race out of town.  He came to a stop.  The road didn’t bend; it didn’t turn; it didn’t drift to the left