That Tourist Trap Out By Dubuque

That Tourist Trap Out By Dubuque

Hank James took Highway 52 south, after he made it through the Twin Cities. Taking 35 South was much quicker, but he couldn’t stand the interstate. It was a long, flat stretch of nothing from Minneapolis to his exit, which was just past Mason City. If someone was even just a little tired, it wasn’t too hard to blink your eyes and not be sure where you were. Each mile marker looked the same.

Outside of Coates, there was a seedy looking little strip club off the road on his right. He passed it just before he went past the refinery, and he couldn’t imagine anything particularly sexy going on in that club. There was also a restaurant or two, but he decided to keep driving.

With its ugly pink paint job, Hank would’ve noticed the strip club whether he wanted to or not. He was interested in it because he had heard the owner was starting up an independent baseball league of his own. Lots of people seemed convinced the big boys wouldn’t be playing a full season in 1994. Even guys with garish pink strip clubs in refinery towns.

Highway 52 would take him to Highway 63 in Rochester, and he’d ride that right into Waterloo. Nickles, his new boss and coach, said he could crash at a place he owned near the local college campus. In his last pitch, the one James had accepted, Nickles had told Hank he could be the hitting coach, too. It’d allow him to pay Hank a little bit more, because of the two job titles. It’d also give him more career opportunities when the big leagues decided to let him back in. That last though made his stomach squirm, but he had some hope. In addition to playing and managing for the HooseCows, Hank had let Nickles talk him into believing the league would let him back in someday.

Hank took his right arm off of the headrest of his truck’s passenger seat and stretched it out. The cab of the truck was full of his suitcases and a few boxes. His stuff filled up the truck, but it still wasn’t that much overall – even when you included his baseball gear, which he kept in a lockbox in the payload of the truck. He was sure he’d think of a million things he’d forgotten when he got moved in and settled in. A man his age should need to pack more for a move of many months.

North of Cannon Falls, he finally decided to stop to eat. There was a bar and grill that looked like it could handle grilling a decent burger. He went in without his ballcap on, and he put on his reading glasses. He would only need them for reading the menu, but he would wear them the whole time so no one would recognize him. He didn’t get recognized all that much these days, but he was growing to hate it. He was getting recognized for all the wrong reasons, by people who called him “Tombstone” James.

He ate at the bar, and the burger was tasty enough. He had a single beer. When he finished the burger, he leaned back on the tall-legged bar chair and stretched out his legs. There was a basketball game on, but it was turning into a blow-out and it wasn’t worth watching. Two guys sat down at the other end of the bar and ordered beers of their own.

He met Taylor Nickles, HooseCows coach and owner, when he flew out to the east coast for the funeral of Billy Royce. Billy’s murder remained unsolved. It had happened on Hank’s property, and that was enough for the murder to briefly make national news until April 8^th, when they discovered the body of Kurt Cobain and his suicide pushed everything else off of the front pages. Hank had been cleared in the investigation by that point.

Nickles had flown out to the funeral, too, which showed a touch of class considering Billy had never played an inning for him. Just as classy, Nickles had not brought up the HooseCows at all during the funeral. He didn’t even bring the up when the two had a beer at the airport, waiting for their flights back. They just talked about baseball, and the major leagues, and the things they had seen. In fact, the closest they had come to talking about the HooseCows was when they, somehow, had gotten onto baseball movies.

“You know that tourist trap they got out by Dubuque? From that movie where they guy puts a baseball diamond in his corn field? They act like that field makes everything about baseball is perfect for the kiddies and being nice to everybody,” Nickles said. Hank nodded. “You know a couple years ago they had some washed up seventies singer and some actor, from that weird TV show with the dead girl and the dwarf, out to play baseball on that field.”

“They did?” Hank asked.

“Yeah. I tell you, if people want that kind of baseball, they can go see crap like that. Just don’t come to see my team. HooseCows may have a gimmick to get people in, but we’re gonna play hard. We’re gonna own the inside corner of the plate, and we’re gonna take ‘em out on the basepaths. None of this smiling and waving stuff. We’re going to play hard.”

That was it. Hank wasn’t sure if Nickles had planned it to go down exactly like that, but it worked well enough. Two days later, he returned Nickle’s calls and worked out a plan to join the HooseCows.

Back at the bar, Hank got out a hunk of cash and stood up. The bartender was finishing up with the other two guys, who were racing through their beers. They couldn’t have been much over twenty-one, and they weren’t acting a day over seventeen.

“”Keep the change,” Hank told the bartender, who simply nodded.

“Don’t let ole Tombstone drink too much,” one of the guys at the bar said. “He might kill again.”

Hank rubbed the back of his shoulder and pursed his lips. They knew he could hear them. The bartender looked back to Hank, like maybe Hank was going to give him instructions.

“They don’t make the best choices when they get all hopped up on that crack, huh?” the kid asked. His friend was trying to hide his laughter. He slapped his friend on the arm.

Because there was no other option, and because he had already paid, Hank just walked out of the restaurant. He knew the bartender was still looking at him, as if he could apologize with his eyes. He went to his truck and started planning for the HooseCows.

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