Read Online The Dart League King by Keith Lee Morris - Free Book Online
Authors: Keith Lee Morris
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dude knew a lot about music but if he knew what was good for him now, because Vince Thompson was tired of this shit, he’d better get the fuck out of the way, which he did, running on into the bar out of the rain, not seeing Russell fucking Harmon stopped dead in his tracks behind him, looking wide-eyed and shit at Vince Thompson, whose head hurt, who had no idea what he looked like standing there with the blood and whatnot. But he did know this, or suspected it—that Russell Harmon would be just fucking stupid enough to come on into the bar and play his fucking dart game even if Vince was there, even if the hand of motherfucking God was about to smite him right in the side of his goofy goddamn head, so Vince Thompson decided he might as well go inside and get out of the fucking rain.
And All the Stars That Never Were
Above Hayley’s crib was the sign, black magic marker on white poster board, The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings .
In sophomore English class, Kelly Ashton, along with the rest of the students, had been forced to memorize and recite lines from Julius Caesar . Her own lines had been the entirety of the I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him speech, which she hadn’t paid much attention to, and had delivered in a monotone that reflected the desperate chore of remembering all the words. The other kids were the same. As they recited their lines one by one she began to fall asleep. There was some excitement when Russell Harmon, whose only role in sophomore English had been to provide comic relief, attempted to disrupt some other kid’s speech, sitting in the back of the room with a spiral notebook wire shoved up his nose to make the kid laugh, but the kid didn’t laugh and when Russell Harmon tried to get the wire out of his nose he couldn’t, twisting the pointed end into
his skin so that he had to be led, bleeding, down to the nurse’s office. But after that the dull routine reestablished itself. Then Tristan Mackey got up with his partner, a kid named Boyd who labored through his lines like he was digging them up with a shovel. But when Tristan Mackey spoke she began to wake up. He wasn’t remembering, he wasn’t reciting, he wasn’t trying out a British accent like some of the more ambitious ones. He was just saying , just talking , and she leaned forward at her desk and rested her chin on her hands and started to listen, and all of a sudden Shakespeare started making some kind of sense to her, because Tristan Mackey was good . And then at one point he looked at Brutus, this kid Boyd whose nose was pointed to the ground, whose face was beet red, and Tristan Mackey let out a long sigh and his eyes went to the window, to the melting icicles dripping along the roofline and the slushy snow out in the street, the sparkling of the snow in the bright morning sun, and for a second she could hear truck tires hissing down the road and she could hear the radiator at the back of the classroom ping, and then Tristan Mackey said as naturally as if he were talking about the weather or what he was going to do after school, “The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” And her eyes filled with tears and she pressed them hard against the knuckles of her thumbs. And that night in bed she opened her English textbook and by the light of the bedside lamp, hearing on some level the dog scratching at her door and her mother cackling in the next room at something on TV, she read the words over and over, and she understood in a deeper way than she’d ever understood anything before what it was that Tristan Mackey, not William Shakespeare, meant: that it was up to them, to
Tristan and to her and to Boyd if he could pull his head out of his ass, and to Russell Harmon down in the nurse’s office with a wire stuck up his nose, and to anybody else who might be alive enough to listen, to find their own way to get the fuck out of
And All the Stars That Never Were
Above Hayley’s crib was the sign, black magic marker on white poster board, The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings .
In sophomore English class, Kelly Ashton, along with the rest of the students, had been forced to memorize and recite lines from Julius Caesar . Her own lines had been the entirety of the I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him speech, which she hadn’t paid much attention to, and had delivered in a monotone that reflected the desperate chore of remembering all the words. The other kids were the same. As they recited their lines one by one she began to fall asleep. There was some excitement when Russell Harmon, whose only role in sophomore English had been to provide comic relief, attempted to disrupt some other kid’s speech, sitting in the back of the room with a spiral notebook wire shoved up his nose to make the kid laugh, but the kid didn’t laugh and when Russell Harmon tried to get the wire out of his nose he couldn’t, twisting the pointed end into
his skin so that he had to be led, bleeding, down to the nurse’s office. But after that the dull routine reestablished itself. Then Tristan Mackey got up with his partner, a kid named Boyd who labored through his lines like he was digging them up with a shovel. But when Tristan Mackey spoke she began to wake up. He wasn’t remembering, he wasn’t reciting, he wasn’t trying out a British accent like some of the more ambitious ones. He was just saying , just talking , and she leaned forward at her desk and rested her chin on her hands and started to listen, and all of a sudden Shakespeare started making some kind of sense to her, because Tristan Mackey was good . And then at one point he looked at Brutus, this kid Boyd whose nose was pointed to the ground, whose face was beet red, and Tristan Mackey let out a long sigh and his eyes went to the window, to the melting icicles dripping along the roofline and the slushy snow out in the street, the sparkling of the snow in the bright morning sun, and for a second she could hear truck tires hissing down the road and she could hear the radiator at the back of the classroom ping, and then Tristan Mackey said as naturally as if he were talking about the weather or what he was going to do after school, “The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” And her eyes filled with tears and she pressed them hard against the knuckles of her thumbs. And that night in bed she opened her English textbook and by the light of the bedside lamp, hearing on some level the dog scratching at her door and her mother cackling in the next room at something on TV, she read the words over and over, and she understood in a deeper way than she’d ever understood anything before what it was that Tristan Mackey, not William Shakespeare, meant: that it was up to them, to
Tristan and to her and to Boyd if he could pull his head out of his ass, and to Russell Harmon down in the nurse’s office with a wire stuck up his nose, and to anybody else who might be alive enough to listen, to find their own way to get the fuck out of
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