Read Online The Dart League King by Keith Lee Morris - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Keith Lee Morris
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this life, get the fuck out of this town, get to a place of their own devising where there wasn’t any fate and there wasn’t any God and there was only a clear, clean space above it all, a breath you could take and a windowpane you could look through to a world where everything below, everything boring and stupid and sad, melted away.
And so when Hayley was born, when it looked to everyone around Kelly Ashton—her drunk mother and her brainless friends and her boyfriend, Aaron, who had already stuck around longer than he had any reason to and whom for that reason she could no longer respect, and to Russell Harmon no doubt if he even knew anything about it, and to Tristan Mackey too if there was anyone to tell him down there at college—like she was stuck in this town forever and she was never going to do anything with her life and would just stay there and drink too much and lose her looks like her mother, she wrote out the words in black magic marker and taped them above the crib.
And so tonight, as always, she read the words, and she changed Hayley’s diaper, thinking how, soon, Hayley would be in the Pull-Ups, and telling her so, saying Big girl, big girl , and tickling her tummy. Then she dressed Hayley in her pj’s and transferred her to the playpen, banging her knee on the bed frame in the crowded room for the thousandth time as she did so, and then to make sure Hayley was happy in there, she squeezed the squeezy doll several times until Hayley got interested and started doing it herself, sitting there in the playpen
with her blond hair dangling in her eyes. She put the picture books in there carefully too, leaving them open to the pages Hayley liked so they would get her attention when she tired of the squeezy doll, so that she wouldn’t start crying before Kelly was safely out the door, because if she did that, if she started crying, if she kept crying, it wouldn’t be until after Hayley was safely asleep that Kelly could convince herself to leave. Then, holding her breath, she snuck out of the room, closing the door about halfway, and then real quick went to the refrigerator down the hall in the little apartment, the fucking apartment she’d lived in with her mother since she was fourteen, and mixed up a bottle with the formula, even though Hayley shouldn’t need a bottle anymore but then there would be hell to pay come bedtime if not. She had to do it herself because she couldn’t trust her mother to do it right—measuring the right amount of formula into the water, shaking it, shaking it, putting it in the fridge. Then checking herself one last time in the bathroom mirror, one last time, running her tongue over the uneven bottom teeth and thinking goddammit at her mother for never getting her braces, and she had to get out the tweezers again because the eyebrows just weren’t even , not quite, and then her hair, toss it a little this way, lower her chin, look at the eyes, and was this blouse getting too tight on her, could she still wear it, because the bathroom mirror wasn’t any good for seeing that and she didn’t dare go back down the hall to the bedroom. She could hear Hayley talking in there— Sam I am, green eggs and ham . She’d better get the hell out quick if she was ever going at all, so she explained everything to her mother one more time, her mother there in the easy chair with the Coors Light next to her on the table, like some drunk old man, was she sure
she knew the cell phone number, did she understand that the bottle was already made up in the fridge, did she know when bedtime was, would she make sure to take Hayley out of the playpen in no longer than half an hour, tops, and was she going to stop after this beer , mother, this one, not the next one and not the one after that, all right she didn’t have time to argue, she would call to check on Hayley soon. She opened the apartment door and stepped out onto the landing in the warm summer dusk and she took a deep breath and
And so when Hayley was born, when it looked to everyone around Kelly Ashton—her drunk mother and her brainless friends and her boyfriend, Aaron, who had already stuck around longer than he had any reason to and whom for that reason she could no longer respect, and to Russell Harmon no doubt if he even knew anything about it, and to Tristan Mackey too if there was anyone to tell him down there at college—like she was stuck in this town forever and she was never going to do anything with her life and would just stay there and drink too much and lose her looks like her mother, she wrote out the words in black magic marker and taped them above the crib.
And so tonight, as always, she read the words, and she changed Hayley’s diaper, thinking how, soon, Hayley would be in the Pull-Ups, and telling her so, saying Big girl, big girl , and tickling her tummy. Then she dressed Hayley in her pj’s and transferred her to the playpen, banging her knee on the bed frame in the crowded room for the thousandth time as she did so, and then to make sure Hayley was happy in there, she squeezed the squeezy doll several times until Hayley got interested and started doing it herself, sitting there in the playpen
with her blond hair dangling in her eyes. She put the picture books in there carefully too, leaving them open to the pages Hayley liked so they would get her attention when she tired of the squeezy doll, so that she wouldn’t start crying before Kelly was safely out the door, because if she did that, if she started crying, if she kept crying, it wouldn’t be until after Hayley was safely asleep that Kelly could convince herself to leave. Then, holding her breath, she snuck out of the room, closing the door about halfway, and then real quick went to the refrigerator down the hall in the little apartment, the fucking apartment she’d lived in with her mother since she was fourteen, and mixed up a bottle with the formula, even though Hayley shouldn’t need a bottle anymore but then there would be hell to pay come bedtime if not. She had to do it herself because she couldn’t trust her mother to do it right—measuring the right amount of formula into the water, shaking it, shaking it, putting it in the fridge. Then checking herself one last time in the bathroom mirror, one last time, running her tongue over the uneven bottom teeth and thinking goddammit at her mother for never getting her braces, and she had to get out the tweezers again because the eyebrows just weren’t even , not quite, and then her hair, toss it a little this way, lower her chin, look at the eyes, and was this blouse getting too tight on her, could she still wear it, because the bathroom mirror wasn’t any good for seeing that and she didn’t dare go back down the hall to the bedroom. She could hear Hayley talking in there— Sam I am, green eggs and ham . She’d better get the hell out quick if she was ever going at all, so she explained everything to her mother one more time, her mother there in the easy chair with the Coors Light next to her on the table, like some drunk old man, was she sure
she knew the cell phone number, did she understand that the bottle was already made up in the fridge, did she know when bedtime was, would she make sure to take Hayley out of the playpen in no longer than half an hour, tops, and was she going to stop after this beer , mother, this one, not the next one and not the one after that, all right she didn’t have time to argue, she would call to check on Hayley soon. She opened the apartment door and stepped out onto the landing in the warm summer dusk and she took a deep breath and
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