Read Online The Dart League King by Keith Lee Morris - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Keith Lee Morris
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thought not in our stars but in ourselves , because there was still time and opportunity to be something bigger than she could be in Garnet Lake, Idaho. She had the looks and brains to make it happen.
She was going downtown to meet Tristan Mackey, who was turning out to be an asshole when you got right down to it, not at all the Tristan Mackey who had liked her all those years, not at all the Tristan Mackey who had created a new world for her that day long ago in English class. He’d fucked her and now he wasn’t all that interested. She knew the type, but hadn’t pegged him as that particular kind of disappointment. She was angry at herself more than him. It had been a long time since she’d allowed anyone other than herself to get her hopes up. But, so, he’d asked her to a dart match, not a nice restaurant in town, not on an actual date , just maybe she could come to the dart match to drink beer with “the boys,” as he’d called them condescendingly, too good for them all obviously, whoever they were, but all right, it wasn’t too late to show him the mistake he was about to make.
But when she walked into the 321 and looked toward the back of the bar the first person she saw was Russell. Russell, cheerful Russell, good sweet Russell, silly Russell, stupid
Russell, my God what could you do with him and what could you tell him about himself and about who he really was and how would you go about it anyway. Poor Russell whom her heart went out to, who drove up Baldy Mountain with her one time to get a good view of the northern lights even though he really didn’t care anything about them, who told her how his father left him, whom she told about how her father left her. Russell was a dead end. Russell was a loser. He was Hayley’s father, but that didn’t count for much in his case, and she’d never had the heart, or maybe not the necessary lack of common sense, to let him know. But then she hadn’t seen him in a long time, either.
Her father had been the manager of a men’s clothing store. He dressed, she could still remember, in crisp gray slacks, in a clean white-collared shirt, in a square-shouldered jacket, a blue tie, and he smelled of good cologne. His socks were sorted in a dresser drawer from lightest to darkest. His shoes were on a shoe tree. His face was smooth and his thin blond hair was just so. He was quiet and he smiled a lot and he did the best he could even though he was relatively poor. Then one day when she was ten he had fixed her breakfast and he had laid out her clothes and helped her get ready for school (her mother was never up for that sort of thing), but when they walked out the door to get in the car he was still dressed in his boxer shorts and undershirt. She’d laughed— Daddy , your pants —and then she’d seen something like terror in his eyes, and after that nothing had ever been the same.
There had been times when he was all right, sure, sometimes months on end when he would get back to the old routine, the socks lined up neatly in the drawer, which she checked
whenever he wasn’t around, as if it were a medical chart of some kind or the psychology test with the inkblots, and the ties and the neatly pressed suits in the morning, the eggs and bacon cooked just so, the drive to school during which he never exceeded the speed limit, the same comforting words when he dropped her off, the See you this afternoon, honey , the Have a good day , but then, inevitably, more and more, there would come the day when he went to the grocery store four times to buy bread, the day when he would canvass the neighborhood, go door-to-door asking the neighbors to show him plat maps of their property lines, even the neighbors who were several doors down, the day when he would suddenly exit the house naked to go grab the newspaper, or, once, to adjust the idle on the car. The doctors disagreed—was it the onset of Alzheimer’s? A brain tumor? Schizophrenia? Manic depression? He showed up at
She was going downtown to meet Tristan Mackey, who was turning out to be an asshole when you got right down to it, not at all the Tristan Mackey who had liked her all those years, not at all the Tristan Mackey who had created a new world for her that day long ago in English class. He’d fucked her and now he wasn’t all that interested. She knew the type, but hadn’t pegged him as that particular kind of disappointment. She was angry at herself more than him. It had been a long time since she’d allowed anyone other than herself to get her hopes up. But, so, he’d asked her to a dart match, not a nice restaurant in town, not on an actual date , just maybe she could come to the dart match to drink beer with “the boys,” as he’d called them condescendingly, too good for them all obviously, whoever they were, but all right, it wasn’t too late to show him the mistake he was about to make.
But when she walked into the 321 and looked toward the back of the bar the first person she saw was Russell. Russell, cheerful Russell, good sweet Russell, silly Russell, stupid
Russell, my God what could you do with him and what could you tell him about himself and about who he really was and how would you go about it anyway. Poor Russell whom her heart went out to, who drove up Baldy Mountain with her one time to get a good view of the northern lights even though he really didn’t care anything about them, who told her how his father left him, whom she told about how her father left her. Russell was a dead end. Russell was a loser. He was Hayley’s father, but that didn’t count for much in his case, and she’d never had the heart, or maybe not the necessary lack of common sense, to let him know. But then she hadn’t seen him in a long time, either.
Her father had been the manager of a men’s clothing store. He dressed, she could still remember, in crisp gray slacks, in a clean white-collared shirt, in a square-shouldered jacket, a blue tie, and he smelled of good cologne. His socks were sorted in a dresser drawer from lightest to darkest. His shoes were on a shoe tree. His face was smooth and his thin blond hair was just so. He was quiet and he smiled a lot and he did the best he could even though he was relatively poor. Then one day when she was ten he had fixed her breakfast and he had laid out her clothes and helped her get ready for school (her mother was never up for that sort of thing), but when they walked out the door to get in the car he was still dressed in his boxer shorts and undershirt. She’d laughed— Daddy , your pants —and then she’d seen something like terror in his eyes, and after that nothing had ever been the same.
There had been times when he was all right, sure, sometimes months on end when he would get back to the old routine, the socks lined up neatly in the drawer, which she checked
whenever he wasn’t around, as if it were a medical chart of some kind or the psychology test with the inkblots, and the ties and the neatly pressed suits in the morning, the eggs and bacon cooked just so, the drive to school during which he never exceeded the speed limit, the same comforting words when he dropped her off, the See you this afternoon, honey , the Have a good day , but then, inevitably, more and more, there would come the day when he went to the grocery store four times to buy bread, the day when he would canvass the neighborhood, go door-to-door asking the neighbors to show him plat maps of their property lines, even the neighbors who were several doors down, the day when he would suddenly exit the house naked to go grab the newspaper, or, once, to adjust the idle on the car. The doctors disagreed—was it the onset of Alzheimer’s? A brain tumor? Schizophrenia? Manic depression? He showed up at
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