Authors: Keith Lee Morris

The Dart League King (27 page)

He passes an apartment complex. Inside is a young girl lying awake in a small room. Her mother has left her in the crib all night and in fact her mother is not there. She is not crying, though. She is lying soundlessly in the reddish half-light, feeling a longing and sadness she does not have the words to name. The door to her room stands wide open, ready for someone to enter and take the longing and sadness away.

Russell Harmon wakes to the rumble of Matt’s truck outside on the street. As soon as his eyes open he is struck by a terrible thought—when he dove from the bridge, he left his wallet in
his pocket. He jumps out of bed and turns on the lamp. He locates his shorts and yanks out the wallet. With trembling fingers he pulls out his daughter’s picture. It is not ruined. It was stuck to the back of his maxed-out credit card, and some of the photographic paper has peeled away, and near the edges where it got damp the colors have bled. But the face is still there, smiling out at him. And now that he knows what he knows, there will always be time for more pictures. Russell Harmon looks closely at his daughter one last time. She has his cheeks but her mother’s eyes, he thinks. He dabs at the moist surface with the hem of his T-shirt, so that there won’t be any further damage done. He puts the picture away in his sock drawer.

It is time for the Dart League King to start another day. He pulls on his jeans. He puts on his boots and laces them. He walks out of his room, but in a moment he returns. He takes the picture out of the drawer and lays it face up on the nightstand. That way, it will be the first thing he sees when he comes back in.

Rules and Regulations for the 2007 Garnet Lake Dart League

GARNET LAKE DART LEAGUE RULES AND REGULATIONS 2007

(by Russell Harmon, Commissioner)

General Rules:

1. NO ELECTRONIC BOARDS! Garnet Lake Dart League matches will be played on regulation bristle boards only! The team sponsor is responsible for keeping the boards in good playing condition (meaning no “bubbles,” bent wires, worn-out areas around bull’s-eyes, etc., report these problems to the Commissioner).

2. Each team must be sponsored by a local business that serves ALCOHOL! (Food is optional).

3. Team sponsors must be willing to schedule matches each Thursday night, 8 p.m., during spring/summer dart season (won’t have to hold matches every week, since sometimes their team will be “visitors,” but should have bar available each week just in case).

4. Team sponsors (or team captains) will make sure all measurements of dart board, foul line, etc., match up with American Dart Association standards (Commissioner will check each board prior to beginning of season).

5. Teams are four players (with one official alternate) each. Matches start at 8 p.m. If a team doesn’t have four official players by 8 p.m., team must forfeit if opposing captain says so. BE TO MATCHES ON TIME, guys! We have had only one forfeit in three years, so take pride in your team!

6. Every team will have official team shirts that must be worn to matches (ask sponsors if they will provide shirts).

7. All players should plan to attend the annual Garnet Lake Dart League Awards ceremony on the Thursday night following the final matches (location to be announced. TROPHIES for team champs and individual champs!) *Note—see number 8 to know why it’s important to plan on attending the awards ceremony!

8.
Scoring
will be done this way:
Teams
—Win=2 points. Tie=1 point. Loss=0 points. Team with most points at end of the season wins the Team Championship. In case two teams tie, the team that won in head-to-head competition is champ. If the two teams tied in head-to-head competition, they will have a tiebreaker match at Dart League Award night (neutral site)!
Individuals
—Player with most wins at end of season takes the title. Any ties will be decided at Dart League Award night!

9. Some singles matches (at the end) may not be meaningful in terms of the team outcome of the match—ALL MATCHES SHOULD BE PLAYED IRREGARDLESS! They still count for the Individual Standings, and even if you are not one of the players on the leaderboard, you should still be concerned about your individual record! NO FORFEITS! Take pride in your game!

10. The rules and regulations of the Garnet Lake Dart League are designed to be the best rules for THIS PARTICULAR LEAGUE! They may or may not be the same as national or world dart league rules, but they are the same if not otherwise stated. LEARN THE RULES!

Match Rules:

1. Team lineups will be made up prior to match on the official dart league lineup sheets (new this year!) by team captains. No switching places after team captains compare sheets! If you want specific matchups, talk them over ahead of time.

2. All team matches will consist of a doubles section and a singles section. Doubles matches are played first. There will be two doubles matches and four singles matches—each player on the team must play one and only one singles and doubles match, for a total of two matches per player per week.

3. Doubles matches will consist of a Cricket game (with points, also known as “killer”), a game of 301, and a game of Around-the-World, in that order. Best two out of three takes the match. If one doubles team (same for singles also) wins Cricket and 301, that match is over, and you go on to the next match. Each match (doubles and singles) counts
1 point
, meaning there are six points in a match overall.
The team with the most overall points wins, with a 3-3 score meaning a tie for that week’s match
. THE WINNING MARGIN DOES NOT MATTER! A 6-0 win and a 4-2 win (or loss) both count the same for the Team Standings. See number 8 under General Rules if there is confusion.

4. Singles matches are the same as doubles matches, except only one player instead of two.

5. Every game of every match will begin with a “cork” (one player from each team throws one dart at the bull’s-eye,
closest to the middle wins). The player (team) that wins the cork goes first. Players then take turns, throwing three darts per turn. In doubles matches, teams must alternate turns (player from Team A throws, followed by player from Team B, followed by second player from Team A, then second player from Team B, etc.).

6. All scores will be recorded by the player who scores them at the end of each turn on a chalkboard, so that the score is always known by all competitors and there isn’t any arguing about it later! (Make sure sponsors provide chalkboards.)

7. One of the two team captains should report the results of their week’s matches to the Commissioner (Russell Harmon) NO LATER THAN SATURDAY by phone (555-2606). (Leave a message if Russell isn’t there.)

Game Rules (“Killer” Cricket, 301, and Around-the-World):

“Killer” Cricket:

To win, a player (or team) must close all numbers 15 through 20 plus bull’s-eyes (in any order) and have at least an equal number of points as his opponent. Three scores in each number means it is closed. A single counts as one, a double counts as two, a triple counts as three. When a number is closed, and the opponent has not closed that number, the player with the number closed can score that number of points on his opponent by hitting the number additional times (for example, if I’m closed on 20s and my opponent is not, I can hit a single 20 for 20 points, a double for 40, a triple for 60, etc.—a
single bull’s-eye is 25, a double bull is 50). You can only score on an opponent when he does not have that number closed! When a player (team) has closed all his numbers and the bull’s-eyes and has equal to or more points than his opponent, he (team) wins.

The scoreboard should be drawn with 20s at the top and go down to 15s, with bull’s-eyes (marked by an X or a B) at the very bottom. Write the numbers down the middle of the board and put the teams on either side. When you score once on a number, mark it with a /. When you have two scores on a number, make an X. When the number is closed, put a circle around the X (if you hit a triple, you can just draw the circle without the X in the middle of it—this saves chalk!) Points are kept track of on the side of the board next to the team that scores them. This is the most skillful game, so if you are a weak player, good luck!

301:

We play this game “double in, double out”—some leagues do not play “double in.” The object is to start with 301 points and work down to zero—first player (team) to zero wins. To begin subtracting from 301, player must first hit a double—any double, including double bull’s-eye—to get on the board. You begin subtracting from that dart (if it’s your third dart, the first two don’t count, in other words). Singles, doubles, and triples point values are the same as in Cricket. To complete the game, player must throw the EXACT DOUBLE to get him to zero (for instance, if I have 16 points left, I have to finish the game by throwing a double 8). If the score gets down below 2, it is considered a “bust,” and the player gives up any
darts remaining in the turn and begins his next turn from the same place he started the last one—the “busted” turn is erased in other words, basically.

Around-the-World:

This is a game not normally used in competition but we use it to keep things moving along (it is fast and fun). We only play this game if the players (teams) split the Cricket and 301 games—it’s a tiebreaker, in other words. The game is simple. You hit every number from 1 to 20 (in order) and then finish with a bull’s-eye (single or double, it doesn’t matter). There are only two basic things to keep in mind. 1) Doubles and triples are scored differently than the other games. In this game, a double means you get to skip the number that comes next (if I hit a double 4, I go to 6 next, not 5). Hitting a triple means you skip the next TWO numbers (triple 4 means I go to 7 next, not 5 or 6). 2) Whenever the player scores the required number with his third dart, he gets to keep his turn (if I’m on 4, and I hit a single 4 with my last dart, I go back to the board and start on 5s, for example). What makes this game interesting is that theoretically a player could shoot all the way around the world in one turn and never let his opponent shoot! Good luck! It’s very hard to do and can only be accomplished by an expert player!

Acknowledgments

Thank you
to all these folks, who read this novel at various stages of its completion and offered a great deal of help—Steve Almond, Dave Shaw, Jason Durham, Brock Clarke, Angela Morris, Sappho Charney, Will Cathcart, Michael Griffith, and London Morris. I hope I haven’t forgotten anyone who had suggestions to offer, and if I have, I apologize. Thank you to my agent, Renee Zuckerbrot. Thank you to Lee Montgomery, Tony Perez, Meg Storey, and all the other folks at Tin House who worked on the book. Thank you to editors Brigid Hughes, Jodee Stanley, Kevin McIlvoy, Stephen Donadio, and Nicola Mason, who have continually supported my work. Thanks to Scott Ellingburg, who assisted with research (we had many excellent conversations about cadavers). Thanks to Nathan Morris, just for hanging around and being cool. Thank you to Krishele. Many, many thanks to my many, many friends, in Idaho and elsewhere—I wouldn’t keep trying if it weren’t for you.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

For information, contact Tin House Books, 2601 NW Thurman St., Portland, OR 97210.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Published by Tin House Books, Portland, Oregon, and New York, New York
Distributed to the trade by Publishers Group West, 1700 Fourth St.,
Berkeley, CA 94710,
www.pgw.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Morris, Keith Lee, 1963-

The dart league king / Keith Lee Morris. -- 1st U.S. ed.

p. cm.

eISBN : 978-0-982-50300-3

1. Darts players--Fiction. 2. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

PS3613.O7735D37 2008

813’.6--dc22 2008020391

“The Trouble with Liza Hatter” originally appeared in
Tin House
.

www.tinhouse.com