Balling the Jack

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good. I’ll put you in C division—the rookie league. You can pick up your schedule Saturday night.”

Dave and I signed up our whole gang from college—Jimmy, Bobby, Tank and Claire. At first, we saw the team as a drinking club. A chance to meet once a week, check out different bars, get trashed, and throw a few arrows besides. As time went on, though, a funny thing happened: we got good.

Stella gave us old boards we put up at home and practiced on a little each day. Sunday nights we entered her five-dollar luck-of-the-draw tournaments. Once we got the hang of the league matches, we found we all had the right makeup for darts—we love to drink and we hate to lose. Especially to some of the cows in C division. Every team carried at least one porker, and the lesser teams two or three. Guys who couldn’t make the bar softball team but didn’t want to go home to the wife, with bad breath and bellies that could stop a truck. Beat ’em and they retreated to the bar, but lose and you were in for it. They’d take you aside, give you a few pointers, tell you their whole darting history, if you let them, from the day they first picked one up. Facing guys like that week after week was a powerful incentive to get good in a hurry.

That first season we sneaked into the playoffs as the fourth-place team and pulled a couple upsets before losing in the semis. We’ve moved up and gone farther each season since and now, in our first crack at A division, we’re in the finals.

I’m the captain and the third-best shooter on the team. No one can touch Jimmy, our ace, and Tank’s more consistent, but I’m streaky and when I get on a roll, look out. I’ve come on strong this season since resolving not to worry about my form. Used to be I’d spend a lot of time on technique, breaking down the dart throw to its component parts—the proper grip, the angle of the elbow, the release point. I’d work on keeping my head still and minimizing arm motion. In the end I gave all that up. You can’t have a hundred things running through your head when you step to the line. Now I make sure I have enough liquor in me come game time, see the target and throw. Not exactly what they tell you in the videos, but it works for me.

As captain, my main task is to set the lineups. I decide the order in singles and the partners in doubles. We carry the minimum six players, so I’m spared the worst part of a captain’s job: deciding who sits out. We really should carry another body, because as it stands, if one of us didn’t show we’d have to play five on six. We’re pretty hard-core, though. We’d all miss a work day before we’d miss a dart night, and in three seasons we’ve never played short.

The chief game we play in the league is 501. Each player starts with 501 points and the first to get down to zero wins. Sounds easy, right? The catch comes at the finish. To win the game you must go out on an exact double. In darts, the double section is the strip of two-inch-by-one-half-inch rectangles ringing the outside of the board. If a player has 40 left, he can only win by hitting the double 20. If he has 20 left, he must hit the double 10, and so on. Doubling out separates the good shooters from the rest, and turns plenty of the latter into alcoholics. A lot of guys can score, but nothing sends you to the bar quicker than pissing away a big lead and losing because you can’t hit that double.

To have any chance at all tonight, we’ll have to hit our doubles, or “take our outs,” as they say. The Hellions are loaded with shooters, and you can’t give them any extra throws.

They have one guy, name of Sean Killigan, who I would pay to see. Best player in the league, except maybe our Jimmy. Only the Irish teams come up with guys like Killigan. He’s tiny, maybe 130 pounds soaking wet, but he throws the sweetest dart I’ve ever seen. Comes out of his hand in a gentle arc and hits dead straight every time, whether he’s shooting the top of the board or the bottom. A robot couldn’t land it any cleaner. When he’s on, nobody beats him.

Killigan has a little problem, though. It comes in a bottle. He’s a first-rate alkie, and when he drinks, his dart game goes out the window. He won’t hit one 20 in three. He has a pattern to him. He’ll stay off the sauce for a few months and kick ass in the league. Then one day he’ll take a few nips on the job, tell off the boss, get canned, fall hard off the wagon and drop out of sight. Just when you’ve forgotten him you walk into County Hell and he’s back, drinking seltzer and nailing 20s.

I saw him play for the first time about a year back. Right here at Adam’s Curse. Our A-division team at the time, the Dudes, was taking on this same Hellion crew for the trophy we’ll be playing them for tonight. I came to root on the home team, but also to get a look at this Killigan fellow, to see if he was as good as the hype. From all the stories I’d heard, the guy never missed.

Killigan had been off the sauce all season at the time and was torching the league. First in wins, first in all-star points. Nobody could touch him. Well, he comes through the door that night and I can see he’s loaded. He orders a beer but Joe Duggan comes over, knocks it away and says something low and mean to him in close. His teammates take him aside, pour coffee down him, water, anything to sober him up, but no dice. The match starts and he’s useless. Gets routed in singles 501, and then again in cricket, the other game we play in the league. Duggan pulled him before doubles 501, but the damage was done. The Dudes won going away.

When it was over, Duggan put his arm around Killigan’s shoulder and walked him to the bar. He ordered him a beer, then pulled back and smashed his forehead into Killigan’s face, splitting his nose right open and knocking him to the floor. Happened right in front of me. Sean is lying there holding his face and Duggan empties his beer on him, says, “Have that on me, you fuckin’ drunk,” and walks out. On the way by me he cuts me a stare and says, “Careful who you root for, college boy.” That was my introduction to Joe Duggan.

Three months later we joined A division and started facing the Hellions ourselves.

As for Killigan, by the next season he was back on the wagon and back on the team, as if nothing happened. By midseason, though, he was out again, sacked from his job, kicked right into the street by Duggan, who tracked him down in some rum hole when Sean didn’t show for a match. And so on.

Unfortunately for us, Killigan seems to have turned his life around. He’s been off the stuff three months now. I heard he got himself a job as an elevator man in Times Square. Rumor is he even has a girl. His arm has never been better, that’s for sure. We’ll have our hands full with him tonight.

I flag down Mason for another pint. It’s a little more than an hour before the match and the rest of the team is due here any minute. I asked them all to come early so we could get fired up.

We’ll need to be. On paper we don’t stack up against these guys. Top to bottom they come at you with someone good. That’s why you play the match, though. Call me a dreamer, but I think we can take them, if it all breaks right. They beat us only 10–8 last time, at their place, and I saw a few chinks in their armor.

For starters, they bring nine guys to every match. You want to play for Duggan, you better win. Lose in singles and he’ll sit you the rest of the night, and spit in your drink besides. We took an early doubles match from them last time and the two losers stood at the board cursing each other, ready to duke it out. That’s their weakness. One big family so long as they’re winning, but get them down a little and they turn on each other. If we can get ahead early tonight, we’ll have a shot.

Christ, beating Duggan would be sweet. I don’t know what it is about him, but from the first I hated him. Maybe it’s the way he hit Killigan when he wasn’t looking. Maybe it’s the eyes, or because he calls me college boy. Maybe everyone’s born into this world with one enemy and he’s mine. Who knows. Anyway, I don’t want him coming into our place and walking out with this trophy. I want to beat him at the boards, fair and square, and turn that mean grin of his around. Then maybe rub it in a little. Put some Irish music on the jukebox, hold the post-match handshake an extra second and ask him if the losers want a round on the house. Then walk the whole pack of them to the door and call out after them, “Next time, gentlemen, bring your darts.”

Jimmy’s voice breaks into my reverie.

“Snap out of it, Tommy. You look like you’re getting laid.”

I’m back at the bar.

“Hi, Jimmy. Almost as good. I was thrashing Duggan.”

“The devil himself. What do you say we end his reign tonight? Mason! A couple pints for the good guys.”

Jimmy is our big gun. If we win tonight, he’ll have a lot to do with it. He was the only A division player to finish the regular season undefeated in singles—12–0. Even beat Killigan once. Watching Jimmy throw is always a treat. His concentration is total. Once he locks in on the target, Cindy Crawford could blow in his ear and he wouldn’t notice. Sometimes after a match, if I have enough in me, I’ll make a V with my fingers against the board. Jimmy splits them every time. Good thing, too, because he really fires that dart.

Before he got hitched we used to hustle a little on the weekends. I’d drop a few friendly games to some guy, get him thinking he’s an ace, then ask if he wants to grab a partner and play for a little dough. Five dollars, ten dollars, whatever he wants. He would call his buddy over, I’d call Jimmy, and if we milked them just right, winning each game by a little, we could take four or five before they realized what was up.

I keep telling Jimmy he should turn pro. Hit the dart circuit with me as his trusty manager. I’d take a modest thirty percent and any women he couldn’t handle. His eyes light up at that kind of talk, but of course that’s all it is. Since the marriage he’s lucky to make it out on dart night. Don’t get me started on that.

Jimmy is tall, about my height, with brown hair he parts in the middle and a smile that goes on and off like a light switch. He carries his weight well, like an athlete, though each time I see him he seems to have a little more to carry.

“Hi, guys.”

We turn around. The first sight of Claire each week is a tonic. Scrubbed features, light freckles, milk in her eye. A heartland princess in the teeth of the big city. She gives us a kiss.

“You look great, Claire. Feel hot tonight?”

“Like always.”

Don’t let her fool you. She may look sweet, but put a dart in her hands and Claire is a killer. She’ll be key tonight. You should see these Irish guys when they go up against a good-looking girl. Boy, do they lock up. We might be in McDougal’s, or O’Flannery’s, and all Claire has to do is shake her opponent’s hand and he starts to sweat. If the guy is getting any action at all, it clearly isn’t in her league. When she steps to the line to warm up he can’t keep his eyes off her ass. He’s a mess before the game even starts.

In darts it doesn’t take a lot to knock you off-stride. An eighth of an inch turns a triple 20 into a triple 1. The guy gets behind early, still out of it, and then the ribbing starts up from his teammates.

“Can’t beat a girl, lad?”

“What’ll you have from the bar, Wally? A wine cooler?”

Brutal. So then he starts to press, swearing between throws, his dart arm full of tension. Claire hits a big round and now the pressure is really on, and the peanut gallery turns it up a notch.

“Whyn’t you tell us it was ladies’ night, Wally?” All of a sudden this A league darter can barely hit the board. Claire finishes him off and the guy slinks back to the bar, ruined for the rest of the evening. We’ve seen it a dozen times.

Dave walks in humming the Notre Dame fight song. He puts his arms around the three of us, bringing our heads together.

“Gentlemen. Claire. We WILL win it all. You know what I did last night?”

No one offers a guess.

“Think of the great fighters, before a fight.”

“You slept alone,” says Jimmy.

“I slept alone.”

“You’re a martyr, Dave,” I say.

“I am that. Though I’ll confess that since I swore off Catholic girls, the rotation’s been a little weak.” He turns to Claire. “I may be able to slip you in there.”

She laughs. “I’ll pass.”

“Okay. But that does mean Debbie’s going to have to go again on two days’ rest.”