The Logic of Our Game
Most days the cargo trains would come by every fifteen to twenty minutes. Today was no different. The third one this afternoon was making its approach. We could hear the distant clacking, feel the hum building beneath us. Mikey, crouched next to me, snapped his head toward me with a grin I knew too well, giddy that it was my turn.
It was always us four: Me, Mikey, Stick (the nickname that stuck to Adrian even though he had gone from cartoonishly skinny in middle school to pudgy after freshman year), and Pops (that’s what we called Jimmy Papadopoulos). Though no one would admit it, Mikey had become the de facto leader of these excursions, in part due to his personality, but also because he lived closest to this particular clearing in the woods where the tracks cut through. He had also grown about a half a foot taller than the rest of us last year. Stick and Pops were neighbors and had been tight since preschool. They started hanging around me and Mikey once we all got to middle school. If they hadn’t grown up together like they did, it’s hard to imagine they’d get along at all. What Stick carried in anxiety, Pops matched with aloofness. In a way, they balanced each other out.
“Hurry up!” Mikey said, shaking my shoulder. “It’s your chance!”
We were positioned just a few yards from the tracks, separated by some overgrown grass and a small hill that, once climbed, would put us just feet away from the train cars. The clacking was becoming a roar, the orange engine now visible and closing in fast. I started up the hill and the guys followed. My eyes were forward but I knew Stick was shaking his head in fearful disapproval. As I reached the top, Pops let out a feral “whoop!”
We were all on the same ground, now, crouching. I looked back and flashed my best game face. But my heart pounded more than I thought possible, and I struggled to breathe. It would only be a few seconds now.
“Zack! Remember, I was this close,” Mikey yelled, nearly drowned out by the noise, now approaching deafening. He turned his head in profile and brought his hand in front of his face about a foot away, maybe less.
As if I needed a reminder. I’d just watched him do it. But he had always been like this—cocky, boisterous, but with just enough self-awareness to keep it charming (usually). Charming enough to have fueled our friendship since first grade, anyway. But how much longer would that last? Mikey was moving in a matter of weeks, just before school started back up. He’d told me a few weeks earlier, but no one else. Somehow, we’d managed to avoid the subject since he brought it up.
All I could hear now was the train’s violent mechanical groan. Like a predator it warned me to fuck all the way off, each car flashing its metallic stripes as it whooshed past, dizzying me, blowing back my hair with its force. I knew I wasn’t that close, but my body was intent on preventing me from taking one step closer.
How had Mikey done it?
The previous train had passed just twenty minutes earlier. Mikey, as if beckoned by some unseen force, slowly, calmly approached the beast whipping past us. Pops, Stick, and I, a few yards behind, veered to the right to get a sense of how close he was. If Mikey was shaking, it was impossible to know whether it was from nerves or the train’s forces, but the sliver of his face I could see showed no sign of fear. Under his wild blowing black hair, his eye was closed (I assume they both were), and it looked like he was inching even closer as car after car flew by.
As we witnessed Mikey’s standoff, Stick maintained an iron grip on my shoulder, but it barely registered until he loudly whispered in my ear in disbelief.
“Is he getting closer?”
I couldn’t tell. The small gap between his nose and the train that was visible from our vantage point seemed to decrease until it disappeared. But there was an illusory quality to the whole thing, like one of those pictures of dots and straight lines that tricked your brain into perceiving animation. He wasn’t backing off, though. The train would only go on for so long, and while I feared that Mikey might pull some idiotic maneuver before the end, I was paralyzed all the same. Stick wasn’t budging, either. It was as if any motion on our part might force Mikey to lurch forward.
As he stood there, the final train car entered our field of vision. Stick’s grip loosened a bit, and I felt the warm exhale of a relieved sigh on my cheek. Almost there. Pops was now inching his way toward Mikey and the train, gearing up to celebrate Mikey’s boldness, lack of injury, survival, or some combination of the three.
But it wasn’t over. The train bolted on, nearing its end. Eyes now open, Mikey’s right hand started to rise like it was being controlled by some other entity. It was soon parallel to his nose, and his left hand violently gripped his right wrist as if to stop it from moving any closer. He turned his face toward us, eyes widened in playful terror and his upper body began to shake, his left and right sides in conflict with one another. And just as he seemed ready to pull himself toward the tracks, the train had passed, and his right hand broke free in the form of a middle finger that first graced the train’s ass, then our faces.
“Holy shit!” Pops erupted, nearly tackling Mikey to the ground.
Gasping laughter all around. Even Stick, crumpled on the ground, hand over his face, was smiling.
“Did you see that? Did you see that?” Mikey yelled at the sky, emphasizing each word as he repeated them. “This close!” He brought his hands nearly together to drive it home.
“You’re a mad man, Mikey,” I said, shaking my head, still smiling. “Fucking crazy.”
“I thought you were gonna lose your hand, dude! Oh, God,” Stick chimed in, sounding out of breath.
“I could’ve gotten closer,” Mikey said, panting and bug-eyed. “Not bad for a first try though.” He spit on the tracks as if to mark his victory.
“Next one’ll be here soon enough,” Pops said, egging him on.
Stick sat up, smile replaced by his trademark are-you-fucking-serious stare.
“I don’t think we’re topping that today, Mikey,” I added.
“Maybe not me,” said Mikey, his devilish grin returning and solely aimed at me.
We’d made our way back down the hill toward our backpacks, chugged some water, and took turns sipping on the one Pabst Blue Ribbon Pops had swiped from his brother’s mini fridge—he had recently left for his final year of college. Pops told us he liked to think his brother left it there for him, but he had a plan to replace it in time for the holidays, just in case.
Summer was fading. The late afternoon sun broke through the oaks and elms and made shadows dance over and around us. The beer was flat and lukewarm after spending too long in Pops’s backpack on such a muggy day, but we took turns sipping it all the same. Soon we’d be juniors, and this might be the last summer like this. In fact, there was no doubt it would be. At least one of us was bound to have a job this time next year, and Mikey would be gone. Four states away, gone. He told me he’d visit whenever he could, and definitely over the summer, but people said things like that, meaning them in the moment despite the inevitable interference of time and circumstance. No matter his intentions, it was unclear how Mikey would even make his way back here after the move. He still didn’t have his learner’s permit, and if he did manage to get his license in Illinois, there was no way his mom would let him take her car, or pay for the gas. And how would he afford a plane ticket? Mikey didn’t like to linger too long in the realm of the pragmatic, though, and I didn’t have it in me to go there with him.
Now, my whole body vibrated as the cars whipped by. Mikey and them were all watching, and I could faintly hear shouts of encouragement, as I forced my body to defy its basest instinct. I knew I had to take several more steps to match Mikey’s record.
One. I forced my right leg forward, just barely, and immediately felt dizzy. I knew that if I closed my eyes it would be easier to maintain balance and focus, but it felt impossible to even blink.
Two. Squinting now, I managed to bring my left leg in line with my right. There was still plenty of distance between me and the train, but it felt like one more step could be the end.
Three. Another step, but it didn’t feel like my own. Something else was moving me now, had bypassed executive control and wanted me to show the world how it was done.
Four. I was now so accustomed to the train’s shrieking, one-note song that it sounded like silence. Squinting even harder now, I entered some kind of trance, hypnotized by the rhythmic vertical lines flying past my eyes.
Five. I could no longer tell how close I was to the train, and had no idea how much longer it would be before it ended. The moment felt infinite. Cosmic. I was virtually still but simultaneously moving at what felt like supersonic speed, experiencing an energy both novel and familiar, like that half-awake state of falling into a dream.
Six. Was I as close as Mikey had been? Closer? My eyes were now closed and in a flash I understood how Mikey had done it. Standing this close to the edge was exhilarating, yes, but intensely peaceful, too. Standing there, face blasted by the wind, body vibrating from the force, unable to hear anything but that haunting frequency, there was truth. The train was truth, and so was I. Whatever surrounded us might have existed, but who could say in this moment? Who could say it wasn’t all window dressing, a shadow projected from something more potent and limitless, like the dark echoes of those leaves scattered over and around us whenever the sun shone through these woods?
Seven—except my foot barely left the ground, and I suddenly felt myself being pulled backwards into that reality I had just so eagerly dismissed. I could now feel hands on my waist, and the train’s roar joined forces with Mikey’s screaming, a mechanical, angelic, demonic “Zaaaaaack!”
Still latched onto me, Mikey stumbled and we rolled over and under one another down the hill as the train faded from earshot. Mikey had wound up on top of me, pinning down my arms, squeezing my wrists. His eyes bulged and bore into me from above, his mouth snarled open. The leer of a wild animal.
“What the fuck, man?” I blurted out. “Get off!”
I could hear Stick and Pops sidling down the hill to catch us, a distant echoing cackle from Pops. Mikey pushed himself off me and staggered upright, pushing his hair back before reaching out to help me up.
“You good?” he asked. I ignored his outstretched hand and got up.
“Why did you do that, Mikey? I was fine. I was standing right where you were!”
“Are you fucking crazy? Zack, you kept going—you were about to fall face first into that thing!”
Stick let out a grunt of agreement and nodded quickly, and Pops shrugged while twisting his mouth as if to confirm what Mikey was saying.
“Bullshit,” I said, brushing the dirt and grass off my jeans. “You were the one pretending to lose control when you went,” I added, aggressively mimicking the dumbassery he had pulled with his phantom arm routine.
“Because I had it under control, dude,” Mikey said, convincing as ever. There was that sly grin again. “Come on, Zacky. You know me!”
I tried to fight a smile of my own, but I was losing. The adrenaline, the anger, the absurdity of it all. If what Mikey was saying was true, he probably just saved my life. But we wouldn’t even be here if not for him. I wouldn’t have been in this position. I hated him for that, but not in the end as much as I loved him for it.
“For what it’s worth, you definitely won,” Pops said, wryly. “Any closer and…,” he trailed off, bringing his hand up to his neck and miming a cut throat.
“Fuckin’ A,” Mikey said, wrapping his arms around me like he was my big brother.
Mikey had pulled me away from the train, but I hadn’t done the same for him. Why? Because I was in such awe? Because I trusted him as much as he seemed to trust himself? Or was I afraid of pushing him in? Maybe I didn’t want to ruin his moment—our moment—in these final days of summer that would never return, only move ever onward, driven by some arcane momentum? Or was it because I was afraid of falling in myself?
“We get it out of our systems?” Stick asked, trying to sound jovial but clearly done with this, with us, for the day.
“Until next time,” Mikey replied.
But I sensed something different in his voice. Something new. A hint of resignation, maybe a realization that you could only do so much, push so far. By the logic of our game, the true winner would have been the one who stood right on the tracks and waited for the train to come: the only victory, utter annihilation.
Ethan Keeley graduated from SUNY Geneseo in 2015 with a BA in creative writing. He currently lives in Rochester, NY, where he was born and raised. When he isn’t writing, he is exploring nature, reading, or making music (solo and with his band The Empty Mouth). His fiction has been published in previous issues of Gandy Dancer.