Counting Fair by Adam Benamram
Czaszyn, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Counting Fair
We used to stand on the tracks outside the tunnel and see who could stay there the longest once the lights rounded the corner. Once you could see the lights—not before, when they lit up the graffiti and you could see who loved who and how big Jack Haring’s dick supposedly was—me, Jake, and Noname would start counting, and we all counted fair because you wanted the others to count fair when it was your turn too. So one of us stood there on the tracks while the other two stood on the side closer to the river and we counted up and most of the time you only got to eleven or twelve but one time Noname got to fifteen. I was sure he was going to die then, but he stepped to the side just as the train brushed past his face and the wind knocked him down, but not into the wheels like we were sometimes warned you could be. When we counted together the train took between sixteen and seventeen seconds to hit our spot. And it was never on time.
We didn’t call Noname that because he died or anything, or even because it was his nickname because none of us had nicknames except maybe the ones that your parents called you at home. We called Noname by his real name until one summer when his family moved to California for his dad’s new job at a big law firm that my mom said was famous because it was involved in prosecuting or defending the Watergate scandal or something like that, and before he left he told us that he hated his dad and he hated his family which we knew already, but then he told us that he hated his name and he’d always hated his name. So after he left, even though we never saw him again, we always called him Noname. It was a sign of respect.
After Noname left, me and Jake sometimes still saw who could stand on the tracks the longest but it wasn’t really fair anymore without a third person to make sure we were actually counting right. And then Jake broke his leg in baseball so bad that he had to wear a cast for three months and get two surgeries and when he was back to walking without crutches (and then a cane that we laughed at him for using because we thought he looked like an old man) he had a terrible limp in his left leg. After that he wouldn’t play the train game with me anymore. And like I said, it wouldn’t have been fair, anyway.
In tenth grade I took a girl down to the tracks. Her name was Julia M and she didn’t pretend to be dumb or hate school or like stuff she didn’t actually like, like a lot of other people I knew. She talked to me about real things like how she wanted to become a doctor in Chicago and never have to live here again—and I’d never thought that you might not live here. She kissed me after a party when I drove her home and then again on Junior Prom when we fucked in the back of my car which was sweaty and way too tight, but I still told Jake that it was good—which in a way it was, really, even if it was way better when we did it the next time in her bed when her parents went out one night—but Julia M made me feel like the world might not be as big as I thought it was. And also she was the first girl I thought I loved.
But before all that, in tenth grade, I took her down to the tracks and I showed her what it was like when the train first rounds the corner and the lights shine right in your eyes and you imagine just for a second (not that you’d ever actually do this) that you stand there a second too long, or you don’t move at all, and the train comes barreling into your body, splitting your arms and legs and head off so parts of you go flying in all directions, and you can imagine that all it takes is one second for you, a whole entire person, to just be gone. She didn’t like it. She didn’t get that when you’re looking right into the lights you can feel everything you have, that you know in that moment exactly what you love and what you hate. She thought it was weird and I couldn’t convince her to stand between the rails, even when no train was coming, and I never told her about the train game. She eventually broke up with me 52 days before Senior Prom. Me and Jake went stag.
When I was 22 I walked down to the tracks to kill myself. Jake had joined the military (they took him even with his limp) and pretty much everyone else I knew had left town or drunk themselves out of it. I was working as a dishwasher and living at home with my parents who either spent their time fighting or telling me to move out and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I didn’t actually want to die, I knew that as soon as I stepped over the rails and looked into the tunnel, but I stood there until the lights turned the corner and then I stepped aside and watched the train pass. Then I stood there again until the next train came. And I kept doing that, stepping in and out of the path of the train until it became dark, because I didn’t exactly hate being alive but I hated the life I was living. Toward the end I stood on one of the slats and looked down at the gravel that lay beneath the tracks. I thought about how there must be a web of gravel that covers all of America, that would mark where the trains go even if the tracks weren’t there and the trains didn’t run. Who makes gravel? And who replaces it when the rain washes it away or kids take the rocks and throw them in the river? I peed at the edge of the tunnel and walked home.
After that I moved out and got a job at a carpet store a mile from my new house. I worked for four years with the man who owned the store named Roger until he had a heart attack and died in bed. His wife asked me if I would take over and continue running the business. I don’t think she needed the money, I think it was more her feeling like Roger was in the store and in the carpets and like something of what made her life up would just disappear without leaving a mark, and I walked by the river next to the tracks to think about if I wanted my life to be being a carpet guy who worked three blocks off Main Street. It could’ve been worse. I would have a steady job and I would get to be my own boss, and plus Roger’s wife asked me to. After two weeks she said I had to make a decision, she needed to look for buyers otherwise. These days that place is a hardware store.
I did get married when I was 31 to Nancy S, who I went to high school with, but it only lasted about four years. I don’t think either of us really wanted to be married to each other, but we both felt like time was probably running out to be married to someone who had a job and also brushed their teeth daily. When it ended it didn’t end bad, it was just sad. She said this wasn’t what she wanted and I asked her what she did want and she said she didn’t know and we looked at each other for too long and she left. I almost wished she hated me, maybe slapped me or cheated on me or made me so mad that I did something to her. Or really I wished she would tell me what she wanted so I could just give it to her.
And that was it, wasn’t it? You can’t take what you want if you don’t know what that is. When you stand on the tracks and you see the lights coming toward you and you feel the wind being pushed out of the tunnel with its pressure growing and swaying you backwards, when you look to the side and you hear your friends counting the seconds and feel the rumble through the rails and through the tie, you look up and you know for sure exactly what you want which is to live, to be alive because there’s something in it that’s worth it, if it’s the glory of standing there the longest or fucking the best or just living longer so you can kill yourself when it’s the right time because how do you know when it’s the right time to kill yourself? How do you know when there’s really nothing else that’s left for you? After that I didn’t go down to the tracks again. I had a few friends I drank with sometimes, but mostly I worked at the grocery store on Camden Street until I retired and then I took up woodworking until I developed arthritis and then I caught pneumonia and died in my living room chair. Maybe Jake came to my funeral.
About The Author
Adam Benamram is an EMT in New York City and a recent graduate of the Vassar College English Department, where his story "Snow, Ashes" won the 2022 Vassar Student Review competition. Adam plans to attend medical school and in his free time enjoys recording and producing music under the stage name, "Adahm."
