The Fugitive

Our next trick was to disappearperson X for twenty years to life plusguess their luckiest number.In the town of Off the Grid,Nevada, a diner owner who flinchedat each mention of back Eastimprovised straws and spoonsand paper napkins into an emergencysurgical kit or cover story.We required an audience volunteer,an ordinary straightjacketand a panopticon taller than God.In a tractor-trailer on the fifth daylong-hauling stuffed poultry cratescoast to coast, a drifter figurewithout ID but with a historyrested on or in chickenshit dreamsabout featherbeds and flight.Only our gesture could unlockthat hatch to get somebody in the chestof smaller and smaller chests.In a database sorted by namesuspiciousness and beardsfrom Abraham Lincoln to ZZ Top,a single facial age-progression photoimagined having hands freeand how much future they could hold.The animal we producedfrom an empty cage was part rabbit,almost dead, so we said rabid.In a room where wind and sunlight meta wall with window written on it,not the world’s worst escape artistand contortionist between positionsgot a coffin half-off while lookinga little too much like us.After the switcheroo, we often forgotwhich twin came through wholeand which went in the hole again.We doubled the number.