Free Sleight by Kirsten Kaschock Page A

cat’s cradle with the children’s fingers removed.
Sketch two: A family of trapezes. Horizontal bars with connective tissue everywhere indicating attempted and aborted support.
Sketch three: Parabolic. Small line fragments arranged to describe waveforms. A digital tide that could be construed as the splintering of a single gull.
Sketch four: A machine with pulleys. All lines reach to a central form. The proposed function either to raise up or to strangle.
[On page five, a newspaper clipping. A photograph with no caption. In the photo a bound man is being dragged behind a military jeep by his legs. His face is to the pavement. It is impossible to discern whether he is still alive.]
[On page six, Lark’s handwriting begins.]
I’m back here. Have decided to stay. I have nowhere else. The ghosts aren’t as thick as I expected. I came two weeks ago to clear out, maybe sell some things. I found my old papers. I recopied four drafts I did of the first Need. I got better at putting them down, I think. Still, these first attempts aren’t bad. I was only thirteen. I can’t believe Jillian never found these. Not that she cleaned. She never mentioned them. They were under the windowseat, just where I put them. It’s helpful here. The dogwoods. I’m going to make soup tonight that should last the week. I went to the farmer’s market yesterday and saw people. That girl from French class with the hips. The black boy I had a crush on junior year. He remembered me. I couldn’t think of his name. I was rude, asked, my North coming out. Drew. We talked a little. He had the paper in his hand. This picture was on the front page—I kept looking down at it. I couldn’t keep up my end of the talking. Drew noticed, gave me the paper, said he’d see me around. It’s possible now, I suppose, that I could have that sort of life. Except—the man’s face. I keep seeing how it must’ve left a trail of blood and saliva, skin and bits of bone on the asphalt—a screaming of. Itself. Into the asphalt. And so, now, I can’t help thinking—what sort of life happens prior to that? What sort of life is possible with that death waiting?

    West shut the book. He spoke to Clef.
    “Do you mind if I take this with me?”
    “I said you could.”
    “Your sister, where is she now?”
    “In Georgia, where we grew up. With her husband and her little girl.”
    “Would you mind if I called on her?”
    “Called on her?”
    “I would like your permission, of course, but I’ll do what I have to.”
    Kitchen knew what West had seen, but asked him anyway. “What did you see?”
    West looked at Kitchen warily, but with eyes too tired to lie. “I saw a horse, legs buckling under, coming down. I saw white boots caked in red mud. And a child old enough, for once, to run.”



CELL.
    F ern lived in a twenties-era apartment on the Upper East Side. The apartment was white. Everything in the apartment was white except for the wooden floors. But every white thing was a different shade of white, and every hard white thing was draped in volumes of white fabric. West had always thought of his grandmother’s place as exclusively hers, not his at all, but warm. Warm and clean—a guest towel folded on top of the bathroom radiator.
    His grandmother, perfectly rendered though wasting, was curled up on the couch in an ivory afghan, drinking tea. Her face was gaunt and glowy. She continued, even in stage four, to look twenty years her junior. Good rouge, West thought.
    “How are you feeling, Fern?”
    “Come off it, West. Why don’t you just tell me why you’re here?”
    West went from shamed to defiant in three seconds, and so subtly Fern barely caught it, and she was the only one who could have.
    “It’s always money, isn’t it, Fern?”
    “It always is.”
    “Well, I need two extra salaries, and the sponsor won’t budge.”
    “The sponsor.”
    “Yes, the sponsor, Fern. We could’ve been the only troupe in the world privately funded, unsullied by the