The first time Liz Chaffin saw Mickey dancing was at the funeral of the dead Mexican boy. She had long since forgotten the Mexican boy’s name, but she remembered that they kept the pine coffin closed because the boy had died from a shark attack. Her father offered no more details, but the closed coffin, topped with exotic flowers from the Yucatan, was sufficient for her imagination. They kept Mickey’s coffin closed too, not because of an irate shark, but because of what he had done to himself.

The obituary explained that Mickey had died of heart failure, which was technically true, Liz supposed. They buried him next to their grandfather, Titus Chaffin. There wasn’t much of a ceremony. Mickey’s best friend, Terrance Figgins, showed up looking stoned, but it was the first time she’d ever seen Terrance in a tie. So, there was that. After they threw clods of dirt on Mickey’s casket, Liz wondered out-loud about her father, why he was so removed, “What is he missing, Terrance?”

“I don’t know.” 

She started crying. Terrance awkwardly put his arm around her. He didn’t know what else to do. Liz’s father glanced her way, nodded briefly, sadly as if this were all part of the same sad script that was inevitable and tragic. Liz felt sick and left the funeral home with Terrance as soon as she could. 

“What are you going to do?” Terrance asked.

“I don’t know, I’m leaving,” said Liz, “I can’t stay here.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Terrence said, “At least they didn’t put it in the papers, you know?”

When she was finally in her bedroom, she saw the ad for Recover Me and contacted the owner, David Bridle the next day. Two weeks later, she was on a flight to Montana, out of New York state, out of her world, entirely. She convinced herself it’s what she needed.

**

In Montana, Liz spent several days washing and cleaning everything at the Recover Me school. It was a continuous battle. She left the windows open because there was no central air. That brought in the dust and pollen. So each day she re-cleaned. She did this until the kids arrived. She had a caseload of five, which sounded high, but David said they’d be self-sufficient, except one. His name was Nelson Schweitzer. He came from a wealthy, well-connected family, but according to Nelson, he was there against his will.

“They kidnapped me!” he announced. All the other kids watched Nelson’s performance.

“You were rescued,” corrected David Bridle. He was sitting in the back of the room, observing the introductions. Liz saw David’s jaw tighten.

“Whatever you want to call it, man. One second I’m hanging at the Quick Mart with a dead blunt, the next thing I’m in back of a van with some sweaty linebacker holding my ass down.”

Liz raised her eyebrows. “Kidnapped?”

“Like I’m Al-Qaeda, ma’am.”

Nelson’s brown eyes flashed angrily.

“That’s not the word to use,” said David Bridle.

“That’s exactly the right word,” retorted Nelson, his voice going high, “They zip-tied my hands, and that fucking linebacker buddy of yours punched me in the chest when I tried to shout.”

“Language,” said David. “God doesn’t hear you when you swear.”

“I don’t want God to hear me. I want you to.” Nelson thrust his finger at Bridle.

“Okay, okay,” David waved him off, “No one should be hitting anybody, ever. Okay? How they did that was all wrong.”

Liz turned to Bridle, “You knew about this, then?” He made the slightest possible movement, almost a twitch: his chin dropping to his chest. Of course, he knew about this.

“We’ll talk about it later,” he said.

**

Liz and David discussed the matter with two of the other counselors present. Bridle assured her that there were no such things as kidnapping going on at the school.

“’Sure sounds like it.”

“These kids will say anything,” Rosie Clements was the second-longest-running counselor there, next to David Bridle. A stout woman with a tanned square face, chapped with dryness that made Liz think of leather. The fan ticked in the corner. A set of flies flung their bodies at the glass, struggling to escape. Every thirty seconds, a warm breeze would almost cool Liz.

“No one in this facility is ever kidnapped, okay?”

“But the linebackers pulling Nelson into a van?” Liz asked, “What do you call that?”

“An intervention. In truth, a rescue.” Before Liz could object, David added, “Let me break this down for you. Montana is a parents’ rights state. That means we need parental consent—and that’s it. And we have that. We have signed consent from their parents, okay? No one is here without parental consent.” David waited for Liz to respond, and then added, softly, “You have to understand their family needs us—these kids need us. They just don’t know it yet.”

**

“No.” Nelson refused their granola breakfast. “Granola makes me fart!” he shouted.

Rosie didn’t see the humor. “You’ll eat what everyone else eats, Nelson.”

“I’ll fart. Seriously.”

“It’s fine.”

“Oh, you say that now.”

 “Just eat your breakfast,” snapped Rosie. She strode away.

Nelson reminded Liz of her brother. He had the same combination of cockiness and vulnerability. Mickey’s heart was so big it finally burst. That’s how Liz liked to think of it, but the truth was different. His seedy apartment and the stack of dirty dishes on the sink, complete with scampering roaches repulsed her. He might as well have put a gun to his head, she thought. Heroin cut with Fentanyl. Who does that?

**

“People like Nelson make me crazy,” whispered Rosie. “They come from so much, and treat everyone around them like dirt. Entitlement,” she added, her thin lips twisted as if tasting something bitter.

“Maybe he’s just scared and hiding it,” said Liz. “He doesn’t know what’s going to happen next. And he doesn’t look rich at all.”

“He’s not scared,” huffed Rosie. “He thinks this is all beneath him. He’ll see. Let him try to make a run for it. Everyone around here knows not to help. No water, no food. Nada.” She flashed her hands outward as if to cover all the possibilities of escape.

Liz’s brother had come from money too, as had she. Her father had cut him off at nineteen, until he “got his act together.” That only drove him further away. At some level playing poor became a game, until it didn’t anymore. She blamed her father, a patrician through and through. The Lord Salisbury of Mannikan Court, she mocked. His rigidity drowned Mickey. And she blamed herself, too—because she hadn’t found Mickey soon enough.

**

Terrance helped Liz find Mickey. He was blasting Nirvana, and wearing a patched flannel shirt when he drove up.

“He’s in deep,” Terrance said, “I mean, really.”

Later, Liz told her father, who replied with supercilious scorn, “Well, he’s found his level, than, I suppose.”

She wanted to scream, “He’s your son!” but had only whispered meekly, “It’s Mickey, Daddy.”

“I know who it is,” said her father, “Much better, I should say, than you do.”

**

Liz was scared to venture into Mickey’s neighborhood alone. She enlisted Terrance. “This is the place,” Terrance said. Liz parked the car, glancing at the boarded-up windows, the over flowing trashcans, “is it safe to leave it here?”

“I don’t think we have a choice.”

**

When they toured their food garden, Nelson took the opportunity to case the fence line. He was not discreet. Rosie spied him within minutes. She strolled behind him while Liz watched.

“We’ve been here twenty-five years. Know how often kids try to escape?” Rosie didn’t wait for an answer. “Every day.”

She added, “How many kids you think have successfully made it, Nelson?”

“Ever?”

“Mmm-hmmm.”

When Nelson didn’t voice an opinion, she explained, “None.”

“I’m gonna be the first.”

“Call me when you get home, then.”

Nelson promised he would.

**

Flies bounced against the bay windows while Liz dusted the room again. Nelson approached her, looking less confident.

“You’re new here, aren’t you?” he asked.

“What makes you think that?”

“You seem like you have a conscience.”

She laughed.

“You remember I said I was kidnapped?”

“Yes.”

“Can you help me?”

“No.”

“You don’t believe me?”

Liz sighed, “I don’t know. I don’t guess kidnapping is the right word.”

He smiled. “But you will help me?”

Liz began to dust again, the never-ending chore.

“It’s not much,” he said. “I just need one thing.”

She did not pause from dusting and kept her face averted for fear her expression would betray her.

“I just need my shoes.”

At night, they collected the detainees’ shoes to keep them from running off. No one wanted to cross the desert barefoot. Cacti, sharp rocks, and burning sand provided amble deterrent, the snakes and stealthy scorpions were an ancillary benefit. Liz and Rosie handled the collection.

Liz didn’t respond.

“What are you doing in here, Nelson?” Rosie barked from the hallway. Liz casually walked away. Nelson acted bored, and shrugged, “Not much,” he said.

**

The next night it was the same.

“If you’re not going to give me my shoes, what makes you think you can help me? I’m fine, you know, except, of course, for being kidnapped.”

“You’re not fine, Nelson. You have a substance abuse problem.”

“I smoke weed. My old man is deranged, mostly, that’s the problem.”

“You’re not into oxies, or downers?”

“No, I told you, I like weed, but I don’t like to work. One time I got stoned and drew swastikas all over some blue prints my old man had sweated up. After that, it was all out war. He sent me to this military school which worked out fine because they were all stoners, too.” Nelson laughed.

Then out of nowhere, “I got kidnapped, Liz. No shit. Honestly, I mean, I don’t even think it was Dad, but my Mom was wound up. It was probably her. Dad would be like, let him make his own bed, you know? Be done with it.”

Liz sighed, “I know what you mean.” Just a whisper, it was almost as though she were talking to herself.

Nelson paused, eyes widened, “You do?”

“Mmm, hmmm. Not personally, but my brother.”

“What?”

“My father basically disowned him.”

“Yeah.” That’s all Nelson said, but Liz heard more. Sympathy, commiseration, maybe anger, “Yeah.”

“That’s really why I’m here. To make up for my brother. For not finding him in time.” She looked at Nelson, “He Od’ed.”

That sounded cheap, she thought. She shouldn’t have said anything. Liz remembered the long staircase Terrance showed her, a five-story walk up, with buckled wooden steps. Almost a shanty. Liz felt as though the whole place were somehow leaning. Terrance described it as ‘sketchy,’ understatement of the season.  In the foyer, a pile of clothes, then two garbage bags.

“But it’s safe here,” Terrance explained, “That’s the reason.”

“Safe?”

“Safe from, you know, thieves and shit. People who might rob you.”

“My God,” said Liz, “rob you of what?”

It stunk of urine and kerosene. Dishes piled up in the sink, pizza crusts and red plastic beer cups and empty bottles of sticky Fanta. When Terrance opened the bedroom door, she closed her eyes.

II

Nelson’s shoes were black, double-laced Converse, trimmed with the red dust of New Mexico. The toe of the left foot was duct-taped. They smelled of sage and dirty socks. That night, Liz was about to drop them into her netted collection bag when she saw Rosie heading out the other door. Liz hesitated, and then she left, too.

**

On the train out of Montana Liz remembered being ten, her father taking them to the funeral near Piste where an employee’s son had suffered the shark attack.  She remembered everyone drinking a strong vanilla scented rum and even her father seemed sad and tipsy in a way she had not seen before. 

A short, dark skinned woman appeared, crying “Donde estan nuestros zapatos.”

“What’s she saying Papa?” Liz asked. He didn’t know, but a helpful employee translated for him, “Where are our shoes?”

**

The next morning, Liz told David it was her fault; that she’d somehow missed picking up Nelson’s sneakers the night before.

“I’ll quit,” she said. “I feel awful about this.”

“You don’t have to leave,” David said. “It was a mistake.”

She toyed with the idea of staying on but could not see it. She would either quit or remain and get so angry she’d have to testify in court.

“I do have to leave, anyhow, David. Personal reasons.”

David studied her expression.

“I hope everyone is okay. I mean, in your family.”

“Me too,” she said. “I think we’re all a little sick right now.”

**

She thought the Mexican funeral was the kind Mickey should have had.

As the train shuttled her across Montana, back to New York where she’d have to find a job, Liz remembered the band with a dark man playing a fiddle, an off-key trumpet, and another man playing an eight-string jarana. The man wore a pristine white guyabera and white pants, smiled widely with a missing tooth. Two women slipped into the shoes. They were dancing shoes. The women had hard faces worn from work and grief, but still filled with a kind of agonized energy.  They faced each, standing on the wooden platform. First one stamped her foot, and then the other. They began staring each other down, issuing challenges, spinning, slapping their hands to the music that rose in crescendo. A fandango of lights glittered off their swirling bodies. Liz got lost in their movement, which seemed not so much about the boy as the grief the boy had inflicted by his sudden death. Other children were trying to dance as well, mimicking a few of their own steps tentatively, and the youngest children were crying to be lifted to their mother’s arms and bounced to the rhythm of the music. Liz saw Mickey standing nearby, tracing his feet to the music. Dancing. He was dancing.  That moment was the closest they had ever been to their father.

**

Liz’s mother had refused to come to the Mexican boy’s funeral. She stayed in an expensive Cancun hotel, waiting for their return. Her father woke hungover the next day, and their whole family flew back to the states. When she thought of Nelson in the dessert, Liz remembered what a woman had whispered as some children left the funeral heading down the sandy road toward their own homes. Maybe because of the young boy’s death, or maybe it was something she always repeated, Mios Dios and a long string of Spanish words. “What is she saying Papa?” Liz asked. Her father shrugged, said it didn’t matter because he didn’t know, but the helpful employee translated that phrase as well, “Dear God,” the employee said, “she is saying ‘keep their feet strong and unblistered. Let them step only in places where human feet are supposed to go.’”

**

A week later Nelson called Liz, said he had managed to make it to a friend’s house near Boise, Idaho. Liz said she was happy for him, and relieved.

“How did you get my number?”

“I called Recover Me.” Nelson changed his voice so that it was deep and slightly cracked, “I told them I was your father. I needed to get in contact. You’re mother has been taken ill.”

“You shit head,” Liz said.

Nelson laughed, “Hey, parent’s rights state, you know? I wanted to thank you, though, for the help.”

“What help?” Liz deadpanned.

Nelson laughed again, “You know, I’m still wearing those sneaks. They’re finally broken in. They’re perfect now.”

“You should get a new pair, Nelson. Those stink.”

“Yeah, teen spirit,” then he said, innocent as a puppy, “Speaking of– Do you happen to have Rosie’s number? I promised her a phone call.”

– Jack R. Johnson