Apache Toe

by David F. Burkey

Professor John Hobson hasn’t danced for years. Many years. In fact, on this sabbatical he’s barely even spoken to anyone, tramping the desert searching for Silurian uplift, daydreaming of baseball and the salt marshes of home.In many ways the Apache Toe town picnic is just more of the same. He’s finished his hamburger and leans against a cottonwood, watching the last of the sunset and the first of the fireflies, content to listen to the old fiddler in a starched white shirt and string tie. He hasn’t spoken to anyone in hours. He’s strictly a stranger passing through. Suddenly his landlady, Susan Jones, asks him to dance.He’s still speechless, of course. But they two-step, then jitterbug, finally they even dance cheek-to-cheek. Back at the picnic table they talk about old songs, about the sunset, and other sunsets, about the magic light in the desert at the beginning and the end of every day. Clearly there is much more to talk about— stars, geology, anthropology, and especially the desert. But first they must have another drink. Susan kisses his cheek lightly as she goes for ice, and disappears.The next morning Hobson learns Susan didn’t just disappear. She disappeared. Vanished. Even more unthinkably, the Arizona State Police, who have tracked him down way out in the desert, consider him the leading suspect. There’s no evidence, of course. On the other hand, there’s not a shred to indict anyone else either. In fact, there’s nothing whatsoever, just a beautiful woman who’s gone and a stranger who danced with her. The second-most likely scenario seems to be abduction by flying saucer.Hobson has no choice, nothing to do but wait, more isolated than ever, in the tiny Arizona town, especially after Maggie, Susan’s willful, thirteen year-old, would-be rock star daughter hysterically accuses him of kidnapping her mother.By the next morning, however, the mercurial Maggie has changed her mind, and just as emphatically proclaims Hobson innocent, and appoints him as chaueffer. She’s also concluded the police are hopelessly incompetent. She’ll have to find her mother on her own. Together they gradually unravel the vague details of another crime that may or may not have occurred five years ago, a robbery that seems almost as bizarre as Susan’s disappearance itself, that may involve the Federal government, a junk yard, an old silver-screen cowpuncher, a chef, a failed sculptor, and Susan’s disenfranchised Indian chief stepfather.The trail seems to lead deep into the desert, to an old quarry closed down by landslides nearly a hundred years ago. When Maggie abruptly disappears into it too, Hobson has no choice but to take the bait and follow. Once, ancient Indians gathered on the canyon’s ledges to watch the scrolling sunlight and pray. Now, as he picks his way down the sheer sides, past ancient petroglyphs and limestone fissures, there’s no sound at all. No wind. Only silence.

240 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2001