And now she had returned to where she began.
Agua Dulce. English translation: Sweet Water. This place’s reason to exist was a single water well of unknown depth and volume that produced cold, sweet drinking water, a rarity in West Texas.
Not far from where she sat, visible in silhouette, stood the flat-roofed, pumice-stone building that protected the precious well. And not far from that stood the huge round tank that stored water for the use of all Agua Dulcians. Just after World War II, so the story went, a promoter from the East had the well drilled at great cost, hoping to establish a real town and make a fortune in a land sales scheme. She wondered if he knew he had drilled for the wrong commodity. In those days the fortune to be made from holes in the ground in West Texas was from crude oil. The modern-day testimony to that fact was more than
six hundred oil wells in Cabell County.
She stopped her mental wandering. What was she doing musing over geology and geography? She had enough that was closer to home to worry about.
As Vince finished on a blue note, she heard the crunch of footsteps and peered out into the night. She recognized Bob Nichols approaching, bundled up in a safari coat, his bushy white hair and beard appearing to glow fluorescent in the moonlight.
“Good evening, Marisa,” he said softly as he stepped up onto the deck.
Bob always spoke formally and barely above a whisper, as if he feared he might disturb the measureless desert quiet. He had lived in Agua Dulce for at least twenty years. She remembered when he came. He owned and operated the Starlight Inn, a ten-unit motel that was a hodgepodge of mobile homes and concrete block buildings ranging from ten to fifty years old.
“Hi, Bob,” was all she answered, not really wanting to encourage conversation or a visit.
“How is your mother this evening?”
“She had a good day, I think. Her mind seemed to be working better.”
He nodded. “Ah.” He came to where she sat, carrying an Albertson’s Bakery sack. “I brought her a treat. I went in today.” He handed over the white paper sack.
He meant he had gone to Odessa or maybe Midland, where all Agua Dulce citizens went for shopping or doctor visits or other necessities. To Marisa, the trip to Odessa or Midland, where she had lived and worked at Denny’s for a time, was a chance to mingle among other human beings--to see the bright lights, so to speak. To a recluse like Bob Nichols, the trip was a trauma. She looked into the sack. Doughnuts and sweet rolls. “Hey, thanks. She loves these.” She set the sack on the TV tray and turned down the radio’s volume. “Did you have a good trip?”
He shook his head and sank into the other rocking chair.
“Do you have customers tonight?” She asked mostly because his having guests in the motel
usually
meant breakfast business in Pecos Belle’s. He raised seven
fingers. “Seven? Hey, that’s good for April, right?”
The months between tourist seasons were lean, April being one of the leanest. With school still in session, no families traveled the highway and the snowbirds who had come south to escape the snow and ice of the northern climes were heading home.
He nodded and sighed.
“Where they from?”
“The North mostly.” In Bob-speak, that meant anywhere north of Amarillo. “Except for a biker. He came from Fort Worth, I believe he said.”
So the guy on whose shoulder she had cried was spending the night. An inexplicable flicker of interest flared. “A biker?”
“Not a real biker. Not a Hell’s Angel or anything. He does have a very nice Harley-Davidson, though.”
This time, it was Marisa who nodded and said, “Ah,” wondering if he would show up for breakfast in the café.
“Marisa,” Bob said, and she could hear an almost indiscernible tremor in the way he said her name. “Have you heard the news?”
Here it comes, she thought. A conversation she wasn’t up for. “You mean about the town selling?”
“I’m very worried. If things start happening here, I fear they won’t come.”
They were visitors from outer space. Marisa couldn’t see Bob’s eyes in the dark, but she had seen them light up often enough in the daylight when he talked about They and Them. In a different way, he was as far out of touch with reality as Mama. To his credit, she believed him to be just as harmless. “Before we get all excited and worried, Bob, let’s wait and see what happens.”
“I’ve worked so hard and for so long, Marisa. We shouldn’t discourage them. There are signs. Very positive signs. Sounds. Coded messages. I know they want to come, but I suspect they fear they won’t be welcomed.”
Marisa couldn’t imagine what kind of communication he had going on with Them. He had never said exactly from where They beamed in, but in the doublewide mobile home where he lived, it appeared to her he had radio equipment sophisticated enough to communicate with Pluto.
He looked toward something neither of them could see in the dark, but both knew was there—a level, football field-size concrete slab, surrounded by boulders the size of a car and on one side, several tiers of seating made from slabs of limestone.
The thing was located in Lanny Winegardner’s pasture that butted up to the far side of Bob’s motel. Lanny had often said that when he gave permission for the construction of the UFO landing pad, he had no idea what a monstrosity Bob would create. With the occasional help of a hired backhoe or a CAT out of Pecos or Kermit, but mostly single-handedly, Bob had toiled at building the landing pad ever since he came to Agua Dulce. He had even built a chain link fence around it, shutting out Winegardner cattle.
Just as the rancher hadn’t anticipated the size of Bob’s endeavor, he hadn’t counted on the groups as outlandish in dress and behavior as Bob who came and sat on the limestone seats for meetings. Even so, none of it appeared to be of great concern to Lanny. When a man owned as much land as his XO Ranch encompassed, losing the use of a little square of it wasn’t that big a deal. If she had ever met a man who truly championed a “live-and-let-live” philosophy, it was Lanny.
Marisa couldn’t imagine how much the landing pad had cost. Tonight as she and Bob stared toward it together, she wondered again from where his seemingly unlimited supply of money came. To this day, his background was a mystery. All she really knew about him was that he was kind to her mother.
“Ben’s drinking,” he said.
Ho-hum. What else was new? Now she knew why Ben Seagrave hadn’t been in to have coffee and pass on words of wisdom in recent days. Ben, a binge drinker, was Agua Dulce’s very own alcoholic sage. He had traveled between Nashville and Agua Dulce for as long as Marisa could remember. He leased a mobile home in the Sweet Water RV Village, within walking distance of Pecos Belle’s. Marisa was constantly amazed that he had written the lyrics and composed the music to many beautiful and well-known ballads. The royalties provided his income.
“How long?” she asked.
“Several days now, maybe a week. I spoke to him about stopping, but he gets so testy when I try to counsel him. I tried to make him understand that in light of what’s happened, all of us need to be clearheaded.”
If Marisa hadn’t felt so sad, she might have laughed aloud at that statement. As far as she knew, there wasn’t a clearheaded human being in town--including herself.
“I suggested he wean himself off whiskey and go to beer,” Bob went on. “He’d sober up faster that way, you know.”
No, she didn’t know. She rarely drank hard liquor. What she did know was that it took almost nothing to set Ben off on a drinking spree and as he had gotten older, he had gotten worse. No doubt hearing about the sale of the town and the home where he lived totally un-bothered and un-pressured had been enough. And as for Bob persuading him to do anything, Bob might as well forget it. Except to a few people, Ben was downright rude. “That was probably a waste of your
time, Bob.”
“I know, but I felt obligated. He is one of us. He says tangential influences drove him to whiskey this time. He’s waiting for the click in his head. He says he’ll stop when he hears it.”
Marisa had no idea what Bob had just said, but she refused to give a glut of credence to a conversation with a man awaiting the arrival of aliens from outer space.
She felt helpless as a babe to deal with the Agua Dulce citizens who surrounded her. How had her mother done it for so many years, shepherded this odd collection of eccentrics? Drop-outs were all Marisa could think to call them, people who weren’t dumb, but for some reason couldn’t quite make it in the big world. Like children, they had looked to Mama for wisdom, for guidance. Now, with their captain losing her mind, every time Marisa turned around, they were looking to her to replace her mother and right their ship.
“Hm. Well for his sake, I hope it’s soon.”
“Marisa, will you be speaking to the new owner?”
“I don’t know. I hope so. I’m sure he’ll contact us sooner or later.”
He nodded. “You will speak for our interests?”
Leaning on her elbow, she put her thumb in her mouth and bit down on the nail. What did he have to worry about? Unlike her and Mama, he owned his motel. Pecos Belle’s Emporium and Eats, however, was a tenant of the town’s owner, whoever that might be. If the new landlord told her and Mama to pack up and move, there would be no choice. That thought brought
on
an onslaught of problems and decisions she was in no shape to face tonight. “Of course I will, Bob.”
He nodded again.
They sat in silence for a while, rocking and looking toward the heavens. In Bob’s company, she couldn’t keep from wondering if They really were up there somewhere, looking back.
Eventually Bob stood up and said goodnight. He walked off into the moonlight, weaving through the cacti, sparse desert shrubs and fragile range grass that were making a pathetic effort to grow in the sand and rocks. She called after him to watch out for snakes.
Chapter 6
Marisa’s digital clock showed 4:45 in neon red. She had survived another night. With a silent groan she rolled over in bed and buried her face in her pillow. In the fog of half-sleep, the name Nikki Warner, the pregnant Nikki Warner, rose in her mind. How long had Woody been seeing her and was she the only one? As much as Marisa hated losing Woody, she hated being made a fool even more.
She flopped to her back and lay staring at the still ceiling fan in the gray morning light, considering the cruelty of fate. She and Woody had never even discussed kids and what might happen if one came along unexpectedly. His priority had always been his career and moving up in the Department of Safety. He even had visions of becoming a Texas Ranger. For him, she had been so cautious to avoid pregnancy.
The irony was as painful as a hard kick. Most of her life she had wanted a family. And friends. Growing up, the loneliness of being an only child, of living in an isolated place with no other children of any age, no parent except her mother and no more than infrequent contacts with her two aunts had almost overwhelmed her at times. She had told herself that someday she would meet a wonderful man and have a dozen kids who would never be lonely because they would have each other.
Sheer fantasy.
Now, she was thirty-four, her biological clock was ticking off time faster than an Olympian sprinter and someday wasn’t even on the horizon.
Wide awake now, she sat up on the edge of the mattress and pushed the hair out of her face. She shifted her thoughts and ran through a mental list of things to look forward to, forcing her attention to the most important one--staying strong for her mother who desperately needed her.
And would need her and need her and need her, for an unknown span of time. Amen. The duration of Mama’s illness was an unknown. The doctors had said she could linger another ten or twelve years.
Another ten or twelve years...where?...And with Marisa doing what to support them?
Until a few days ago, Marisa had assumed that she would live here in Agua Dulce for the rest of her mother’s life, eking out a meager living for the two of them from the flea market and cafe. Now the sale of the town could change everything in such a dramatic way Marisa couldn’t channel her thoughts toward what to do next.
She heard no shuffling footsteps, no clattering dishes, so Mama was still in bed. Since Marisa didn’t open the café until 7:00 at this time of year, there was time for a short run before the heat rose. She forced herself to her feet and went to the bathroom where she got into sweats and running shoes. Forty-five minutes and a quart of sweat later, she had showered and was selecting clothing. Another day, another cowgirl suit. Today it was Rockies jeans and a pink T-shirt with a Cruel Girl logo accented with silver nail heads across the front.
Then she was in the kitchen, cooking bacon and eggs. Mama came in wearing her nightgown.
“Morning,” Marisa said, glancing at her mother’s feet. She was wearing two different shoes. Shoes were always an issue with Mama. More than once Marisa had discovered her wearing them in bed. “Want some coffee?”
Her mother didn’t answer. Instead, she went to a cabinet drawer, yanked it open, rummaged inside it with jerky movements and came up with an apron. “I have to clean today.” She tied the apron on, her teeth clenched, her lips drawn tight. “Rosemary’s coming and you know how she is. She’ll inspect...everything.”