Sweet Water

by Anna Jeffrey

  From the corner of Tanya’s eye, a sly look passed Marisa’s way. The woman seemed to be oblivious to the fact that Marisa was on the verge of screaming. “A lot better’n Jake,” she said, “if you know what I mean. Jake’s never made me come half a dozen times in one screwing.” She lifted her mug and drew in a deep breath Marisa could only define as wistful. “Yessir, that Woody knows just where to put it and he can go and go.” Tanya’s hips shifted on the stool.

  Marisa could only stare at the woman who appeared to be enjoying something sexual right before her eyes. Good grief. She felt like a voyeur. The last afternoon she and Woody had spent in the tiny apartment bedroom flashed in her memory. The sex had been...well, lengthy as well as hot. And he had made Marisa come several times. At the moment, she hated having that in common with Tanya.

  “It’s funny,” Tanya went on, “that everybody calls him Woody? Get it? I know it’s a nickname that’s tied to his last name, but when I first heard it, I thought I’d die laughing.”

  Marisa hated herself for wanting to know, but she schooled the anger out of her voice and asked, “And when did you and Woody, um, get together?”

  “Oh, it was over ten years ago. Before I hooked up with Jake.”

  A feeling of relief almost overcame Marisa’s anger, followed by disgust with herself for being so naive.

  A little smirk lifted the corner of Tanya’s mouth. “I always wanted to tell you so we could, you know, compare notes, sort of. I’ve been curious if Woody’s still got it. I mean, he is forty, right?”

  As if she had read Marisa’s thoughts, Tanya added, “But I decided not to mention it because it wasn’t important, really. I mean, it was just was one of those things that happened one night. Started with a picnic at the sandhills in Monahans. We were sitting at one of those concrete picnic tables having a few beers, then the next thing I knew, I was perched on the end of it and Woody and I were going at it. Then we did it another night in the front seat of his pickup out in the parking lot at Rustler’s Rest up in Odessa. That time was even better. I mean, he was able to go deeper. But it didn’t mean anything either time, you know? All we did was fuck. I didn’t even take off all my clothes.” She took another swallow of coffee. “I guess I didn’t tell you because I thought knowing about it might hurt your feelings.”

  From what Marisa had seen in the short time she had known her, Tanya rarely concerned herself with anyone else’s feelings.

  “You think I’m not hurt now,” Marisa said in a stage whisper, “finding out all of a sudden that he’s a, a...a damn Roto-Rooter? That besides knocking up infants, he screwed around with my neighbor? I didn’t have a clue.”

  “Hey, don’t blame me. Until you started dating him, I hadn’t seen him in years.”

  “Dammit, even if it was ten years ago, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. How would you like it if I told you I fooled around with Jake ten years ago?”

  Tanya shrugged. “I’d say, ‘No big deal. That was then, this is now.’”

  Marisa could only blink. The words that fell from Tanya’s mouth often left her dumbfounded.

  Marisa set her jaw, trying to shut out the image of Woody and Tanya doing it on the end of a picnic table and thinking about something she had read once about character being formed by the time people are six years old. Or something like that. The voice of another expert. Her head was filled with incomplete snatches of trivia that came back at unpredictable moments. As she took a sip of her Columbian Roast, she concluded she would be happier if she stopped reading.

  “Well, gotta go,” Tanya said. “Gotta do a perm. Bring Raylene over this afternoon and I’ll do her hair.”

  Tanya always fussed over Mama’s hair and if there was time, they even played with makeup.

  Refusing to let her annoyance at the hairdresser affect something Mama enjoyed, Marisa said, “Sure.”

  “When you come over,” Tanya added, “I’ll show you the new stuff I made. I took those pieces of raw amethyst those rockhounds from Arizona gave me and mixed them with some turquoise. I made this cross thing out of hammered silver. I only had enough stones for a pair of earrings and a pendant, but they look pretty.”

  “Sure,” Marisa said again, although, at the moment, she didn’t care if she never saw Tanya Shepherd again.

  And she was damn glad she hadn’t mentioned the sexy stranger who had come into the café and how they had danced to Frank Sinatra’s music from the old juke box.

  A new visual of Woody came to her and she managed to grin inside. Now, she, too, would want to die laughing every time she heard someone call him Woody.

  Chapter 7

  After Tanya left, Marisa let go of her anger. Hanging onto it accomplished nothing. Tanya had always been an enigma. Marisa realized mere minutes after meeting her that she was empty-headed and self-centered. Yet, she was generous to a fault and never failed to show concern and compassion for Mama. So Marisa usually excused her more bizarre behavior and ignored her blunt remarks. After all, she was an artist and weren’t artists supposed to live in a realm apart from the rest of the population?

  Marisa picked up a pitcher of tea and moved down the counter to where Gordon Tubbs sat, his bald pate gleaming under the fluorescent light mounted above the lunch counter. Marisa suspected he had been straining to hear the conversation between her and Tanya, but he gave no indication he knew what they had said. “Want some more tea?” she asked him.

  He shook his head, keeping his eyes on his salad. He forked a tomato wedge. “Guess I’ll soon be leaving, Marisa.”

  Gordon was a gentle man, but usually morose about something. Marisa steeled herself against letting his pessimism affect her. God knew she had enough depressing thoughts of her own; she didn’t need his, too. She set the tea pitcher on the back counter and pulled a two-quart plastic pitcher of sugar from a shelf under the drainboard and began topping off the sugar dispensers.

  “Where you going?”

  He didn’t look up and didn’t answer right away. “I’m out of a job,” he said finally.

  She heard a quiver in his voice and glanced up to see him spear a lettuce leaf. His fork tines tinked against his plate. Gordon Tubbs was the only person in Agua Dulce directly employed by the owner of the town. Marisa hadn’t thought of it before now, but obviously, Gordon’s employment either transferred from Clyde Campbell’s estate to the new owner or disappeared altogether.

  “Really? Have you gotten some kind of word from the new owner?”

  “I’ve talked to him on the phone. I don’t think there’s gonna be a place for me in his plans.” Gordon shook his head slowly.

  The splinter of fear that had harried Marisa for more than a week grew into a two-by-four. She set the pitcher of sugar on the counter and walked back to where Gordon sat. “Did he say so?”

  The trailer park manager looked up, his brow tented. “He’s closing the RV park.”

  Marisa felt a cold wind waft through Pecos Belle’s. “But why would he close it? It isn’t in his way. You have tenants. And campers. I thought the trailer park made money.”

  Gordon’s shoulders lifted in a shrug. He dropped his fork on the counter with a clatter and covered his doughy face with soft-looking hands. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do.” He picked up a napkin, wiped his eyes and blew his nose.

  Marisa looked away. She didn’t often see men cry, but this week, she had seen almost everyone in Agua Dulce on the verge of tears.

  “I don’t know what I can do.” Gordon seemed to be in control again and Marisa turned back to face him. “I’ve been here for so many years,” he said. “Clyde always took care of me. What I mean is, he paid me a wage and gave me health insurance through his company.”

  He shook his head again and fanned a hand in front of his face. “A man my age ain’t gonna get a job that amounts to diddly. And nowadays, a diabetic who’s had two heart attacks not only ain’t gonna get a job, he ain’t gonna get health insurance anywhere on this earth.”

  She di
dn’t know Gordon’s exact heart problem, but she knew it was expensive. She had never given a thought to how his care was paid for. After his last heart attack, he had been in ICU in a Midland hospital for days, his life saved by a highly skilled cardiologist. He now swallowed a handful of medications every day that couldn’t be cheap. And he was too young for Medicare. “No, I guess not.”

  What he said about health insurance might be true. Marisa had fought the health insurance battle on her mother’s behalf before Mama became eligible for Medicare. Even now, Marisa didn’t have health insurance for herself and hadn’t had it since she left her cooking job in Arlington.

  She felt her brow tug into a frown as she tried to remember and calculate how many years Gordon had been the manager of the RV village. “Surely you’ve got some savings, Gordon.”

  “Savings? Clyde Campbell was the stingiest man I ever met. Do you think he paid me enough money for me to have any left to save?”

  Marisa’s jaw clenched involuntarily. Hell, yes, Clyde Campbell was a skinflint, along with being a thoughtless asshole. Look at how he had treated Mama. Of course, Mama had let him take advantage of her, but that was beside the point.

  What was Gordon going to do? What was he qualified to do? As far as Marisa could tell, the answer was a resounding nothing. Without the Sweet Water RV Village, he wouldn’t even have a place to live. “So the new guy’s going to just close up the trailer park”—Marisa snapped her fingers—“just like that?”

  The middle-aged man nodded.

  “But what about Ben? What about Tanya and Jake? Where will they go?”

  A new spark of indignation burst within Marisa. The big guy kicking the little guy. She had never been able to keep quiet when she saw it happen. She had also never been able to do anything about it, but she had always been vocal. “He can’t just put people out of their homes. That isn’t fair. He has to—”

  She stopped herself. Shit! What did the new owner have to do? The answer was, not a damned thing. He wasn’t obligated to a single citizen of Agua Dulce. “He has to give them time to make plans,” she said, putting an effort into making a firm statement.

  “He’s coming here for a few days,” Gordon said. “He plans to start using one of the mobiles. He ordered me to have a phone installed and buy some groceries. Even gave me a shopping list. He sounds like he’s used to giving orders.”

  Gordon wadded the napkin and dropped it on top of his salad. “He sounds like a real piece of work, Marisa. He told me to make sure the trailer’s ready for occupancy when he gets here. Said to make sure there’s no roaches. He wants everything clean as new. The small doublewide’s the newest trailer, so I got Rosia to come up from Pecos and we’re cleaning it now. He even wants the walls scrubbed and the carpet replaced.”

  “No kidding?” Marisa muttered, shocked. “New carpet?”

  Gordon nodded. “I’ve already gone to Odessa and bought it. Rosia’s washing and ironing all the curtains. The carpet’ll go down tomorrow.”

  “Hunh,” Marisa said. Agua Dulce’s new owner sounded like an arrogant nut. Okay, fine. No problem. Marisa could hardly wait to meet him. She had experience with nuts.

  ****

  Terry returned to Fort Worth on Monday. Spending the weekend in his old stomping grounds in West Texas confirmed his belief in Agua Dulce’s potential. He was so excited he could hardly wait to get started. On Tuesday morning he met with Brad England in the offices of England Engineering, the firm he usually hired to design, survey and lay out a new project.

  In the afternoon, he caught up with his best friend and construction foreman Chick Featherston. Chick was overseeing the building of a two-story cut limestone with three fireplaces, four bedrooms and five baths. It was all crammed into 4,500 square feet in a gated sub-division west of Fort Worth.

  After they covered the progress, Terry led Chick to his truck and pulled out a large plat of Agua Dulce. “Want to go back to West Texas?”

  Chick’s chin dropped and his head slowly shook. “Aww, no, man. You didn’t really do it.”

  Terry grinned as he spread the plat across the truck’s hood. “I won the bid. I closed on the deal yesterday. Just got the town so far, but the ranch is next. I have to do a little more research and get a loan in place.”

  Chick looked at the plat. The blue-line drawing showed the perimeter of the town’s 199.4 acres, with the principal buildings drawn in--water well, flea market/café, adjoining building leased for business, RV village consisting of eight permanent mobile homes, fifty RV spaces and a separate small mobile that served as an office building.

  The foreman shook his head again. “Ledger, that last time you jumped out of an airplane, you must have landed on your head.”

  Chick knew Terry’s passion for sky diving. The cowboy engineer was one of Terry’s few friends who went all the way back to the first time Terry had parachuted from a plane.

  Chick was more like a brother than a friend. They had met as kids in the army boot camp. Both being from West Texas, their friendship had occurred almost automatically. Terry had served as an Army Ranger, where, among other things, he learned to parachute, and Chick had been a combat engineer. Different duties and different assignments, but their paths had crossed in unexpected places in various parts of the world. Together they had partied hard in Germany, chased women in Italy, liberated Kuwait.

  Chick had been the construction foreman at Terry Ledger Homes ever since the company had grown large enough to need one. He was just now surfacing from his second divorce and starting a new life at age thirty-seven. He had handed well over a million dollars worth of real and personal property to two women. These facts only added fuel to the notorious Ledger distrust of the female of the species.

  “After the smoke cleared, where’d you land?” Terry wanted to know.

  “Weatherford. Found a place with a few acres. Gotta have grazing for my horses. And a place for Clay to come. His mother’s gonna fuck up one time too many and God as my witness, I’m gonna end up with custody of that kid.”

  Clay. Chick’s eight-year-old son. To hear Chick tell it, the only good thing that had come of his first marriage.

  “What’s it look like out in the Wild West?” Chick asked. “As if I didn’t know.”

  “Looks good. That’s why I want you to come on out and be a part of this. It’s gonna be great, Chick. Honest. Hell, I might even build a golf course.”

  “Out of what, Astro-Turf? You couldn’t grow a blade of real grass in Cabell County if you needed it to eat.”

  “I’m spending some time out there, Chick, starting the end of the week. If everything comes together, I want to get something on the ground before the year’s out. I want the houses to take on the flavor of the area, like what we’re doing in Rancho Casero, only smaller.”

  His good friend nodded and stared at his boot toes. “Well, what the hell. Those are easy houses to build. Yeah, I’ll go. But not permanent-like. I don’t want to get that far away from the kid.” Chick pointed at a blue-lined square on the plat across the state highway from a cluster of other blue-lined squares. “What’s this?”

  “An old service station.”

  “And you don’t own it. Well, a Larson’s will put him out of business in a hurry.”

  Terry had confided in Chick months back that he had his eye on a Larson’s Truck & Travel Stop. The Oklahoma company had yet to make an inroad into Texas, but they were excited at the prospect of building a discount gasoline and diesel full service station and convenience store on one of the few north/south routes out of West Texas. Inside their convenience stores, Larson’s usually placed at least one nationally-known fast-food restaurant. Nothing like a Larson’s Truck & Travel Stop existed between Odessa and El Paso.

  “Kim’s been researching all the properties and the ownerships,” Terry said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the service station’s already in trouble. It was built in the forties. The state’s bound to be after it for storage tank clean-up.”


  Chick dragged his finger across the highway to a smaller cluster of squares on property that had a common boundary with the town of Agua Dulce. “And this is?”

  “A motel. Ten units. I slept there a couple of nights while I was scoping out the area.”

  “But you don’t own it, either?”

  “Right. The owner’s some strange little character who believes in flying saucers.”

  Chick looked up from under an arched brow. “For real?”

  Terry answered with a shrug. “That’s what he told me.”

  “Hm. Takes all kinds I guess. With a new motel opening, I doubt he’ll stay in business.”

  “That’s up to him.”

  “And the water?” Chick tapped a finger on the blue lined square labeled WELL.

  “Good water and plenty of it, as far as I know now. Looks like it has a good storage tank. Too small for my plans, but that’s not a problem. I’ll have to put in a water system to state standards anyway.”

  “When I go out, is the motel fit to stay in?”

  “Sure, but half the mobiles in the trailer park are vacant. You know you’re welcome to stay in one. They’re furnished. You just need to take some bedding. If you don’t want to cook, I’ll foot the bill for you to eat at the café. Not bad food.”

  Terry reached inside his truck for a notepad and wrote the name, Gordon Tubbs. He tore the note from a pad and handed it to his foreman. “Keep this name. This guy’s the manager of the trailer park. He’s an employee who came along with the town. When you’re ready, I’ll call him and tell him you’re coming.”

  “I haven’t been to West Texas in years,” Chick said, his eyes taking on a distant look.

  Terry couldn’t guess what he might be thinking. He knew Chick had grown up in the small town of Andrews, thirty miles from his own hometown of Odessa.

  “What about the ranch?” Chick asked.

  “It appears to be what I’m looking for. It’s big and has history. Goes back to the days of the cattle drives north. It’s been owned by one family since the twenties.”