Sweet Water

by Anna Jeffrey

  He scrunched up his face and squinted one eye, then dug a pack of Camels and a plastic lighter from his T-shirt pocket.

  “No kidding,” she said, “you’ll feel better if you eat.”

  “I always liked you, Marisssa,” he said. “Do you ‘member... when you were li’l?” He plugged a cigarette into the corner of his mouth and lit up with a shaky hand.

  She smiled, tucking back her chin to avoid the cigarette smoke. “I do. Now come on.

  Let’s get some food.”

  He shook his head.

  “I could cook something and bring it over here.”

  He shook his head again.

  “Look, that’s what I’m going to do. You get cleaned up a little. Wash some of the stink off. You’ll feel better. And I’ll be able to stand being around you.” She plucked the cigarette from his hand. Another full ashtray sat in the center of his small round dining table. She laid the cigarette on the edge of it, then turned him and pointed him toward the narrow hallway that led to the bathroom. “I’m gonna go over to the café and make you some eggs and toast. I’ll bring it back in a few minutes, so get ready.”

  She started for the door, but remembered what Bob had said last night about weaning Ben off whiskey with beer. As water began to run in the bathroom, she walked over to the kitchen counter, dumped the contents of the tumbler into the sink and secreted the whiskey jug in the cabinet underneath. Opening the refrigerator door, she saw a case of Lone Star beer taking up one wire shelf. She pulled out a can and popped it open, took it to the bathroom and tapped on the door.

  “Whaaat?” he bellowed and yanked open the door. He was still dressed, thank God.

  She handed him the can of beer. “Here, drink this while I cook breakfast, okay?”

  He took the beer, lifted the can to his lips and gurgled half of it in one long swig.

  Unable to keep from staring as his throat muscles flexed, she muttered, “Lord, Ben, you’re killing yourself.” She turned away as he began to undress. “Look, stay on the beer ‘til I get back, okay?” She shut the bathroom door.

  Making her way back through the kitchen, she saw a trail of smoke rising from the ashtray on the dining table where she had put his cigarette. She stopped and snubbed out the cigarette before it set the whole ashtray on fire.

  Alongside the ashtray lay a couple of pencils and some scattered pages of paper—notebook paper like the kids used in school. She couldn’t keep from looking at the lines of words, some scratched out or marked through and replaced by others. Poetry. Had Ben been writing song lyrics?

  “And I’m warning you,” she called out as she sank into one of the four chairs that snugged up close to the table. She picked up the top page. “I won’t be gone long,” she said loudly. “And don’t forget to brush your teeth.”

  It’s not you, it’s me, you said.

  As the words filled my head

  Tears filled my eyes.

  Was this our last good-bye?

  It was a love song. A ballad. The words without music didn’t mean much to Marisa, but if it had Ben’s name on it and if a famous artist recorded it, it was sure to be a hit. She was prying, but she couldn’t make herself stop.

  You said I was too attached

  You weren’t ready for that

  Should I have gave only half?

  Would that have made it last?

  What I thought we could have was perfect

  The future I dreamed

  Would have brought me everything

  But it wasn’t what it seemed.

  Now here I stand

  My head in my hands

  On the outside looking in

  He has everything I wanted us to be.

  The house on the hill

  The cat on the windowsill

  The picket fence

  And he has you.

  Half the remaining words were scratched out, some so violently the paper was torn. Even through the roughness of the composition, she cold tell the song would be a tearjerker, the kind that always had caught her ear and the ears of most country music fans. In her head she could hear the whine of a lonesome fiddle, the twang of a steel guitar, the voice of a singer like Alan Jackson or George Strait or Travis Tritt.

  Was this a song about the mysterious Rachel? And what did it mean? “Damn,” she mumbled under her breath, attempting to put the pages back the way she had found them. Ben was an intelligent, talented man. But he was a mess. A tragic alcoholic mess. She cared about him. Not only did she not want to lose him, she didn’t want the world to lose him.

  Mumbling to herself, she stepped out onto his rickety porch, then had a second thought. She marched back into the trailer, yanked the half-empty gallon jug of Jack Daniel’s from where she had put it under the sink and took it with her.

  Outside, she could see the new owner’s mobile home at the back of the park. No time like the present to approach him with Bob’s and Mr. Patel’s latest concerns. She detoured from her trek to Pecos Belle’s. Ben’s breakfast would be a few minutes late.

  Chapter 11

  That jitter returned to Marisa’s insides as she neared the back corner of the RV park where the new owner had taken up residence. His small doublewide mobile home was just that—a mobile home, whereas Ben’s abode was a trailer. Terry Ledger’s place was years newer than Ben’s and looked neat and clean, with tan siding that simulated painted wood and matching skirting, powder blue shutters neatly framing the windows and a redwood deck out front. The solid front door was open and through the screen door’s haze, she saw a silhouette moving inside. As she climbed the three steps onto the deck, a roadrunner sitting on the rail watched her and she smiled. She liked the roadrunners that hopped and darted everywhere.

  The form inside turned her way before she knocked, came to the door and opened it, a pencil in one hand. “Morning,” he said. If he harbored anger or antipathy about the way they had parted yesterday, she didn’t hear it in his voice.

  Freshly shaved, wearing Levi’s and a black OC Choppers T-shirt, Lord, he was sex personified. She sneaked a glance at ropy forearms showing below long sleeves pushed up and almost forgot why she had come. “Uh, hi....” She nodded toward the roadrunner. “Uh, I see you’ve got a guard out front.”

  He chuckled, well shaped lips turning up at the corners. “I named him Hercules.”

  “Hecules? I hope you left it up to your wife to name your kids.”

  “I don’t have any kids. Or a wife. It was just a name that came to mind.”

  Hearing that he was unmarried sent another little frisson through her. She had suspected he might be single the very first day she saw him, but she hadn’t been certain.

  The roadrunner cocked its head as if it knew it was being discussed and Marisa smiled again. “They’re so funny. Sometimes they act like they’re tame.”

  “I swatted a beetle yesterday and gave it to him. He’s been hanging out ever since. Now, he’s my buddy.”

  “Naturally. Uh, may I come in?”

  “Sure.” He stood back, holding the door open. As she passed in front of him, she caught a whiff of his cologne. Safari, that was it. Hmm. Nothing smelled quite as luscious as an all-male man wearing Safari. And if she had ever seen an all-male man, Terry Ledger filled the bill. The anxiety that had retreated briefly with the roadrunner talk returned.

  His eyes targeted her left hand. “I hope that’s not breakfast you’re delivering.”

  She drew a blank at first, then remembered she was carrying a half-empty gallon jug of Jack Daniel’s. “Oh, my gosh,” she said, looking down at the bottle hooked onto her finger and feeling her cheeks warm. “No, I just—well, I don’t know. I just took it away from someone.” She gave a breathy heh-heh and brushed back a sheaf of hair. “If you were hungry, you should’ve come to the café. I made biscuits this morning, and cream gravy.”

  “Heck. Wish I’d known. But that’s okay. I usually eat light after I run.” He pointed his pencil at the whiskey jug in her hand. “You wa
nt to set that on the counter or would you like a glass?” He laughed.

  She laughed, too. “No, uh, no. But yeah, sure. Just let me set it down.” She did that, glad to get rid of it.

  As she stepped back from the counter, she saw maps and drawings spread over the dining table. They were the only clutter in the place. Everything else was just as spotlessly clean as it had been the first day she came here, a blessing after the few minutes she had spent in Ben’s trailer.

  He laid his pencil on the table and carried his cup to the kitchen, picked up the coffeepot and gestured toward her. “Coffee?”

  “No, thanks.” While he poured some for himself, she crossed her wrists behind her back and from the corner of her eye, tried to peek at the maps and drawings. “You run, huh?”

  “Cross-country. I try to do five miles if I have the time.”

  Without an ounce of body fat, he looked like a runner, and she envisioned him in full stride, not even breathing hard, while she panted and staggered at two miles. “I ran this morning, too. I didn’t see you, but then, I usually stick to Lanny Winegardner’s road. Not as many snakes.”

  His head cocked to the side and his eyes widened. “You know Winegardner?”

  The alert response aroused her curiosity. She thought of what Mr. Patel had told her and what she suspected was Mr. Ledger’s grand plan. How would the cattle rancher react to the expansion of Agua Dulce into a huge service station? “Of course. Winegardners have been a part of this county for generations. Everyone knows Lanny. He’s one of the good guys.”

  She openly looked at the maps on the table, saw the names of Agua Dulce’s businesses printed in tiny, neat letters. Mr. Ledger set down his mug, came to the table and began rolling the top map into a tube. Okay, so she was being nosy. She could accept that he didn’t want her to see his maps and drawings. “Uh, I don’t want to take up your time, but I need to speak to you about something.”

  He grinned as his agile fingers stretched a rubber band around the map. “Who’re you interceding for this time?”

  She let out a great breath, his reading her so well making her visit easier. “It’s Mr. Patel and Bob Nichols. They’re terrified, you know.”

  He appeared unfazed by that information as he stood the roll against the wall. He didn’t say anything, so assuming she had been given the floor, she charged ahead. “Mr. Patel’s service station is all he has. He’s owned it since I was in high school. He works really hard. For that matter, his whole family works in the station and they all work hard. He has a wife and two kids. Bright, good kids, I might add. And Bob, well, he’s lived here for over twenty years. He’s built the motel little by little. I think he’s in the same position as Mr. Patel. The motel’s all he has.”

  Mr. Ledger took a seat on the sofa arm, his left elbow resting on his thigh. His brown hair, obviously skillfully cut, curled at his collar. “These two are like Gordon Tubbs? Friends of

  yours?”

  “We’ve all lived together for a very long time, Mr. Ledger. When there’s so few of us, we have to be friends. There isn’t much we don’t know about each other.”

  “Hey, call me Terry. ‘Mr. Ledger’ sounds old.”

  Except for a few laugh lines at the corners of his eyes and silver at his temples, he didn’t look old. She guessed him to be her age or only a few years older. “Okay. I know what you mean.”

  “Since you know everyone here so well, you must be aware that Patel could be closed down by the state and it has nothing to do with anything I might or might not do in Agua Dulce.”

  “Well, we know each other, but he doesn’t discuss his business with me. Why would they close him down?”

  “Violations of EPA standards. I’d be surprised if he hasn’t already gotten warning letters.”

  The gossip about the station’s aged storage tanks leaped into her mind. Even before the emergence of environmental militants, the concern was that the station’s underground gasoline storage tanks could deteriorate with age, seep fuel into the surrounding soil, leach into the aquifer and contaminate the town’s only source of drinking water. “You mean they’d just arbitrarily close him down?”

  “Sooner or later. He’s in a no-win position. The legislation requires all the vintage stations to replace their old storage tanks. When the owners dig up the tanks, if they find there’s been leakage, the surrounding soil is supposed to be hauled off and replaced with new, clean soil. So far, leaks have been found in almost every case where the old tanks have been uncovered. The deadline’s long past, but I’ve seen no evidence that Patel’s even done any testing.”

  She vaguely remembered hearing something about the issue, but at the time she hadn’t thought she knew anyone directly affected. “So? What, they just force him out of business?”

  “The clean-up’s expensive. Most mom-and-pops can’t afford to do it, so they choose not to. A lot of them have just walked off from their stations.”

  “I can’t believe that. What about the money they’ve—”

  “They leave it up to the state, the taxpayers, to do the cleanup. All too often, it ends up costing more than the property’s worth.”

  Marisa swallowed. She hadn’t heard Mr. Patel say one word about being required by the state to replace his gasoline tanks or clean up after them. But as secretive as she knew him to be, perhaps he wouldn’t have mentioned something as incriminating as warning letters from the state.

  “And Nichols,” Mr. Ledger went on, “could go out of business tomorrow and not suffer financially if that’s what’s worrying you. He comes from old Eastern money. Pennsylvania utilities, I think it is. He lives off a trust fund. A very nice trust fund. He’s about half a bubble off of plumb. I suspect his family pays him to stay away.”

  She didn’t totally disbelieve this. Bob Nichols had always been strange and, in his own way, as secretive as Mr. Patel. Hadn’t she wondered a hundred times where he got so much money to waste on something as foolish as a UFO landing pad? She sank into a chair at the table, a considerable amount of wind taken out of her sails. “How do you know all this? You just spy on everyone, pry into their lives?”

  “It’s information that’s easy to get. It isn’t spying or prying, either. It’s prudence. If I don’t know what I’m facing when I start a new development, I can’t protect my investment.

  Besides that, my bankers expect me to be on top of what’s going on. If they ask me questions, I have to be able to answer them.”

  Development. The word sent a shiver down her spine. Her hunch had been right.

  At the same time she worried about development, she couldn’t keep from worrying over what he might have learned about her and her mother. Not that she had anything to hide, but now she felt naked. And vulnerable. “None of that means the people who live here suffer any less if you tear down the whole place. This isn’t like a city, where we can just pick up and move to another part of town. All of us have heard rumors ever since you bought Agua Dulce, but you haven’t told us what you’re planning. That’s all we want to know. You think it’s important to make your bankers happy? Well, our whole lives are invested here. We think it’s important to know what’s happening so we can plan for our own futures.”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t discuss my projects. Everything’s in the very early stages. I’ll tell you this. When I know something for sure, I’ll let you and your friends know. I said the other day, I’m fair.”

  All at once she was out of words. He had shut her down completely. Why the hell had she ever agreed to come and see him anyway? “Well, I guess that’s that.” She stood, willing herself not to run from the room.

  He stood, too. “Look, I’m being as honest as I can. I’ll give everyone’s circumstances fair consideration, including Patel and Nichols. I always do.”

  And what about Pecos Belle’s? she wanted to ask, but didn’t, for fear of hearing his answer. After all, he owned the Pecos Belle’s building.

  As she approached the door, he cam
e up behind her. “I’m gonna be here a few more days. Maybe we’ll run into each other some morning on the trail.”

  “I—I don’t run cross-country.” Not looking at him, she reached for the screen door latch. “It’s an accomplishment to get up and down Lanny’s gravel road. Besides, I never know what morning’s going to hand me, so I don’t have a schedule. I just run when I can swing it.” She pushed on the latch, but it didn’t open the door.

  He reached around her and did it for her, his chest and face so close she could feel his body heat. “Then maybe I’ll catch up with you on the road some morning when you’re out.”

  She looked into his eyes, her face inches from his. “S—sure. Maybe so.”

  She left his mobile home, frustration hammering her, and headed home to check on Mama. All she could do was berate herself. Her visit had accomplished nothing. Other than his being a cross-country runner, she knew no more about him now than she had known before. In fact, she had gleaned more new information about the friends and neighbors she had known for years than about him.

  She had never felt—or been—so powerless.

  Then it dawned on her that she had left Ben’s jug of Jack Daniel’s on Terry Ledger’s counter.

  ****

  Seeing Marisa’s distress left Terry with a kind of anxiety about his project that was unfamiliar. It felt almost like guilt.

  Lord knew, his business had placed him in conflict and controversy many times. Real estate development changed lives as much as it changed landscapes. Opposition from some quarter came with every project—uneasy neighbors, greedy politicians, litigious special-interest groups. Dealing with one or all of those factions was as common as tying his shoes. But this uprising from Marisa, speaking for a handful of people, was different. As he watched her image grow smaller, he had a compelling urge to run after her and reassure her that his plans for change weren’t directed at her personally.