Sweet Water by Anna Jeffrey Read Free Book Online Page B

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,