He followed the Mercedes for five miles. As the road became the main street, Twenty-fifth Avenue, four lanes wide and with a tall building down there against the sky, Franklin de Dios was wondering if he was certain about the sides. If there were more than two sides. If he was on the side he thought he was on or on a different side. He was getting a feeling, more and more, that he was alone.
THE SIGN OVER THE SIDEWALK said Cromwell’s, straight up and down. Across the lower part and much smaller it said Men’s Wear * Sporting Goods * Military Surplus New and Used.
Alvin Cromwell asked Jack and Cullen as they looked around, “You fellas want a suit of clothes? You need some resort wear? Tell me how I can fix you up.”
Jack kept looking around as they moved toward the back of the store. They seemed to be the only customers. For something to say he asked if they carried Hollandia Sportswear, the outfits with the little tulips on them.
Alvin Cromwell had to stop and think. “I have these shirts with different little animals on ’em. Let’s see…” He had a beard and looked like a weight lifter in his black T-shirt with white lettering that said Never mind the dog, Beware of owner. He seemed like a nice guy though. He told Jack, “No, I don’t think I have any with tulips.”
“You sure have guns. I’ll say that.”
“You know guns?”
Cullen said, “I bet I can still strip an M-1 in the dark and put it back together.”
It surprised Jack, but he was looking off toward the guns now, racks of them across the knotty-pine wall in the rear of the store: rifles, shotguns, and what appeared to be submachine guns, all with red tags attached to them.
To get there they walked past pipe racks of camouflage fatigues, jackets and trousers On Sale! Reduced from $29.95 to $24.95. There were new and used Genuine USAF flight jackets. Ranger vests, Good-looking and functional. Camouflage T-shirts for kids, stiff-brim drill instructor hats, Ranger boonie hats and combat caps, holsters, binoculars, canteens, knives, and bayonets with sawtooth blades…
As they approached the knotty-pine shelves and racks, Alvin Cromwell said, “If you men have been to war or know your assault weapons, this here ought to turn you on.”
“I was with the First Cav in the big one,” Cullen said, “WW Two. The first time in the history of the First was when we got off our horses and took an island in the Admiralty group, Los Negros.”
Jack looked at him. This was the first he knew of Cullen being in the army. Now Alvin Cromwell was shaking Cullen’s hand. So Jack said, “I wanted to go to Nam in the worst way but, damn it, I got turned down.” Alvin Cromwell nodded, but didn’t shake his hand. He said, “You the two fellas in here yesterday asking for me?”
“We happened by,” Jack said. “My friend here misplaced his car keys. We stopped back wondering if it might’ve been here.”
Alvin Cromwell said, “Guys from Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms are always losing something in here too and come looking around. I point out to ’em I deal only in legal sport and recreational weapons, semiautomatic at best.”
Jack said, “If you think we’re government we’ll leave right now and sue you for slander. We’re just looking, is all, and don’t even know what we’re looking at.”
Alvin Cromwell said, “There’s no harm in that. What you see up there, left to right… There’s your Ruger Mini-14, your Uzi, your Tech-9. Next, your H and K 91, fires the 672 nato round or a 308 Winchester. You recognize your Thompson? Popular with World War Two guys willing to pay the price. Next, your handy-dandy AR-15 Armalite. With a conversion kit you can turn it into an M-16, if that’s what you want. I’ll tell you, in Nam it had the attrition rate of about a C-ration can. We got ’em, everybody thought, oh, man, this here’s a gas on full automatic. But see, it was the gas, tapped at the front sight and sent to the rear to run the gun, that fucked it up. The mechanism’d get filled with debris and then she’d malfunction on you. So what we had to do then was kill us a VC and appropriate his AK-47 ’cause, man, that’s a gun, second only to your FN-FAL, made by the Belgians. I don’t know how they know how to do it, but shit, they’re good. That FN-FAL. The Brits use it, and just about anybody else can get their hands on it, like those crazy assholes over in Lebanon. We’ve managed some for the contras, but not a lot.”
“Down in Nicaragua,” Jack said.
“Yeah, shit. Man, they need all the help they can get. The contras don’t cut it, man, we’re gonna be down there.”
“You think so?”
“I already been,” Alvin Cromwell said. “I’ll tell you what made me go. I’d think of Nam I could cry of embarrassment how we let those little suckers run us out. I came back I didn’t know which way to turn. I tried the Klan, but they’re a bunch of negative thinkers is all. You name it, niggers, Jews, Catholics, they’re against it. I told ’em, ‘Don’t you know what the only evil in the whole world is we have to stop? It’s commonism.’ I hate Commonists, always have. But hate doesn’t do you a bit of good less you can direct it. It was through a gun-club convention I joined the CVP, the Civilian Volunteer Program, and got a new lease on life. What we do is assist the freedom fighters down there. Take them in supplies, food and gear, see, and train them in field tactics. Over in Vietnam I was a gunner on a Cobra-got blown out of the sky during Tet and I was six months in the hospital getting my legs to work again. Anyway, I went down there… Listen, I’ve spent over twenty-five hundred of my own money showing Miskito Indians how to fire an M-60 machine gun, a piss-poor weapon but all we got. I’ve taken them into Nicaragua from Honduras on what we call, quote, a practical application exercise, if you know what I mean. But don’t ever say I told you that. Like I’ve never mentioned the CIA in this deal, have I? Well, seven weeks with the Miskitos I lost thirty pounds eating beans and rice, what they had of it. But, man, I come home feeling gooood. I know what’s shaking and what it’s gonna take for us to win down there. See, it’s way different than over in Nam. It’s the bad guys have the firepower and the fucking gunships.”
Jack said, “You were with the Indians.”
“Yes, sir, and learned I wasn’t twenty-one no more. Those people have got a hard life, what the Sandinistas done to ’em.”
“They kind of a strange people?”
“They’re good people. Been there minding their own business since before Columbus till the Sandinistas come along and fucked ’em over. You know what Commonists remind me of? Hard-nosed as they are and can’t see past it? The Klan. I think one’s as bad as the other.”
“You ever going back?”
Alvin Cromwell looked out toward the front of his empty store. “My wife don’t want me to. I told her, honey, there’s way more for me to do there’n here. I got two ladies and a fella working for me now I don’t even need. They’re having their lunch. I tell ’em, take as long as you want. Go on home and have a nap afterwards. My daddy always went home, had his noon dinner and a nap. But times are changing, huh?” He looked toward the front again, then at Cullen, then at Jack. “I’ll tell you something if you don’t breathe a word. I have a chance to go down there this weekend and, shit, I’m gonna take it. Do some good in the world.”
Jack hesitated. “You fly down?”
“Too expensive. We got a load of gear and supplies and there’s a fleet of banana boats that puts in right here. They’ll take any cargo you got rather than go dead-head.”
Jack said, “It sounds like you lead an exciting life.”
Alvin Cromwell said, “When I’m not here I do.”
When they were outside, squinting in the sunlight, Jack said, “Jesus Christ, you believe that guy?”
Cullen surprised him. “Jack, you haven’t been to war, so don’t say anything, okay?”