Nathan Jones - First Winter

He was in business.

“No buyer’s remorse now, hear?” Ned said, clapping his shoulder.

“No, now that the deal’s made I’d say it was pretty fair,” Lewis admitted. “If you have more of this I might be in touch sometime in the future, depending on how my luck goes.”

“I might. And if I’m around this way again I’ll look you up.” The trader grimaced and glanced towards his truck. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get things squared with Mayor Pennypincher over there. The guy haggles like a used car salesman.”

Lewis couldn’t help but grin. “Probably because he was, at one point.”

“That explains it. If you thought you dug in like a badger for the best price…” As Ned walked off Lewis heard him grumbling loudly to himself. “You’d think that junk he laughingly calls firearms were made of solid gold and shot diamonds. And what good am I even going to get out of them when he’s buying up all my ammo?”

Once he was gone Lucas took one of the boxes and did his own hefting as he inspected it. “Congratulations, son.”

“Thanks.” Lewis shifted things around long enough to pull his dad into a one-armed hug. “However you managed to set up this deal, it means a ton.”

His dad paused for a couple deep coughs into his elbow, then handed the box back and examined what remained of their reduced supply of precious metals. “I guess I’ll get in line for browsing. There’s a few other things I saw that I might be able to trade for.”

“Good luck.” Lewis went in search of Trev, eager to get started with the reloading after so long planning and searching for what he needed.

His cousin was shaking hands with Ned’s bodyguard and pocketing something small enough to fit in his closed fist. As Lewis approached Trev turned and grinned. “Is that what I think it is?”

“A whole lot of it,” Lewis agreed, grinning back. “Ready to make some bullets?”

“Sure, I guess.” Trev glanced over at Deb, who was standing with April, Aunt Clair, and a few other women from the shelter group. “Let me go tell my girlfriend that her boyfriend’s no fun and wants to spend the day playing with toxic metals and propellants instead of shopping.”

That was another thing to be pleased about. Whatever issues Trev and the brown-haired woman had been dealing with hadn’t gone away, but things seemed better between them. They were obviously getting more serious and finally willing to formally acknowledge their relationship, if still noticeably shy on intimacy.

He clapped his cousin on the back. “Just tell her you’ll give her some ammo as a gift to make up for it. Bullets are a girl’s best friend.”

For some reason Trev gave a surprised start and absently patted his pocket as if checking for his recent purchase. “I thought diamonds were.”

It didn’t take much for Lewis to put the pieces together there. Probably a good thing he was holding these boxes so he couldn’t put his head in his hands. “You didn’t.”

Trev hunched his shoulders. “I know it’s a grossly unnecessary luxury,” he admitted in a low voice, obviously not wanting Deb to hear. “But it was a decent price and I want to do this right.”

Lewis sighed. “Well it’s your business. I can try to appraise it for you if you want, or we can find someone who can.”

“You think Ned cheated me?”

“No. But it never hurts to be cautious.”

His cousin gave him a doubtful nod, obviously experiencing buyer’s remorse. Lewis felt a bit bad about that. “Just give me a second.”

He watched as Trev went over and quietly spoke to Deb. As his cousin spoke the brown-haired woman nodded and grinned over at Lewis, giving him a congratulatory thumbs up. In just a moment Trev came trotting back over. “Okay, good to go. Unless you want to buy something else?”

Lewis hesitated, then shook his head. “Nah. Nothing there I really need more than what I’d have to trade to get it. Most of what looks interesting Matt’s already snatched up for the town.”

“True. Besides,” Trev said as he hooked an elbow around Lewis’s neck, starting them back towards the Halsson cabin, “once we start making serious money off this we can trade for stuff whenever we want, with something everyone will be willing to trade for.”

“Preaching to the choir.” Lewis led the way to his room, where he’d already set up his reloading station and spent a bit of time making all the preparations he could without these final materials. Now that he had them he was ready to jump in with both feet.

“Wow, and I thought my room was cramped with the new bed,” Trev said, squeezing around the carefully laid out equipment. “Jane doesn’t mind having this in here?”

“I asked her and she barely seemed aware that the limited space was an inconvenience.” Lewis began running his cousin through a tour of the space, even though he’d already shown Trev all the equipment on a previous occasion, then began a rundown on the process of reloading cartridges.

As Trev listened he poked through the bins where Lewis and Jane had neatly sorted all the empty casings by caliber. Lewis trailed off when he noticed his cousin’s attention settling on the smallest bin, with less than a hundred casings that were quite a bit bigger than the 5.56. Lewis joined him in front of it and picked up a handful.

“You only have this many .308 shells?” Trev asked.

“Yeah.” Lewis frowned as he rolled the light casings across his palm. “I should’ve been saving the brass all along, but I only started about when I decided to get into reloading. Horrible lack of foresight on my part. I’ve only got those to work with.” He lowered his voice. “And I’m down to my last 100 bullets, too. Jane has less than 50 herself. The town storehouse is also getting low on that caliber. We’re seriously talking about switching to the AK-47s we got from the blockheads.”

That made his cousin start with surprise. “150? You had so much starting out! And didn’t you get some more from the raiders?”

Lewis smiled humorlessly. “You use up a lot more ammo in combat than with hunting, and we’ve done a lot of fighting this year.” He jiggled the shells in his hand. “Jane’s already agreed to switch to the AK and let me have the rest of what we’ve got. She insists that since my G3 is the better gun, I’m more familiar with it, and I’m a better shot with .308 anyway, it makes sense. That’ll give me a little bit longer before I have to swap too.”

He looked up and shrugged, putting the shells back in their box. “But you never know. Maybe I’ll get a chance to trade. Or maybe I can keep up the reloading fast enough that we’ll both be able to have enough when we need it. Assuming the shells don’t inevitably get damaged, or wear down to the point they can’t be reused.”

Trev nodded. “It’s a shame, though. Your .308s are like his and hers weapons for you and Jane. People might not realize you’re a couple without the familiar fixtures.”

Lewis snorted in amusement. “Well at least we’ve got plenty of 7.62 shells. You’ll have plenty of reloaded bullets for your rifles.”

“Silver linings, eh?” his cousin said wryly, clapping him on the shoulder. “Come on, let’s get to work.”

“Right. I’ve read up on all this and watched videos, but like with so many things I haven’t actually done it. We’ll need to figure some of it out no matter how good the instructions are. And with something like this it’s really important we do it right.”

Trev nodded emphatically. “You got that right.”

Lewis returned the nod, thinking of the times his gun had misfired, sometimes near disastrously in combat situations. He guided Trev over to the bench, where they broke open the boxes of propellant and primers and got to work.