Cronies (Perry County)

by Roy F. Chandler

  Logan wanted to visit pawn shops along the side streets off Market, so they planned on a later train.

  Logan said, "Pawn shops have real bargains, Mick. I knew a Corporal who bought a Colt six gun for thirty bucks, down in Killeen, Texas."

  "What are you looking for?"

  "How do I know? I'm looking for bargains."

  "If it was a bargain, the shop owner would know it and jack the price."

  "They don't know everything."

  Mickey snickered, "And neither do you, Dell. You'll buy something dumb and I'll get to laugh about it. Let's go."

  The hawk shops were of a kind: weakly lighted with humanity's dross stacked in untidy piles or displayed in cracked and dusty glass cases. All were hovered over by close-eyed pawnbrokers.

  Logan was offered five dollars for his stainless steel watch that counted seconds with a bold sweep hand. The watch had cost twenty-seven fifty only a month before.

  "Pawnbrokers are always looking for deals, Mick. I knew one in Panama that bought a French seventy-five cannon some drunks dragged off a monument. He paid fifty bucks and sold it to some revolutionaries out of Nicaragua. Last seen, the gun was going north on a fishing boat."

  "Nothing in these places but junk, Logan."

  "Baloney! Suppose you wanted a banjo. There's one for a dollar fifty. How about those binoculars for four bucks?"

  "They probably fog up every time the weather changes."

  "You just don't know bargains. What about a pair of Indian clubs for one dollar. I'll talk him down a little if you want them."

  "Indian clubs? Good God, Dell, let's get out of here."

  Logan led into the narrow alley that fronted the shop, still arguing, but about finished with his looking.

  Light spilled from a saloon entrance and they stepped through it just as a gaggle of soldiers stumbled from the light into the black of the alley.

  Logan hopped quickly, but still caromed off a lurching figure. He slid aside and laughed, "Steady men, it's close out here."

  Mickey was caught in the tangle and pressed himself against a wall until he could get through.

  The soldiers were of a kind, big burly men with too much whiskey fogging their minds. One asked, "Who the hell pushed me?"

  Another, whose eyes adjusted more quickly said, "It must have been this dumb-assed civilian."

  Pointed out, Logan said, "Easy now, we just bumped together, is all."

  "Hell, here's another one over against the bricks."

  The first speaker growled, "No 4F shoves Frank Klubcar around." He started setting himself with his fists coming up.

  Mickey Weston felt his knees turn to jelly, just as they had before the first kickoff of every football game he had played. A back alley fight with a half dozen drunks? He couldn't believe it.

  Logan held his hands up, palms out and ordered, "Hold it, soldier!" His voice was commanding but just then someone slugged him on the back of the head and the fight was on.

  Mickey saw Logan sag from the first blow and catch others before he disappeared from sight. He saw Logan only in flashes because he was swinging like a wild man at anything within reach. When something pinned an arm, he kicked like a mule and for an instant broke free.

  Then they were all over him. Blows splatted along his head and thundered into his body. Somebody kicked his thigh and his leg began folding.

  Suddenly he was flung like an oat sack onto something yielding. A few blows and a kick or two followed. He lay quiet, hearing the soldiers move away.

  One complained, "Damn it all, one of them guys kicked my crotch. I think I'm gonna puke." Hoots and laughter were the complainer's only reward.

  Dazed and pained, Mickey sought to get himself together. The thing beneath him moved, and he tried to make sense of it.

  Logan's voice asked, "They gone yet, Mick?"

  Holy hell, he was lying on top of Logan! Mickey rolled aside, wondering if he should be moving with all of the broken bones he surely had.

  Logan also shifted around and propped himself weakly against a wall. Each explored his wounds before Logan said, "Guess nothing's broken. How about you?"

  To his surprise, Mickey found himself whole. "I'm all right." That wasn't quite true, but things moved reasonably well.

  Logan pulled himself higher. "Damnation that hurt." He chuckled, "Did we win, Mick?"

  Laughter pained sore ribs, but Mickey couldn't help it. "We taught 'em a lesson, Logan. They'll never tackle a pair of Perry Countians again."

  "What was that mean bastard's name, Mick?" Logan searched his memory. "Klubcar, that was it. I'll search the army for him."

  "What'll you do when you find him? Make him salute? That guy hit you ten times before you moved an inch."

  "My foot slipped."

  They got up, examining their wounds under a street light. Logan's nose bled down his shirtfront, but the bleeding had almost stopped.

  There was a great lump forming over one of Logan's eyes, but Mickey's wounds were mostly to his body where they didn't show. He pulled up an overall leg to examine a shin scraped raw by a combat boot.

  Logan looked, too. "That's going to hurt for a while." Mickey knew it would. His bad knee had gotten twisted and he felt run over, but he didn't look as bad as Logan.

  They groaned their way the few blocks to the train station and cleaned up in the men's room.

  Logan's shirt was ruined, but his nose was not broken. He gently touched the lump over his eye. "Man, you could hang your hat on that."

  Mickey looked. "You'd be better with one on the other side to match, Logan. Maybe that Klubcar is hanging around here somewhere."

  Logan tried to look mean. "Just point him out and I'll rip him apart."

  Mickey gave him a snort and went out.

  They slept most of the way to Newport and were stiff and sore getting into Mickey's old truck.

  Logan joked, "This meat business of yours is awful hard work. Doubt I'd choose it for myself."

  Mickey's glance was venomous. "The work was easy, Dell. It was your bargain hunting that was hard."

  He drove quietly for a minute. "You know, Logan, every time I've gotten into trouble, and I mean in my whole lifetime, it's been because of you. You get us in some terrible scrapes, though I'd say this one was about the worst."

  Logan sounded insulted. "Don't blame this on me. Why, I'd have gotten away clean if I hadn't had to fight 'em off you."

  "What? Logan, I was still swinging after you were down and rolled into a ball."

  Logan was smug. "That's because I had five of ’em on me and you only had one that I'd already crippled."

  Later Logan said, "Boy, I ache all over. A couple of those guys about kicked holes in me."

  "Same ones must have gotten me."

  "They didn't fight too fair."

  "When you find that Klubcar, explain about fair fighting, Logan."

  "Not me. I'll point him at the Nazis or the Japs and say, 'Go get 'em.' War'll be over in a week."

  "Boy, bed'll feel good tonight."

  "I'll probably do some calisthenics to loosen up before I sack out, Mick. Soldiers are tough."

  "Sure, Logan. Those real soldiers went through you like railroad spikes through a watermelon."

  "Darn it, Mick, I told you my foot slipped."

  +++

  Logan had souvenirs of his service. Most were of only passing interest, but Mickey liked the wavy-bladed kris from the Philippines and a shrunken head from somewhere.

  Logan explained, "It looks like a human head, but it's only a shrunk down monkey. Natives pretending to be headhunters sell 'em to suckers as the real thing. I don't know how they shrink them like that. They keep the technique secret. Good business, I guess."

  Logan most liked his canes. He had two, made by the same craftsman, looking exactly alike.

  "Now these are Matanzas canes. There's a family makes them on an island off Saint Augustine, Florida."

  The canes looked ordinary to Mickey. Smooth, fine grained
wood, with the handle right angled from a tree's natural branching. Each had a broad and decorated metal band just below the handle.

  "Look ordinary, don't they, Mick? But this one has a sword in it." A twist of the wrist separated the cane at the metal band and Logan drew forth a slender, triangular blade, tapering to a needle point.

  Mickey flourished the short rapier. "That's sneaky, Logan. Mean weapon."

  Logan was delighted. "You think that's mean, look at this." Logan pointed the second cane at a dirt clump and the cane fired, just like a pistol. Dirt jumped with a bullet's impact.

  Mickey said, "Holy cow!"

  Logan separated his gun cane and pried out a spent .38 caliber case. "She's only got a single shot and you have to be careful not to clog the end, but she'd sure surprise a man, wouldn't she?"

  "Sure would. Next time that Frank Klubcar comes visiting, you can stab him and I'll shoot him."

  Logan almost swore. "Damned man was so big we'd probably just make him mad."

  +++

  Mickey closed the deal on the Ruby farm a few days before Logan's leave expired. The new partners settled down in their old camp In the woods clump behind their homes.

  Mickey said, "I ought to clean all this out and farm straight across."

  "This is sacred ground, Mick. Big plans were made here."

  "Yeh, all the snakes in the world live in here."

  "We've never been bitten."

  "If they knew about us selling their skins they'd have gotten us before high school."

  Logan grinned, "Wasn't that a time? Boy, I can still remember how important I felt in those high top boots.

  "We had the best boots in school, all right."

  "Hell, we had the only boots in school."

  "The knives in those little pockets were the thing,

  Logan, that's when Sis Ruby first fell in love with me."

  "You should have kept after her, Mick, fine woman.

  Can't believe she's a Ruby. Must have been left on the doorstep."

  Logan was too right. He had missed the boat there.

  Thinking about Sis turned Mickey somber.

  They tried a new subject. "How's it feel to be a landowner, Mick?"

  "Same as it does to you. You're as much owner as I am."

  "I'm investing in you, Mick. You're the one who cares about the ground."

  "Well, I feel rich. As though I had something worthwhile. Land is real, Logan, more real than buildings or money. Land is forever and they don't make any more of it, like they do other things."

  "Fine, as long as it's not me that has to work it."

  "That's our deal, partner."

  The day Logan returned to duty, word came that Bart Ruby had been killed in action. Big, dumb old Bart had earned his Silver Star medal and had taken Germans with him. Sis Weller placed a Gold Star alongside her husband's blue service star in her window.

  Other windows in the county were showing the gold stars of service men gone under. There would be more—no one doubted it.

  +++

  1946 - The Pentagon

  Colonel Jim Hanson pinched the fat roll above his belt and judged it less than an inch thick. Too much, but not enough to panic over—quite yet.

  Desk work did that to you. All the gym exercising failed to remove what a few months of field duty would dissolve. Hard and sweaty, dawn till after dark work, with short rations and interrupted sleep was what he needed. No chance, his new assignment promised only more paper.

  Hanson punched a desk button and ordered, "Send in Captain Dell."

  To Hanson, Logan looked much the same, a little heavier, but hard, older in features, and tanned like leather. Hanson envied him.

  Dell had service ribbons, enlisted foolishness, like the Good Conduct medal with knots, and significant awards, such as his Silver Star and Purple Heart. Above them rode the wreathed musket of the Combat Infantry Badge. To Jim Hanson, that was the real medal. To have met the enemy, rifle to rifle, was war at its deadliest.

  The war had done well by Logan Dell, so had the army. The experienced officer facing Colonel Hanson was a giant step beyond the hard-nut Buck Sergeant of 1942.

  Well, they had all grown some. The question was whether Captain Dell was ready for the next step.

  When they had settled, Colonel Hanson said, "All the news isn't good, Logan."

  "It never is, Colonel. I expect you're going to tell me that the peacetime army doesn't need Captain Dell."

  Hanson's smile was lopsided. "Well, that is part of it, but there is a good side, too, if you're interested, that is."

  Interested? Logan had to be. After the commissioned years, with all he had seen and done, to revert to Master or Technical Sergeant—the probability haunted him.

  "If there are opportunities, point 'em out, Colonel. From where I've been sitting these last months, not much has shown up."

  Hanson got on with it. The army had decreasing interest in officers with only high school diplomas, but Jim Hanson could use such a man. An intelligence organization was being formed. It had not been named, but some thought The Central Intelligence Agency might do.

  For now, rank would be retained. Later, the job might call for military separation. It would still be federal employment, with all the benefits, and probably comparable promotion.

  The duties? No one was sure. A sort of spying, of course, perhaps liaison with other national intelligence groups, certainly some sort of clandestine and covert operations. Who could tell, the thing had not yet been assembled.

  "Why me, Colonel?" Logan did not see himself as a secret agent.

  "Why not, Logan? You speak Philippino Spanish. You know the Pacific, even some of Central America. The world is going to be filled with American drifters, American businessmen, Yankee entrepreneurs. You can fit among them.

  "If you are accepted, you'll be trained just like any other specialist as the OSS boys were. Some of them will be with us, of course."

  "You're part of it, Colonel?"

  "I'm in it to stay, Logan."

  "You think it would be smart for me?"

  Hanson sighed, "Look, Logan, the war is done. There may never be another. The army will stagnate and dwindle, as it did before.

  "How many times do you want to run Company in the Attack? How many classes on VD or the Articles of war do you wish to teach? That'll be the new army, Dell. Just like our pre-Pearl Harbor one. Train and retrain, then do it all again.

  "I can't guarantee much, but if I were you, I'd choose intelligence."

  +++

  Logan studied with the FBI in Washington and fired on the Marine weapon ranges at Quantico. There were courses at Fort Monmouth and languages at Monterey. He spent months learning special skills at Fort Holabird.

  Logan plowed his way through them, absorbing and assimilating the information heaped upon him. His instructors seemed satisfied and Logan felt the changes. The soldier retreated to be replaced by an easier confidence in civilian ways. An understanding of the workings of intelligence gathering and covert operating widened his vision of how things really worked.

  Most of it, Logan liked. The work would be demanding and, at times, dangerous. But, deception replaced open-faced honesty as a respected attribute and that Agent Dell did not prefer.

  He told Mickey what he could, which wasn't a whole lot, and some of that wasn't true.

  "I'm moving out of the military and into the intelligence game, Mick."

  "You mean like spying, Logan?" Mickey appeared revolted. "Why would you do that?"

  "Well, not exactly spying. I'll be placed in offices around the world, shuffling papers and trying to make something out of how many tons of beans the Chinese ship to the Soviet border, that kind of stuff."

  'I thought you liked soldiering."

  "I do, but they want me to revert to enlisted rank.

  Too many college boys around to need many captains with only high school behind them."

  "You could go to college on the side."

  "
I'm going into civilian intelligence."

  "Logan Dell, behind a desk?"

  Logan shifted irritably, "I'll get out once in a while, maybe."

  "You could come home and farm with me."

  Logan was horrified. "I'd rather face cannon or even a dozen In-boxes and only one Out-box."

  Then Logan got to what he had come to say. "The main thing is, Mick, all of what I am going to be doing is classified. Even where I am'll be a secret, so I won't be at the addresses I give you. Someone will forward my mail.

  I won't be able to write about what I'm doing. When you ask, I'll have to lie or say I can't tell.

  "I don't like that part, Mick, but it's the law and I'll be sworn to obey it."

  Mickey thought about it and decided to remain jocular. "Well, Logan, you've always been an awful liar. I guess things won't be all that different."

  They left it at that and Mickey turned to business.

  "Now, Logan, I'm planning on investing in a combine. There's money in owning farm machinery. I can use it on my own land and rent out its use. If one combine works out, I'll likely go to two."

  "The bottom's out of my meat business. Plenty of meat around now. To me, dairy farming looks promising. We can automate it all and a few people can handle a big herd."

  "The important thing is to act now and tie up milk contracts before somebody else does. That means big spending for modern barns, milkers, and pasteurizing equipment."

  "You wouldn't be interested in how it's all laid out, but you might want in for a share, Logan."

  "You need money again, Mick?"

  Mickey chuckled, "Money? What's money, Dell? Farmers don't have money. If any comes by, the bank picks it off. If some still slips through, it goes for seed, feed, or machinery."

  "Of course, I need money! Right now, all I've got my name on might be worth twenty thousand at public sale, but the bank would take most of it."

  "I've got three thousand in the bank, if you can use it."

  "Three thousand, cash? My God, Logan, how do you pile up so much? I thought soldiers were underpaid."

  "Plain old saving, Mick. I put away half of what I make every month. It adds up."

  "Soldiering, you were taken care of. Food, clothing, shelter, medical, the works, but how'll it be from now on? Being a spy might not be the best paying job around. You get a retirement out of spying?"