299 Days: The Community

Chapter 85 Trouble at the Tienda (May 8)

John pointed to a Mexican tienda, a neighborhood store about the size of a convenience store.

“There?” Wes said. “Do they even sell to people like us?” Wes had a bad feeling about this.

John nodded, “Yeah, I buy stuff here all the time. The best tortillas in the world.”

Drew motioned that he’d stay with the truck. He was tired and had the least shooting experience, by far.

John and Wes went in. For the first time in this whole ordeal, they were scared. When they walked in, everyone stopped talking. The other customers, all young Latino men, stared at them. The Latinos weren’t gangsters, just young men.

John said, “Hi. You guys open?” The store owner just looked at him. John pointed over at the fifty-pound sacks of red beans and the twenty-five pound sacks of rice. “How much are those?”

“We’re closed,” said the store owner in a thick Mexican accent. He looked mean.

“We have cash,” John said.

That seemed to insult the store owner. He raised up his hand and the young men started walking toward John and Wes.

Wes instantly drew his pistol with his right hand. With his left hand, he quickly undid the two buttons on his hunting shirt, just as he’d practiced a few times before they left. There was his AK. Out for the whole world to see. Which was the point.

This stopped the young men cold, and they instinctively put their hands up. None of them were armed. John fumbled for his revolver and clumsily pointed it at the store owner.

It was silent for a few seconds.

Wes finally said, “I think it’s time for us to go. Sorry to have troubled you, señor.” Wes was sincere. He realized that the beans and rice in that store were for the store owner’s family and friends. Maybe those young men were a gang, although they didn’t look like gangsters. In the past few days, “gang” had come to mean a group of people connected in some way protecting themselves. Neck tattoos, baggy pants, and gold teeth were no longer a prerequisite. Hell, Wes and John were part of a “gang” now. Who were the well-armed ethnic outsiders in the tienda? John and Wes.

Everyone was still silent. Wes was walking backwards very slowly and deliberately, keeping his pistol on the young men. Everyone in the room could tell that Wes knew what he was doing. John was in shock and walking backwards, too. Wes felt enormous relief when he went out the door and back onto the street.

Wes covered the door as he yelled to John, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Drew had been scanning the area and saw Wes and John walking out of the store with their guns out. What was going on?

Wes and John jumped in the truck and took off.

“What happened?” Drew asked.

John looked down, obviously embarrassed. “I went to the wrong store.”

“We need to be out of this part of town,” Wes said. “They’ll be looking for us. We didn’t make any friends today.”

Wes was pissed at John, but when he thought about it, he shouldn’t have been. John had not foreseen that the Mexican store would only sell to Mexicans, but he should have realized it. Wes had a feeling not to go in there and should have listened to his gut. Having a pistol and an AK probably made him feel invincible, so he wasn’t trusting his intuition. He wouldn’t do that again. Wes felt like he was making mistakes. He knew what happened when mistakes were made in an environment like this.

They had failed. They didn’t very much get anything on their list. They had to draw guns and now people were out probably trying to kill them. Great. At least they had some cash left over.

Wes got on the CB. “Limit of $200 on groceries. We have cash left over. We’ll be staying out of the Mexican part of town. Anyone need us to go get something?”