James Ackerman
Arms Dealer

James Ackerman runs Ackerman & Burton Arms in the Hub with his partner, an older man who introduces himself as Ken Burton. Originally from Philadelphia, Ackerman has also worked as "a caravan guard, a bartender, a field medic, a scavver, and a few other jobs that escape me at the moment. None of them were pretty, though."

I think the big reason Ken and I got into the gun business was because we were looking for a place to do more than just cool our heels. Up until that point, I'd been travelling around with a caravan, and before that I was a field medic with a small merc group up north, so I hadn't had a set place to live for...ten, fifteen years, maybe? Somewhere around that long. Time passes differently when you're alive for centuries, but it was a while, even for me. And Ken had been with the caravan way before I ever joined up with them, so at that point he'd been on the road for nearly twenty years. We were getting tired of always staying in run-down motels and people's back rooms. We wanted a place that was ours, you know? So we talked about it and eventually decided to set up shop here in the Hub. That was maybe about...what would you say, Ken, five years or so? [Ken nods. "Might be six, actually."] Yeah. Five or six, that sounds about right.

Why guns? Well, mostly because the gun business isn't all that difficult. You get guns, you fix them up, you sell them. You make friends with caravaneers so that they save some of the guns they come across for you. It looked like the easiest business to get into coming out of caravaneering, since we already had half of that equation down. Hell, the same folks that supplied us when we first started out are people we've known for over a decade, and they still come around every week or every two weeks with new shipments. Like I said, you get your guns, you fix them up, you polish them a bit, and you sell them. Nothing to it, really.

Now, of course, there's a lot of chestbeaters in some of the bigger cities, guys with sticks up their asses about how their guns are so quality, so top-notch, that you better not even look at their shitty stock wrong or they'll show you how good a shot they are. Really, if you're not the Gun Runners then you don't get to brag about how good your stock is, because everything aside from their guns are shades of junk wrapped together with duct tape and hope. And damn near everyone in the NCR knows it. But the stock at shops like ours, even the top tier pieces, are still leaps and bounds cheaper than what the Runners' guns go for, so that's our edge.

But still, I guess a nuclear holocaust hasn't changed how people will fall for flashy advertising. I've seen a lot of places go up with a whole bunch of fanfare, run hot for a month or so, flounder along for three more, then close up before they're half a year old. I think a lot of the new shop owners run into trouble by thinking they can compete with the Runners when they have the same recycled stock the rest of us have. The way to last is to sell a quality product for a reasonable price. And also to fix guns, weapons, and equipment on the side. Honestly, most of our income comes from the repair part of the shop; if it weren't for the fact that everything breaks so damn easily, we'd be out on our asses without a cap to our names. That's the big secret—repair and consistent quality. That's what keeps people in business.

[Pauses.] I used to be really anti-gun, you know. Back before the War. I worked in an emergency room for a while and I used to see people get brought in with some nasty gunshot wounds. Didn't make it a lot of the time. Now, though? Well... [Shrugs.] Times change. Hell, I don't set foot outside without my .223 or my Colt. You really can't go walking around very far from a big town without a gun or weapon of some sort.

You don't like the idea that everyone has to arm themselves?

Hell no. That's ridiculous. There's people who can't afford a gun or ammo, and people who won't carry anything for personal reasons. I don't think they deserve to get shot or stabbed or worse. Honestly, I think that there ought to be tighter gun laws to make it so that it's harder for this sort of stuff to fall into the wrong hands. There are people who would get all up on their soap boxes about that, really start ranting about "personal security" and the "right to bear arms" or whatever. The way I see it, though, having to carry a gun around because every other asshole out there is carrying one doesn't make me feel any safer. Just adds to the weight I have to lug around whenever I want to go outside.

[Pauses, sighs.] I guess I really shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth too much, though. Since Ken and I started A&B, we've never wanted for food or a place to sleep. Nowadays, guns are like liquor and drugs—the market never really takes a hit. Everyone needs guns. People that don't aren't people that end up out in places like the Hub.

Still, though. Would I rather go out of business because everyone decided they were done with guns? Sure. There's always other business to start, other ways to make money. Acting as a glorified death merchant isn't something I consider to be my life calling. Ken and I have talked about it, actually, cutting out the gun part of the shop and just being Ackerman & Burton Repair. But...well. [Sighs.] Money problems. We wouldn't be able to get by on just repair. So, we stick with guns.

I won't lie, the idea of some innocent kid getting shot with a gun from our shop...I don't know. The more time passes, the more it gets to me.

"Way back before the world got blown to hell, I was a doctor. Probably pretty tough to believe, with these hands—" He holds up his hands and wiggles his bent, gnarled fingers. "—but I was one of the better surgeons in Sacramento. I worked in the burn unit at the UC Davis Medical Center, this big hospital that UC Davis owned and operated."

He pauses. "University of California at Davis. One of the state colleges in California, like that medical school the Followers have down in the Boneyard except that they had a lot more subjects. Agriculture, veterinary care, med and pre-med, other stuff. By the look on your face, I'm guessing you didn't have a damn clue what I was talking about, which I suppose isn't too surprising. Not many people do nowadays."

I've been around for too goddamn long, honestly. I've had more jobs than almost all of the people that come through here. I suppose being alive for over two hundred years tends to lead to that sort of employment history, though. I've thought about retiring—I'm not exactly doing this for caps, at this point. But what's the point? What else would I do? Half the reason I decided to settle down with this shop is because all the walking around started to be more of a hassle than it was worth. Not just because of the jackasses out there, but because it's rough, hiking around the wasteland. My legs hurt all the time. My shoulders, elbows, hands—all of my knuckles—you could name any joint in the body and I can guarantee you, it hurts. Everything hurts. Humans aren't meant to live this long. We just aren't.

Do you miss anything about the world pre-War?

[He pauses and gently rubs his chin.] Cheesesteaks. I really miss cheesesteaks.

A customer talking to Ken on the opposite side of the shop speaks up: "'Cheesesteak'? What's that?"

A sandwich we used to have in Philly. It's steak sliced really thin with melted provolone—that's a sort of cheese—piled on an Amoroso roll. When I was a kid, we lived right around the corner from a cheesesteak place my dad's friend owned. They made everything in-house. Best damn things I've ever eaten.

The customer laughs. "A sandwich? That's what you miss from before the War?" Ackerman looks over at her and the smile on his face fades.

I miss my dad. My mom. My friends, my girl. I miss the house I grew up in, the apartment I lived in out here when everything went to hell. I miss walking into the main foyer of the hospital and being able to say that the worst part of my day was having to do some paperwork. I miss being able to walk down the street without worrying about getting shot and the smell of freshly mowed grass on early summer mornings. I miss not waking up with bits of my skin on my dirty ass mattress, I miss having more than a few patches of my hair on what's left of my scalp, I miss being afraid of what radiation would do to me. I miss not having to deal with jackasses asking if they need to drag me out to that toxic waste dump a few miles south to "freshen me up."

But you know what? I don't usually feel like thinking about all that stuff. Because it's not coming back even if I do miss it. And I do—I always will, probably, up until the day my body finally decides it's had enough and I keel over on my workbench. But missing it isn't going to do shit but make me feel bad, so when someone comes in and asks me what I miss about the world before it got blown to hell, I say cheesesteaks. It's the easiest answer, and besides, I do miss being able to eat a sandwich that doesn't taste like ass and doesn't set off a Geiger counter. You runts don't even remember cheese.

[He pauses again, then laughs and shakes his head.] Jesus, I never thought I'd be talking to anyone that didn't remember cheese. What a world we live in.