Chapter 7: Clench Bargo
The next day Clare found Clench Bargo at the cafe having lunch.
“Hi there! Do you mind if I sit with you? I’d like to ask you more about the concealed carry class.”
“Sure thing. Sit down.”
He looked pleased.
“Well, we’ve been giving classes once a month. All day on a Saturday. It’s a long day, 12 hours. Got one coming up in a couple of weeks. It’ll be just after Independence Day.”
“Good timing. Meanwhile, should I get a guard dog?”
“Not unless you want to spend a lot of time with it. I guess you’re not home all that much.”
“No, not really. I’ve got a cat already, my aunt’s cat. Smoky. He might not adjust well to a dog.”
“I wouldn’t recommend it. Not unless you just want a dog to hang out with. Take him with you to work.”
“Well, I could get a house alarm system.”
“That’s not a bad idea. Yeah, do that. You should be able to get installation pretty quick. And get one for the store too. More people are coming in from out of town now that you’ve opened your store. Not that we don’t have a few Ali Babas around here, but we know who they are and what they do, and the kinds of things they do. There’s a place over in the next town that does alarm systems that’s pretty reliable.”
“Ali Babas?”
“That what we called thieves in Iraq. I mean you could hardly call them, uh, cat burglars or rustlers or welshers or … sometimes it meant insurgents.”
“So when in Rome.”
“Something like that. You ought to hear what we call thieves and other criminals here.”
“By the way, did the sheriff ever identify that guy he was chasing down the road, who was sniffing around in the alley?”
“No. The guy had rubbed mud over his license plates so he never got a good look at the car. I don’t guess he’ll be back. Anyway, I don’t suppose those Sears guns have arrived yet?”
“No. When we’re done eating, do you want to see The Cellar? I put that bottle you gave me in pride of place.”
“Sure.”
They concentrated on their food for a few minutes.
“By the way, if you don’t mind my asking, how did you get the name ‘Clench’? It’s so unusual. Although I’ve heard of the Clinch Mountain Boys, Ralph Stanley’s band. Bluegrass. You like Bluegrass?”
“Yeah, I like it, I even pick a little banjo. But that’s not where my name came from. And Clinch Mountain is in the Appalachians, spelled with an ‘i’, not an ‘e’. But me, my mama said that when I was born I reached out and wrapped my hand around her finger and held on tight. Clenched it. Although going back some generations my family did have hunting dogs that were called Clench. Old English name.”
“I like it. I didn’t know you played banjo. Is there anything you don’t do?”
Clench smiled and blushed.
“Well, I’m not that good at it. You have to play every day to be any good and I’m too busy. But once in a while I play with some of the boys around here. Frailing.” He held his right hand up in playing position. “Do you play an instrument?”
“Oh no. No talent really or maybe no discipline. Anyway I never learned. Can’t sing either.”
“I sing along with the boys when we jam but only when I have other voices to drown me out. We’re probably going to do a little something for the July 4th festival.”
“Oh wow, that’s coming up already, isn’t it.”
“You gonna wear that helmet again?”
“Ha! I don’t know. I suppose there’s going to be another parade.”
“Yeah, and fireworks.”
“I think the Fourth is on a Thursday this year. Do they celebrate on the day or shove it into the weekend?”
“No, we do it on the day. But the parade is in the evening so as not to cut into the work day. Not everybody gets off. I’ll be marching with the vets. Got a few old guys from World War II who still come out in their uniforms.”
“You were in the Army, right?”
“Yeah, in Iraq.”
“What was your job?”
“I was a linguist. A translator. Went to the Defense Language Institute at the Presidio of Monterey and learned Arabic and Farsi.”
“Wow! I’m impressed.”
“I spent a long time studying so they didn’t want to release me after investing so much in my education. I had three tours in Iraq, and now I’m in the Reserves.”
“Gee, if you’d stayed in a little longer you could have retired with a pension.”
“It was time for me to leave. I want to … help out, but I had enough.”
“Understandable. I guess it’s not exactly Tales of the Arabian Nights.”
“Not hardly. More like a thousand and one nights, and counting.”
He gave a lopsided smile, a brief one, and went back to eating. Clare thought maybe she shouldn’t ask too many questions.
“I think I’ll get some pie,” she said, picking up the menu again, and ordered lemon meringue.
“Back when I was a student I had some neighbors across the hall in this apartment building who must have been from Iran,” Clare said. “Our doors faced each other, and if we opened them at the same time there was this huge poster staring at me, the Ayatollah Khomeini. Really fierce looking. We never did get very friendly. At all. Funny thing was about the same time I made friends with this woman who managed the apartment complex with her husband. One time she was interviewing a couple of prospective tenants, graduate students from someplace in the middle east, and she didn’t like their attitude. Maybe they wanted to talk to her husband, but he had another day job. So she said, ‘Look into my eyes! These are the eyes of an American woman!’ She was a tough little thing. I think they ended up not renting there.”
Finally Clare stood up and said, “I better go back to the store. I’ll get back to you about that class. Uh, I’ve got to get back here too later, to pick up something to take home for supper. I’ll just put in my order now.”
“Do you always eat out?”
“Mostly, at least when I’m working, which is a lot. Once in a while on my days off I’ll cook a little but it’s hard just for one person. My refrigerator is full of jars of things, olives, pickles, mustard, sauces, relish, horseradish, all kinds of stuff but nothing to eat. I’m all hat and no cattle when it comes to food.”
“Well, living at home I’m lucky I still get to eat my mom’s cooking.”
Clare tried not to look as interested as she felt about the idea of someone’s mom’s home cooking, and went up to the cash register to pay and put in her take-out order for later.
With a couple of days, people started trickling into the store with things to sell. Everyone was cleaning out their basements and closets for their summer yard sales. Clare decided she’d have to try to limit the hours she’d be available to buy items — she had decided to buy outright rather than take things on consignment, it was just easier. She could make exceptions if she felt like it. And she’d make an exception about her hours too, if someone drove much of a distance to try to sell something. But she made new flyers and changed her newspaper ad, including her open-for-buying hours.
Occasionally someone had tried to persuade her to buy something at the flea market, something she didn’t want, but there it was easy to steer them to some other vendors without discouraging them too much.
One thing she had tried very hard to manage since she’d opened the store was to avoid letting people know where she lived. Of course all the old locals knew, and she’d had enough publicity to make anonymity impossible. They were pretty respectful. They didn’t want outsiders butting in either, though they welcomed the new business. Clare put up a “Private drive” sign at the house and hoped for the best. The store had a phone, a real land-line telephone, and she avoided using her cell phone for business.
After Clench’s little bottle, the first item s
he acquired for The Cellar was an old wooden sled that some farmer had made for his grandkids probably sixty years before. It was a small version of the large sleds he made for working on the farm, that horses pulled loaded with hay bales and sacks of feed. He’d made the metal hinges himself too.
As usual Clare couldn’t understand why the family would get rid of something like that, but often after a couple of generations had passed — and she figured 60-plus years must equal three generations — and only relatives by marriage, not by blood, were in possession, these items were disposed of. Maybe they really needed the money, she thought charitably.
“This is a wonderful piece,” she said, and paid a good price for it. She would sell it for an even better price.
Clench brought in a couple more jars and bottles and some buttons he dug up.
“You cleaned these up really well,” Clare said. “I appreciate that.”
Again the lopsided smile. He wasn’t really boyishly diffident (except about his banjo picking) or shy, just pleasingly asymmetrical when he smiled.