Second Hand: A Tucker Springs Novel 2

beans from the back burner, and smiled when she smacked his hand and waved a finger at him.
“I know your tricks. No fingers in my pot.” She smiled, though, and turned toward El as she worked. “Thank you for coming, mijo. I miss you when you stay away too long.”
El missed her too. But admitting that would open up the old argument about his mom, so he didn’t go there. He pointed to the pan of beans in front of him, instead. “Can I stir this for you?”
“Sí. You stir, we talk.” She handed him a spatula. “So. Emanuel. You meet a nice boy?” He tried to laugh her question off, but Paul’s face drifted into his head. El became very busy stirring the beans, but there was never any getting past Abuela. She sighed happily and patted him on the shoulder. “You ask him out, sí? You bring him to your Abuela. I make him tamales.”
He didn’t argue because it would only make things worse. Besides, he was distracted by the mental image of Paul tasting his grandmother’s food, face lighting up in joy.
Of course, the fact that it would happen in his mother’s hoard cooled the image pretty quickly.
“I don’t have anyone to ask out,” El told her. “Don’t worry about me, Abuela. I’m fine.”
She clucked her tongue and touched his hair. “You are lonely, Emanuel. You need nice boy to make you happy.”
“I am happy.”
She made a face and waved his idea away. “You sit in pawnshop and smoke cigarettes all day. That is not happiness.”
“Abuela,” El complained.
“You hide from life. You have no joy, no family, no passion. You sell other people’s things and get cancer and break my heart.”
“Abuela.” He stopped stirring and reached for her arm, but she moved it away to wipe tears from her eyes. Before he could figure out what to say, she recovered, patting his hand as she took the spatula back.
“Let me cook. You go talk with your brothers. Go,” she added, when he tried to protest.
With little left to do, El kissed her on the cheek and went outside.
Lorenzo and Miguel stood with Uncle Mariano on the back porch, sipping beer and watching the kids run around the yard. They nodded and greeted El as he approached. The kids were crazy loud, cutting off any chance for real conversation, though Lorenzo and Miguel had long since become immune to the noise. Adding to the chaos was occasional static from Miguel’s radio, which meant he was on call for the volunteer fire department.
“What are we moving down from the attic?” El asked his uncle.
The grim look on his face didn’t bode well. “Mami wants to try and get rid of a few of Papi’s things.”
El wished he’d grabbed a beer from the fridge. Hell, he wished he’d snagged a bottle of vodka. “Shit.”
Uncle Mariano held up a hand. “That’s why the girls are here. They’re going to take Patti shopping while we work. Mami thought maybe you could take some of the things right to your shop so she wouldn’t even see.”
He was going to need two bottles of vodka. “That’s the first place she’s going to look.”
“I know.” Mariano sighed and handed over his beer. “I know.”

    Cleaning out the attic didn’t bother El. In fact, it made him feel good, even though he was sure he’d never been dirtier in his life. What upset him wasn’t the work or what they removed to sell or junk. What upset him were the things they left behind.
    He understood his mom was sick, that hoarding was a psychological condition, that it had more to do with unresolved loss and other head-shrinky things than with crass commercialism and sentimentality. On a purely academic level, he even empathized. Reality, though, was difficult to swallow. Reality was slipping on papers that littered the stairs as he helped Lorenzo haul Abuelo’s old tools out to his truck, knowing they had to move fast because if Patti came back before they were done, they were screwed, that the fit to end all fits would ensue. Reality was standing in the sweltering heat of the attic with dust choking their throats as they argued over how much they could take before she’d miss anything. Reality was knowing the piece-of-junk eight-track player they found wouldn’t bring ten bucks in El’s shop but would send his mother into spirals of betrayal, so they couldn’t even throw it out.
    Reality was hauling only three pickup-loads worth of stuff out of the attic and leaving a house full of crap behind.
They managed to pull it off, though, and by the time the girls got back, the