The Book of Joe

appreciative double takes she garnered from the men. Everyone agreed that she seemed much too young to have a son Sammy’s age, and it was undoubtedly her abundant sexuality that was responsible for that, as well as the mysterious troubles back in New York. There apparently was no Mr. Haber, which was, of course, perfect.
    That summer, as I did every summer, I went to work in my father’s display factory on the outskirts of Bush Falls. My father was one of the few men in town who were not directly employed by P.J. Porter’s, the immense discount department store chain whose national corporate headquarters was based in the Falls. With over seven hundred retail outlets nationwide selling everything from apparel, cosmetics, and jewelry to furniture and major appliances, Porter’s was one of the largest employers in Connecticut. Bush Falls had originally been developed as a planned community for the employees of the retail giant, whose corporate campus was situated on seventy acres just a few miles north of the town proper and housed over a thousand offices. Just about every family in Bush Falls had at least one member working for Porter’s. It was well-known that Porter’s preferred to hire from within the community, and they ran a highly successful summer jobs program with Bush Falls High School.
    My father had originally worked at Porter’s as a purchasing agent before going into business on his own, manufacturing store displays, and Porter’s subsequently became his largest account, thanks to his friends there, who ordered all of their promotional displays and packaging from him. While he was no less dependent on Porter’s for his livelihood than he had been when he’d worked there, he was now his own boss, a distinction of which he was immensely proud, and pleased to point out at every opportunity.
    So while my classmates went to work as summer interns at Porter’s, I took my place alongside the stooped Peruvian immigrants who comprised my father’s labor force, operating one of the hydraulic vacuum presses. My job consisted solely of continuously loading four-foot-square styrene sheets onto the press and setting the aluminum molds beneath them before lowering the press and activating the heating bed and the hydraulic pumps that melted and sucked the styrene onto the molds. Then I would lift the press and pull off the hot styrene, now formed in the shape of the mold, cut away the excess plastic with a box cutter, and toss the raw piece into a cart, which would periodically get wheeled out onto the floor for assembly and finishing. It was sweaty, monotonous work, and I trudged tiredly home every afternoon with stiff shoulders, smelling of burnt plastic, reminding myself that at least I didn’t have to wear a suit.
    As a point of pride, my father always paid me marginally better than Porter’s paid its summer interns. “Your old man is not a spoke on someone else’s corporate wheel,” he would say to me from behind the scuffed aluminum desk in his small, cluttered office in the rear of the factory.“ And there’s no reason for you to be one, either.”
    Summers were always busy, as we desperately churned out product for the fall retail season, and that summer we were particularly inundated with orders. Because of this sudden increase in production and the pressure to meet delivery dates, my father leased a second vacuum press, which he installed directly behind the first, and asked me if any of my friends would be interested in operating it for the summer.
    My best friend was Wayne Hargrove, who had proven to be such good company over the years that I was willing to overlook his regrettable status as a starting forward for the Cougars. A tall, sinewy kid with a thick mane of blond hair and a perfect swimmer’s body, Wayne was one of those guys who effortlessly navigated the vast complexities of the high school caste system by being genuinely unconscious of its existence. He seemed to lack the innate filtration system we all had that automatically categorized geeks, dweebs, preps, stoners, jocks, goths, and the various subcategories therein.
    It’s generally those occupying the lower positions on the food chain that are occasionally unmindful of the social boundaries, and their trespasses will usually engender swift repercussions worthy of a John Hughes film. Wayne’s jock status exempted him from such concerns, and he was consequently one of the most genuinely liked people at Bush Falls High. His