The Book of Joe

understand?” my father continued, before turning to me with a stern look. “You show him the guardrails and watch him lower them, you got
    it?” I nodded and he turned back to Sammy. “If you leave your arm on the bed when that press comes down, you’ll be going home with a stump.”
    “Duly noted,” Sammy said. “The management frowns on amputation.” And then, lowering his voice theatrically, he added, “Thank you for the opportunity, big guy. I won’t let you down.”
    My father stared at him for a long moment, trying to determine if there was some joke he might be missing. “Don’t call me big guy.”
    “Understood, Arthur.”
    “Mr. Goffman.”
    “That was going to be my next guess.”
    My father sighed deeply. “Okay then, you’re hired.”
    Sammy said, “Cool.”
    “You lower those rails.” Sammy imitated my father’s growl surprisingly well as I walked him over to the press. “We can’t have a severed arm gumming up production. Jesus! Was that guy toilet trained at gunpoint or what?”
    “Now might be the right time to tell you that he’s my dad,” I said, not sure whether to be offended or amused.
    He stopped walking and looked at me uncertainly. “You’re kidding, right?”
    “Afraid not.”
    “Fuck me very much,” he said emphatically.
    I decided to go with amused. “Don’t worry about it.”
    “No, really. I’m a schmuck. Sometimes in my efforts to win friends and influence people, I just make a complete ass of myself.”
    “Forget about it. It was a good impression.”
    “And for my next impression, a skinny putz with his foot in his mouth.”
    “It’s really okay.”
    “I really am sorry. I’m sure he’s a great guy.”
    I shrugged. “Not really.”
    Sammy studied my face intently for a moment. “Well, then,” he said with a grin. “Fuck him if he can’t take a joke.”
    Sammy’s father was a music professor at Columbia University. His mother had divorced him because of his unfortunate proclivity for bedding his female students, aspiring musicians being highly susceptible to passion and therefore easy prey. I learned this and many other things about Sammy during his first few days on the job. Working side by side for eight hours a day, we got to know each other pretty well.
    Sammy was a huge Springsteen fan and would unabashedly break into song as he worked the press, bobbing his head to the beat, serenading the immigrant women when they walked by, oblivious to their averted gazes. “Rosalita, jump a little lighter,” he would sing out without warning. “Come on, Carmen - sing it with me! Señorita, come sit by my fire.” He was fiercely passionate about Springsteen and would often lecture me on the profundity of a particular song, reciting the lyrics and punctuating them with his own commentary.
    He was terribly concerned about the recent commercial success of Born in the U.S.A. “I’m not saying it isn’t a great album, but it doesn’t compare to Greetings from Asbury Park or Born to Run. And all these airheads dancing to it on MTV are totally clueless. He’s singing about the plight of our Vietnam vets, and the youth of America are shaking their asses like it’s Wham! or Culture Club.” He punched the air with his finger for emphasis. “Bruce Springsteen is not Wham!”
    The summer of 1986 was on record as the worst to hit Connecticut in over ninety years, a hot, bleeding ulcer of a season. The air was laden with a cloying humidity and the pervasive stink of melting tar as the sun beat down mercilessly on the streets and roofs of Bush Falls. The neighborhood vibrated with the combined hum of the hundreds of central air compressors, nestled in side yards, that ran at a fevered pitch day and night, serving to further raise the already blistering outside temperature. People generally stayed indoors, and when forced to venture out, they moved sluggishly, as if under a greatly increased gravity.
    In the factory, Sammy and I toiled in pools of our own sweat, the heating beds from our presses adding a good ten degrees to the already sweltering temperature. We took our breaks outside, on the concrete stairs that ran down the side of the building to the parking lot, sipping lazily at cherry Cokes as the sweat evaporated off our bodies. “Have I mentioned,” he said to me during one such break, “that we have a pool?”
    I looked at him severely. “No, you haven’t.”
    He grinned. “I meant to.”
    It was starting to look as if my summer