The Book of Joe

it, but I’m not convinced your interests are best served that way.”
    I allow the implications of that to sink in for a moment.
    “It’s really bad, isn’t it?”
    “You’re a good writer, Joe.”
    “Oh, for Christ’s sake. Just say it sucked.”
    “If I thought it sucked, I would tell you it sucked.” Owen takes another deep breath. “Listen, we’ve discussed this. You know the second one’s always a bitch. There’s too much riding on it. It’s almost worth writing just to get it the fuck out of the way.”
    “So we just forget about it and move on to book number three?”
    “That idea is not without merit.”
    “And why won’t book three be just as bad? I can’t even figure out where this one went wrong.”
    “Ah, but I already have,” Owen says grandly. “That’s why you pay me the big bucks.”
    “Would you care to enlighten me?”
    “I could, but muddling through on your own is a critical journey for you as a writer.”
    “You are so full of shit,” I say, annoyed.
    “It’s true, it’s true,” he admits.
    “Then what good are you?”
    “That, my friend, is a whole other conversation,” he says with a chuckle. “I’ll call you back.”
    I snap the phone shut and toss it onto the bed in disgust.
    “Problems?” Jared says.
    “Just the usual.” I notice his T-shirt again. I know I’ll regret it, but I ask anyway. “What’s ‘Bowling for Soup’?”
    “A band.”
    “Never heard of them,” I say. This doesn’t appear to shock my nephew in the least. And there it is, out in the open for all to see. I am officially an old fart. “What kind of band are they?” I ask, determined to prove that I’m at least generally up to speed.
    “Kind of a mixture of pop and SoCal punk.”
    “SoCal?”
    “Southern California,” he explains. “Take the punk rock from your generation, like the Ramones or the Sex Pistols - ”
    “They were before my time,” I point out weakly.
    “Whatever,” he says. “Anyway, take that stuff, add better musicians and production values and better songwriting, and that’s basically SoCal punk.”
    “Like Blink 182,” I say.
    “Like Blink before they sold out,” Jared says, wrapping up his toenail clippings in a tissue and tossing it into the waste-basket behind me, and for a brief instant I hate him.
    “Fenix TX?” I try.
    Jared looks up at me, surprised, and I feel a little better.
    “You listen to Fenix?”
    “Doesn’t everybody?”
    My cell phone rings again while I’m tying my shoes.
    “Could you get that?” I say.
    Jared flips open the phone, and even from where I’m crouched across the room, I can hear Nat’s voice shouting through the plastic. “Oops,” he says with a grin, leaning forward to hand me the phone. I listen for a few more seconds, and then she hangs up. “Man,” Jared says. “Does anybody like you?”
    “You like me, don’t you?”
    He grins sadly at me and says, “I don’t count, man.”

    My arrival makes the front page of The Minuteman, above the fold, no less. Jared has retrieved the paper from its plastic blue mailbox at the edge of the driveway and now tosses it onto the counter in the kitchen while I’m mixing some Folgers into a mug. “You’re famous again,” he says with his trademark grin. “Controversial Author Returns” is the head-line in the top left corner. Below it is a grainy reproduction of my book jacket author photo. With mounting unease, I sit down and read the article.
    After a 17-year absence, author Joseph Goffman returned to Bush Falls yesterday. Goffman’s best-selling novel, Bush Falls, angered many residents here when it was released in 1999. The book was loosely based on a number of incidents alleged to have taken place in Goffman’s senior year at Bush Falls High. Although the book is classified as fiction, the author’s use of these incidents, as well as characters clearly based on well-known residents of the Falls, caused a great deal of controversy when the novel was first published. Many locals viewed the book as nothing short of libel, written with deliberate malice and the intent to damage reputations. The novel and its author were widely condemned in raging editorials in this newspaper and on local radio and television stations as well. The recent film version, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kirsten Dunst, has done nothing to assuage the collective anger felt toward Mr. Goffman.
    Coach Thomas Dugan was one of those singled out for a negative portrayal in