As Simple as Snow by Gregory Galloway Page A

He was always friendly, maybe because he was young. He was the only male teacher who still had all his hair, and one of the few who didn’t have any gray yet. Instead, he had an overabundance, an unruly black mop that looked like he cut it himself. It was often crooked and asymmetrical, as rumpled as the rest of him. He wore faded blue jeans or paint-splattered khakis, and work shirts, mostly denim. When you saw him in the hallway he always had a tie, but he never wore one in class. We always tried to figure out where he had it hidden in his classroom, and then one day when there was a fire drill and we were lining up to leave the classroom and the building, Mr. Devon calmly opened his desk drawer and pulled out his old, wrinkled tie, and slipped the large loop over his head and tightened it under his denim collar. “It probably wouldn’t burn anyway,” he joked. “Besides, you have to look respectable for the fire-men.” The only time he dressed up, without any holes in his shirts or pants, and no stains, was for football games.
    All the girls (except Anna) liked Mr. Devon, because he was handsome, in his rumpled, rugged way, and because he was an artist. A lot of girls asked him to paint their portraits, and he just laughed. “Would you settle for a photograph?” he’d say. The guys liked Mr. Devon because he was a jock, and he seemed like one of the guys. Senior players would go to his place after home football games and drink beer. I always thought that if I could be any adult in town, it would be Mr. Devon. He appeared to really like what he did, he always had a good word to say, and he was popular and respected. There didn’t seem much wrong with the world of Mr. Devon.
    “I hear he’s got false teeth,” Anna said.
    It’s hard to look at someone the same way after you hear that. You’re constantly looking at the person’s mouth.
    “What does that matter?” I said.
    “It wouldn’t matter with anyone else, but he’s as fake as his teeth.”
    “How would you know? You’ve never talked to him.”
    “Let’s keep it that way, all right?”
     
     
     
    Anna and I were walking together after school one day when Mr. Devon pulled up and asked if we wanted a ride home. “Sure,” I said, and went toward the car. Anna didn’t move. I looked back to her and tried to get a sense of what she was thinking. Finally she followed me to the car and got in the backseat. She wasn’t happy.
    Mr. Devon drove to my house, even though it would have made more sense for him to drop Anna off first. I could see him glancing in the rearview mirror at her. He was probably wondering why she was in such a foul, quiet mood. When he pulled up in front of my house, Anna got out of the car with me.
    “I can take you home too,” Mr. Devon said.
    “That’s all right,” she said.
    He nodded and drove away.
    “You like him, don’t you?” she asked me.
    “He’s nice to me. Why don’t you like him?”
    “It’s not important,” she said.
    “I want you to like him. It’s important to me.”
    “It only seems important. I’m not telling you to stop liking him. That’s why I’m not telling you why I don’t. I see him one way and you see him another way, that’s all.” She moved on to another subject.
     
     
     
    I’d first met Mr. Devon in junior high school. He was new in our school when I was in the eighth grade, and there was some tension and nervousness about what he was trying to teach us and how. He had probably learned somewhere, either as a student in his own required teaching classes, or as an on-the-job teacher somewhere else, that there was no use trying to teach a group of seventh- and eighth-graders much technique or form in drawing, painting, sculpting, or whatever. So our class had more activities than art lessons.
    There were things to do, which is a radical notion in school. Usually you just sit there and listen to the teacher tell you things, instead of actually getting a chance to do them