As Simple as Snow by Gregory Galloway Page B

yourself. Mr. Devon, however, erased that step and had us immediately drawing and painting, and even trying a little sculpture and pottery. Surprisingly, a lot of the kids hated doing stuff. Maybe they wanted to sit around and have Mr. Devon lecture us on the proper way to hold a brush or draw. I liked his class. You didn’t have homework and you didn’t have to take notes or read a textbook. Best of all, very little attention was paid to a right way or wrong way to do anything, and most of the activities were fun. For instance, Mr. Devon would put a large block of drawing paper on an easel and have one of us go up and draw something on a section of one sheet—a third or fourth or fifth of it, depending on how he had folded it—without letting the rest of us see it. Then another person would go up and, still without knowing what the previous person had drawn, continue the drawing, and then another person would do likewise, and so on until the sheet of paper was filled. The image was always strange, funny, startling, unexpected. After we had done a number of these drawings Mr. Devon explained that the technique had been made popular by the Surrealists. He then showed us some examples of theirs.
    Mr. Devon started teaching in high school my sophomore year, and one morning before school he came up to me. “Maybe you can help me out,” he said.
    “Sure,” I answered.
    “I have this sculpture in my truck that I need help bringing in. It’s a little too heavy just for me. Do you think you could give me a hand for a minute?”
    I looked up and down the hall, hoping to find a football player who could help Mr. Devon instead, but there was no one.
    “I guess I can help you.”
    He had an old beat-up Chevy that looked as if it had driven through the woods in a straight line, hitting every tree in the way. It was caked with mud, and the passenger side of the front windshield was cracked from top to bottom.
    “Don’t worry,” Mr. Devon said. “My car’s in better shape. I use this for hauling stuff.”
    In the bed of the pickup was a wooden crate about the size of a thirty-two-inch TV. It was a lot heavier than that, though. I was sure I was going to drop it any minute, but I was afraid to stop.
    “You need a rest?” Mr. Devon could tell that I was about ready to drop the crate, and whatever was inside was going to smash to bits on the sidewalk. I kept hoping someone would come along and help, but nobody did.
    “I’m fine,” I said, and tried to move faster.
    Somehow we made it to the back door of the school. From there it was about thirty or forty feet to Mr. Devon’s classroom. We had to put the crate down in order to open the door, and then we dragged it through the doorway.
    Mr. Teller, one of the custodians, was coming down the hall. “Hold it right there,” he shouted.
    “I think we’re in trouble,” Mr. Devon said.
    “What do you mean ‘we’?” I said. He laughed.
    “Don’t kill yourself,” Mr. Teller said. “Let me get a handtruck and haul that thing out for you.”
    “Actually, we’re coming in,” Mr. Devon told him. “This goes in my room.”
    “All right. Same thing. Just go on about your business and I’ll bring this into your room. There’s no reason to break your back when I’ve got a handtruck right around the corner.”
    “Why didn’t you think of that?” Mr. Devon looked at me. “Come on, let’s go inside and wait for Mr. Teller.”
    “I’d better get to class,” I said. “I’m already late.”
    “Let me write you a pass,” he said.
    I followed him into his classroom. He fished around in a cluttered desk drawer and found a blank pass. “Are you sure you don’t want to stick around and see what’s in the crate? It will only be a couple of minutes. Besides, I could use your help in getting the sculpture out.”
    “Yeah, I can do that,” I said.
    He went into the hall and helped Mr. Teller put the crate on the dolly. They wheeled it into a corner and lifted the