Here’s a story that came to me in pieces. I came up with the character before anything else. He was based on an old guy at a school I observed before teaching, where the oldest faculty member was basically a glorified hall monitor because, since he wouldn’t retire, they simply didn’t give him any classes to teach. I also experimented with how much a character can say without actually saying anything and with writing a less-than-noble narrator, since often I find my characters are just a little too cut and dry.
UPDATE: One of the casualties of short story writing is you have to get rid of anything that takes you too far off topic. I came up with an awesome backstory for the high school’s namesake, but couldn’t manage to fit it in anywhere, so here goes.
A. A. Breaux was the last State Senator to sit in the Louisiana Legislature without shoes on. Surprisingly, that was only ten years ago. Also, the amount of people in this part of the state who greet one another with “Ey Ey, Brah,” I came up with the closest approximation I could think of.
—
Teaching is supposed to be a noble profession. That’s the image we put off, but when it all comes down to it, this industry has been corrupted as much as everything else. In the end, we do what we need to do in order to get the job done to get our paycheck. Much like the sausage-maker or congressman, a school secretary gets to see the ugly inner workings closer than anyone else, and we do our best to maintain that veneer of illusion, lest the whole world find out the truth.
Oh, I had the same perceptions when I started here at A. A. Breaux High School (“The Pride of Morganza Parish”), which is part of why I became a secretary. But the more I’ve seen, the more my idealism wasted away, right alongside my work ethic and my concept that I’d ever get higher than the principal’s administrative assistant. That didn’t fall apart until Coach Sanders became principal, then hired on Coach Dekalb as his assistant. Being that Sanders is my fifth principal, I’ve learned that eventually everyone moves on and everything changes.
Everyone except Bishop, that is.
The problem with coaches becoming principals is they forget how to use their inside voices, which only gets exaggerated by their sense of authority. So here I end up, in the foyer to Sanders’ office, sitting across my desk from a handful of chairs usually occupied by those waiting for an audience with The Man himself. Such was the scene when Bishop sat down for his end-of-year job review, right next to D’Angelo, one of his students on the brink of expulsion.
Sanders and Dekalb had already spent an hour going back and forth over Bishop’s fate as a teacher. Sanders insisted he needed to retire. Dekalb said, “Anyone who can manage to teach for over half a century should retire when they’re good and ready.” Sanders brought up the young teachers he couldn’t hire because Bishop took up a crucial position in the English department. Dekalb countered with the expertise a mentor like Bishop brings with him. Sanders dragged up Bishop’s lackluster testing record and eschewed the idea that any other teacher should ever learn from him. You get the idea.
The worst part was watching Bishop sit there and take this all in. The short, stocky Cajun man in his typical Mr. Rogers sweater shifted in his seat, looking up, but never knowing what to say to me. Bishop scratched his bleached white head full of hair and stroked his matching beard before wiping his sweaty palms on his slacks. I didn’t bide my time much better, pretending to check my email (i.e. playing some of the online games the kids told me about) while not looking like I was watching him.
The argument continued its encroachment through this unnecessarily thin wall. “You’ll never get the Union to sit back and allow it,” Dekalb grumbled.
“I don’t have to,” Sanders told him. “I don’t answer to any Union.”
“You don’t wanna alienate the Union, they have too much influence.”
“You’re an administrator now, Frank. You’ve gotta separate yourself from them.”
“From the teachers? The ones who do all the real work?”
“Unions exist to come in between workers and their bosses. Divides their loyalties.” Sanders got quieter, but not quiet enough as he said, “The Union’s your enemy now.”
Dekalb scoffed. “You’ve forgotten where you came from, Pete.”
“And you’ve forgotten where you’ve come up to.
Dekalb didn’t pick it up there. Bishop looked across my hallway-turned-office like a death row prisoner. I exhaled and returned to my games, laying on a poker face I learned 20 years ago. I wanted to cry for him, but I just couldn’t right then.
I heard through the office wall what must’ve been Dekalb shifting in his seat before excusing himself. “I have to go make that deposit for athletics.”
“Make sure the money winds up in the books this time, will ya? We don’t need another deposit made and spent before we know where it’s disappeared off to.” Dekalb blew by me on his way out of the office. As I watched him pass, I thought I saw the slightest grin on Bishop’s face.
Two massive hands slamming on my desk jarred me back to reality.
“I gotta speak to Sanders,” the man tells me. He’s D’Angelo’s father, who only shows up to give Sanders a piece of his mind about the way school personnel treat the son he probably abuses. He looks like a refrigerator in a leather jacket and, believe me, I am not in a position to tell him no.
“Go right ahead,” I tell him, since Sanders is certainly big enough to handle such a bear on his own. They always tell me I’m supposed to tell people to wait their turn, but they’ve never done anything about it. Not like anything has ever come of it.
Now, normally when a student knows their parent is about to tell off the administration, they get excited. D’Angelo shrank back and muttered something about going to get water before making his retreat. Bishop, knowing he was supposed to be next, just dropped his head like the kid who was first in line when all the cookies ran out.
In Sanders’ defense, the man walked straight in without knocking and started making up reasons to accuse him. Sanders got up from behind his desk to face this ornery spectacle. After trading as many insults as the man felt he could stand to hear, he brandished a Glock and aimed it straight at Sanders’ chest.
My instincts dragged me under the desk, scared for my life, shockingly thankful that I didn’t try to stop this aggressor myself. I tried to pull inside myself completely –
The shot. I checked myself – I’m unhurt, though my heart felt like it could have been pierced directly for the stress on it. The world was still for the briefest of moments before anyone out in the main office figured out what they had just heard inside.
“Bishop, what the hell?” Sanders shouted. I dared to peek out and saw Bishop standing over the body, Sanders’ hands still in the air. Officer Arnaud, resource officer assigned to Breaux High, busted through the door, weapon drawn. Bishop threw his .357 snub nose on Sanders’ desk. Arnaud holstered his sidearm, still apprising himself of the scene.
“Carrying a concealed weapon on public school grounds?” Sanders asked, finally lowering his arms. “Arnaud, take him away.”
Don’t ask me what happened over the past week. I must have eaten and slept somewhere along the line, but with the investigation, dealing with parents and the media, then listening to Sanders and Dekalb bicker over this ceremony set to honor the exonerated Bishop (which, of course, I had to plan), I haven’t had a moment to think for myself.
I finally come back to reality watching Sanders and Dekalb sitting on stage, arguing with feigned civility as the whole school community awaits its hero’s arrival.
“A concealed weapon on public school grounds!” Sanders grunts.
“A concealed weapon that saved your life,” Dekalb replies.
“Why would he even have that?”
“Why not? You’ve seen how things have gotten over the past few years.”
“You think he was after us?”
“I think if he was, he’da let the gunman do you in.”
“Should be sending him to the chair, not giving him a medal. If anyone deserved a medal–”
“You do, Pete?” Dekalb breaks in. “Just—”
“Just what?”
Dekalb looks the opposite way, huffs, and shakes his head.
“Bishop’s a disgrace to this school and her faculty,” Sanders scoffs to no one in particular, but certainly in Dekalb’s direction.
“Do you even know where he got ‘Bishop’ from?” Dekalb asks. “Or what his real name is?”
Sanders opens his mouth, but nothing substantial comes out beyond, “Well, when he was in the war, wasn’t he…”
Bishop finally hobbles on stage, as late as he ever was to work in the morning. A slow clap sprouts up, soon enveloping the audience. Before it finally dies down, the crowd shouts and whistles its poor lungs out.
Bishop sits quietly next to Vice Principal Dekalb, not relishing in himself like the Army veteran who walked into a job interview 50 years ago and impressed the administration with his war record, carrying promises of turning its failing students around like the Dirty Dozen. The form that slumps over in that chair today carries years of substandard evaluations and standardized test scores, to say nothing of the hearts he’s warmed and lives he’s changed throughout the years. This isn’t the man who has attended every game of every team, danced at every pep rally, and volunteered at every school activity. This isn’t the man who has greeted current and former students alike, showed up early and stayed late, all in an effort to be the best teacher he could be. His face hangs to an appearance nearing sleepiness with the weight of understanding that some people, people like Principal Sanders, can never be won over by a person merely trying hard enough.
All the eyes of A. A. Breaux High School fix on this man as their principal stands to introduce him. Sanders all but phones in the speech I prepared for him. Bishop looks down from stage to me in the first row. His expression matches every child who has ever sat in my poor excuse for an office while listening to Sanders talk about them on the other side of the wall. That’s the “What am I supposed to say?” look.
Sanders finishes his speech – that is, my speech – and everyone stands to applaud. Before Bishop can move to the podium, he is accosted by the entire Morganza Parish School Board, who insist on publicly shaking his hand right now. Bishop reaches the podium and everyone falls silent. He opens his mouth to speak, but catches himself. The sound guy increases the microphone volume until it feeds back, just in case Bishop might be speaking too low to be understood.
Bishop idly taps the podium a few times before trying to speak again. I hear him inhale and catch himself, the small sound coming forth much like a hiccup. After his third attempt to speak, Bishop backs away and starts to dig through his pocket.
Sanders shifts in his chair and looks accusatively at Dekalb. Dekalb shrugs and raises his hands. Sanders turns around to find Bishop fiddling with his key ring. Bishop’s arthritic fingers strain to remove the key to his classroom. When they finally do, he flips it in his hand a few times.
Sanders stares at the key. His first act as principal was to remove Bishop from the main school building, from his classroom of 45 years. That day, he gave Bishop this key to an unairconditioned temporary building. Bishop was also immediately reassigned from the AP English class he had gained by seniority to remedial Reading, which is normally used to see whether first year teachers are truly dedicated to the profession.
As Bishop flips the key in his hands, he turns away from Sanders for a moment. He gestures to D’Angelo and several others who, like D’Angelo, come to school for a free lunch every day while waiting on their 18th birthday so they can drop out. Most of the student body hates these kids because they know full well about their poverty, but somehow they’re always more well dressed and fed than any students outside of Bishop’s class. D’Angelo leans forward as Bishop raises the key in his direction, as if he were giving a toast.
With one move, Bishop turns around, tosses the key at Sanders, and walks off stage. The key resonating from the oak stage and Bishop’s hard-sole loafers are the only sounds that echo through the auditorium. The rhythm of his steps only breaks when Bishop high fives D’Angelo on the way out the door. A chorus of applause breaks out when Bishop steps through the door, but he just keeps going like an action hero walking away from an explosion.
Bishop’s class stands up first, their gait shouting, “O Captain, My Captain!” as they exit. The rest of the student body mills about, wondering if they’re free to go home early, since the program was supposed to last until the end of the school day.
Sanders keeps his seat, oblivious to the world. In his right hand sits the medal he intended to pin on Bishop’s Mr. Rogers sweater. With his left, he picks up the weathered key that used to define where he and Bishop stood. Of course, it still does; only now, the balance has shifted. The key used to represent Principal Sanders’ first decision at A. A. Breaux High School, and it may very well represent his last.
As I exit the auditorium, I pass D’Angelo. His mother and grandmother were all Bishop’s students. This homeless young man, three weeks from his eighteenth birthday, straightens his starched American Eagle polo and tucks it into his creased and pressed khakis. Bishop’s finally gone, but his influence will stick around for many years to come. I, however, still have to press on.
After all, someone has to make sure Principal Sanders’ athletic account problem never gets connected to Bishop.
Rebekah Hope
Anastasis Man 