Mr. McCoy's expression was difficult to read. Sat behind his too-small of a desk, he held Anna's report in one hand and took the occasional sip of his chamomile tea with the other. The hard lines of his face would break every once in a while with a brief smile or a nod before returning to a more neutral, more relaxed position.
Sat at the desk closest to McCoy's, Anna was anything but relaxed. She didn't know why. It's not like her extra credit report on the civil war hero Abraham Galloway was going to change the course of her American History grade. Still, she ended up working on it well into the night.
McCoy smiled, lowered the paper, and slowly folded his glasses shut. "Young lady, I don't know that I've ever read such an impassioned history report in my whole teaching career."
Anna grinned and scratched behind her ear. "I mean, the guy made it easy. I… like, of course, there are really important people in history, and they all did stuff that mattered, but I never knew there was someone so cool in the okey-smokey days of the Civil War. That dude was like James Bond or something! Born as a slave in North Carolina, he lived a life of subterfuge and was this one-man wrecking machine all to help and save his people. The guy took shit from nobody! Including the president! Seemed like he wasn't completely sold on the Union either. From what I read, the Union was just as crappy towards Black People as the Confederates. I mean, they didn't enslave them, but it was pretty clear they didn't exactly care what happened to them. Apparently, once, they got all these freed slaves to dig this ditch, then just sorta left them there to die when the soldiers had to suddenly pull out.
"So then, after being a spy for the Union and helping free tons of people, he ran for Senate in North Carolina and won! He was also a huge advocate for Woman's rights and made moves to ban the N-word. He was insane!"
The grin only grew on McCoy's face as Anna spoke. "I told you that you'd like him." He took out a red marker and wrote a fat A+ on the top. "As I said before, this will replace your worst test score." He put his glasses back on his face and looked at her. "And if it's alright, would you mind if I kept this report?"
She shrugged, "Yeah. Of course."
He opened one of the smaller drawers and slipped the paper inside. "What we read in our textbooks is a very condensed, very sanitized version of what has really happened out there. It's gotten better in some aspects depending on where you are, but it's unfortunate heroes like Mr. Galloway don't have their deeds sung more than they are." He interlaced his fingers on his desk. "What black men and women were asked to do then was beyond comprehension. The way many were able to cope and overcome using tactics, wit, and astute thinking… well, it's something we all can still learn plenty from today."
Anna nodded. "I think you're right, Mr. McCoy. I'm starting to understand that now." She stood and pulled her backpack over her shoulder. "Well, I should probably get headin'. My lunch group is probably wondering where I am."
"Ah, of course. Have an excellent lunch, Anna."
She smiled, waved, and made for the door."
"Anna, would you actually mind doing me a small favor?"
She stopped just short of the door to the hall and turned. "Yeah, what's up?"
When McCoy took his glasses off a second time, she noticed the bags more clearly defined under the fluorescent light. "Do you know where the science teacher Mr. Morgan's class is?"
The name Mr. Morgan scratched the top of Anna's head, but she couldn't quite place the name. "No."
"If you take the stairwell to the left, follow the left wall upstairs till you hit the third door on the left. That's his room. I left some paperwork up there. Would you mind stepping by his office and collecting it for me?"
"Up the stairs, third door to the left," She nodded. "Got it. Yeah, I can get that for Mr. McCoy!"
He smiled a row of white teeth back at her. "Thank you. I will warn you, Mr. Morgan is a little on the eccentric side, but he will be more than happy to get you what you need."
Anna's lip drew a line across her face with one side cocked up into a sort of half grin. What a weird and… kinda ominous thing to say.
McCoy's directions were spot on. Sure enough, following up the stairs and the third door to the left, she found the door closed with the nameplate 'Mr. Morgan' above 'Intro to Chemistry.' Beyond the thick door, she could hear an off-beat thumping that sounded akin to some sort of techno music. She tried to peer through the window, but it was covered up in black construction paper. She knocked on the door with no response. She knocked louder, but still nothing. She tried the handle, found it was open, and pulled the door open enough to peek inside.
Beyond were three rows of long black top desks with evenly spaced hot plates and glass cylinders. The tables also were where any semblance of order ended. The cupboards, shelves, and counters were scattered with strange test tubes, funky-looking platers, gloves, masks, wadded-up balls of plastic table dressing, microscopes were sticking out of open doors of cabinets, and the rest of the mess was far too complicated to pick apart from just a glance.
She stuck her head in a little further. "Mr. Morgan?" She called over the thumping music, which stopped suddenly upon her call.
"Jesus Christ! You think about knocking, girl?"
Anna looked in the direction of the squawky South Boston dialect and found a man, whose glasses were bigger than his head, sitting behind a desk. One hand was poised over the keyboard of a computer, and the other over a cracked iPod plugged into a fat speaker.
"Who the hell are you, and what gives you the right to disturb a man on his lunch break?"
"Oh, sorry. Ah-" She cleared her throat of the Mississippi and tried again. "Sorry, I was told my Mr. McCoy-"
"Mr. McCoy sent you?" He craned his neck as if to look out the sliver of space between the door and the door jam into the hallway. "Well, what are you waiting for?" He waved his hand over. "Get in! Get in!"
Anna slipped inside, clipping her backpack on the door as it closed behind her. Inside now, she got a good wif of the air: tuna, burnt toast, and… formaldehyde. She clamped her hand down on her mouth and nose to stop herself from gagging.
"So?" Mr. Morgan leaned forward in his swivel chair, which squeaked under his shift in weight. The few hairs from his thinning widows-peak flew into his face, and he swept them back with his hand. "Well? Out with it, kid!"
"Um - I… Mr. McCoy sent me down here for paperwork or something?"
"McCoy sent you here to get his paperwork?"
"Um, yeah? Is that okay?"
He placed a solitary elbow on his desk, scattered with food wrapper debris and papers. "What's your name?"
"Anna. Anna Marie."
"Well, Miss. Anna - Anna Marie, how do you know our dear Mr. McCoy?"
"He's my U.S. History teacher… I just had his class."
"Uh huh, and let me ask you this, Miss Anna - Anna Marie, you like Mr. McCoy?"
Anna's fingers drove into her chest, and her cheeks went flush. "Excuse me? He's my teacher… it ain't like that."
Behind the man's thick glasses, his dark eyes rolled, and his second elbow joined the other on his desk. "I'm not talking about that, you dolt. If McCoy sent you here to pick up his paperwork, it leads me to believe you might need some paperwork yourself"
Anna rubbed where her neck met her chest. "No… I don't think so. I have plenty of homework as it is."
"Jesus, they make them thick these days." Mr. Morgan stood suddenly, his white lab coat fluttering at the hem. "Do you know who I am, young lady? My name is Francis P. Morgan! I am the LeBron James of Chemistry! Everything I do is nothing but net, do you understand me? There is no chemist alive that can do what I can with as little as I have. I'm a damn genius, and I'm here playing babysitter to a bunch of horned-up teenagers whose soul preoccupation is where they can stick it next!"
Anna stiffened when she saw the man pull something from beneath his desk, but didn't know whether to relax or run when she realized it was a long yellow rubber chicken. "So, when you think I'm talking about 'paperwork,' you think I'm talking about goddamned homework?" He slammed the chicken on the desk, and it made a long duck-call-like wheezing sound as it made contact with the many wrappers.
Anna was dumbstruck as she watched the man plunge a hand inside the rear of the rubber chicken and pull out something that looked like a whoopee cushion. He found some sort of zipper, unzipped the whoopee cushion-looking bag, and produced a hand-sized rectangle container with the 'tic-tac' logo emblazoned on the side. He shoved the chicken back in his desk with one hand and held up the tic-tacs with the other. "The 'paperwork.'" He said plainly.
Anna slowly walked up and gently pulled the container free from the man's sweaty hand. She looked the large plastic rectangle over and found it looked just like a tic-tac bottle, but the candies inside were pill-sized. "I don't understand."
"I didn't expect you to. Now get the hell out of my classroom before you cause even more of a scene."
When Anna looked up, the little man had already resumed the music on his painter's tape-mended iPod and had his face inches away from his flickering monitor.
"That friend of yours is a fucking psycho," Anna told Mr. McCoy once she was safely back in his classroom. She passed the strange tic-tacs to her teacher, and he plucked them gently from her hand.
"He's an eccentric man without a doubt." McCoy pulled out one of the pills and popped it in his mouth with a swig of water. After, he rolled his head back and took a long breath. His shoulders dropped following a second-long breath.
"Are… you alright?"
"Mr. Morgan is an uncommon sort, maybe even uncouth, but he serves a very important purpose in this school." McCoy took a sip from his tea and seemed as if he was gaining strength by the passing second. "There are others like us here, Anna. However, many of them need extra help in suppressing and dealing with their particular burdens."
Anna crossed her arms. "So he's a drug dealer to kids. Is that what you're telling me?"
"I suppose in the same way a pharmacist is a drug dealer." McCoy took another breath and shook out his shoulders. "With what you and I deal with, we can't exactly see a family physician about it, can we?"
Anna's lips drew to a line. "I suppose not."
"The need for help is still great, so where people like you and I can't go through official channels, we go through people we can trust."
She averted her eyes and looked out the window.
"It may not seem like it," McCoy continued," but Mr. Morgan loves these kids. He's not some seedy dealer trying to get anyone hooked on hard drugs. He's a very talented chemist who doesn't need to be here but instead chooses to be so he can help those who would otherwise be without. He doesn't charge, and he doesn't keep names." McCoy pressed his fingertips together. "The truth is, without him, I wouldn't be here talking with you."
She looked down at her feet. "What is it he gives you?"
"It's something special he's concocted specifically for my condition. Without it, well, what I deal with would truly come to light."
"You've never told me what it is you… 'deal with.'"
McCoy smiled at her. "And hopefully, you will never have to know."
Anna looked at him, then back down at her feet.
McCoy leaned on his desk and sighed. "A time is coming, Anna, when you are going to need to know who you're friends are. I want you to know here, at this school, you have people you can rely on when you need it."
She looked at him. "That's a little sinister sounding, don't you think?"
"Maybe." He finished his tea and looked up at her. "As far as I know, no one knows the future. So I do what I know how to and look at history. The Civil War didn't happen over a single conflict. The Civil Rights movement didn't get solved over one march or a single Martin Luther King speech. What we deal with today, by and large, isn't anything that hasn't happened already. We just do it bigger and louder than before. Study, Anna. Let those before you be your guide."
Anna's face scrunched as she stared at her feet a while longer. Eventually, she looked at her teacher. "Alright, Mr. McCoy. I'll try."
"Trying is all any of us can do, my dear student."