“Remember the time you walked on the desks in English?” Billy asked as he packed my groceries into a thick brown bag. “The sub started crying and you had to call the office yourself?”
I nodded my head and scanned the Stop & Shop crowd for anyone I knew.
“Was that ninth grade?” Billy’s stomach shook as he laughed. His belly fell a little fuller over his belt and his face was a little scruffier, but otherwise he looked exactly the same as he did ten years ago.
“Eighth,” I lied as if that made it better.
“There was a streak of five years when every teacher we had either quit or retired,” Billy shouted and began chuckling. His voice boomed as loud as ever – like a foghorn – but that silly, infectious laugh caused the most trouble.
I began to help him bag to speed things along.
“Remember the lion’s cage we were supposed to be building for Art Day?”
“Ahmm,” I admitted.
“We got out of classes for four days and just hung out in the basement and smoked cigarettes.” White foamy spittle formed at the corners of his mouth as he laughed and his belly shook Santa-like with rolling laughter.
“Remember talking like a robot until that old history teacher cried?”
“How long you been working here?” I asked, but he ignored me.
“And the time we all switched our names on the sub? And we kept switching them all period? ” The memories tumbled out of him faster and faster. “And the time Dansdill was sick and you convinced the school he moved?”
A spitting, full-breathed guffaw stopped his packing. He moved back from the counter and tried to collect himself. With a deep breath, he stepped forward, grabbed a can of tuna fish, looked up at me and the laughter broke out again like a wave – a tidal wave.
His eyes teared. His cheeks reddened all the way to his temples. He held the counter with both hands and shook. The other baggers laughed now, too, with the checkout girls and the lines of customers. That was the magic in Billy’s laugh, and the problem, too. In elementary school and junior high, all I wanted to do was make him laugh. Once during fourth grade lunch in a burst of unexpected laughter, he shot a pea right out his nose. His laugh was trouble. I expected the manager to come out any minute and throw the both of us out of the store, but Billy caught his breath, slowly stood up straight and resumed bagging.
“Remember the time you read Shakespeare in a Brooklyn accent?” he asked. “Man, Miss Amen was mad.”
I paid with exact change and threw the ice cream and fruit into the same bag.
“Man, it was fun torturing those teachers,” Billy said and paused to look off across the room and sigh.
“Yeah,” I said, put the last bag in my cart and pushed toward the parking lot. It seemed the entire store had paused to hear Billy’s stories. I hunched my head into my shoulders and raced for the exit.
“Hey!” Billy shouted just seconds before my escape was complete.
I stopped as the automatic door swung open and looked over my shoulder.
“What are you doing now?” Billy yelled.
I shrugged and mumbled a reply.
“WHAT?” He leaned closer and I swear the entire store froze in place and leaned closer too: bag boys with cans hovering over upright bags, cashiers with fingernails poised over the register keys, long lines of customers holding carts turned faces toward me. Even the manager’s bald head poked out his office door.
“I’m a teacher!” I shouted and raced into the parking lot.
Originally Published in CT English Journal S04