Adventures of Homer Fink

by Sidney Offit

  “Precisely,” said Mr. Muncrief. “And that sheep and that dog and the little boy who should have been in nursery school. What were they doing in the auditorium this morning? I would certainly like to know the meaning of that.”

  “Pete is Richard’s brother,” said Homer Fink. “He loves a parade.” Homer started to quote again in Greek, but Mr. Muncrief interrupted him.

  “I’ll see you this afternoon at three-thirty in my office. In the meantime …” Mr. Muncrief noticed the collar of Homer’s jacket was back on his shoulders. As he adjusted it, Mr. Muncrief said softly, “We’re going to have to take a little more care with our appearance now that we’re in the public eye.”

  It was a perfect opening for me to explain that Homer would like to join Little Louie as a demonstrator.

  “I had no idea you were athletically inclined,” the assistant principal said to Homer. “Indeed I would prefer to have you right up front where I can keep my eye on you. We’ll put a little beef and muscle on you yet, Homer.”

  As we started to the yard I suggested Homer put on his sweat suit. Homer Fink told me that changing clothes was one of the rare things in the world he considered a bore.

  We lined up with an arm interval between each student. At the far end of the yard, Mr. Muncrief stood on a raised platform flanked by Little Louie and Homer. Both candidates were on the ground with their hands and feet braced beneath them to power their rise.

  “One,” commanded Mr. Muncrief, and Homer and Louie began their demonstration of a push-up.

  “Back straight,” we heard Mr. Muncrief remind them. “Push up. Heave.”

  Little Louie completed the first step with ease. From his upright position he gazed at Homer Fink who remained on the ground.

  Mr. Muncrief said, “The idea is to exercise your arms and leg muscles by pushing up, Homer.”

  Homer maneuvered his hands and readjusted his feet and at last with a great push managed to raise his chest by arching his back.

  Mr. Muncrief dropped to his knees and made an effort to set Homer’s body; he put Little Louie in charge of leading the rest of us.

  “Up. Down. One. Two,” Little Louie repeated.

  “Lay off. Slow down,” Jerry Trout demanded.

  Brian Spitzer called, “You’re breaking my back.”

  Most of us dropped out after the twelfth push-up, but Phillip Moore had no difficulty keeping pace with Little Louie.

  “Hold your position,” Mr. Muncrief directed Homer.

  With a tremendous effort Homer shoved up. His shirt-tail overlapped his belt and I noticed Homer’s feet were out of his unlaced shoes. His long red hair fell across his eyes, but there was a big smile on Homer’s face.

  “That’s it. Fine,” said Mr. Muncrief. “Now try without my support.”

  Homer Fink slowly lowered his body.

  With the exception of the boys who were interested in the endurance contest between Little Louie and Phillip Moore, the rest of us followed Homer’s progress.

  “Steady. Steady.” Mr. Muncrief encouraged him. “You can do it. I know you can do it, Homer.”

  Homer’s arms trembled and there was a thin line of sweat rolling down his cheek. “Tendit in ardua virtus. Courage exerts itself in difficulties. Ovid,” Homer reminded himself.

  “Give up?” Little Louie called to Phillip Moore. “Are you worn out?”

  Phillip replied, “I’m fine.”

  “Gently now,” Mr. Muncrief told Homer. “Not you chest! Touch your chin to the ground and you’ll have it.”

  Homer’s elbows were pressed to the side and his cuffs hung to his knuckles. Biting his lip, he lowered another inch. “Bear up. τέτλαθι,” Homer groaned. “Iliad, Book I.”

  “Sink. Fink. Sink,” a voice urged from the rear of the yard. Homer’s legs quivered and his body shook, but he made another inch of painful progress.

  “Don’t give up,” Mr. Muncrief pleaded. “One push-up-only one.” And then the assistant principal said, “τέτλαθι—”

  With the word from the Iliad ringing in our ears, we saw Homer stretch his neck. The muscles strained and Homer resembled a turtle rising from his shell. He came closer and closer until at last the tip of Homer Fink’s chin was a fraction of an inch from the ground.

  Suddenly Mr. Muncrief slapped his hand against the platform and proclaimed, “He made it.”

  Students rushed forward hollering versions of the Greek word that inspired the victory. They slapped Homer’s back and pumped his hand and treated Homer Fink as if he had hit a home run in the last of the ninth with bases loaded or broken the tape to win the Olympic marathon.

  19

  “Count me in,” Brian Spitzer told me after school that day. “My arms are still sore from all those pushups. Who wants Little Louie for president of the school anyway? Homer is more laughs.”

  I was waiting for Homer to return from Mr. Muncrief’s office. It had been almost an hour since the last class and I was beginning to face the fact that my candidate had detention. I wasn’t particularly happy to have Brian on our side again, but as a random sample it indicated the polls were in our favor.

  Homer Fink was smiling as he started down the steps from P.S. 79. He swung his bookbag high in the air, tried to catch it, and missed. Making two big circles with his thumbs and forefingers he exclaimed, “I’ve solved it. He’s Apollo.”

  I said, “Pick up your schoolbag and I’ll treat you to an icecream soda, Homer.”

  “As you so perceptibly observed the other day, Richard, Mr. Muncrief is something special.”

  I picked up Homer’s bookbag, and he followed me up the street. “Do you have to bring a note from home to explain your absence? Did Mr. Muncrief lay it on because of the sheep and Argus and all the ringers you brought to school for your demonstration?”

  Homer pounded me on the back. “Remember your Shelley?” He recited:

  All men who do or even imagine ill

  Fly me, and from the glory of my ray

  Good minds and open actions take new might.

  Isn’t that Mr. Muncrief all over?”

  I said, “If you’re planning to put that to music for a campaign song, Homer, forget it. I’d suggest you start thinking along the lines of ‘Buckle Down Wisconsin.’” Then I said, “What’s going on in detention anyway? Your imagination is running away with you.”

  “It wasn’t my imagination that brought the mouse to Mr. Muncrief’s office,” said Homer. “It was no vision of mine when he opened the window and greeted her.”

  “You don’t mean to tell me Mr. Muncrief is hiding the mouse, the one Mr. Aberdenally is running all over the school trying to kill?”

  “Exactly,” said Homer. “The spirit of Apollo Smintheus is upon him.”

  “I definitely need a soda.” I thrust Homer’s schoolbag at him and he took it.

  “We call her Persephone,” said Homer Fink, and on the way to the soda fountain he told me the story of the queen of Hades who spent half her time on earth and the rest in the underworld. But I was thinking Persephone could prove a valuable bit of information if Mr. Muncrief became impatient with Homer during the campaign.

  Because the owner spent lots of time decorating the window with displays of the history of drugs, Goldenheimer’s Drugstore on North and Park was Homer’s favorite. The window was devoted to penicillin that month and there were pictures and samples of roots and cards explaining things such as “Antibiosis was first used by P. Vuillemin in 1889.”

  Goldenheimer’s was different than the chain store up the street. It wasn’t only the windows. We would have to look for about ten minutes if we wanted to find a comic in Goldenheimer’s and then it would always be a funny book and not a war story. Mr. Goldenheimer had very definite ideas about magazines and comic books. Not that we could tell from talking to him. He had very little to say.

  When Homer and I arrived, Mr. Goldenheimer was in the back making a prescription. A customer was sitting at the counter drinking a cup of coffee. M
rs. Goldenheimer had set his place with a paper doily and a napkin and a glass of water.

  I ordered a chocolate soda with vanilla ice cream, but Homer wanted to see a menu.

  Mrs. Goldenheimer seemed pleased by this request. She made the menus, running them off on a mimeograph machine that was in the rear of the store. There was always soup and sandwich and a dessert of the day. That was called the “special luncheon” and it was featured for 99 cents. The Goldenheimers must have done a great lunch business or received lots of orders on the telephone because the place was never crowded in the afternoon. It was hard to figure out how they could afford to keep changing the menus and redoing the windows and setting every place with a clean doily without going bankrupt.

  We didn’t order the luncheon, but Homer Fink was interested in the dessert that went with the special. He was the only boy I knew who would stop for an after-school snack and order rice pudding.

  Mrs. Goldenheimer handed Homer the menu. “The tapioca is very tasty,” she said. “Made it myself fresh, today.”

  “Ah—tapioca,” Homer repeated. “I can’t resist.”

  Mrs. Goldenheimer smiled again and wiped the counter in front of Homer’s place, even though it was already sparkling clean. “One chocolate soda with vanilla ice and one tapioca—working!”

  “Tapioca,” Homer said again.

  “Tapioca,” said Mrs. Goldenheimer.

  Homer Fink snapped his fingers. “Tapioca, Cha. Cha. Cha.”

  After we were served, Mrs. Goldenheimer disappeared into the back of the store where her husband was filling a prescription. We could hear her telling him. “Tapioca. Cha. Cha. Cha.”

  “Not when I’m working, please,” was Mr. Goldenheimer’s response. I just knew he was making the most accurate and sanitary prescription in the world.

  Homer was eating his tapioca and I was sipping my soda when two boys from the Latin School entered the store. One had on a gray wool sweater beneath his sports coat and the other was wearing a tan poplin raincoat. The raincoat was old and dirty, but on the fellow from the Latin School it seemed neat, the perfect coat to be wearing on a fall day when weaker fellows would have on overcoats.

  They nodded in the direction of Homer and whispered.

  Homer waved a spoonful of tapioca. “It’s good the spirit of Apollo has entered Mr. Muncrief, and fortunate, too, that he has Persephone for company.”

  I tried to change the subject, but Homer went on discussing the loneliness of the life of an assistant principal.

  The fellows from the Latin School sat at the fountain and the boy in the poplin raincoat said, “Pardon me, but isn’t he Homer Fink?”

  We introduced ourselves and Oliver, the boy in the wool sweater, asked how Homer’s campaign was going. He wanted to know if the students at 79 were “thinking with Fink.”

  Homer was ready to launch into a thought project at once, but I was interested in where they had learned about Homer’s campaign.

  Oliver told us that their schoolmates who had heard Homer speak at the B and O terminal had spread the word.

  Wally, the boy in the poplin raincoat, told us, “‘Think with Fink’ is always scrawled on blackboards and yesterday it was written in chalk on the north grounds.”

  Oliver said, “The question in our forum this quarter is—is there really a Homer Fink?”

  I was about to ask how they recognized Homer when Oliver asked what Homer was eating.

  Homer said something about “a farinaceous food substance prepared from cassava starch.” That was exactly the way the fellows from Boys Latin placed their order. Mrs. Goldenheimer was bewildered until Homer said, “Cha. Cha. Cha.” Then Mrs. Goldenheimer prepared two more plates of tapioca.

  I was mushing the last of my ice cream with the chocolate syrup at the bottom of my soda when Oliver asked if we were on Lafayette’s soccer team. I guess all public schools have names as well as numbers but I never thought of myself as going to Lafayette until our meeting with Oliver and Wally. Except in our school song, we just about never called our school “Lafayette.”

  Homer told them we didn’t have a soccer team, but we were making great progress with push-ups.

  Oliver thought that was funny and Wally said Homer Fink certainly lived up to his reputation.

  “We don’t have a varsity in any sport,” I told them. “The only time we compete against other schools is in the city-wide track meet.”

  “Lafayette will be playing us in soccer,” said Wally. “And that’s for sure!”

  “We’re inviting your ninth-grade boys to lunch and scrimmage with us on Friday,” Oliver continued, “Our varsity committee had a meeting this afternoon with a fellow from your school.”

  I crunched my straws. “The boy who spoke to you—was his name Bannerman?”

  Oliver looked at Wally, and Wally shrugged his shoulders. They couldn’t remember the name.

  “Was he kind of thin and wearing glasses? Very neat and always taking notes as if he were writing prescriptions?”

  Wally said that was an accurate description, and Oliver remembered that the fellow had been very careful to shake everyone’s hand.

  “It’s Little Louie,” I told Homer. “Bannerman has scored a political coup.”

  Homer wasn’t the least distressed. “After all these years of student clamor for a varsity team, Little Louie had come to grips with the problem and resolved it.” He raised his tapioca dish. “Here’s to Little Louie.”

  Oliver and Wally joined Homer’s toast, hesitating only to see if Homer intended to drink from the tapioca dish. (He didn’t.) I tried to keep my chocolate syrup going with a shot of free soda.

  The campaign had taken a sudden turn for the worse, and it was no help having my candidate so enthusiastic about the opposition.

  20

  “I didn’t know until today there was a shepherd in Druid Hill Park,” my mother told my father at dinner that night. “A very pleasant man he is, too. Pete was delighted with him.”

  “Amo,” said Pete and he slapped his spoon against the table of his baby tender.

  “This is the first I’ve heard of a shepherd in Baltimore City,” said my father. “Did you discover him?”

  My mother explained that the shepherd was a friend of Homer Fink’s and then she said to me, “Who was that beautiful young lady who brought Pete home from the assembly?”

  “That’s Katrinka,” I said. “She goes to Park School and she’s heading up the women’s division of the Fink campaign.”

  My mother handed Romulus a teething ring and gave Remus a rattle.

  “Beautiful girls and kissing babies are traditional in politics,” my father said as he handed Pete a rubber cup in exchange for his spoon. “But how about the shepherd? Is Homer appealing to the rural vote?”

  “Homer doesn’t exactly think he’s a shepherd. More or less he’s convinced the man is Pan.”

  “Have some Brussels sprouts,” my mother said to me. “You must learn to eat vegetables, Richard. I don’t want you filling up on bread and potatoes.”

  “Pan who?” asked my father.

  “Pan, the Greek god of nature.” I took two Brussels sprouts and put them on my plate.

  My father said, “It’s just a game, of course. Homer’s father is a classics professor and I suppose it’s to be expected.”

  “Homer thinks the old drunk who wanders around the park is Silenus.” I pushed the Brussels sprouts into the far corner of my plate.

  Romulus dropped his teething ring and screamed. My mother picked it up and then Remus threw his rattle to the floor. When my mother handed it back to him, Romulus let go of his teething ring again.

  “Homer’s been telling me Katrinka is Aphrodite and he’s just about convinced himself beyond a question of doubt that Mr. Muncrief is Apollo.”

  “Mr. Muncrief, the assistant principal of the school?” said my father.

  “It’s so refreshing to hear a young person speak with admiration of a teacher,” said my mother. She ret
rieved the teething ring and then went after the rattle. The twins were gurgling and smiling and having a ball.

  “Homer thinks all the children in the world should spend a few hours a day curled up in a garbage can—thinking.”

  My father said, “I can see that your candidate is keeping you busy.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about Homer,” said my mother. “Some people just pass from childhood into adolescence more slowly than others. I’m sure it’s a game and Homer is having fun playing it.”

  “How’s it going over with the electorate?” asked my father.

  “The kids at school think Homer’s a riot.”

  “Omni—Omni—,” screamed Pete and he threw the rubber cup across the room.

  “As long as Homer Fink knows the difference between the truth and the games he’s playing I suppose he’ll be all right.” Then my father said, “What do you think, Richard? Are you beginning to have visions of Greek deities, too?”

  “Only one and sometimes I have my doubts about her.” I sliced a sprout.

  “Homer is campaigning for a return to the classics,” announced my mother. “It runs in his family. It’s just as simple as that.”

  Pete climbed to the table of his tender and reached over to my plate. He was always trying to filch my food. Usually I stopped him but this time he was headed for half of a Brussels sprout.

  “Now Peter, don’t bother Richard when he’s eating.” Mother was on her way under the table to recover Remus’s teething ring.

  “It’s O.K.,” I said. “He’s my brother. I don’t mind sharing.”

  “Sooner or later Homer will have to face the fact that there are no gods on earth—only people,” said my father. “And that’s a truth that’s been the last straw for more than one reformer.”

  “Homer’s never really discouraged by people,” I said. “If anything, he’s the first one to find things unusual or exciting about them. The way things are going now, I wouldn’t be surprised if Homer votes for Louie Bannerman.”

  My mother thought that was wonderful and even my father had to admit it was a new twist. I concentrated on watching Pete stuff a Brussels sprout into his mouth.