Adventures of Homer Fink

by Sidney Offit

  I didn’t have to be a professional politician to know that this was no time for Homer to make a speech on Plato. I hurried to the front of the crowd and with Argus still yelping at my heels, I said, “Fellow students, classmates, friends, we all know that in the next few weeks the students of P.S. 79 will be called upon to elect a president of our student council. We will be looking for a boy who can express our opinions and create programs to satisfy our needs—a boy who is exciting and inspiring. A boy who is loyal. A boy who is helpful—” I was joined in the recitation of the Boy Scout qualities. “Friendly … courteous … kind … obedient … cheerful … thrifty.…”

  There was a tug at my sleeve and I heard Homer say, “No more ‘boy-who,’ please, Richard.” Homer went on to explain that he intended to point out the beast in our nature. He must have tried this speech on Katrinka Nonningham because she told me, “It has to be said.”

  The students were chanting Homer’s name and cheering. We had built to the climax and I knew we shouldn’t delay. The stage was set for Homer Fink to sweep into office without opposition. All he had to do was say something simple and to the point. But Homer was primed for philosophy and I had to discourage him.

  “Let’s hear it,” I urged the crowd. “Who is he? What’s the name of the ‘boy-who’?”

  While the crowd was letting off steam, I talked to Homer. “Tell them you think we should have a varsity football team,” I advised. “Say that. And nothing more.”

  Argus had hold of my trouser cuff and I gave him a gentle boot to drive him away.

  Katrinka Nonningham dashed to the rescue, picking up Argus and holding him in her arms. She didn’t seem to be the kind of girl who would make a big fuss over animals. I guessed Homer had told her about Ulysses and how his dog Argus had recognized him when he returned from his wanderings.

  What happened after that would make Machiavelli roll over in his grave. I don’t remember how he started or what made him stop, but Homer Fink gave a long speech. He wanted us to think about the meaning of life and the purpose of government.

  It was dark when Homer finally concluded. He promised to talk more later and mentioned a vigorous campaign of ideas.

  Katrinka Nonningham was sitting on the steps petting Argus and Phillip Moore was standing in front of Homer looking up at him as if the message was coming right from Olympus. A couple of fellows from the Latin School stayed, but everyone else went home.

  As we started back up the steps Phillip said, “I was interested in your thoughts concerning the responsibility of government. It doesn’t seem to me we talk about that nearly enough.”

  “It would be a big help if we had one person in each homeroom working for Homer’s election,” I suggested to Phillip.

  “I’ve never heard a boy admit he was part beast,” said Katrinka Nonningham. “Homer is right. We have to control our nature so that we are free for higher purposes. I get so bored with boys trying to kiss me all the time.”

  “I intend to discuss all kinds of ideas in this campaign,” said Homer Fink. And then turning to me he said, “Thanks for getting my constituents together, Richard. I hope we gave them something to think about.”

  11

  Mother was in the kitchen feeding the twins and Pete was banging pots together in his playpen. My father had a cup of coffee and the Evening Sun in front of him on the kitchen table. He was reading a column aloud. It had to do with something going on in Washington. My father must have thought it was funny, I heard him say, “Did you hear that, Lil? This is a parody of a Presidential press conference.”

  “Do you think you could take Pete downtown for shoes on Saturday?” answered my mother. “I have an appointment with Dr. Smith for the twins’ shots in the afternoon.”

  My father laughed at something he read. “You must listen to this, Lil. It’ll do you good.”

  Although my mother nodded, she couldn’t smile. She had a diaper pin in her mouth. My father had to move the coffee cup and paper from the table to make room for my brother, Remus.

  “I went to the Hopkins with Russ Baker in ’46,” my father told me.

  I said. “That’s great. Was he an all American lacrosse star?”

  “Not exactly. He’s a syndicated columnist who appears in the Sun.” I could see see by my father’s expression that I had discouraged him.

  As soon as the diaper pin was out of her mouth, my mother said, “Richard could use a new pair of crepe soles, too. And don’t let them sell you the exact size—a half size larger, please.”

  “Homer Fink is running for the presidency of our school,” I told my father. “I’m his campaign manager.”

  My father put down the paper. “That’s fine, Richard. No better time to start.”

  My father was a lawyer and he had once been active in politics. I remembered the year before the twins were born when we went around the neighborhood distributing handbills and hanging up signs for a friend of his who was running for the State Assembly. I don’t recall the friend’s name. After the election I guess you couldn’t have found very many people in the city of Baltimore who remembered him any better than I did.

  That was the last time my father was involved in politics. I had heard him say many times that he wished he had the time to do some real campaigning.

  “We had our first rally this afternoon,” I went on. “It was terrific, but a flop.”

  “Did you do all of your homework?” my mother asked.

  I told her I had.

  My father took a cigar from his pocket and lit it. “So you’re in politics and Homer Fink is your man.”

  “Homer wants to be the president of the school,” I explained. “He’s heard the call.”

  Pete must have recognized Homer’s name. He banged a saucepan against a small fryer and shouted, “Omni—.”

  “Homer’s teaching Pete Latin,” I told my Dad.

  My father winked. “I’m not sure I approve of making deals.”

  Remus sneezed and Romulus was gurgling. “Why don’t you gentlemen retire to the living room for your talk,” suggested my mother. “It’s much more comfortable.”

  Waving the cigar smoke from Remus’s head, my father said, “Come along, Richard. A kitchen is no place for a smoke-filled room.” He led me to the basement and opened an old trunk. There were bumper stickers and blotters with the name of the candidate he had supported and a large clip-board that my father dusted and gave me. “This clipboard will come in handy for your campaign memos,” he said.

  We sat on orange crates near the boiler and my father told me how to organize a political campaign. He talked about “communication” and ways to “get your message to the voter.” I could see he was eager to talk. Politics meant a lot to my father and I guess if that fellow who had run for State Assembly decided to try again my father would have been very tempted to help him. (I still couldn’t remember the candidates’ names even five minutes after seeing them spelled out all over the bumper stickers and blotters.)

  “Government is everybody’s responsibility.” declared my father. “We can’t leave it to the professional politicians to run the country.”

  I tried to explain that there weren’t any professional politicians at P.S. 79. The most popular students in the school were usually elected. But my father wanted to tell me all about machines and reformers.

  The way I understood it, the machine politicians controlled government because they gave away jobs and did people favors and had workers keeping in touch with the voters. Machine politicians wanted things to stay pretty much the way they were, according to my father. And it took reformers such as the fellow he had supported for State Assembly to bring in new ideas and make people aware of what was going on, whether they liked it or not.

  “That’s Homer Fink all over,” I told my dad. “He’s bringing in ideas all the time.”

  “Good for Homer Fink,” said my father. “And what is it Homer wants to reform?”

  I hadn’t really thought about that before. I roc
ked on the orange crate and studied the boiler a while and then I said, “I guess when you really come right down to it, all Homer Fink wants to reform is the world.”

  My father chomped on his cigar and was quiet.

  “That’s about it, Dad,” I said and I stood. “How about a quick game of Ping-pong?”

  We didn’t say anything more about politics. I caught my father twice on easy backhands and he missed the table with four slams. I won 21–19, which was really something because I only beat him once before. That was the night before the twins were born and we were killing time while waiting for the call from the hospital.

  12

  The day before the nominating assembly, a large sign appeared on the fence between the girls’ and boys’ yards. It announced: JOIN THE PLAN FOR BANNERMAN. There was room for signatures and although it wasn’t official, lots of students wrote their names on the sign.

  Homer thought it was a great idea and I had to convince him not to write a message encouraging Little Louie.

  It was during lunch hour and Homer and I were standing near a group playing wall ball. “At last we know the enemy,” I said to Homer. “Little Louie is very popular in his class and you can be sure he’ll give us a tough time on issues. We have to start hitting him and hitting him hard.”

  “Little Louie is my friend,” said Homer. “Let’s find him and hear what he’s thinking.”

  “It may be a better idea to save our energy and try to develop something that will attract as much attention as Louie’s sign,” I suggested.

  Homer clasped his hands behind his back. “We must find out all about Louie’s campaign plans.”

  Homer wasn’t suggesting undercover work. He was expressing curiosity. “It doesn’t work that way in politics,” I explained. “Candidates don’t share ideas with each other. They try to come up with a better platform than their opponent so they can win more votes.”

  “Our campaign will be different,” Homer told me. “Louie is welcome to my ideas. I hope he’ll stand with us and search for justice, which comprises in it all virtue. Justitia in se virtutem complectitur omnen.”

  A ball bounced our way. Homer made a great flourish of trying to catch it, but it rolled through his legs. I backed him up, caught it, and returned it to the players. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that, Homer,” I said. “I was hoping we could explain our platform in English and try to make it more specific.”

  “There is nothing more specific than truth, Richard,” said Homer Fink. “And the time to pursue it is now when we are young enough to be free and old enough to be strong.”

  “You better talk to Little Louie,” I said. “A bi-partisan policy on truth and justice could be just what we need to clear the deck and get down to the issue of the noise in the cafeteria.”

  We found Little Louie perched on the shoulders of Marvin Bloom. He was looking over the fence into the girls’ yard and we could hear him saying, “Hi, girls. Vote for Bannerman if you want a school prom.”

  “We had better have some signs circulated this afternoon,” I said to Homer.

  Homer dashed across the yard and offered his hand to his opponent. “I’m sure we will have a spirited campaign, Louie,” he said. “I gather you’re addressing yourself to the ladies.”

  “You bet your Vitalis we are.” Marvin Bloom gave Louie’s legs a tug. “And we aren’t bringing in any ringers like that blonde who was baby-sitting for your dog.”

  “Katrinka is my friend,” Homer answered. “She isn’t going to vote.”

  From his lofty height Little Louie warned, “I may be forced by conscience to make an issue of outside assistance.”

  I was about to interrupt and cover Homer by telling them Katrinka was my friend, but Homer changed the subject. “How do you see the position of women in our society?” he asked Louie.

  “I see them as votes,” was Louie’s answer.

  Then Marvin Bloom said, “A prom wouldn’t be much without girls.”

  “My view is women have the same capacities as men,” said Homer.

  “By ‘capacities’ Homer Fink means girls are as good as boys,” Louie Bannerman announced to the boys on our side of the fence. “They can do anything boys can do.”

  “Are you nuts or something?” said Marvin Bloom. “Show me a girl who can pass like Johnny Unitas or throw a punch like Floyd Patterson.”

  “That’s not the full measure of an individual’s ability,” Homer tried to explain. “My point is that women should not be discouraged from taking full and useful places in society. It’s all in Plato.”

  “Nuts to Plato,” a boy called from the crowd. “He could talk because he didn’t manage the Orioles.”

  Comfortably seated on Marvin’s shoulders, Little Louie leaned on the fence. Even though we couldn’t see her, I could hear Trudy Deal ohing and ahing in response to Louie’s announcement about the prom. Some of the girls were squealing in that way they have that made me doubt the truth of Homer’s statement.

  “If you elect me, I will press for a five-piece band,” Louie was saying. He lowered his voice and while Homer Fink was defending the merits of a woman president to the boys, Little Louie Bannerman was whispering to the girls, “I’m going to fight to make sure this prom is a formal, whether the boys like it or not.”

  With Louie Bannerman winning the girls’ vote and Homer simultaneously discouraging the boys’ vote, I knew what my father meant by a communications problem.

  “Quick, Homer, up on my shoulders,” I said.

  It took some urging, and Phillip Moore had to give him a boost before Homer finally agreed. By this time all the boys in the yard had gathered around us. I heard a voice from the rear of the crowd say, “Fink and Bannerman are going to have a horse fight.”

  Addressing the girls on the other side of the fence, Homer received a much warmer response to his theories on women’s rights. I asked Little Louie if it was true that he wanted the boys to wear tuxedos to the prom. Louie said he was going to appoint a committee to investigate that, but Marvin Bloom bounced him vigorously on his shoulders and announced, “I’m not wearing a monkey suit for anybody.”

  I was beginning to feel we had the communications problem licked when a whistle blew and Mr. Muncrief’s voice demanded, “What is the meaning of this?”

  “A horse fight,” the voice from the rear repeated.

  “I will give those boys detention. Who are they?” Mr. Muncrief rushed toward us. “What are their names?”

  There is a difference between “being kept in after school” and “detention.” If we talk in class without permission or fail to do our homework or chew gum and are caught before we can stick it under our seats, the teacher will ask us to stay after school.

  Detention is reserved for students with whom the teacher is unable to cope in class or as a punishment for creating a major school disorder. Detention is noted on our report cards and constant offenders are asked to bring their parents to school. You didn’t exactly have to be a Franklin Delano Roosevelt to realize that an afternoon of detention was no way to begin a career in school politics.

  I had to make one of those on-the-spot decisions required of men in public life. Either Homer would stay perched and share the dishonor of detention with his opponent or risk a more severe penalty by making a bid to escape.

  There was no time for discussion. “Over the fence,” I advised my candidate. And with a quick lift from me, Homer Fink went flying over the fence into the girls’ yard.

  Little Louie Bannerman was not above borrowing that idea. But strong as he was, Marvin Bloom’s reflexes were a little slow.

  Homer had disappeared into the girls’ side of the yard and Louie Bannerman was straddling the fence when Mr. Muncrief arrived in the center of the crowd.

  “Stop, right where you are,” the assistant principal directed Little Louie. “What kind of Peeping Tom stunt are you up to, Louis Bannerman? I’ll see you at detention this afternoon. As for the rest of you boys—I’m ashamed�
��ashamed of all of you!”

  13

  Homer Fink did not appear in class that afternoon. I had arranged with Patty Esposito and a group from her class to distribute “Think With Fink” signs after school. We met in the library where I learned that Trudy Deal had been the last person to talk with Homer.

  Trudy explained there had been great excitement in the girls’ yard when Homer arrived. The girls protected Homer from the teacher monitoring the yard and shielded him when they lined up to return to classes after recess.

  “We got as far as the girls’ washroom,” Trudy explained. “Then Homer wandered off.”

  “Wandered off where?” Phillip Moore wanted to know. “There’s no way for Homer to have re-entered the school without having been seen by a teacher.”

  “Maybe he was caught,” Patty suggested. “Homer could have been sent to Mr. Muncrief’s office.”

  “He could be there right now.” Trudy’s eyes filled with tears. You would have thought Homer was a prisoner at Sing Sing.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” I said “I’ll look.”

  I started down the deserted hall and passed the library where Dr. Creel sat reading a thick book. Mr. Bowen was at the blackboard in the science lab. With colored crayons he was drawing a picture of a frog for his biology class which met the next morning. Miss Pierce was busy marking history tests.

  My shoes echoed down the hall and as I came closer to Mr. Muncrief’s office I walked on tiptoe. It wouldn’t be easy to explain my presence to the assistant principal, but I had to take the chance. If Homer Fink had been caught in the girls’ washroom, his campaign manager should be the first to know.

  When I was several feet from the assistant principal’s door, I heard Mr. Muncrief’s voice. I stopped and listened. “It’s only natural, Louis. All boys have a curiosity about girls. But that’s not the way we express it,” Mr. Muncrief was saying. “It may be that we are a little old-fashioned separating the girls’ playground from the boys’,” he continued. “But in many ways it’s an advantage to you young fellows to be able to run and play ball and not have to consider bumping into or injuring the girls. Have you ever looked at it that way? Did you consider that, Louis?”