Candle Burning

All the mental giants at Smoky River Junior High are assembled in the auditorium, waiting to be pronounced the lights of the world for their academic achievements. All their moms are here, too. When Homer enters, his hair looking like a flopped pie on his head due to the baseball cap he’d worn at the doubleheader defeat that afternoon, he practically can feel the brain power buzzing in the air, ready to strike the less enlightened with a geometrical left jab or a hypothetical right hook. He looks around at the girls in their spring dresses that go “swish, swish”; he looks around at the guys, all scrubbed and combed and fidgeting in their seats; he looks around at all the halos in the air, and for a second, he wonders whether his presence is the result of some sort of administrative miscalculation.

There’s no Stroker, no Grunter here, upon this stage so far from the real world. As best as he can fathom, he has nothing in common with these people. But here he is, anyway, a clod imposter, with dust from the dugout still caked on his goofily grinning face, poised to hold out his greedy mitt for some hallowed pin and certificate proclaiming him to be an egghead of the world.

So Homer sits through the ceremony, listening to his old friend (sure, right) Jane Mars deliver a passionate speech about excellence in academics and children being our nation’s greatest resource and all that, and at one point, he wants to run up there with a big old knife, spill his guts on the stage and yell, “Okay, everybody, let’s make this the best Easter ever!”

But he just sits there, squirming politely, doing a slow, silent burn, wondering whether it’s possible all these spectators actually believe he qualifies as a learned, industrious young man with far-reaching intellectual and humanitarian ambitions, when really he’s adept only at copying from and paying off the right people. He wonders whether they’d ever understand—even if he’d fanned four times in the doubleheader (three times with the bat resting comfortably on his shoulder), let two grounders trickle between his legs and fired one ball clean into Lake Pearl—he is, above all, an athlete, and his primary goal in life isn’t to strut up on stage, be handed some pin and certificate and light a candle as some spiritual symbol of having copied Martin Finkmeyer’s papers in exchange for Italian hero subs from Basanasse’s deli.

Maybe, he thinks, maybe I’ll do just that. Maybe I’ll just stand up and scream that
“Martin Finkmeyer’s the real reason we’re all assembled here today, and it’s his enormous melon we’ve come to worship!”

But no, he knows it’ll never happen, because he’s been raised a Christian.
When his turn comes, Mom pops off a flash pot in his face, practically singeing his eyebrows, as he marches ceremoniously up to the stage to get his inductee’s pin and certificate, a handshake and a knowing grunt from Mr. Blanke, the principal.

Then Homer lights his candle.

Everyone watches, stunned, as he touches the flame to the wick. He feels the solemnity of the occasion pushing down on his shoulders. And as he glances at the crowd, his face bathed in a sweet angelic glow, he wonders whether anyone can see the horns.