Harvard University
Rick Novak writes:
As a high school senior in the Northern Minnesota iron mining town of Hibbing High School, I applied for admission to Harvard University. As part of the application back then, Harvard asked for a “personal statement,” without any specifics regarding what the candidate should write about. As an aspiring writer at the age of 17, I chose to respond with a 700-word short story, “The Amazement of All.” I believed the story provided insight into the type of rascals who lived my unique home town, how they behaved and felt, as well as my own personal values and writing style. The story worked, as I was accepted by Harvard. In one of the significant crossroads in my life, I chose to pass on Harvard and enroll at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. At that time, at the age of 17, I had never traveled east of Duluth, I had never been on an airplane or a train, and I felt more comfortable staying in the Midwest where I grew up.
I’ve always been proud of this, my first short story, which follows below:
The Amazement of All
Zeke Johnson pushed through the door of the Corner Bar and peeled off his wool stocking hat and leather gloves. It was twelve degrees below zero in the Minnesota night he left outside. He welcomed the warm air, the smoky haze, and the beery smell inside his second home. “Cab Driver” by the Mills Brothers played on the jukebox. Zeke mounted a barstool and sang out, “Cab Driver, drive by Mary’s place. . . .” His drinking buddies Tony and Randy, already lined up at the rail and on their second beer, chimed in the next line in the chorus, “Doop doobie do, Doop doop doobie do.”
This was Zeke’s ritual each day. After his shift driving a 40-ton dump truck, hauling iron ore from the depths of the Hull-Rust Mahoning mine, he met up with fellow miners to drink, smoke, and raise hell at the Corner. He made fifty-seven round trips between the pit and the crusher today. It was time to reward himself with some frosty mugs of Pabst Blue Ribbon.
The bartender slid the first foaming glass across to Zeke, who chugged it down in one long draw—one of his singular talents. The Mills Brothers sang, “Cab Driver, Better take me home.” Zeke joined in with the next line and crooned, “I guess I’ll always be alone.”Tony said, “How’s she hanging, Zeke?”“Same shit, different day,” Zeke answered. “One day I’ll die on the job, with my monster ass melded into the seat of my monster truck.”
Zeke felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned around to see a hunchbacked old fellow curled over the bar rail on his left. The man wore a faded yellow Minnesota Vikings cap pulled down and shading his face. Bloodshot eyes peered up at Zeke from beneath the brim. The man hadn’t shaved for days, and gray stubble armored his chin. A single tooth sprung from his lower jaw, a solitary pearly stalagmite in a gaping cave. His breath smelled like rancid bologna. Zeke had never seen the man at the Corner Bar before, and had no interest in looking at him for another second. He turned back toward Tony and Randy.
The tap on his shoulder came again. Zeke fired up a Marlboro, inhaled deeply, turned, and exhaled smoke into the old man’s face. “What’s up, Mac?” he said.
“No faith,” the man said.
Zeke’s eyebrows shot up, and he laughed out loud. “No faith? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Listening to you. Watching you. You’re down. No hope.”
“I just got done hauling 2,000 tons of rock so some asshole in Pittsburg can make a million dollars off it, and all I can afford is a barstool in this shithole, sitting next to a jerk-off like you.”
The man’s head rocked left and right. “Your anger is misplaced. You have a job. You are young, and probably healthy. You’re blessed.”
“Blessed? Maybe the last time I sneezed, somebody said ‘Bless you.’ That’s as close to blessed I’m gonna be.” Zeke turned back to his buddies, who joined in laughter with him.
“God is with you,” the old man said. “I see it. I know it. You need to see it and know it too.”
“God never did nothing for me,” Zeke said. “and all I want to see and know is when you’re going to crawl back into the hole you were hatched from.”
The old man shook his head again, and reached into the breast pocket of his threadbare denim shirt. “God is with you,” he repeated. “I’m going to show you.” He pulled a quarter from his pocket, and held it out in his open palm toward Zeke, Tony, and Randy. He turned the quarter over from side to side and said, “Heads there’s a God, and tails there’s no God.” Without another word, he flipped the coin high into the air.
Zeke, Tony, and Randy craned their necks to trace the parabola of the coin’s path as it rose, spun, and descended through smoky air. To the amazement of all, the quarter reached the surface of the bar and landed in the most peculiar way.
The coin stood balanced on its edge.