Award Winner

Despite his initial self-consciousness, Harvey found like-minded souls on campus. Attending classes and then impromptu parties, Harvey’s sense of freedom, his sense that his life was actually his, that each morning was up to him to decide how to live his life, that the ocean of possibilities in front of him was something like an ocean, and that, though storms were likely, so was the joy of discovery and the overwhelming beauty of a sunset on the water.

Harvey tended to be quiet in class but engaged in one-on-one conversations. Sitting in a circle with his roommates, passing a joint and listening to Jimi Hendrix, The Doors or Sly and the Family Stone, it became easier for Harvey to turn off his doubts.

In his tiny high school, few of Harvey’s classmates rarely added to discussions in ways that surprised him. In contrast, the college lit class discussions were lively and provocative. A few of the professors were younger and knew how to step out of the way, letting the discussion go wherever it wandered, only occasionally reigning it in. Classes came alive. Ideas came alive. Harvey was turned on, even though he rarely spoke. When classes began, Harvey wondered if he was out of his depth among these young offspring of wealthier families, young people who’d grown up with books surrounding them, who knew they’d attend college since first grade.

Gradually, Harvey found others like him, other outsiders and scholarship students. As the year went on, Harvey sensed that the campus was a place for dissolving the boundaries. It was beautiful in that way. And the ladies, those female classmates with their beads and flowers in their hair. One was named Katarina. They started having lunch at a deli near campus. Her family had come from Lithuania to New York City. Not only was her accent captivating, as she spoke about the power of protest, the need for the masses to organize without a clear hierarchy and the potential of literature to stir the American imagination, she had incredible cheekbones and piercing green eyes. Harvey was smitten and intrigued. They experimented with each other’s bodies in ways Harvey couldn’t have imagined. There was no hesitation in Katarina, as if he was being transported, hovering above the ocean, like the surfing movie he’d seen a few years ago. Afterward, Katarina always insisted he go back to his dorm room. She was regimented about classes and her studies.

As a sophomore, Harvey took a class with a passionate professor who went by her last name. Thompson was an environmental activist who’d published in well-known magazines. The class analyzed the works of Rachel Carson, Thoreau, Edward Abbey and other naturalistic writers. Harvey made connections to his experience among the maples. He wrote a personal essay on the family and the maple trees of Vermont. The need to maintain the forest, the currency of syrup and the ways in which humans can sustain the forests. He described how using a tree’s resources and sustaining the trees was an antidote to deforestation. He also thought about the sound of the axe splintering endless logs. The backyard chopping sessions of his father, a necessary chore, done to provide heat in the frigid winter months. The professor called Harvey in to her office and praised him for his writing. She remarked on his self-examination and his ability to make connections to the wider issues. She encouraged Harvey to register for her rhetoric class, starting in the spring. Katarina registered, too.

In the rhetoric class, the final assignment was a protest speech. There were four options for topics. The environment, war, civil rights and disability rights. Harvey wrote about the Vietnam draft lottery, the generational antagonism toward a better future without war, and the way war had shaped his father and uncle’s lives. Harvey’s experience in college was his pathway out of war, but also, a pathway out of an obstructed vision of the future. Harvey connected the dots; how possibility and reality is shaped by the greater expectations of society. How an individual’s future, and a generation’s future depends on seeing wider possibilities. He also saw how Vietnam could exist as a perpetual cloud for his generation.

Penelope had written Harvey a letter recently. Three of his classmates had now been killed in Vietnam. Frank, Michael and Louis. Frank was a bit of a bully. Michael was a good football player, a running back. Louis had dropped out after 10th grade to work on the family farm. Penelope wrote to Harvey to let him know and to say once again, how proud she was of his success in school. A few of his old friends were doing fine in Quebec. Last he knew, several others were still serving tours. Occasionally, Harvey still dreamt of himself in the jungle. Of his own sweaty, terrifying and untimely death.

At the end of the semester, Thompson called Harvey and Katarina into her small office at the corner of the English faculty building. Turned out, the professor had sent a few of the best student essays into a literary magazine for submission. Harvey and Katarina would soon be published. Harvey whooped with joy. Thompson laughed. Katarina received the news happily, but with restraint. Thompson encouraged them to attend a writer’s conference that summer in western Massachusetts. Harvey filled out the application with a newfound sense of self-importance.