He’d been in Superior now for five years—longer than he’d lasted with any other place. Maybe it was on account of the war that he wasn’t itching to leave yet—this rumbling port town was a great place to see the action from if you were 4-F. But then, maybe Superior held his interest more because of its mood swings. He couldn’t abide those gentle towns that tried so hard to please, with their prim little bungalows and sculpted downtowns, their gentle rains and snows, their flowers. As though they were mewling, “Make me your home; we’ll be so happy!” Superior simply barked, “Stay if you want to; I don’t give a damn,” blaring its boogie-woogie music out of its Tower Avenue taverns late into every night, stretching awake before sunrise again the next morning with the clank and whine of metal, the whirring of pulleys, the shouts of bleary-eyed men.

Superior was a tempestuous lover, to be sure, howling and spitting and wearing away a man’s morale one minute, caressing him and murmuring sweet nothings the next. Spring, summer, fall, it could be so sweet a man never wanted to leave it. Of course, Harry reflected, burrowing his chin down closer to his neck, squinting against the spitting sleet, those three seasons typically accounted for only about six months of the year.

But, at least for the time being, he was content enough. From his third-floor office window at the Superior Gazette, as long as it wasn’t foggy or snowing a whiteout, he could see the hills of Duluth, Minnesota, rising up on the opposite bank of the St. Louis River. When his windows were open, he could hear the whistle and clatter of trains, the blasts of ships, as they moved their cargo that would ultimately reach nearly every part of the world. The stirring within him was placated by the knowledge (fanciful as it might be) that, any day he wanted to, he could stroll down to the harbor, stow away in the hold of a ship, and soon be halfway around the world. Oh, just knowing that the getting away would be so easy!

Harry took the marble steps in the Gazette building two at a time, ignoring the jouncing ache of his knee. The flight of stairs leading to the second floor was massive, directly in the center of the building’s large foyer. At the second floor, a 180-degree turn was necessary, either to the right or to the left, to reach one of two narrower flights that led to the third floor. Harry always turned to the left, since the newsroom and his attached office were in that direction.

“Morning, Maggie,” Harry said, bursting into the newsroom. “What’s new?”

“You tell me,” his assistant said, continuing to type. She was wearing her blue dress today, Harry’s favorite. She had worked for him for three years and he’d never told her.