Broker shook his head and studied his work-battered hands. A long time ago he had vowed to never get trapped working inside in an office. So now…machine guns.

He artfully rearranged his tool trove so that anything he needed was always in a steel tangle on the bottom. But it was good camouflage. Nobody would want to get dirty nosing around in the intimidating pile. He locked the rear door to his camper and got in and slowly drove out his driveway.

He pokeyed up the dirt streets at the city limits and climbed the North Hill until his tires picked up cement. He passed nicer homes that abutted the golf course and turned south onto North Fourth Street. He craned his neck when he passed the bed and breakfast that the movie star had just bought and was remodeling. She was nowhere in sight. Slowly, he rolled down a gauntlet of three-story woodframe homes with Rococo gingerbread trim. New tulips punched up in the flower beds. Lilac and bridal wreath were busting out. He passed the Carnegie Library, built in 1902, and the city hall and turned left on Myrtle and drove three blocks to Main Street.

He pulled into the FINA station and gassed up. With a dry hitch in his voice he asked the clerk for six pick-five lotto tickets. The Powerball drawing tonight was for 32 million bucks. He pocketed the tickets, a couple packs of beef jerky, and hit the road.

He drove north, up State 95, through cuts in the river bluffs and listened on A.M. radio for a weather report. The day would remain clear but with a kicker. Frost was possible tonight across the northern tier suburbs. His eyes were fixed beyond the tree lines ahead. Still cold up north.

North was more than a direction. As life in the Cities took a definite seedy turn, he could always count on one last clean place-deep winter up along the North Shore where he’d been raised. He replayed a memory from last November, during deer season. Strapped in snowshoes, he’d plodded the frozen shore of Lake Superior on a night so cold that sap exploded in the trees. Orion glittered down and solid bedrock buoyed him from beneath the clean snow and he had felt locked in place by a harsh beauty that was older than God. He wanted to get back to that moment. Leave the city lights behind.