One of the sailors lowered his Schwinn on a line. It banged against the side of the steamship a couple of times on the way down. Jens grabbed it and undid the knot. The line snaked back up to the Duluth Queen.

The small boat had a crew of four. They all looked at the bicycle. “You’re not going anywhere far by yourself on that, are you, mister?” one of them said at last.

“What If I am?” Larssen had ridden a bicycle across most of Ohio and Indiana. He was in the best shape of his life. He’d always look skinny, but he was stronger than most people with bulging biceps.

“Oh, I won’t say you couldn’t do it-don’t get me wrong,” the crewman said. “It’s just that-this is Minnesota, after all.” He patted himself. He was wearing boots with fur tops, an overcoat over a jacket over a sweater, and earmuffs on top of a knitted wool cap. “You don’t want to get stuck in a snowstorm, is what I mean. You do and you won’t even start to stink till spring-and spring comes late around Duluth.”

“I know what Minnesota’s like. I was raised here,” Jens said.

“Then you ought to have better sense,” the sailor told him.

He started to come back with a hot reply, hut it didn’t get past his lips. He remembered all the winter days he’d had to stay home from school when snow made the going impossible. And his grammar school had been only a couple of miles from the farm where he’d grown up, the high school less than five. If a bad storm hit while he was in the middle of nowhere, he’d be in trouble and no doubt about it.

He said, “Things must move, or else you guys wouldn’t be out here working in the middle of winter. How do you do it?”

“We convoy,” the sailor answered seriously. “You wait until there’s a bunch of people going the same way you are, and then you go along with ’em. Where you headin’ for, mister?”