Don't Call Me Hero

Chapter Two

The wheels of my Harley-Davidson Sportster spit up wet gravel as I cruised down the lonely northern Minnesotan county highway. The bike hugged the center double line as I put more and more distance between the Twin Cities and myself. A motorcycle was an impractical vehicle for northern Minnesotan winters, but spring was starting to fade into summer, not that Mother Nature ever paid attention to days on the calendar.

The town was a speck on the map, nestled between national and state parks, about a three and a half-hour's drive north of Minneapolis. A wooden sign that looked like it had been made in a high school woodshop class welcomed me as I rolled into town: Embarrass, Minnesota. The Cold Spot.

I tugged at the collar of my leather jacket. The words on the sign hadn't been an empty boast. The bike ride had left me chilled to the bone. A dense fog clung in the sky, making the sleepy town more reminiscent of a costal city than its Midwestern location. It wasn't much past the dinner hour, but the sun had disappeared for the day about halfway into my trip.

I parked my bike in front of a Victorian-style house whose signage indicated it served as a bed and breakfast. It was the first place I saw on my drive into the city limits, so I took a gamble that it would be cheap but bug-free. I could have kept going, but I didn't have much faith that I'd find something better the farther into town I drove. I'd been on the bike for long enough. I just wanted a hot meal and an even hotter shower.

My plan was to stay at the bed and breakfast for only the night. I'd stayed on with Angie longer than I'd originally intended, and I didn't want to bother the town's chief of police at this hour. I would contact him in the morning to get settled. All I had on me was whatever I could fit into the saddlebags on my motorcycle. The majority of my belongings had arrived ahead of me and were sitting in boxes in the rental unit Chief Hart had procured. I was thankful that he'd arranged housing for me; I'd discovered soon after I'd accepted the job that apartments were a rare commodity in the unincorporated town. My sense of Embarrass was a village from which people rarely moved.

A bell rang overhead when I pushed open the front door of the Embarrass Bed & Breakfast. I flared my nostrils; there was a peculiar scent of potpourri or dying roses in the air. It was unpleasant, but it could have been worse. I would get used to the stench eventually, or it would get stuck up my nose.

The inner décor of the Victorian home was like being sucked into a time warp. But instead of turn-of-the-century antiques, the bed and breakfast was filled with artifacts from World War II. Big band music piped in from some unknown location. Old sheet music sat on an upright piano. A worn couch upholstered in imitation velvet was covered with a mountain of Easter Sunday bonnets, and a hand-painted sign announced tea time on Tuesday afternoons. Everything looked a little run down, but at least it was clean.

There was no one at the front desk, so I rang a bell for service. A small woman in a long jean skirt and white turtleneck walked out from a previously undisclosed location. Her hair was long and dark with grey streaks running through it, and it looked like it had never seen a brush or scissors in her lifetime. When she came closer I saw an embroidered cross on the collar of her turtleneck.

"What can I do for you?" Even from such a small sampling, I heard the thick northern Minnesotan accent.

"I'd like a room. The sign out front said you had vacancies."

The woman laughed at an unvoiced joke. "Every room is vacant. It's not tourist season, ya know. How long will you need the room for?" she asked.

"Just tonight."

She pulled out a guest book. "And how will you be paying?"

"Uh, credit card?" The words came out as a question because I had no idea if this place even accepted credit cards.