Page 23 of The Girl from Devil’s Lake (Joanna Brady Mysteries #21)
Fertile, Minnesota
The public library in Fertile carried a few daily newspapers for their patrons to read— The Wall Street Journal , The New York Times , and the dailies from Minneapolis/St. Paul—but other than posting the expected high and low temperatures for Phoenix on any given day, they offered very little Arizona-specific weather information.
Wanting to know more, Steve began to subscribe to several Arizona papers, ones from locations in which he might be interested—Pinetop, Sedona, Bisbee, Prescott, and Flagstaff.
The weather information he gleaned from those gave him a much clearer idea of where he might want to settle and where he wouldn’t.
Steve read his newspapers in the evenings, often in those later months, while seated at his mother’s bedside. “What’s going on with you?” she had asked him once. “You never used to be interested in newspapers.”
Fortunately, she was more interested in what was on television at the time and hadn’t tumbled to the fact that the papers he was reading were all from out of state.
“Just trying to keep up with current events,” he told her.
The other person in town who noticed his new interest in newspapers was Walt Whipple, the postmaster. Because there were often too many papers to fit in his P.O. box, Steve would have to go up to the service window to collect them.
“You thinking about moving to Arizona?” Walt inquired one day as he handed over Steve’s latest batch of mail.
Fortunately, Steve already had a plausible answer lined up and ready to deploy. “I’ve been having some trouble with my back lately,” he explained. “The doc told me it’s early stages of rheumatoid arthritis and that I might need to consider moving to a high, dry climate, so that’s what I’m doing.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Walt said. “Your mother would be lost without you.”
“Yes, she would,” Steve agreed. “That’s why I’m only considering it at the moment. I haven’t mentioned a word about it to her or anyone else, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t, either.”
“Absolutely,” Walt replied. “My lips are sealed.”
By the spring of 1976, Cynthia Hawkins’s medical situation had worsened to the point that Steve knew it was time to make his move.
After reading the Bisbee Bee , he learned that a number of local teachers, unhappy with the current superintendent of schools as well as the school board, were pulling up stakes and leaving town.
Shortly after reading the article, Steve placed a long-distance call to the superintendent’s office, asking if there were any teacher openings expected for the upcoming year.
Eager to reassure parents and students alike that there would be no educational disruptions, the superintendent wanted to fill those previously unanticipated vacancies as soon as possible.
He allowed as how there were indeed several openings, and having someone who could teach both English and chemistry was just what the doctor ordered.
A job application from the Bisbee School District and addressed to Steve Roper arrived by mail four days later, along with his latest supply of Arizona-based newspapers.
Fortunately that day’s mail all fit in the P.O.
box, so Steve didn’t have to pick it up from the window and deal with Walt Whipple’s nosiness.
At that point, Steve was finally forced to come clean about his intentions with Mr. Donner because he needed a reference from his current principal as part of the job application.
By then, however, his mother’s death was imminent, and she never had any reason to suspect he was leaving.
She died two days after the job application arrived.
Two weeks after her funeral, Steve received a special delivery letter containing both the job offer and a contract in need of signing.
He did so and sent it back by return mail.
Then, after writing a formal letter of resignation to the Fertile School Board, Steve was left with a month and a half to close up his life in Minnesota.
By the first of May, he had informed all his students he was leaving.
By the end of May he had unloaded his mother’s house and goods and sorted out her final affairs.
Years earlier, he had bought Coach Nielson’s house fully furnished, and he sold it the same way, with much of the Nielsons’ original but now well-used furniture still in place.
Having decided that when he left town for good he’d only be taking whatever fit in his car, Steve went to visit Gus Elkins’s car dealership one last time.
This time he passed on a Camaro in favor of an Impala.
Camaros were for younger hotshot types. It was time for Steve Roper to graduate into respectable middle age, and his new Chevy Impala filled that bill perfectly.
Flush with his inheritance, he was able to pay cash.
Unsurprisingly, Gus Elkins was very sorry to see him go.
When it came time to pack up and leave, the first item Steve loaded into the trunk was the large suitcase holding his work clothing—the suits, ties, and dress shirts that teachers were expected to wear—as well as his most prized possession, Gramps’s cigar box.
Steve left Fertile bright and early on the morning of June 5, 1976.
He felt no regret as he put his hometown in his shiny new rearview mirror.
In actual fact, he felt lighter than air.
He was giddy at the idea of being off on a brand-new adventure, and the voices in his head, awakening from years of enforced slumber, felt exactly the same way.