STORAGE

SHE WAS HEFTY, an older caucasian woman in her late fifties, and had long lost her accent that belied her Irish origins. Her hair was straggled and wrapped with a bandana tied "head band" fashion to block any sweat incurred during any day's work at the sheds. Adrianne managed the family storage shed business situated in a calm suburb among a population struggling to "become society" out of the edge of a suburban kettle of "have nots." Today whe was going out to purge the late pay bins for discovery of what the company could recapture from bad rentals. There were ten out of the two hundred sheds scattered across the one acre lot, one hundred fifty of which were leased to persons of varied backgrounds. Today's lottery would need to cover the month's mortgage payment on her home and lot utilities. She had remortgaged her home in a family deal through which they had purchased an acre of vacant land along the highway at the edge of town. The land was paid for outright but the sheds purchased to establish a storage facility demanded monthly payments to the note of $50,000. She rauched the sleeves of her sweatshirts and headed for the office door, " Mildred, I'm gone out to make count. I'm starting with shed B32... after working over to aisle C I'll stop back in the office. We can switch places, okay." The slightly younger woman at the counter waived her on out the door. It was going to be a long day. End of the month tallys and accounting, bill payments and purging late pays or abandonded accounts were all just part of the job. The regular inflow of hopeful renters added to the burden of the women's on site lock in position on every day's 7:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. shift. They were their own employees. Every few days Joan, another family member, stopped in to go out to lunch or bring a meal to be enjoyed by all three women. Joan was due to stop in for lunch hour chat.

She never knew what she was going to find during a purge, so Adrianne took a bag with her. There were trash bags at the head wall in each inner aisle so that clients and staffpersons could dispose of waste properly. The handbag was for items of value that could be sold to recapture losses from none paying customers. She read the list of ten lockers that needed her intervention today. Locks had been added to the outer front access doors to prevent the owners from entering their storage prior to payment of any behind rents, and the ten on her list were past due for eviction. Three military clients... they'd placed items in storage prior to departure for military duty. Four were business storage items set into the shed and used on rare jobs by a contractor. The roster included three business lots... one HVAC... one siding contractor, and one auto repair shop which held two lockers. The other three belonged to families in the middle of relocating to or from a housing situation. Adrianne turned her key in the office lockset of the closest unit and rolled the door over her head. "Well... well," she paused to think a bit and size up the pile of boxes before her. She reached down to a box which would have been placed into the shed on the tenant's first load. The top was barely fixed shut so that one of the flaps revealed papers inside. When she stood up she brought with her several envelopes easily plucked free. Agains she uttered, "Well well," looking over the lettering on each paper she pulled free, "Natchez Reservation Census," and "Registration Card... registration card... birth card..." she tucked the letters back into their envelopes and reached down for another set. When she stood again she had to lean against the wall to maintain her composure. The tenant was a chieftan of some Indian reservation and the box she was pulling from held a roster of the reservation's registered population. There were other boxes above it piled nearly to the ceiling of the unit. She pulled a few down and set them aside to clear a path into the unit. Five or six boxes removed gave her access to the front... the renter's front, of the storage unit. She flipped the light switch to turn on the interior overhead light. Now that she could see a little better, Adrianne was more satisfied with her find. "These were artifacts!" she almost yelled out loud into the recesses of the long aisles beyond the boxes in this one storage shed. She yanked a box on the first row spilling it onto the floor of the yellow shipper locker constructed for prevention of theft. The heavy metal surrounding the prize stored inside set off resounding clanging and thudding with each item jerked from or spilled out of the boxes as she plunged hand over fist into the piles before her. "Museum artifacts!" her face revealed a shriek of hungry greed lavishing over the audacity of whoever set loot into her property and left it this way... open for the taking. Unpaid was determinedly... OPEN for the taking. And Adrianne was ready for the job. Taking was the best part of this business. An hour later she left the unit with her bag filled with evidence to be shown to the girls back in the office. After replacing the lock on the rear door, she headed there with the loot. She burst into the small front office dropping trinkets and spilling paper documents yellowed from age, across the floor then upon the desk where two other women were peering at a computer screen. Adrianne's re-entry startled them, "What are you doing back so soon? It's only..." The question coming from the wrong person caught Adrianne off guard causing her to drop what remained in hand and reply, "What are you doing here so early?" A short staring contest took hold on the three until Joan spoke up, "I traced out that B storage character. He's in the hospital... been there for over at least one month. That old guy that came in with the trailer of stuff is a museum antic... tribal representative. He's a federal agent for the BIA." The items strewn into the room only moments ago took their attention and Mildred offered up inquiry, "What's this stuff?"

(to be continued)