Free Sendoff for a Snitch by KM Rockwood

that stuff to find the information they needed. But what did the office staff care if those of us who actually did the work had a harder time of it?
    We had two clipboards available, but management didn’t deign to provide staplers or paperclips here, and the clipboards held only so much.
    I folded down the corner of each set of papers and tore a narrow strip in the folded corner, then twisted it. It was an effective system that held the sheets together, the system we used in prison to keep voluminous stacks of legal paperwork organized. Staplers were kept locked in desk drawers accessible only to staff. Paper clips, which in practiced fingers made great handcuff keys, were completely forbidden.
    Since I knew Kelly would have trouble with the packing lists, I tried to catch up with her a couple of times a shift to help her with the paperwork. She got mad sometimes, since she didn’t like to admit she couldn’t do it on her own.
    Kelly finished loading the truck. The driver checked his load, signed a receipt, and handed it to Kelly. She glanced at it and folded it, then slipped it down the neck of her sweatshirt, tucking it on top of her large bosom.
    The driver closed and locked the back doors and climbed into his cab. His lights came on as he pulled away.
    A blast of driving rain blew through the open door. Kelly hurried over to hit the button that brought the overhead door down.
    I thought about my apartment. How high would the water get? Where was I going to go if staying there wasn’t possible? I could ask Kelly if I could camp out at her place for a while, but I was a bit afraid of what it would do to our volatile up-and-down relationship.
    As it was, Kelly treated me like a regular person, not a paroled convict. An equal. I was eternally grateful to her. Would all that change if she knew I didn’t have a place to stay? She might see me as super-needy. I didn’t think I could stand having her feel sorry for me.
    Not only that, but she was the only woman I’d ever slept with.
    I didn’t want to jeopardize a budding relationship, either with pity or too much togetherness.
    The apartment would either be okay or it would not. Nothing I could do about it now, though, other than to hope the water stopped rising before it ruined the furniture, not to mention the heating, plumbing, and electrical systems in the building. If the sanitary sewers backed up in addition to the storm drains, the whole place would be completely uninhabitable for a considerable length of time, even if the landlord decided to spend the money to get it cleaned up. I had to stop obsessing about it.
    What I could do, when I got off from work, was go buy some tarps, bungie cords, and rope, and I’d be able to get some more of the stuff, like the mattress, hung up high enough that it stayed dry. Maybe.
    We worked through the night. I pulled stock and assembled loads, lining up the pallets and crates in the order we expected to load trucks. When Kelly got swamped with work, I switched to loading trucks.
    As we got nearer to eight a.m., one last truck backed into a bay. The driver came in, shaking rain off his hat. “Done closed the bridge, right after me,” he said. “Almost didn’t make it. Water’s high, and you can hear them damn chunks of ice crashing into the bridge supports.”
    “You want me to load you, even if you can’t get back across the bridge?”
    “Hell, yeah. I’m going east, then south. I don’t need to go back over it again.” He chewed and looked around for someplace to spit. “Make sure you get it right this time. Last time, somebody here made a mistake.”
    I hoped it wasn’t on our shift. We hadn’t heard anything about it. “You got the wrong stuff?” I asked. “Or you were short?”
    He laughed. “That’s just it. I was over by one crate. So I just let it be. Made me a few bucks. But it’s likely that where there’s one mistake made, others will be, too. And not always in my favor.”
    The missing crate