The real Tax Man

I didn’t know it at the time, but I married the daughter of a Tax Man.

He’s not an IRS agent or a CPA. He’s a regular guy named Bill, but at tax time he dives into a paper storm of his own making. Focused like an Olympic athlete, he pushes himself to the limit. Pushes the family as well.

For me, watching him work is better than digital cable. A veteran LSU research scientist, he throws himself at taxes as though it were an article for an international journal on the effects salinity and temperature have on Leptasterias reproduction.

By the time you read this the Tax Man will be up to about eight cups of Community dark roast a day. His voice can boom on a good day, but this time of year he cranks it up a notch. Those who know him best will simply stay out of his way. And we’ll definitely stay out of the dining room, where a tornado of receipts, printouts and scratch paper festoons the table.

The whole table. Seats eight people on Sundays, but for three weeks a year it’s a paper feast for one. Only Shelby the mellow black Labrador may enter, but even she knows something’s wrong, so she sleeps nervously in the corner, awakened every few minutes by an Ugh! or a What?! blurted to no one in particular.

“Dad?” one of the Tax Man’s children might call out, “I’ve impaled my arm in a power saw out in the garage, and I’m losing a lot of blood. A little help?”

I’m doin’ the taxes in here! he’d bark back.

“Honey,” the Tax Man’s woman might call from the other room. “There’s some sort of retrospective about the 1970s Steelers on TV, want to come watch it?”

Are you nuts?! Doin’ the taxes!

One year he actually took the taxes along on the family vacation, working in the hotel while the kids cavorted at Astroworld.

I suspect, however, that he relishes the small freedoms his self-imposed financial cloister affords him: occasional midday naps, temporary absolution from chores.

Help clean the kitchen? Come on, Versa! The deadline’s April 15th!

Something’s wrong with the cable box. Can’t you see I’m looking for Form 2 dash 27 here?

She used to be the family finance guru, but one day she made a mistake and accidentally paid a batch of bills twice. The Tax Man ousted her from office, declared himself minister of finance and has held the post since. But I’ve come to believe hers was a fiendish sleight-of-hand to shuck the job. Haven’t seen anything that diabolical since Auric Goldfinger tried to corner the world gold market in 1964’s Goldfinger.

Come April 15, however, life will return to normal.

Shelby will again sleep soundly under the breakfast table. There will be time to pore over the morning paper, dripping as it will with stories about CEOs and bureaucrats squandering tax dollars, which will make this couple of taxpayers mad, and they’ll gripe a little. But it won’t break their spirit or rock their world. Not really.

“Weather’s supposed to be nice tomorrow,” she’ll suggest over morning coffee. “Maybe we can take the grandkids to the farmers market.”

“Sounds nice,” her Tax Man will reply from behind the Metro section. “We’ll take Shelby.” And somewhere under the table a sleepy tail will go “thump, thump, thump.”