Confessions of a Tax Collector Read Online Free PDF Page B

something tough.”
    “Tough doesn’t matter. Smart matters.”
    “I don’t know of any smart trees.”
    “I’m not talking about trees right now. I’ve known many good ROs who weren’t what you’d call tough, but they were smart. Smart will get you a lot farther than tough. Tough helps. Next question: What would you want on your tombstone?”
    That’s a good question,
I thought,
because you are fucking killing me.
I had not peed my pants since kindergarten. Not in twenty-two years. It was tough to sit there while my bladder threatened to explode. Tough, but not smart. I tried to concentrate.
Don’t give him the answer you think he wants. Just be honest.
But the honest answer was I thought quotes on tombstones were stupid. He isn’t being literal, I told myself. He doesn’t intend to record it for posterity. I said the first thing that came to mind.
    “‘He worked very hard.’”
    Now, what a moronic thing to hang over your head for all eternity:
He worked very hard.
I crossed my legs and the pressure moved upward, into my stomach.
    “You’ve quit a lot of jobs, Rick. What makes you think you won’t quit this one? No, the real question is, what’s gonna make
me
think you won’t?”
    “I don’t know how to answer that, Mr. Neyland,” I said. “A lot of things about the job appeal to me. There’s independence, opportunities to advance. I like that it’s not your typical nine-to-five desk job.”
    “Lemme tell you something, Rick: you are gonna
loathe
it. Everybody hates it, some more and some less, but especially during the training year you’re gonna say to yourself, ‘Why the hell did I listen to that SOB Neyland and take this stinkin’ job?‘ You’re gonna be confused and upset and dreading getting up in the morning.” A smile slowly spread across his narrow face. “But then, one day, and I can’t tell you when, but one day you’re gonna be sitting at your desk and it’s gonna hit you, and you’re gonna say, ’Jesus Christ, this is the easiest job in the whole damn world!‘ You won’t believe the government pays you forty, fifty thousand dollars a year to collect taxes. Most attorneys in this country don’t make that much. What’s the most you’ve ever made in a year, Rick?”
    I guessed. “Eleven, twelve thousand.”
    “And you busted your butt for that twelve grand, I bet. Long nights, weekends. At the ranch ripping your hands on the barbed wire, stomping in the cow patties. You understand what I’m getting at. Dollar for dollar, this is the easiest job ever invented by man. You don’t believe me, but you will. I promise you will. So here’s the bottom line, Rick. You want this job? Last chance. You want it?”
    “I want it.”
    “No going back. You’ll shatter my faith. I’m batting a thousand: no one I’ve hired has yet to leave the Service. My gut is always right, and my gut is telling me something about you, Mr. Yancey. My gut is
screaming
at me to do something to you.”
    “What—what are you going to do to me?”
    “I’m going to hire you, man!”
    He leapt to his feet and thrust his hand toward me. I accepted his iron grip immediately.
    “Let me be the first to congratulate you, Mr. Yancey. Welcome aboard the Internal Revenue Service!”
    Twilight had come and, with it, a fine, misting rain. I was on the interstate, heading home. I had driven my father’s GMC pickup to the interview, my old rattletrap having suffered another breakdown. I was in a state of shock. If someone had told me just a month before that I would soon be a tax collector for the largest employer in the federal government, I would have laughed. Me? The IRS? Never! It must be fate, I told myself. There was no other explanation. Fate had brought the Service and me together. The world had gone monochrome, and along the interstate the towering pines cast no shadow. I drove nine miles over the speed limit, the volume on the radio set to speaker-busting levels, and thought of towering white