On Tax Day, Auditors and Cow Manure

Tuesday last was tax day and as I usually do around April 17, I ponder taxes, money, accountants.

All of this, of course, fuels imagery that erupts from the past: characters, events, some funny, some sad, some unwanted, some I am glad I remembered.

In 1979-1980 I worked for a big corporation in the ag business; cotton, lettuce, ranches, feed lots. I was part of a team who ran a feedlot on the Gila River Indian Reservation at a place called San Tan, southeast of Phoenix.

When somebody from the Phoenix corporate office called and said “Audit,” images of three-piece suits came to mind. Imagine a suit (an auditor) on a cayuse. A twirling lasso cutting the breeze, stirrups, chaps, saddle (an auditor?).

When you work outside at a feed yard you fight manure dust biting the eyes, the ears, the nose. Flies, sweat, cattle wild with fear. Frightened cattle don’t eat. That stops them gaining weight. It costs money when they don’t gain weight.

Not making money…hmmm…the thought of an auditor causing loss of money seems an oxymoron, but a lot about the cattle feeding business is strange. Somewhere the task of providing protein for a hungry world gets caught up with the drive to make a buck. We all understand making a buck, but when keeping track of making bucks hinders the efficiently production of a t-bone steak, it causes a buckaroo to pull off his Stetson and scratch his head.

They’d be out on Saturday morning. That’s what they said. “Saturday.” It was going to be 105 degrees so that meant a dawn start. We’d need to chouse the cattle before they had time to eat.

My cohorts, Robert, the manager, and Ed, the cattle boss, showed up before the sun sliced the eastern horizon. We copied lists and lot numbers and waited for the auditor.

A dark blue BMW pulled up. Two men, one whom I recognized as the corporate controller and who was wearing fancy orange and gold Nikes, and another whom I had never seen, got out and stomped up to the front door. Both looked rough…hangover rough, pallid skins. A day’s dark whiskers glooming their faces. When the controller walked in, those orange and gold Nike’s cut the dim like the glint of coin in a counting house. I thought to myself, those shoes are a bit brash for knocking around in cow manure.

Robert said, “It’s going to get hot fast. And it’s hard on the cattle. We best be moving now.”

Two cowboys showed up on horseback. Flies began what flies do: eat, lay eggs, die and bother horses, cattle and humans. The sun grew surlier as the day swelled.

As soon as the auditor and Mister Controller picked a pen of cattle (we were trying to see if the actual count matched what the records said) the cowboys drove the lot into an alley between the pens and we’d count. Dust rose with the temperature. The auditor broke an early sweat and Mister Controller complained about everything: the heat, the flies, the dust.

If the count was off, we’d run the lot out into the alley again and count them a second time. The cattle didn’t like it. Once or twice, big hump-backed smoky-gray south Texas steers hurdled the sucker rod fences which dismayed the auditor, messing with his tallies. Ed and the cowboys cackled. Mister Controller spent a lot of time pontificating on cattle, especially south Texas, half wild smoky-gray hump backs. It sounded like a bunch of…how should I best say it?…like a bunch of manure.

We had eight or ten lots to tally and were keeping pretty close on our counts which made Robert happy…less chousing the cattle. It was hard to tell what the auditor thought. He looked to me like he needed a cool place to vomit up his hung-over guts. Mister Controller kept babbling about cattle this and cattle that.

On the last lot, we drove the steers out into the alley and threaded them back in. In the middle of the pen, a big wet spot about ten feet across marked the tan dust a dark brown. All of us, the cowboys, Robert, Ed and me, avoided that spot. There was a leaky water line down below the four or five feet of dried manure.

Robert and Ed told everyone to stay clear of the wet spot. As we finished the count, Mister Controller crossed the pen, wiping his hands like he’d just finished a big chore.

He yelled at the auditor, “What’s the count look like?” as he stepped into the big wet spot. Ed yelled, “Hey, don’t go there.” Mister Controller frowned and said, “I don’t take orders from…” and he began to sink. As if it was all a fantasy, he walked on into the middle of the spot with a look on his face like he couldn’t believe what was happening to him. He sunk past his knees. Robert yelled, “It’s like quicksand.”

Mister Controller stopped and glanced down as he sunk an inch at a time. He stuck out his hand. “Help me.” The auditor looked at me and I shrugged. Mister Controller looked at me, too, but I shook my head. He almost sobbed, “Why?” One of us, I don’t remember, said, “Because you’ll pull us in.”

One of the things a cowboy loves to do more than anything is build a loop and rope something. They will rope anything…a dog, a goat, a horse, a set of horns on top of a saw-horse. I don’t know if one of us suggested it, but before you could slap a blow fly off the side of your face, the two cowboys had their ropes in their hands building loops. Mister Controller sank deeper, his face paralyzed by the realization he was caught in the nefarious grip of cow shit.

One loop, then two, whirled in the hot air. Somebody chuckled, and then laughed as one loop, then two, flopped over the torso of Mister Controller. Drawn tight, trapping his flailing arms. He yelled, “Hey, wait a …” We laughed, even Mister Hung-over Auditor, as the cowboys pulled Mister Controller out.

I don’t know how much weight gain was lost as a result of the audit. But there were other rewards, wastes and squanders. Mister Controller lost one of his fancy orange and gold Nike’s. Sucked right off his foot into that manure sinkhole. I have often wondered what else he lost.

Oh Outhouses, Four-Holers, and Burning the Heads

One of the Twitter headlines for The Washington Post.com on 4/5/2011 was, “Is it impolite to bring reading material to a public restroom?” I chuckled when I read that and not because of the inanity of the query, but because of memories that hove into my mind’s view.

In early April, 1968, I had just escaped from the siege of Khe Sanh and was killing time in the 1st Battalion, 26th Marine Regiment rear at Phu Bai south of the old Vietnamese imperial capital, Hue, waiting to go home. Luxurious being able to sleep in every morning on a cot, above ground, in a covered hooch, no mud, no incoming. Luxurious with hot showers, hot chow, movies, sodas, beer, no work parties. Luxurious, too—and this will sound basic, basic as hell—walking to the head with the latest edition of The Stars and Stripes military newspaper without doing the Khe Sanh Shuffle. Not worrying about being blown off the toilet seat while taking care of one of your most intimate acts.

The battalion head at Phu Bai was a four-holer housed inside a substantial building vis à vis the one-holers I was used to. I had some experience with heads…crappers. On several occasions, I had to burn the “shitters” as we called them in Vietnam. I had shitter-burning detail for a whole month in August-September 1967 on Hill 861. Alphabet (a Marine with a Polish last name too hard to say or spell), Spooner and I had given each other Mohawk haircuts, out of boredom, I suppose, and the Company Commander, after catching sight of one of us, ordered us to fix the damned things. So we did the only thing possible, we shaved our heads and of course, given military logic, that was worse than a Mohawk, so the three of us had to run all the way around the trenchline of Hill 861 as our fellow Marines pummeled and slapped and kicked us as we stumbled and huffed and puffed and elbowed each other to come in first which really was not part of the punishment, to come in first, but as you know, coming in first is important. As I hunched my shoulders and kept my face buried to avoid the hands and fists attacking me, I recollect I thought of Tyrone Power in The Black Rose when Orson Welles as the Mongol warrior Bayan forced Power’s character to run lengthwise on a log through a dangerous gamut of Mongol warriors slugging Power’s character with inflated pig bladders with the intent of knocking him off onto spearheads buried point-end-up on both sides of the log.

Our reward (Alphabet, Spooner and I), whether we finished the circuit of Hill 861 first or not, was burning the shitters and the trash dump. Which we did. Twice a day. Using gasoline, diesel, and wet matches. Ignominy was draped on our shoulders. We smelled like what we tried to burn. Everything was monsoon wet. We joked about it and laughed and exaggerated our every crapper-burning action, but no matter how hard we tried, we were shitbirds, as the term goes. Luckily for me, time and time-in-grade moved me past my shitbird moments, through the dank wet of monsoon floods, red mud, two trips out-of-country on R & R, and then as a grand finale, the siege.

Then on to Phu Bai, where the head in Phu Bai was not under constant attack, as had been the heads in Khe Sanh. Right now I can smile at the guttery notion of it all, running between incoming rockets, mortars and artillery to do your business, but men were killed and wounded while conducting their affairs in the head. So, being able to sit on the throne and read The Stars and Stripes without fear of flying shrapnel, even though there was little privacy between stalls, just a half wall, was still paradise. That’s one of the things you learn in war and privation, the elegance that can be had with the most basic of functions in the most basic of places.
In the head at Phu Bai, what was scratched on the walls was more interesting than reading in the paper about Lyndon Johnson deciding not to run for re-election, or who won NBA basketball games, or who got killed that week in-country. Some of the messages left dug into the unpainted walls were names, dates, home town, home states. One of the most interesting things I read:

We are the unwilling
Lead by the unqualified
To do the impossible
To help the ungrateful

I laughed when I read that little verse. It was cynical, yes, bitter, yes, but something about it drove home a little sharp stake near where I imagined my emotional heart, not necessarily the physical heart, lived. The unqualified out there tearing up a country, killing people, getting killed…and most of those we were trying to help, ungrateful. Not a comforting thought as you sat there, relaxing…not a comforting thing to think about. But like having to dodge shrapnel on the way to the crapper, not much about the Vietnam War was comforting.

To this day, while driving down country roads in Idaho, finding abandoned homesteads, often one can still find the outhouse. When I was a kid in Arizona, some of them were still functional. My grandfather had one on his old outfit. Tar paper, black widows, cold seat, hot seat, gossamer trailings into the dark corners. Flies. Seeing those old outhouses, with their doors flung open, hinges missing, throws memories at me, about incoming artillery rounds, my shitter-burning details, running the gamut, getting pummeled like Tyrone Power, and that message carved into the wall at Phu Bai.

I’ve never had an affinity for communal heads, and try to avoid them as much as possible. I’m not sure if that’s due to my bathroom days in a war zone, or the unwanted but often truthful messages carved into the paint on the walls. And whether someone carries Time or Good Housekeeping or Playboy into a stall is not my concern, nor is it my business.