The Infernal Boneyard

Today I woke up inside of a headache. A Randy Travis lament reverberated off the walls, “I’m digging up bones, I’m digging up bones, exhuming things that’s better left alone…” Yes, it’s October 15th, deadline for deadbeat late tax filers, of whom I am chief.

It happens every year. It’s caused by anal retentive accountants who are in complicity with the IRS. Everything must balance, everything must reconcile. It’s a sickness unto death. They’re obsessive tyrants. They inflict grueling punishment with each unclassified check written.

My 2014 checkbook resembles an Accounting 101 practice set, volumes of undocumented scribbling, indecipherable numbers, missing check stubs and misplaced bank statements. The entire enterprise that it represents seems to be sustained by nothing but the thin air of hope and improbable promises.

The inside of a headache is like an insane asylum…a solitary padded room, cold, no windows, no door, no mini-bar, a concrete floor, a bed bolted to the wall and no room service. The only perk is a uni-sex toilet with no lid. I have a standing reservation there, made by my accountant. This year I vow a short occupancy in that hell by promising to prepare taxes on time. What a joke!

Here’s what transpires in this dungeon due to that irresponsible promise:


Every October finds me in the numbers boneyard,
There with my accountant, working on taxes.
We dig into checkbooks, files, transactions,
Sorting out details of last year’s train wreck.

Forensic tools lie in disarray.
A computer, red-ink pens, calculator, legal pads and laptops.
The conference table resembles an Operating Room,
A surreal stage to anatomically restructure the fiscal year.

We labor in lockstep while the IRS bell tolls.
The method is always the same. She digs deep,
Exposes the financial bones of last year’s transactions,
Facts without flesh, cold, dead, without feeling, impossible to recall.

We slog through the checkbooks, try to sort it out.
It’s drudgery, slow, agonizing and torturous work.
Her patience is short. She shoves. I sulk.
My memory escapes like steam from Yellowstone.

This check, that check, for what? For how much?
Every check is a mystery, prompting an interrogation.
You forget to code, to label, to balance, she says.
Your brain is a sieve, I work for an idiot. I agree.

My mind moans, like digging in red clay, hard and painful,
Fleshing out the bones of last-year’s debacles.
We break, take a reprieve from house arrest,
Walk to Starbucks, dragging our balls and chains.

The clock is an enemy in relentless pursuit, the incessant tick, tick, tick.

We continue the reconciling, resurrecting the corporate corpse.
This deal, that deal, they intertwine, twisting, turning,
Winding down an endless and tortuous road.
My mind spins cartwheels trying to assemble details.

Hours pass. The floor is cluttered with files scattered in random disarray.
Ledgers, checks and pizza scraps litter the room.
The table is a tornado aftermath, a primordial chaos.
We curse it and each other, but keep digging.

She threatens to resign. I threaten to accept. No one leaves.
Then, a breakthrough…one gets done, then another, a third, one more to go.
We can see the light…, until
She discovers some checks are missing.

Where are they? We panic, pound on the padded walls.
At wit’s end we call the bank, they lament the computers are down.
We fabricate the numbers, apply the sleight of hand.
The clock, prods with its tick, tick, tick.

The headache room shrinks, its walls close in.
Our heads throb, endless numbers swirl, demanding closure.
Long-term confinement looms.
So little time, always no time, always no time.

We abandon all hope of early release,
Incarcerated with last year’s bones.
By luck the banker calls,
Reconciliation is achieved at last.

**********

We break for beer, celebrate and come back for cleanup. I’d like to say we live happily ever after. But wait. She picks up a checkbook and notices missing checks for 2015. What’s this, she says?

I can see it coming. I sprint from the padded cell and yell, “Fresh graves for next year’s boneyard…it’s job security!” Her response echoes in my ears.


Bud Hearn
October 16, 2015