The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [138]
“We aren’t going anywhere. I’ll do it right here,” the agent replied.
John went for his revolver, but the agent didn’t seem to be armed. “What do ye aim to do it with?” John asked.
“Why, with my ears, of course,” the agent said, and sat down at John’s desk and began asking him a whole bunch of questions. Beads of sweat began to break out all over John’s doomy face; soon his collar was drenched, but the agent went on asking questions, and John went on sweating, and then he began squirming in his seat. “Auditing,” he reflected, was not quite as bad as the frakes, but it was worse than ticks and chiggers. Finally the agent stopped asking questions and began writing some figures on his pad. At length the agent informed John that he had underpaid his taxes by $756.00 plus 8? interest and penalty. John opened the vault and got the money and gave it to the agent, who didn’t even thank him for it. Every year after that, John grew to dread the appearance of the agent, who always came, always without warning except the general warning that he always came. Year by year, the people up in Washington collected so much money that they didn’t know what to do with it. Like Willis Ingledew, who had collected so much money he didn’t know what to do with it, and thus had bought an automobile that nobody noticed, the government, on a larger scale, began to buy battleships and tanks and submarines, which nobody noticed.
John Ingledew was not the only Stay More victim of the Federal Bureau of Internal Revenue. The black-suited agent also “got” Willis, and “got” Jim Tom Duckworth and Doc Plowright and even William Dill the wagonmaker, who wasn’t making much profit now that anyone who could afford it was buying an automobile.
The black-suited agent had a younger brother, who wore a brown shirt and brown pants, and worked for a different branch of the Revenue Service, a branch that claimed a right to put a tax on the distillation of corn. That was going too far. If they would allow the government to put a tax on their right to convert corn into beverage, the government might as well put a tax on their right to have their cows convert grass into milk. The next thing you know, the government would be putting a tax on a cow’s right to convert bullseed into calves. John Ingledew called an emergency meeting of T.G.A.O.T.U. to assess the situation. Stay More’s best distiller, Waymon Chism, was a member, and he stood to lose most if the man in the brown shirt located his still, which wasn’t hidden, but in plain view on the Right Prong Road, with a sign over the doorway, “Chism’s Dew, 35¢ a gourd, W. Chism Prop.”
The members suggested that the first thing he had better do is scratch out “dew” and write in something else. To fit the space, it had to be a three-letter word, and there weren’t many of those. “Sip,” “sup,” “lap” and “nip” were suggested, but considered risky. Better to disguise it entirely with “pot,” “lap,” “oil,” or “rot.” Better still to call it “tea.” Waymon Chism scratched out “dew” and painted in “tea,” but the man in the brown shirt came anyway and stared at his sign and sniffed the air and asked Waymon what kind of tea was worth 35¢ a gourd. Waymon offered to sell him a gourdful, but the man claimed he was a United States government agent and was not required to pay for it. They argued awhile, and finally Waymon gave him a gourd, which contained a genuine tea that Waymon’s old woman had brewed out of sassafras roots, goldenseal, wild cherry, May apple, spicebush bark, dogbane, red-clover blossoms, bloodroot, purple coneflower, peach leaves, wild cherry