Dear Diary, I'm In Love

by John A. Broussard

  “The milk-cooling system will have to be improved,” she said as she consulted her notes. She went on to add a list of what else had to be done before the contract could be signed. McKenzie listened quietly while doing his best to hide his annoyance. The state inspector had approved his whole operation; why should she insist on anything else? But then, he reasoned, for meeting state standards he was awarded a certificate to pin on the wall; for meeting Bernice’s standards he was going to receive a premium price for his premium milk.

  She must have sensed what he was thinking. “I’m not asking these things to be ornery, Bill. The core of our ad campaign is going to be the milk producers. Yours and the other Jersey farms we’ll be buying from will all have to meet the same standards, and they’ll be featured on the CreamRich ice cream containers, themselves. Pictures of milking parlors, prize cows, equipment—everything. Maybe we’ll even have photos of the individual farmers.”

  McKenzie guffawed. “My picture will guarantee your ice cream won’t sell.”

  She joined in the laugh, protested that he was underestimating his looks, then added, “Can you manage the costs of revamping?”

  That was something McKenzie had already estimated in his head. Forty thousand should do it, even allowing for unexpected problems. Mel Southwith at the First National would loan him that amount. “No problem,” he said. “I should have all those changes made and be ready to sign on by this time next month.”

  Bernice rose, saying, “OK. Let’s make that a tentative date. One month from today. I’ll bring my attorney and we’ll meet in your attorney’s office.”

  “Attorney? I don’t have any attorney, except maybe Oscar Melville who made out Mary’s and my wills.”

  She shook her head. “No way do I sign a contract without you having an attorney. Come on, Bill. These are changing times and you’re going to have to move into the twenty-first century. Whether you like lawyers or not, you can’t do business with just a handshake anymore. If it’s all written down and the experts look it over, that should minimize any misunderstandings. And I most certainly do not want misunderstandings.”

  Once the preliminaries were out of the way, they talked about their own families—Mary’s death, Bernice’s divorce, his regret at not having any children, her pride in her two daughters. It was a pleasant hour or so of conversation, and McKenzie wondered why two friendly people needed lawyers to make a simple business agreement.

  ***

  At the mention of a loan, Carter Robinson, the First National Bank manager, had sounded strange over the phone. Having known him for years, McKenzie thought little of it, and said he’d bring in the necessary documents—the last three years of tax filings and an up-to-date report on the current year’s income and expenses. That last item called for a stop at the office of Hubert Mays’ office, the farm’s accountant. Fortunately, both offices were nearby in Turnville, so McKenzie wouldn’t have to be away from the farm for more than an hour or so.

  Hubert’s surroundings were impressive, and the accountant himself even more so. Occupying the entire first floor of the brand new building he’d recently had built, and with several receptionists, secretaries and additional accountants and bookkeepers in the various offices and cubicles, Hubert Mays had come a long way up in the world, and in a very short time. Welcoming McKenzie into his own luxurious office, the somewhat overweight but expensively suited Mays, hand on his visitor’s shoulder, ushered him to a large leather office chair.

  “Can I get you something to drink, Bill? Oops!” I forgot. You’re a non-drinker. Maybe coffee?” As he spoke, and before McKenzie could answer, Hubert pushed an invisible button hidden among some wooden curlicues on the wall. A section swung open to reveal a well-stocked wet bar. “I’ve got an almost instant espresso brewer here. In the meantime, mind if I start the afternoon off with a drop of something stronger?”

  The coffeemaker did indeed produce a nearly immediate brew with minimum intervention. Settling down behind his mahogany desk with his own drink after providing McKenzie with a tiny cup of the steaming beverage, Hubert said, “Now, to business. I got a call from Carter, at the bank, and he filled me in on what he needs in order to consider your loan.” Pulling a manila folder over, he went on, “This should do the trick. A summary of your expenses and income for the year to date. It’s in pretty much the same form as the copies of your IRS returns he said you were bringing in with you.”

  McKenzie nodded, at the moment fascinated by Hubert’s carefully-manicured hand and gold-ringed fingers holding his drink, and thinking of the contrast to his own hands, which showed the effects of working on a tractor transmission an hour or so earlier that day. Life for an accountant was an easy one, and—as McKenzie took in the large, solid desk, the artwork on the walls, the thick rug underfoot and the rest of the lavish surroundings—obviously paid far better than dairy farming.

  Finishing his coffee, which he felt was inferior to the brew he produced at home (though he didn’t say so), he excused himself. The bank was the main reason for coming to town, and the sooner he had that business out of the way, the sooner he could get back to the surroundings he much preferred.

  As he climbed the marble stairs of the bank, McKenzie reflected on how times had changed. The bank building was well over a hundred years old. In sharp contrast to the entrance to the accountant’s luxurious modern building, the steps showed marked signs of wear from a century’s footsteps. Carter Robinson’s office reinforced the disparity with what McKenzie had seen a few moments before. Half the size of Hubert’s, there was none of the lush extravagance of the accountant’s workplace.

  Also, unlike the accountant, the banker was an old acquaintance of McKenzie’s, had been in the same high school class, and he and his wife had visited back and forth when Mary was alive. Somehow, though, the atmosphere today was—if not unfriendly—at least distant. There was no question but that the banker was uneasy, as he skimmed the documents McKenzie had handed to him.

  “Seems like your net is going down every year, Bill.”

  “Yeah. That’s why this deal with B&D is so important. Nice to know someone who isn’t turned off by butterfat these days. If I can make the changes she wants, she’ll buy my total production for the next three years at ten percent over market.”

  “Maybe so, but right now your credit is stretched to the limit.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Well, you know the loan we extended to you when you decided to buy that half section from Mantrell?”

  McKenzie nodded.

  “It means you’ve reached the limit on your security for loans. Now, I know you’ve always paid regular and all that, but the Federal Reserve is breathing down our necks. Too many banks have been going under, so we can’t lend on a signature alone.”

  “My cows are worth a lot, Carter. You know that.”

  A wry smile was the answer before Carter said, “The bank’s not about to go into the dairy business. We could manage to sell your land if you couldn’t meet your payments, but anything on the hoof is something we don’t want to get into.”

  “What this all means is that you aren’t going to give me the loan.”

  Carter shook his head. “What it really means is that we can’t.”

  ***

  The gloom was still hanging over McKenzie’s head as he opened the door to his house and heard the phone ring. “It can’t be worse news,” he thought.

  It was.

  The local Internal Revenue Office was notifying him of an impending audit.

  ***

  Hubert didn’t sound disturbed when he heard the news from his client. “Relax, Bill. It’s just routine. They’ll do most of their investigating right here in my office, and everything’s in order. The most they’ll do when they come out to the farm is to check and to make sure you haven’t bought some fancy equipment with cash you’ve squirreled away that you didn’t report.”

  The conversation had been reassuring, though McKenzie figured accou
ntants were just accustomed to such visits. He wasn’t, and he expected two hard-nosed, suited investigators who would want to go through his bureau drawers. Mistaken as he had been about Bernice, he was even more so by the couple who arrived that morning. The agent in charge was a pleasant-faced, middle-aged woman accompanied by a much younger man. Both were dressed in what were hardly city clothes. Levis, wool shirts, boots. “These two know what a farm is like,” he thought as he shook hands.

  Hubert’s prediction was essentially correct. After being invited into the kitchen, the young agent broke out his laptop and quickly scanned through some receipts and cancelled checks he’d downloaded from the accountant’s office. Erik was standing by, fascinated by what he was seeing on the screen, with the agent happy to tell him what he was doing. McKenzie and the woman left them to their computer talk while he took her out for a guided tour of the premises.

  “I was born and raised on a farm,” she commented as they leaned on the fence watching the cows heading toward the milking parlor for the noon milking. “Dad always had a milker or two and my brother and I took care of them. I get homesick every time I’m around a cow.”

  The friendliness prompted McKenzie to ask why he was being audited, and the agent seemed surprised at the question. “Didn’t they tell you when they called? Obviously they didn’t. This has nothing to do with questioning your returns. The Service is trying to establish a baseline for various farm enterprises. Yours was just picked at random. We aren’t doing any probing.” She smiled. “We’re just trying to get some idea of how much a farm this size brings in, what your market is, what kind of expenses you have, and how much it costs to run your operation.”

  McKenzie returned the smile, though his was somewhat wistful. “It seems like it’s costing more every year and bringing in less and less.”

  “My Dad used to say the same thing. I am surprised at how little you’re making, though. I never realized how much feed it takes to keep a dairy herd producing, and it looks like you’ll be needing some new equipment soon.”

  McKenzie filled her in on the prospects with B & D, and she wished him luck. Returning to the house, they found the other agent and Erik now sitting at the desk top, obviously at an advanced stage of entering data. Erik looked up as they entered. “Mark’s showing me how to fill in a spreadsheet. He says the bookkeeping and accounting is really easy with this kind of software, and it sure looks that way. Look. We did it for all of last year.”

  To humor his young employee, McKenzie looked, but the enormous table of figures meant little to him, so he suggested they all adjourn to have a snack. Coffee and some store-bought cookies were on the agenda, with Erik and Mark too engrossed with the computer screen to take much notice. But McKenzie had a sympathetic audience at the kitchen table as he described the problems he was having in cash for the changes he needed to make.

  It wasn’t until that evening, as McKenzie and his helpers cleared off the supper dishes, that an enthusiastic Erik announced, “You know, Bill, there’s no reason why I couldn’t do all the bookkeeping for you. It really is simple.”

  McKenzie gave it some thought before saying, “I can’t see why not. I could always have Hubert check your figures. If you can handle that part, it could save some money, and I’m going to have to do a lot of scrimping these coming weeks.” Coming months, he thought to himself, as he rehearsed in his mind the phone call he knew he’d have to make to Bernice that evening.

  “Why don’t you two go off to your bookkeeping?” Baldy asked as he moved off to the kitchen sink. “I’ll finish the cleaning up and take care of the evening milking.”

  McKenzie rapidly decided the bookkeeping was beyond him, as Erik waxed eloquent over accounts receivable and accounts payable while pointing out figures on the screen. “If you have any recent receipts, and records of income, I can put them all on the hard disk.”

  McKenzie shrugged, ran down the shoebox he kept receipts in until his monthly delivery to Hubert, and took it along to Erik with the warning, “Don’t lose those bills. Hubert would give me what-for if I didn’t have them all together for him every first of the month.”

  A nod and Erik was back punching away at the keyboard, while McKenzie tried to decide the best approach to Bernice, first to explain his financial situation and second to ask for an extension of the deadline they’d set. He was sure that somehow, someway, he could come up with the necessary cash. If worse came to worst, there was always the possibility of being carried by the local hardware store and some of the contractors he’d worked with for years. It wasn’t an ideal solution, but surely he would be able to pay them off once he was selling his full production to B&D.

  Bernice’s reaction was not what he had expected. “Look, Bill, I have to come up that way tomorrow to look at another farm. How would it be if I dropped by? Maybe if I can look over your books, we can figure something out. I really do want to draw up that contract.”

  “The books!” McKenzie laughed at the expression. He had none, so it would mean another visit to Hubert’s, but he’d wait on that. Maybe a second tour of the farm instead might convince Bernice that some of the more expensive changes might not be needed. By noon the next day, he’d again changed to a clean set of coveralls, and this time did take the time for a second shave.

  Bernice was the passenger in the B&D van, as a pretty young girl slipped out from behind the wheel. The resemblance to the older woman was unmistakable. Bernice introduced one of the two “Daughters” from the company name. “Becky Anne is my bookkeeper. She’s majoring in business administration at the junior college and already knows more about computers than I’ll ever know.”

  “Maybe she can give Erik a few tips. Come on in. If I know him, he’ll probably be in there working away.”

  McKenzie was amused at the encounter between the young persons. It reminded him a bit of two calves suddenly thrown together in a pen, wary of each other and circling, then finally deciding to put up with the company. In this case, the computer seemed the key to quick mutual acceptance. Within moments the talk of gigabytes, applications, spread sheets and the like drove Bernice and McKenzie out to the more congenial company of Baldy, who was in the milking parlor hooking up the cows coming in for the noon milking.

  Obviously at home in these surroundings, Bernice followed the two men along the lines of animals, chatting about their health, production, feed and other matters she was thoroughly familiar with. “Dad raised beef cattle,” she said, but we always had one milk cow—just for the family. Far cry from all this.” She waved a hand at the long row of animals connected up to the machines. McKenzie was amused to think that two women—Bernice and the IRS Agent—could look so different yet have a common farm background.

  Talk finally drifted to the inevitable after they’d returned to the house and settled down to coffee at the kitchen table. Bernice shook her head. “I can’t back down on the changes, because the marketing of this whole line of ice cream is going to stress the production end. But maybe you and I can figure something out. Maybe an advance on future income.”

  McKenzie didn’t like the idea, and was pointing out that they would have to go into town to his accountant’s office, when the Erik and Becky Anne answered the call for lunch. Erik had several sheets of paper which he passed across the table, grinning as he did so. “See. Every bit as good as what old Hubert produces. This one is the complete financial record that Becky Anne and I did for this last month, and this other one is the comparable one for the same month last year.”

  Bernice was the one who reached for them while McKenzie busied himself with brewing coffee and rummaging around in the refrigerator for something edible and suitable. Her exclamation caught his attention. “Bill! What in the world were you feeding last year. Hay and feed costs were almost four times what they are this year.”

  Puzzled, McKenzie came over to look at what Bernice was talking about. “That makes no sense,” he said. “I actually have more cows this year, since I’ve got extra past
ure. And I had plenty of my own hay last year. I don’t remember buying even one bale. It must be a mistake.”

  “We need the checks you made out,” Bernice said.

  Erik looked up from the sandwich he was putting together at the counter top. “We have copies for the past three years. That IRS agent scanned the originals and I made a copy of his disk. If you want to see them, I can print them out.”

  Becky Anne and Erik went off to the computer carrying their sandwiches and soft drinks. Erik returned soon with several sheets of the cancelled checks. Within moments Bernice was comparing them with the checks for the current month. McKenzie peered over her shoulder.

  “You should remember these,” she said, pointing to a check for a large amount made out to a feed store in a nearby town.

  McKenzie shook his head. “I never ordered that. I’m sure.”

  “Your signature’s on the check, along with your accountant’s.”

  An embarrassed silence followed. “It was Hubert’s idea when I first went to him for us to have two signatures on the checks. He said it was a safeguard against forgery and the like.”

  Bernice shrugged. “That’s not a bad idea. But if you signed this check, how come you don’t remember it? That’s a lot of money.”

  McKenzie shifted uneasily in his chair. “Well, it got to be too much of a hassle—me signing a check and sending it in to Hubert for every piddling little thing, so I just signed up a bunch of them.”

  “You what?” Bernice's voice rose, she shook her head in disbelief , reached for the sheets of cancelled check copies and went on before McKenzie could answer her question. “Look through these Bill. How many of them do you not recognize?”

  McKenzie’s horror showed, even without his saying a word. Several checks were to companies he had never heard of, for feed and supplies he had never ordered, in amounts far larger than any he would have written.