The Return Of Jonah Gray. Heather Cochran
they were born. My experience with tax returns bore that out. Most California taxpayers offered up Social Security numbers showing allegiance to California, whether they were born there or were naturalized there. And if Jonah Gray had been from California originally, his Social would have begun with a number between 545 and 573, or else between 602 and 626.
But Jonah Gray was not from California, not originally at least—229 came from the East Coast, from Virginia. And specifically, it came from the southwestern corner of the state, from the rolling green hills at the cusp of the Blue Ridge Mountains, almost to Tennessee but not quite. The number 229 was from Roanoke, an old Virginia city along the salty banks of the river that gave it its name. I knew this because 229 began my Social Security number, too. So, 229 meant that Jonah Gray and I were from the same place, probably the same town, perhaps even the same zip code. That wasn’t just rare—it was something I had never before seen.
So he was a Virginian originally, but like me, he didn’t live there now. How long had he lived around Roanoke? I wondered. Had we crossed paths before? When had he left, and why? Had he been brought west by his parents, as I had been, years before? Or had he moved later, on his own volition? And how on earth did he end up in Stockton, in the agricultural belly of the San Joaquin Valley? Kurt had moved himself, his sons and his wife there to assume a tenure-track geology professorship, which he’d been torn about accepting because of its location. Stockton wasn’t commonly considered a hub of culture and industry. Indeed, it was known as a place to drive past without stopping. Then again, I realized, a lot of people might say the same about southwestern Virginia.
My phone rang.
“Are you busy?” Martina asked.
“I know why I’ve been getting those calls,” I said. I told her about Gray’s Garden. “I’m only telling you his name because he’s already discussed the audit on a public Web site.”
“Yeah, yeah. Your protocols.” On the far end of the phone, I could hear her typing. “Ah,” she said. “Huh.”
“Huh, what?”
“I like him. Is he single?”
“Are you kidding?” I asked.
“No. Is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t check?”
“I didn’t get to that field yet. You like him?”
“He’s got a good sense of color, for one. It’s an attractive site.”
“So you mean you like his Web site.”
“It’s inviting. Attractive site, attractive guy,” she said, as if I should have made the same connection.
“That’s not a given,” I pointed out.
“Well, he sounds appealing. If he grows plants, you’ve got to figure that he likes working with his hands. And I do like a guy with good hands. Did you check yet?”
“He’s from Virginia,” I said.
“So what? Oh, I forgot. You lived there, didn’t you?”
“I’m from there,” I corrected her.
“But you’ve been in California practically forever.”
“But I’m from Virginia. And the same part that he’s from.” I couldn’t explain, but I felt that this was important, even though it was true that I’d spent more than three-quarters of my life elsewhere. I looked back at the first page of his return and felt a sudden flutter. I realized that I didn’t want to share the news with Martina, but I had to. She wasn’t going to forget she’d asked.
“He’s single,” I said.
“He is? Perfect,” she said. “Where does he live? Or maybe I should just write to him through his Web site. I’m totally going to write to him.”
“He lives in Stockton,” I said.
There was a pause. “Oh.” She sounded disappointed.
“I’ve been assigned a lot of Stockton audits this year. It’s random. I don’t know why.”
“Never mind then.”
“What, just because he’s in Stockton?”
“Geographically undesirable, my dear.”
I felt myself smile a little.
“So what does Mr. Stockton do anyway? No way this site is a full-time gig.”
In his file folder, I flipped to the back of his return, to the field just below his signature. “He’s a journalist,” I told her.
Journalists weren’t often targeted by the Service, but like a number of my assignments that August, Jonah Gray was a randomly chosen compliance audit. Every year, a sample set of taxpayers gets tagged by pure chance. I appreciated compliance audits for the challenge of not knowing what to look for, but I did sympathize with folks on the receiving end. Out of the blue, they were ordered to gather their records and justify their claims and often had to bring in a certified public accountant to weed through the process. And still, maybe half the time, the IRS wouldn’t find anything amiss. My father, an accountant for going on forty years at that point, liked to say that compliance audits were like revving a car engine once a month. You needed to do it, if only to keep things running. Then again, as a CPA, he got paid no matter how things turned out.
“He’s a journalist?” Martina said. “That’s like you, only cooler.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’ve got to figure that auditors and journalists are opposite sides of the same coin. With auditors being the quantitative, nerdy side. No offense.”
“How am I the flip side of a journalist? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“You’re both ferreters. You’re more interested in finding the truth than pulling down a high salary. Journalists are always sniffing around for a story, looking for the why and who and how. Same as you. I bet he’s actually perfect for you. Too bad he’s in Stockton.”
“And that I’m auditing him.”
“I know, I know. You’ve got all those rules.”
Martina had to get off the line to take a call from her boss. After I’d hung up, I sat there, wondering if what she’d said was true. I supposed that I was a ferreter, though I’d never thought of myself in rodent terms. But she had a point. I sorted through bills and bank statements, interest income and mortgage expense and capital gains, in order to find my own version of a story. I was about to do the same with Jonah Gray’s life.
I stared at the first page of his return, studying the way he’d printed his address, 530 Horse hair Road, all caps, in black ink. He was obedient, at least in those first few lines. The IRS requests black or blue ink, but I’d seen purple and green, too. And once, pink. You’ve got to figure a guy who fills out his tax form in pink is daring you to do something about it. In his case, actually, we did. I don’t advise people to assume that the IRS has a hearty sense of humor.
Because Jonah Gray had handwritten his address information, I figured he’d moved to Horsehair Road within the past year, and that he’d prepared his own return. Taxpayers who’d stayed at the same address year after year are sent forms with preprinted labels. And an accountant would have printed the return straight from a computer.
I respected a self-prepared return. It took more effort, but it meant that Jonah was someone who wanted to know where his money went. I’d seen plenty of people get into trouble by signing everything over to CPAs, though I’d have caught hell if I ever told my father that.
So Mr. Gray was a journalist, I thought. I glanced at his W2 (stapled, as requested, to the front of his return). His employer was the Stockton Star, which a quick bit of research confirmed was Stockton’s