Best American Crime Writing 2006 - Mark Bowden [94]
Brooks’s friends—Bobby Lakin, Wick Coleman—and others say that at its core, the feud was not so much about money or class differences (though those played a role), but something more intangible and fundamental. It was about respect.
“He didn’t treat my father as a human being, as an equal, as someone you would talk to,” said Kim Brooks.
During the trial over the disputed boundary line, Perry Brooks was asked if it was true that he had once fired a shotgun in the general direction of John Ames. Yes, Brooks testified. And was it true that he had done so in part to “needle” John Ames? Yes, Brooks said again. And why did he want to do that, Ames’s attorney asked him.
“I think he needed it,” Brooks replied. “Let him know somebody else was around besides hisself!”
PERRY BROOKS AND JOHN AMES MET, according to Brooks family accounts and court testimony, at a public auction for Holly Hill Farm in June 1985. Holly Hill, a former plantation turned dairy farm, had fallen onto hard times. The auction was not a bankruptcy sale, but the widow of the owner was selling by agreement with the farm’s creditors. Farmers around the county were in attendance that day. Ames, visiting from Richmond, approached Brooks to ask if there were any problems with the property. Brooks, Ames testified later, said no. The property was sold to Ames for about $442,000. Ames added the word “Corporation” to the farm name. Farm stationery listed Ames as vice president and his wife as president and treasurer.
According to testimony by both Ames and Brooks, they met again in January 1989 near their shared property line. Brooks had received the registered letter from Ames but had not yet formally replied. They talked about the cost of the fence, fencing materials, and the need to keep their herds separated. At some point, Ames reportedly remarked on the beauty of Brooks’s land and said that his own cattle “sure would look pretty on it.” The two men dickered. Ames offered to swap the fence bill in exchange for some of Brooks’s land. Brooks said no. Brooks suggested Ames just tie in this new fence to the one hundred yards of Brooks’s existing fence. Ames said he would agree, but only if they put the deal on paper and filed it at the courthouse. Brooks said no.
Brooks also told his neighbor that Ames’s proposed fence line was in error. It included a 1.87-acre triangle of land that actually belonged to him, Brooks said, by virtue of an old plat drawn up after the Civil War. That map, which used landmarks such as old sycamore stumps and white pine trees, gave him clear possession of that triangle of land, he asserted. In addition, he and the previous owner of Holly Hill Farm had made a handshake deal about the triangle years ago.
No, Ames replied, he had more recent legal surveys showing the land was his. The meeting ended with Brooks storming off, according to testimony.
At least three times in the months that followed, Brooks drove his tractor down to the disputed boundary line and nudged the new fence down, Ames alleged. He picked up posts and even a gate and carted them back to his barn, saying the materials and the new fence were over his property line and so belonged to him. On one of those occasions, Ames called out to him and demanded that he stop. Ames later testified that he had reminded Brooks then that they had talked about fencing the disputed section. Brooks replied, in so many words, that he didn’t care.
On another occasion, Brooks showed up at the offending fence line with a single-barrel shotgun.
“What you got there?” Orlett said Ames shouted over to Brooks that day, a query that Brooks heard as a taunt.
“I’ll show you,” Brooks reportedly called back, and he discharged the shotgun in the air, according to court and other accounts. No one was hit, but Ames was frightened enough to take cover behind a tree,