Best American Crime Writing 2006 - Mark Bowden [99]
(In most of Virginia’s suburban counties, the “pay half” provision is superseded by local regulations, Geyer said. But in other parts of the country, according to Jordan, even suburban neighbors often are liable for the construction and maintenance costs of their shared fence lines.) Some state legislatures have tried to head off problems by writing laws that dictate fence wire gauges and post diameters. Virginia’s law does not do this.
Every neighbor dispute is different, Jordan said, but often the two principals in a long-running feud are “two extremely stubborn people,” neither of whom is willing to take a first step that professional mediators call “unilateral deescalation.”
Translation? “Choosing to do nothing when it is your turn to do something extremely nasty,” Jordan said.
IT WAS EMBRYO-FLUSHING DAY at Holly Hill Farm, and John Ames had agreed to let me on the property for a visit. Ames had declined all media contact since the shooting, but in a brief conversation about cattle breeding outside the courtroom before his preliminary hearing, his lead attorney, Richmond defense lawyer Craig S. Cooley, by his side, Ames had volunteered that he thought the cattle business was on the eve of a revolutionary leap forward, a day when cattle breeders might produce enough cattle, at a low enough price, to end world hunger. If there was one thing that bothered him, Ames added, it was the thought of children starving in a world of abundance.
He also had an unusual, wired energy that day. John Ames is small-boned, of medium height—five feet ten inches, according to court records—but he has the lean build of a marathon runner and appears younger than his sixty years. His skin that day was ruddy from outdoor work, and his salt-and-pepper hair was shorn close to the scalp. His bright blue eyes blazed with an expression both inquiring and imperious, and his voice had the mild twang of his native Tidewater.
With Cooley’s blessing, Ames was willing to allow the visit, on one condition: There were to be no questions about the shooting, the feud, or Perry Brooks.
Holly Hill Farm is a big piece of real estate. Its rolling hills run alongside Route 207, just outside the town limits of Bowling Green, for a good mile and a half, until the property ends at the low-lying highway bridge that spans the Mattaponi River. The farm’s main entrance is flanked by two formal brick pillars, and the long driveway—a half-mile or so—is paved in rough-cut gray gravel. The drive cuts through a sweeping bowl of open pasture. In the fields, large, ink-black rectangles of cattle stand motionless except for an occasional shake of a massive, ear-tagged head. Up at the house, the only sign of life is one red horse in a paddock and the sound of barking dogs coming from behind the house’s tall front windows and thick white columns.
On the first of two visits, Ames appeared in a long-sleeved dress shirt and suit trousers, having come straight from his office in Richmond. He led a tour of the barn area, and talked about his love of farming. “Once it gets in your blood, it never leaves you. And you have to do it for love,” he added, chuckling, “because there’s no money in it.” He opened a gate and called to four of his prize-winning cows. “Come on, girls,” he said, and stopped to scratch one on the back.
Ames’s specialty is bankruptcy law, which tends to attract people who enjoy crunching numbers. During my visits, he displayed a keen command of the statistical side of his cattle operation, explaining the intricate spreadsheets by which serious breeders track data such as intramuscular fat ratios and weight gain. He rattled off his top cows’ eight-digit identification numbers with the ease of a man reciting his phone number, and in a small workroom, he unscrewed liquid nitrogen tanks where bull semen was stored in plastic straws as narrow