The Stranger You Seek - By Amanda Kyle Williams Page 0,112

to another grower. It’s not personal. I got to make money and Jim won’t come down on his price come hell or high water. It don’t make a damn to him that I helped him out when he was just getting started.”

“Sounds personal to me,” I observed.

“Well, maybe it is a little, but I still wouldn’t give two cents for that damn ole cow.”

Just outside Ida May’s restaurant, I saw the stack of Atlanta papers in a wire rack near the front door with a handwritten sign putting the price for dailies at seventy-five cents and the Sunday paper at two and a quarter. The headlines screamed: Gruesome Murder in Morningside Home. Wishbone’s 8th.

I went back inside and paid the cashier, stepped out on the street and walked with the newspaper. I needed to walk. It was barely ten-thirty in the morning and already I’d unbuttoned the top of my pants under my shirt. If I didn’t get out of the apple capital soon, I’d have to hire a truck to get me home.

I spent the next three hours checking off the names on Big Jim’s enemy list, which included the Snell family, who owned the second-largest peach and apple orchards in Georgia, claimed to have a town named after them outside Atlanta, claimed to have no ill feelings for their largest competitor, and claimed to be “good God-fearing folks.” They happily gave me a tour of their orchards, their processing center, their home, and their horse ranch. They fed me pimento cheese sandwiches cut into little squares, what we call pamina cheese down South. They invited me to church with them, but I would have just as soon been beaten with a stick.

In the hills above East Ellijay, I discovered that Clyde Clower, the sixth name on Big Jim’s enemy list, was not going to be as forthcoming. He slammed the door so hard that the double-wide shook, leaving behind him only the faint smell of Budweiser and marijuana. Big Jim had fired him a couple of days before Sadie disappeared. I snooped around outside a little, didn’t find anything, but Clyde was the kind of guy who looked like he was perfectly capable of getting ripped and stealing a cow. I decided to come back later and keep an eye on him.

I was beginning to feel worried for Sadie. She trailed around behind Big Jim’s family because she preferred them to the other cows. She opened doors and walked into the house. That cow was the best dog they’d ever had, Big Jim had said. And she was totally socialized now to humans. I hated to think of her in a strange place scared and with separation anxiety.

I decided to drive over to Ida May Culpepper’s and have a look in her pasture. My Neon huffed and puffed up the hill to her ranch house and a split-rail fence, three posts high, a barn, and a few cows. I walked to the fence, took out the picture of Sadie. Looked at the cows, looked at the picture. Back at the cows, again to the picture. I had no idea. I called Sadie’s name a few times. They all ignored me. It was more of a snub, really. They raised their heads briefly, appraised me, then went back to grazing.

There was a basket of apples Big Jim had given me in my car. Thinking that apples might be attractive to a cow, I got a few of them, put them on the ground while I climbed over the fence, and made my way out into the pasture for a closer look.

“Sadie, come on, baby. Want an apple?”

The cows started off slow, meandering toward me, then I heard hoofs galloping in the distance. I turned. It was a bull running fast, red clay dust boiling up behind him. His head was low and he looked mad. A flock of crows that had been pecking around in the fields lifted up at once. This startled the cows. They picked up speed, became deliberate and fast until they were all coming at me full gallop.

I started to run, turning to lob a few apples at them. They kept coming. Believe it or not, cows are fast once they get going. I wasn’t getting paid nearly enough to get trampled in Ida May’s pasture. Hurling my last apple at them, I picked up speed and made a leap for the fence, squeezed through just as the bull got there. He was milling around,