THE voice at the other end of the line wanted a lamb. Might Frank Randle have an intact male animal that he was willing to sell? “Yes, ma’am,” he replied. “I do.” The caller explained that she was a liaison officer at Fort Benning, an army base about 40 miles from Mr Randle’s farm. She told him to expect a customer.
Soon a black Mercedes, windows tinted, turned off the road that traverses his shallow Alabama valley, with its beautiful creek, and pulled up to the farmhouse. Two huge, shaven-headed bodyguards in black suits with Uzis strapped to their hips got out. Mr Randle selected a lamb and bound its legs. The flunkies placed it, baaing, into the limousine’s boot. Finally the car’s rear window rolled down, just enough for a hand—belonging, it transpired, to a Saudi prince—to proffer a $100 bill, a royal sum for a single creature.
That was 30 years ago. Mr Randle—now 64, lean, bronzed and moustachioed—still doesn’t know why they called him, though it helped that his sheep were and remain uncommon livestock in the pork- and beef-eating South. The transaction was the start of his role as a supplier of meat to...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/1O0fry4
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