John Grisham


A Time to Kill


Billy Ray Cobb was the younger and smaller of the two rednecks. At twenty-three he was already a
three-year veteran of the state penitentiary at Parchm^an. Possession, with intent to sell. He was a
lean, tough little punk who had survived prison by somehow maintaining a ready supply of drugs
th^at he sold and sometimes gave to the blacks and the guards for protection. In the year since his
release he had continued to prosper, and his small-time narcotics business had elevated him to the
position of one of the more affluent rednecks in Ford County. He was a businessman, with
employees, obligations, deals, everything but taxes. Down at the Ford place in Clanton he was
known as the last man in recent history to pay cash for a new pickup truck. Sixteen thousand cash,
for a custom-built, four-wheel drive, canary yellow, luxury Ford pickup. The fancy chrome wheels
and mudgrip racing tires had been received in a business deal. The rebel flag hanging across the
rear window had been stolen by Cobb from a drunken fraternity boy at an Ole Miss football game.
The pickup was Billy Ray's most prized possession. He sat on the tailgate drinking a beer, smoking
a joint, watching his friend Willard take his turn with the black girl.
Willard was four years older and a dozen years slower. He was generally a harmless sort who had
never been in serious trouble and had never been seriously employed. Maybe an occasional fight
with a night in jail, but nothing that would distinguish him. He called himself a pulpwood cutter,
but a bad back customarily kept him out of the woods. He had hurt his back working on an offshore
rig somewhere in the Gulf, and the oil company paid him a nice settlement, which he lost when his
ex-wife cleaned him out. His primary vocation was that of a part-time employee of Billy Ray Cobb,
who didn't pay much but was liberal with his dope. For the first time in years Willard could always
get his hands on something. And he always needed something. He'd been that way since he hurt his
back.
She was ten, and small for her age. She lay on her
elbows, which were stuck and bound together with yellow nylon rope. Her legs were spread
grotesquely with the right foot tied tight to an oak sapling and the left to a rotting, leaning post of a
long-neglected fence. The ski rope had cut into her ankles and the blood ran down her legs. Her
face was bloody and swollen, with one eye bulging and closed and the other eye half open so she
could see the other white man sitting on the truck. She did not look at the man on top of her. He
was breathing hard and sweating and cursing. He was hurting her.
When he finished, he slapped her and laughed, and the other man laughed in return, then they
laughed harder and rolled around the grass by the truck like two crazy men, screaming and
laughing. She turned away from them and cried softly, careful to keep herself quiet. She had been
slapped earlier for crying and screaming. They promised to kill her if she didn't keep quiet.
They grew tired of laughing and pulled themselves onto the tailgate, where Willard cleaned himself
with the little nigger's shirt, which by now was soaked with blood and sweat. Cobb handed him a
cold beer from the cooler and commented on the humidity. They watched her as she sobbed and
made strange, quiet sounds, then became still. Cobb's beer was half empty, and it was not cold
anymore. He threw it at the girl. It hit her in the stomach, splashing white foam, and it rolled off in


the dirt near some other cans, all of which had originated from the same cooler. For two six-packs
now they had thrown their half-empty cans at her and laughed. Willard had trouble with the target,
but Cobb was fairly accurate. They were not ones to waste beer, but the heavier cans could be felt
better and it was great fun to watch the foam shoot everywhere.
The warm beer mixed with the dark blood and ran down her face and neck into a puddle behind her
head. She did not move.
Willard asked Cobb if he thought she was dead. Cobb opened another beer and explained that she
was not dead because niggers generally could not be killed by kicking and beating and raping. It
took much more, something like a knife or a gun or a rope to dispose of a nigger. Although he had
never taken part in such a killing, he had lived with a
bunch of niggers in prison and knew all about them. They were always killing each other, and they