Chapter One
BILLY RAY COBB was the younger and smaller of the two rednecks. At twenty-threehe was already a three-year veteran of the state penitentiary at Parchman.Possession, with intent to sell. He was a lean, tough little punk who hadsurvived prison by somehow maintaining a ready supply of drugs that he sold andsometimes gave to the blacks and the guards for protection. In the year sincehis release he had continued to prosper, and his small-time narcotics businesshad elevated him to the position of one of the more affluent rednecks in FordCounty. He was a businessman, with employees, obligations, deals, everything buttaxes. Down at the Ford place in Clanton he was known as the last man in recenthistory to pay cash for a new pickup truck. Sixteen thousand cash, for acustom-built, four-wheel drive, canary yellow, luxury Ford pickup. The fancychrome wheels and mudgrip racing tires had been received in a business deal. Therebel flag hanging across the rear window had been stolen by Cobb from a drunkenfraternity boy at an Ole Miss football game. The pickup was Billy Ray's mostprized 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 aharmless sort who had never been in serious trouble and had never been seriouslyemployed. Maybe an occasional fight with a night in jail, but nothing that woulddistinguish him. He called himself a pulpwood cutter, but a bad back customarilykept him out of the woods. He had hurt his back working on an offshore rigsomewhere in the Gulf, and the oil company paid him a nice settlement, which helost when his ex-wife cleaned him out. His primary vocation was that of apart-time employee of Billy Ray Cobb, who didn't pay much but was liberal withhis dope. For the first time in years Willard could always get his hands onsomething. And he always needed something. He'd been that way since he hurt hisback.
She was ten, and small for her age. She lay on her elbows, which were stuck andbound together with yellow nylon rope. Her legs were spread grotesquely with theright foot tied tight to an oak sapling and the left to a rotting, leaning postof a long-neglected fence. The ski rope had cut into her ankles and the bloodran down her legs. Her face was bloody and swollen, with one eye bulging andclosed and the other eye half open so she could see the other white man sittingon the truck. She did not look at the man on top of her. He was breathing hardand sweating and cursing. He was hurting her.
When he finished, he slapped her and laughed, and the other man laughed inreturn, then they laughed harder and rolled around the grass by the truck liketwo crazy men, screaming and laughing. She turned away from them and criedsoftly, careful to keep herself quiet. She had been slapped earlier for cryingand screaming. They promised to kill her if she didn't keep quiet.
They grew tired of laughing and pulled themselves onto the tailgate, whereWillard cleaned himself with the little nigger's shirt, which by now was soakedwith blood and sweat. Cobb handed him a cold beer from the cooler and commentedon 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. Hethrew it at the girl. It hit her in the stomach, splashing white foam, and itrolled off in the dirt near some other cans, all of which had originated fromthe same cooler. For two six-packs now they had thrown their half-empty cans ather and laughed. Willard had trouble with the target, but Cobb was fairlyaccurate. They were not ones to waste beer, but the heavier cans could be feltbetter 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 apuddle behind her head. She did not move.
Willard asked Cobb if he thought she was dead. Cobb opened another beer andexplained that she was not dead because niggers generally could not be killed bykicking and beating and raping. It took much more, something like a knife or agun or a rope to dispose of a nigger. Although he had never taken part in such akilling, he had lived with a bunch of niggers in prison and knew all about them.They were always killing each other, and they always used a weapon of some sort.Those who were just beaten and raped never died. Some of the whites were beatenand raped, and some of them died. But none of the niggers. Their heads wereharder. Willard seemed satisfied.
Willard asked what he planned to do now that they were through with her. Cobbsucked on his joint, chased it with beer, and said he wasn't through. He bouncedfrom the tailgate and staggered across the small clearing to where she was tied.He cursed her and screamed at her to wake up, then he poured cold beer in herface, laughing like a crazy man.
She watched him as he walked around the tree on her right side, and she staredat him as he stared between her legs. When he lowered his pants she turned tothe left and closed her eyes. He was hurting her again.
She looked out through the woods and saw something—a man running wildly throughthe vines and underbrush. It was her daddy, yelling and pointing at her andcoming desperately to save her. She cried out for him, and he disappeared. Shefell asleep.
When she awoke one of the men was lying under the tailgate, the other undera tree. They were asleep. Her arms and legs were numb. The blood and beer andurine had mixed with the dirt underneath her to form a sticky paste that gluedher small body to the ground and crackled when she moved and wiggled. Escape,she thought, but her mightiest efforts moved her only a few inches to the right.Her feet were tied so high her buttocks barely touched the ground. Her legs andarms were so deadened they refused to move.
She searched the woods for her daddy and quietly called his name. She waited,then slept again.
When she awoke the second time they were up and moving around. The tall onestaggered to her with a small knife. He grabbed her left ankle and sawedfuriously on the rope until it gave way. Then he freed the right leg, and shecurled into a fetal position with her back to them.
Cobb strung a length of quarter-inch ski rope over a limb and tied a loop in oneend with a slip knot. He grabbed her and put the noose around her head, thenwalked across the clearing with the other end of the rope and sat on thetailgate, where Willard was smoking a fresh joint and grinning at Cobb for whathe was about to do. Cobb pulled the rope tight, then gave a vicious yank,bouncing the little nude body along the ground and stopping it directly underthe limb. She gagged and coughed, so he kindly loosened the rope to spare her afew more minutes. He tied the rope to the bumper and opened another beer.
They sat on the tailgate drinking, smoking, and staring at her. They had been atthe lake most of the day, where Cobb had a friend with a boat and some extragirls who were supposed to be easy but turned out to be untouchable. Cobb hadbeen generous with his drugs and beer, but the girls did not reciprocate.Frustrated, they left the lake and were driving to no place in particular whenthey happened across the girl. She was walking along a gravel road with a sackof groceries when Willard nailed her in the back of the head with a beer can.
"You gonna do it?" asked Willard, his eyes red and glazed.
Cobb hesitated. "Naw, I'll let you do it. It was your idea."
Willard took a drag on his joint, then spit and said, "Wasn't my idea. You'rethe expert on killin' niggers. Do it."
Cobb untied the rope from the bumper and pulled it tight. It peeled bark fromthe limb and sprinkled fine bits of elm around the girl, who was watching themcarefully now. She coughed.
Suddenly, she heard something—like a car with loud pipes. The two men turnedquickly and looked down the dirt road to the highway in the distance. Theycursed and scrambled around, one slamming the tailgate and the other runningtoward her. He tripped and landed near her. They cursed each other while theygrabbed her, removed the rope from her neck, dragged her to the pickup and threwher over the tailgate into the bed of the truck. Cobb slapped her and threatenedto kill her if she did not lie still and keep quiet. He said he would take herhome if she stayed down and did as told; otherwise, they would kill her. Theyslammed the doors and sped onto the dirt road. She was going home. She passedout.
Cobb and Willard waved at the Firebird with the loud pipes as it passed them onthe narrow dirt road. Willard checked the back to make sure the little niggerwas lying down. Cobb turned onto the highway and raced away.
"What now?" Willard asked nervously.
"Don't know," Cobb answered nervously. "But we gotta do something fast beforeshe gets blood all over my truck. Look at her back there, she's bleedin' allover the place."
Willard thought for a minute while he finished a beer. "Let's throw her off abridge," he said proudly.
"Good idea. Damned good idea." Cobb slammed on the brakes. "Gimme a beer," heordered Willard, who stumbled out of the truck and fetched two beers from theback.
"She's even got blood on the cooler," he reported as they raced offagain.
Gwen Hailey sensed something horrible. Normally she would have sent one of thethree boys to the store, but they were being punished by their father and hadbeen sentenced to weed-pulling in the garden. Tonya had been to the store beforeby herself—it was only a mile away—and had proven reliable. But after twohours Gwen sent the boys to look for their little sister. They figured she wasdown at the Pounders' house playing with the many Pounders kids, or maybe shehad ventured past the store to visit her best friend, Bessie Pierson.
Mr. Bates at the store said she had come and gone an hour earlier. Jarvis, themiddle boy, found a sack of groceries beside the road.
Gwen called her husband at the paper mill, then loaded Carl Lee, Jr., into thecar and began driving the gravel roads around the store. They drove to asettlement of ancient shotgun houses on Graham Plantation to check with an aunt.They stopped at Broadway's store a mile from Bates Grocery and were told by agroup of old black men that she had not been seen. They crisscrossed the gravelroads and dusty field roads for three square miles around their house.
Cobb could not find a bridge unoccupied by niggers with fishing poles. Everybridge they approached had four or five niggers hanging off the sides with largestraw hats and cane poles, and under every bridge on the banks there would beanother group sitting on buckets with the same straw hats and cane poles,motionless except for an occasional swat at a fly or a slap at a mosquito.
He was scared now. Willard had passed out and was of no help, and he was leftalone to dispose of the girl in such a way that she could never tell. Willardsnored as he frantically drove the gravel roads and county roads in search of abridge or ramp on some river where he could stop and toss her without being seenby half a dozen niggers with straw hats. He looked in the mirror and saw hertrying to stand. He slammed his brakes, and she crashed into the front of thebed, just under the window. Willard ricocheted off the dash into the floorboard,where he continued to snore. Cobb cursed them both equally.
Lake Chatulla was nothing more than a huge, shallow, man-made mudhole with agrass-covered dam running exactly one mile along one end. It sat in the farsouthwest corner of Ford County, with a few acres in Van Buren County. In thespring it would hold the distinction of being the largest body of water inMississippi. But by late summer the rains were long gone, and the sun would cookthe shallow water until the lake would dehydrate. Its once ambitious shorelineswould retreat and move much closer together, creating a depthless basin ofreddish brown water. It was fed from all directions by innumerable streams,creeks, sloughs, and a couple of currents large enough to be named rivers. Theexistence of all these tributaries necessarily gave rise to a good number ofbridges near the lake.
It was over these bridges the yellow pickup flew in an all-out effort to find asuitable place to unload an unwanted passenger. Cobb was desperate. He knew ofone other bridge, a narrow wooden one over Foggy Creek. As he approached, he sawniggers with cane poles, so he turned off a side road and stopped the truck. Helowered the tailgate, dragged her out, and threw her in a small ravine linedwith kudzu.
Carl Lee Hailey did not hurry home. Gwen was easily excited, and she hadcalled the mill numerous times when she thought the children had been kidnapped.He punched out at quitting time, and made the thirty-minute drive home in thirtyminutes. Anxiety hit him when he turned onto his gravel drive and saw the patrolcar parked next to the front porch. Other cars belonging to Gwen's family werescattered along the long drive and in the yard, and there was one car he didn'trecognize. It had cane poles sticking out the side windows, and there were atleast seven straw hats sitting in it.
Where were Tonya and the boys?
As he opened the front door he heard Gwen crying. To his right in the smallliving room he found a crowd huddled above a small figure lying on the couch.The child was covered with wet towels and surrounded by crying relatives. As hemoved to the couch the crying stopped and the crowd backed away. Only Gwenstayed by the girl. She softly stroked her hair. He knelt beside the couch andtouched the girl's shoulder. He spoke to his daughter, and she tried to smile.Her face was bloody pulp covered with knots and lacerations. Both eyes wereswollen shut and bleeding. His eyes watered as he looked at her tiny body,completely wrapped in towels and bleeding from ankles to forehead.
Carl Lee asked Gwen what happened. She began shaking and wailing, and was led tothe kitchen by her brother. Carl Lee stood and turned to the crowd and demandedto know what happened.
Silence.
He asked for the third time. The deputy, Willie Hastings, one of Gwen's cousins,stepped forward and told Carl Lee that some people were fishing down by FoggyCreek when they saw Tonya lying in the middle of the road. She told them herdaddy's name, and they brought her home.
Hastings shut up and stared at his feet.
Carl Lee stared at him and waited. Everyone else stopped breathing and watchedthe floor.
"What happened, Willie?" Carl Lee yelled as he stared at the deputy.
Hastings spoke slowly, and while staring out the window repeated what Tonya hadtold her mother about the white men and their pickup, and the rope and thetrees, and being hurt when they got on her. Hastings stopped when he heard thesiren from the ambulance.
The crowd filed solemnly through the front door and waited on the porch, wherethey watched the crew unload a stretcher and head for the house.
The paramedics stopped in the yard when the front door opened and Carl Leewalked out with his daughter in his arms. He whispered gently to her as hugetears dripped from his chin. He walked to the rear of the ambulance and steppedinside. The paramedics closed the door and carefully removed her from hisembrace.
Continues...
Excerpted from Time to Killby John Grisham Copyright © 1992 by John Grisham. Excerpted by permission.
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