A Time to Kill
A Time to Kill
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1989 by John Grisham
Author’s note copyright © 2009 by Belfry Holdings, Inc.
Reading group guide copyright © 2009 by Random House, Inc.
Excerpt from The Litigators © 2011 by Belfry Holdings, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Dell, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
DELL is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
This book contains an excerpt from The Litigators by John Grisham.
eISBN: 978-0-307-57613-2
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Table of Contents
Questions and Topics for Discussion
AUTHOR’S NOTE
______________
When
A Time to Kill
was first published in June of 1989, I was brimming with the typical enthusiasm of a rookie novelist whose dreams were not even remotely connected to reality. The warning signs of failure were everywhere—unknown writer, unknown publisher, a phantom budget for promotion, and subject matter that appealed to few and ran the risk of alienating many. But I was wonderfully oblivious to all that. Five thousand hardback copies were printed and we couldn’t give them away. The book, originally, never made it to the paperback stage. The grand ideas of foreign translations and movie rights and so on were dashed within two months of publication.
My plan at the time, if any struggling writer can realistically claim to have a plan, was to try again with another type of book—the legal thriller. Hopefully, such a book would find a wider market, thus allowing me to return to Ford County, my own little fictional world where there were, and still are, so many stories to be told. Fortunately,
The Firm
found an audience, and I was suddenly free to write whatever I wanted.
However, the popularity of
The Firm
created a desire to succeed at this new career, to strike again while things were hot, to get on top, and to stay there. Such opportunities are rare, and I found myself staring at one head-on, with enough sense to know what I was looking at. I realized that it would be foolish not to stick with legal thrillers for a while. I was going to write again, and quickly, so why not aim for the top of the bestseller lists?
A Time to Kill
sold less than five thousand copies.
The Firm
sold a few million. Who couldn’t understand this math?
And so the legal thrillers came, one after the other, and then the movies based on the legal thrillers, and a good life became even better. Along the way, my neglected and almost forgotten first novel got itself noticed, and reprinted and marketed properly, and before long it was indeed being read in more languages than I could ever name. A fine movie was made from the story, and it is still being recycled on television even today. At least ninety percent of those readers who get close enough to offer an opinion say something like, “I enjoy all your books, but my favorite is
A Time to Kill
.” It’s mine too.
Through the years—and I hate to use those words because they sound too much like an old man looking back—I have wanted to return to Ford County, to Clanton, to the colorful lives of a people still dealing with a complicated past. I have visited it occasionally, in
The Chamber
and
The Summons
, and almost all of
The Last Juror
took place there, but I have yet to move back permanently and write the thick, layered, meandering stories that I carry around with me.
And I firmly intend to, one day. Maybe next year.
For now, though, the legal thrillers keep getting in the way. I still enjoy the challenge of piecing together a complex plot and constructing it in such a manner that readers will find themselves compelled to turn the pages as rapidly as possible. I am still fascinated by the law, by those who practice it, those who abuse and manipulate it, those who strive to protect it, those who study and teach it, those who are chosen to interpret it, and especially by those ordinary people who are forced to deal with it, for better or for worse. When you watch these folks as closely as I do, the material seems endless. In short, the legal thrillers are still fulfilling and quite popular. I have no plans to abandon the genre.
Meanwhile, I continue to think about Jake Brigance, and Harry Rex Vonner, and Judge Noose, and I often wonder where Carl Lee is and what happened to his daughter, Tonya. Could these characters possibly produce enough drama for another book? I’m not sure, but their neighbors and ancestors certainly can. I’ve had dozens of ideas for Ford County novels, almost all of which peter out for one reason or another, but when one fades away, two more pop up and hold my attention for a year or so.
The good stories stick, but they’re not always long enough to become novels. To give them life, and to make sure I don’t eventually forget them, I have collected seven of my favorites, seven longer short stories, and Doubleday has agreed to publish them in the fall of this year.
The collection is titled simply
Ford County Stories
. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did writing them.
Thank you, dear readers, for your loyalty.
John Grisham
Oxford, Mississippi
April 1, 2009
1
__________
B
illy 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 Parchman. Possession, with intent to sell. He was a lean, tough little punk who had survived prison by somehow maintaining a ready supply of drugs that 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 always used a weapon of some sort. Those who were just beaten and raped never died. Some of the whites were beaten and raped,
and some of them died. But none of the niggers. Their heads were harder. Willard seemed satisfied.
Willard asked what he planned to do now that they were through with her. Cobb sucked on his joint, chased it with beer, and said he wasn’t through. He bounced from 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 her face, laughing like a crazy man.
She watched him as he walked around the tree on her right side, and she stared at him as he stared between her legs. When he lowered his pants she turned to the left and closed her eyes. He was hurting her again.
She looked out through the woods and saw something—a man running wildly through the vines and underbrush. It was her daddy, yelling and pointing at her and coming desperately to save her. She cried out for him, and he disappeared. She fell asleep.
________
When she awoke one of the men was lying under the tailgate, the other under a tree. They were asleep. Her arms and legs were numb. The blood and beer and urine had mixed with the dirt underneath her to form a sticky paste that glued her 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 and arms were so deadened they refused to move.