A Time To Kill - John Grisham(page 2)

She wiped her eyes. "I'm sorry for crying, and I'm sorry for being so irritable lately."
You've been irritable for forty years, Jake thought. "That's okay."
"What about these?" she asked, pointing to the invoices.
"I'll get the money. Don't worry about it."
Willie Hastings finished the second shift at 10:00 P.M. and punched the clock next to
Ozzie's office. He drove straight to the Hailey house. It was his night to sleep on the couch. Someone slept on Owen's couch every night; a brother, a cousin, or a friend.
Wednesday was his night.
It was impossible to sleep with the lights on. Tonya refused to go near the bed unless every light in the house was on. Those men could be in the dark, waiting for her. She had seen them many times crawling along the floor toward her bed, and lurking in the closets.
She had heard their voices outside her window, and she had seen their bloodshot eyes peering in, watching her as she got ready for bed. She heard noises in the attic, like the footsteps of the bulky cowboy boots they had kicked her with. She knew they were up there, waiting for everyone to go to sleep so they could come down and take her back to the woods.
Once a week her mother and oldest brother climbed the folding stairs and inspected the attic with a flashlight and a pistol.

A Time To Kill - John Grisham(page 1)

A Time To Kill
by
John Grisham
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.