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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 Parchh little punk who had survived prison by sos that he sold and souards 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 business 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 chro tires had been received in a business deal The rebel flag hanging across the rearhad been stolen by Cobb froame The pickup was Billy Ray&039;sa beer, s 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 eht in jail, but nothing that would distinguish him He called himself a pulpwood cutter, but a bad back custo 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&039;t pay much but was liberal with his dope For the first ti And he always needed so He&039;d been that way since he hurt his back

She was ten, and se She lay on her elbohich 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 whiteon the truck She did not look at theand cursing He was hurting her

When he finished, he slapped her and laughed, and the other hed harder and rolled around the grass by the truck like two crazyShe turned away from them and cried softly, careful to keep herself quiet She had been slapped earlier for crying and screa They promised to kill her if she didn&039;t keep quiet

They grew tired of laughing and pulled theate, where Willard cleaned hier&039;s shirt, which by noas soaked with blood and sweat Cobb handed him a cold beer from the cooler and commented on the hue, quiet sounds, then became still Cobb&039;s beer was half eirl It hit her in the sto white foam, and it rolled off in the dirt near soinated from the same cooler For two six-packs now they had thrown their half-ehed 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 ht 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 un 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 the each other, and they always used a weapon of some sort Those ere just beaten and raped never died Some of the whites were beaten and raped, and soers 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&039;t through He bounced fro 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 hiht side, and she stared at his 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 soh the vines and underbrush It was her daddy, yelling and pointing at her and co desperately to save her She cried out for him, and he disappeared She fell asleep

When she awoke one of the ate, the other under a tree They were asleep Her ars were numb The blood and beer and urine had mixed with the dirt underneath her to forround and crackled when she htiest efforts ht Her feet were tied so high her buttocks barely touched the ground Her legs and arms were so deadened they refused to move

She searched the woods for her daddy and quietly called his naain

When she awoke the second tiered to her with a srabbed her left ankle and sawed furiously on the rope until it gave way Then he freed the right leg, and she curled into a fetal position with her back to theth of quarter-inch ski rope over a lirabbed her and put the noose around her head, then walked across the clearing with the other end of the rope and sat on the tailgate, where Willard was s at Cobb for what he 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 under the lihed, so he kindly loosened the rope to spare her a few more minutes He tied the rope to the bumper and opened another beer

They sat on the tailgate drinking, s at her They had been at the lake most of the day, where Cobb had a friend with a boat and soirls ere supposed to be easy but turned out to be untouchable Cobb had been 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 when they happened across the girl She alking along a gravel road with a sack of 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&039;ll let you do it It was your idea"

Willard took a drag on his joint, then spit and said, "Wasn&039;t ers Do it"

Cobb untied the rope froht It peeled bark froirl, atching thehed

Suddenly, she heard so-like a car with loud pipes The two hway in the distance They cursed and scra toward her He tripped and landed near her They cursed each other while they grabbed her, reed her to the pickup and threw her over the tailgate into the bed of the truck Cobb slapped her and threatened to kill her if she did not lie still and keep quiet He said he would take her home if she stayed down and did as told; otherwise, they would kill her They sla home She passed out

Cobb and Willard waved at the Firebird with the loud pipes as it passed them on the narrow dirt road Willard checked the back todown Cobb turned onto the highway and raced away

"What now?" Willard asked nervously

"Don&039;t know," Cobb answered nervously "But we gotta do soets blood all over my truck Look at her back there, she&039;s bleedin&039; all over the place"

Willard thought for a minute while he finished a beer "Let&039;s throw her off a bridge," he said proudly

"Good idea Daood idea" Cobb slammed on the brakes "Gimme a beer," he ordered Willard, who stumbled out of the truck and fetched two beers froot blood on the cooler," he reported as they raced off again

Gwen Hailey sensed so horrible Normally she would have sent one of the three boys to the store, but they were being punished by their father and had been sentenced to weed-pulling in the garden Tonya had been to the store before by herself-it was only a mile away-and had proven reliable But after two hours Gwen sent the boys to look for their little sister They figured she was down at the Pounders&039; house playing with the many Pounders kids, or maybe she had ventured past the store to visit her best friend, Bessie Pierson

Mr Bates at the store said she had coone an hour earlier Jarvis, the roceries beside the road

Gwen called her husband at the paper an driving the gravel roads around the store They drove to a settleun houses on Graham Plantation to check with an aunt They stopped at Broadway&039;s store a roup of old black ravel roads and dusty field roads for three square miles around their house

Cobb could not find a bridge unoccupied by niggers with fishing poles Every bridge they approached had four or five niggers hanging off the sides with large straw hats and cane poles, and under every bridge on the banks there would be another 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 left alone to dispose of the girl in such a way that she could never tell Willard snored as he frantically drove the gravel roads and county roads in search of a bridge or ramp on so seen by half a dozen niggers with straw hats He looked in theto stand He slammed his brakes, and she crashed into the front of the bed, just under theWillard ricocheted off the dash into the floorboard, where he continued to snore Cobb cursed the rass-covered da one end It sat in the far southwest corner of Ford County, with a few acres in Van Buren County In the spring it would hold the distinction of being the largest body of water in Mississippi But by late suone, and the sun would cook the shalloater until the lake would dehydrate Its once aether, creating a depthless basin of reddish broater It was fed frohs, and a couple of currents large enough to be named rivers The existence of all these tributaries necessarily gave rise to a good nues near the lake

It was over these bridges the yellow pickup flew in an all-out effort to find a suitable place to unload an unwanted passenger Cobb was desperate He knew of one other bridge, a narroooden one over Foggy Creek As he approached, he saw niggers with cane poles, so he turned off a side road and stopped the truck He lowered the tailgate, dragged her out, and threw her in a small ravine lined with kudzu

Carl Lee Hailey did not hurry home Gas easily excited, and she had called the ht the children had been kidnapped He punched out at quitting time, and made the thirty-minute drive home in thirty ravel drive and saw the patrol car parked next to the front porch Other cars belonging to Owen&039;s fa drive and in the yard, and there was one car he didn&039;t recognize It had cane poles sticking out the side s, and there were at least 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 sure lying on the couch The child was covered et towels and surrounded by crying relatives As hestopped and the crowd backed away Only Gwen stayed by the girl She softly stroked her hair He knelt beside the couch and touched the girl&039;s shoulder He spoke to his daughter, and she tried to smile Her face was bloody pulp covered with knots and lacerations Both eyes were swollen shut and bleeding His eyes watered as he looked at her tiny body, co from ankles to forehead

Carl Lee asked Ghat happened She began shaking and wailing, and was led to the kitchen by her brother Carl Lee stood and turned to the crowd and demanded to knohat happened

Silence

He asked for the third tis, one of Gwen&039;s cousins, stepped forward and told Carl Lee that soy Creek when they saw Tonya lying in the middle of the road She told theht her hos shut up and stared at his feet

Carl Lee stared at hi and watched the floor

"What happened, Willie?" Carl Lee yelled as he stared at the deputy

Hastings spoke slowly, and while staring out therepeated what Tonya had told her mother about the whitehurt when they got on her -Hastings stopped when he heard the siren froh the front door and waited on the porch, where they watched the crew unload a stretcher and head for the house

The paramedics stopped in the yard when the front door opened and Carl Lee walked out with his daughter in his are tears dripped from his chin He walked to the rear of the ambulance and stepped inside The paramedics closed the door and carefully removed her from his embrace

Ozzie Walls was the only black sheriff in Mississippi There had been a few others in recent history, but for the reat pride in that fact, since Ford County was seventy-four percent white and the other black sheriffs had been from much blacker counties Not since Reconstruction had a black sheriff been elected in a white county in Mississippi

He was raised in Ford County, and he was kin to ation in the late sixties, he was a h School He wanted to play football nearby at Ole Miss, but there were already two blacks on the team He starred instead at Alcorn State, and was a defensive tackle for the Rams when a knee injury sent hi the high sheriff, especially at election time when he received morewhite votes than his white opponents The white kids loved him because he was a hero, a football star who had played on TV and had his picture in azines Their parents respected hih cop who did not discriminate between black punks and white

Sunks The white politicians supported him because, since e became the sheriff, the Justice Department stayed out of Ford County The blacks adored him because he was Ozzie, one of their own

He skipped supper and waited in his office at the jail for Hastings to report from the Hailey house He had a suspect Billy Ray Cobb was no stranger to the sheriffs office Ozzie knew he sold drugs-he just couldn&039;t catch him He also knew Cobb had a mean streak

The dispatcher called in the deputies, and as they reported to the jail Ozzie gave them instructions to locate, but not arrest, Billy Ray Cobb There were twelve deputies in all -nine white and three black They fanned out across the county in search of a fancy yellow Ford pickup with a rebel flag in the rear

When Hastings arrived he and the sheriff left for the Ford County hospital As usual, Hastings drove and Ozzie gave orders on the radio In the waiting room on the second floor they found the Hailey clan Aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends, and strangers crowded into the small room and some waited in the narrow hallway There hispers and quiet tears Tonya was in surgery

Carl Lee sat on a cheap plastic couch in a dark corner with Gwen next to him and the boys next to her He stared at the floor and did not notice the croen laid her head on his shoulder and cried softly The boys sat rigidly with their hands on knees, occasionally glancing at their father as if waiting on words of reassurance

Ozzie worked his way through the crowd, quietly shaking hands and patting backs and whispering that he would catch them He knelt before Carl Lee and Gwen "How is she?" he asked Carl Lee did not see him Gwen cried louder and the boys sniffed and wiped tears He patted Gwen on the knee and stood One of her brothers led Ozzie and Hastings out of the room into the hall, away from the fa

"How is she?" Ozzie asked

"Not too good She&039;s in surgery and ot broken fjones and a bad concussion She&039;s beat up real bad There&039;s rope burns on her neck like they tried to hang her"

"Was she raped?" he asked, certain of the answer

"Yeah She told her momma they took turns on her and hurt her real bad Doctors confirmed it"

"How&039;s Carl Lee and Gwen?"

"They&039;re tore up pretty bad I think they&039;re in shock Carl Lee ain&039;t said a word since he got here"

JDzzie assured hi, and when they found theested he should hide them in another jail, for their own safety

Three ravel driveway "Pull in there," he told Hastings, who turned off the highway and drove into the front yard of a dilapidated house trailer It was aled violently on the front door "Open up, Bumpous!"

The trailer shook and Bumpous scrambled to the bathroom to flush a fresh joint

"Open up, Bued "I know you&039;re in there Open up or I&039;ll kick in the door"

Bumpous yanked the door open and Ozzie walked in "You know, Bumpous, evertime I visit you I smell somethin&039; funny and the cootta job for you"

"W-what?"

"I&039;ll explain it outside where I can breathe Just get some clothes on and hurry"

"What if I don&039;t want to?"

"Fine I&039;ll see your parole officer tomorrow"

"I&039;ll be out in a minute"

Ozzie smiled and walked to his car Bobby Bumpous was one of his favorites Since his parole two years earlier, he had led a reasonably clean life, occasionally succu sale for a quick buck Ozzie watched him like a hawk and knew of such transactions, and Buer to help his friend, Sheriff Walls The plan was to eventually use Bu, but that would be postponed for now

After a fewhis shirttail and zipping his pants "Who you lookin&039; for?" he demanded

"Billy Ray Cobb"

"That&039;s no problem You can find him without me"

"Shut up and listen We think Cobb was involved in a rape this afternoon A black girl was raped by thite men, and I think Cobb was there"

"Cobb ain&039;t into rape, Sheriff He&039;s into drugs, remember?"

"Shut up and listen You find Cobb and spend soo his truck was spotted at Huey&039;s Buy him a beer Shoot some pool, roll dice, whatever Find out what he did today Who was he with? Where&039;d he go? You kno he likes to talk, right?"

"Right"

"Call the dispatcher when you find him They&039;ll call me I&039;ll be somewhere close You understand?"

"Sure, Sheriff No problem"

"Any questions?"

"Yeah I&039;onna pay for this?"

Ozzie handed his drove in the direction of Huey&039;s, down by the lake

"You sure you can trust his asked"Who?"

"That Bumpous kid"

"Sure I trust him He&039;s proved very reliable since he was paroled He&039;s a good kid tryin&039; to go straight, for theI ask"

"Why?"

"Because I caught hio He&039;d been outta jail about a year when I caught his brother with an ounce, and I told him he was lookin&039; at thirty years He started cryin&039; and carryin&039; on, cried all night in his cell By mornin&039; he was ready to talk Told o and went to see Bobby I knocked on his door and I could hear the commode flushin&039; He wouldn&039;t come to the door, so I kicked it in I found him in his underwear in the bathroom tryin&039; to unstop the commode There was dope all over the place Don&039;t kno much he flushed, but most of it was comin&039; back out in the overflow Scared him so bad he wet his drawers"

"You kiddin&039;?"

"Nope The kid pissed all over hiht standin&039; there et drawers, a plunger in one hand, dope in the other, and the room fillin&039; up with commode water"

"What&039;d you do?"

"Threatened to kill him"

"What&039;d he do?"

"Started cryin&039; Cried like a baby Cried &039;bout his momma and prison and all this and that Proain"

"You arrest hily to hiht there in his bathroom He&039;s been fun to ith ever since"

They drove by Huey&039;s and saw Cobb&039;s truck in the gravel parking lot with a dozen other pickups and four-wheel drives They parked behind a black church on a hill up the highway froood view of the honky tonk, or tonk, as it was affectionately called by the patrons Another patrol car hid behind sohway Mo lot He locked his brakes, spraying gravel and dust, then backed next to Cobb&039;s truck He looked around and casually entered Huey&039;s Thirty minutes later the dispatcher advised Ozzie that the informant had found the subject, a hway 305 near the lake Within minutes two more patrol cars were hidden close by They waited

"What s asked

"I ain&039;t sure I just got a hunch The little girl said it was a truck with shiny wheels and big tires"

"That narrows it down to two thousand"

"She also said it was yellow, looked new, and had a big flag hangin&039; in the rear "

"That brings it down to two hundred"

"Maybe less than that How many of those are as mean as Billy Ray Cobb?"

"What if it ain&039;t him?"

"It is"

"If it ain&039;t?"

"We&039;ll know shortly He&039;s got a big mouth, &039;specially when he&039;s drinkin&039;"

For two hours they waited and watched pickups coo Truck drivers, pulpwood cutters, factory workers, and farravel and strutted inside to drink, shoot pool, listen to the band, but mainly to look for stray woe, where they would stay for a few e was darker both inside and out, and it lacked the colorful beer signs and live music that made Huey&039;s such a hit with the locals Ann&039;s

was known for its drug traffic, whereas Huey&039;s had it all- , and plenty of fights One brawl spilled through the door into the parking lot, where a group of wild rednecks kicked and clawed each other at randoreinded and returned to the dice table

"Hope that wasn&039;t Bumpous," observed the sheriff

The restrooms inside were small and nasty, and most of the patrons found it necessary to relieve the lot This was especially true on Mondays when ten-cent beer night drew rednecks fro lot received at least three sprayings About once a week an innocent passinghe or she saw in the parking lot, and Ozzie would be forced to make an arrest Otherwise, he left the places alone

Both tonks were in violation of nual whiskey, minors, they refused to close on time, etc Shortly after he was elected the first tin pro all the honky tonks in the county It was a horrible mistake The crime rate soared The jail was packed The court dockets multiplied The rednecks united and drove in caravans to Clanton, where they parked around the courthouse on the square Hundreds of the, playing loudobscenities at the horrified town folk Eachthe square resembled a landfill with cans and bottles thrown everywhere He closed the black tonks too, and break-ins, burglaries, and stabbings tripled in one month There were two murders in one week

Finally, with the city under siege, a group of local ed him to ease up on the tonks He politely ren they had insisted on the closings They ad and pleaded for relief Yes, they would support him in the next election Ozzie relented, and life returned to normal in Ford County

Ozzie was not pleased that the establishments thrived in his county, but he was convinced beyond any doubt that his law-abiding constituents were much safer when the tonks were open

At ten-thirty the dispatcher radioed that the inforave his location, and a er to his truck He spun tires, slung gravel, and raced toward the church

"He&039;s drunk," said Hastings

He wheeled through the church parking lot and ca stop a few feet from the patrol car "Howdy, Sheriff!" he yelled

Ozzie walked to the pickup "What took so long?"

"You told ht"