John grisham. the testament

The Testament
John Grisham

ONE.

DOWN TO THE LAST DAY, even the last hour now. I’m an old man, lonely and unloved, sick and hurting and tired of living. I am ready for the hereafter; it has to be better than this.
I own the tall glass building in which I sit, and 97 percent of the company housed in it, below me, and the land around it half a mile in three directions, and the two thousand people who work here and the other twenty thousand who do not, and I own the pipeline under the land that brings gas to the building from my fields in Texas, and I own the utility lines that deliver electricity, and I lease the satellite unseen miles above by which I once barked commands to my empire flung far around the world. My assets exceed eleven billion dollars. I own silver in Nevada and copper in Montana and coffee in Kenya and coal in Angola and rubber in Malaysia and natural gas in Texas and crude oil in Indonesia and steel in China. My company owns companies that produce electricity and make computers and build dams and print paperbacks and broadcast signals to my satellite. I have subsidiaries with divisions in more countries than anyone can find.
I once owned all the appropriate toys-the yachts and jets and blondes, the homes in Europe, farms in Argentina, an island in the Pacific, thoroughbreds, even a hockey team. But I’ve grown too old for toys.
The money is the root of my misery.
I had three families-three ex-wives who bore seven children, six of whom are still alive and doing all they can to torment me. To the best of my knowledge, I fathered all seven, and buried one. I should say his mother buried him. I was out of the country.
I am estranged from all the wives and all the children. They’re gathering here today because I’m dying and it’s time to divide the money.

I HAVE PLANNED this day for a long time. My building has fourteen floors, all long and wide and squared around a shaded

courtyard in the rear where I once held lunches in the sunshine. I live and work on the top floor – twelve thousand square feet of opulence that would seem obscene to many but doesn’t bother me in the least. By sweat and brains and luck I built every dime of my fortune. Spending it is my prerogative. Giving it away should be my choice too, but I’m being hounded.
Why should I care who gets the money? I’ve done everything imaginable with it. As I sit here in my wheel-chair, alone and waiting, I cannot think of a single thing I want to buy, or see, or a single place I want to go, or another adventure I want to pursue.
I’ve done it all, and I’m very tired.
I don’t care who gets the money. But I do care very much who does not get it.
Every square foot of this building was designed by me, and so I know exactly where to place everyone for this little ceremony. They’re all here, waiting and waiting, though they don’t mind. They’d stand naked in a blizzard for what I’m about to do.
The first family is Lillian and her brood-four of my offspring born to a woman who rarely let me touch her. We married young-I was twenty-four and she was eighteen-and so Lillian is old too. I haven’t seen her in years, and I won’t see her today. I’m sure she’s still playing the role of the grieving, abandoned yet dutiful first wife who got traded in for a trophy. She has never remarried, and I’m sure she hasn’t had sex in fifty years. I don’t know how we reproduced.
Her oldest is now forty-seven, Troy Junior, a worthless idiot who is cursed with my name. As a boy he adopted the nickname of TJ, and still prefers it to Troy.