Southern Ghost

for a gun to be shot off. Not that close. I went to my window and looked out and I saw Mr. Ross running across the garden toward the house. That relieved my mind. I knew Mr. Ross would take care of it, so I went back to my rocker. But pretty soon doors slammed and cars came and went. I went to see

what was happening and Mr. Harmon met me at the kitchen door and told me to be fixin' food for all the family to come, that Judge Tarrant's heart had given out and he was dead.' She pursed her lips, then burst out, 'I knew there was more to it because Enid—she was the maid—she came to me the next week and showed me this charred bundle of clothes. She said they'd belonged to the Judge, and she'd found them out in the incinerator. I told her to hush her mouth and I would see to it. I gave the clothes to Mr. Harmon, and he told me he'd take care of everything. By then the funerals were over, and it had been in the papers how the Judge died from a heart attack when he heard the news about Mr. Ross's accident with his gun.' She looked across the room at a table filled with framed photographs. 'Mr. Ross never had an accident with a gun. Mr. Ross, he was always careful. He did things right.' She smoothed her starched cotton skirt. 'I knew it was wrong, all these years, and now the past has come due—and Mr. Ross's daughter is lost and gone. I tell you, Miz Darling, I feel low in my mind.'

'You can help,' Annie said quietly.

'Now? What can I do?' She was not so much reluctant as uncertain.

'Talk to me about the Tarrants.' Annie held her gaze. 'You knew them, really knew them. Tell me who was angry, who was afraid, who was threatened.'

'The Tarrants.' A smile transformed Lucy Jane's face. 'Young Mr. Ross, he had a sense of humor, he did. Did you ever hear tell how he made a family shield? I suppose you know how prideful Miz Charlotte is, always talking about past glories and all the fine things the Tarrants have done and seen —and rightly so. Lawyers and doctors and preachers and good women keeping families going. Oh, there are many stories to tell. I used to hear the Judge calk to the boys when they were little, telling them about mighty battles and such. But Miz Charlotte, she riled Mr. Ross, and one day when he was home for the weekend from school, he and Miss Sybil were in the library giggling fit to kill. When they came out, they put this big poster up on the landing of the stairs, where nobody couldmiss it, and it was like those shields that knights of old car­ ried. Above the shield, Mr. Ross had written THE TERRIFYING, TERRIBLE TARRANTS, and in each part of the shield, he'd drawn a huge hairy tarantula, and down below, he'd printed, THE FAM­ILY CREST-TARANTULAS RAMPANT. Зourse, it made Miz Charlotte

mad as everything. She said he was making fun of the family, and Mr. Ross kept insisting he thought it was a lovely shield, very appropriate, probably the very name Tarrant came from tarantula, and that made her madder still.' She chuckled, then slowly the laughter died away. 'And not two weeks later, he was lying dead in his grave in St. Michael's. Just a boy.'

Annie felt a prickle of horror: Ross Tarrant, having fun with his heritage and so soon to sacrifice himself for his fam­ily's honor.

'The Family.' Annie shivered though the swath of sun­light spilling from the east window touched her with warmth. She drank more of the strong, hot, chicory- flavored coffee. 'Tell me about the Judge.'

'Mr. Augustus.' If there was no great warmth in Lucy Jane's voice, there was ungrudging respect. The Judge appar­ently had earned great respect. Had anyone ever loved him? 'He came to dinner every Sunday with his parents when I first came to Tarrant House. After his folks died, that's when Mr. Augustus and Mrs. Amanda moved in with their two little boys. Mr. Ross was born there. He was such a beautiful baby, blond curls and blue eyes, and always happy. Mr. Augustus was real strict with the boys. He expected them to do just so. I know it's a fact—I raised three boys and a girl—you have to expect a lot from children if they're to grow up right. But somehow, the Judge expected—' Her eyes were troubled. '— my heart told me he expected more than mortal boys could give. Even Mr. Ross. I don't know if I can rightly explain. I always thought the Judge never saw them—Milam and Whitney and Ross—as flesh-and-blood people. He saw them as . . . Tarrants.'

'What else would you expect?' Annie asked.

The older woman nodded impatiently. 'Yes. But they were Milam and Whitney and Ross, too. They had to pick their

own way. That's it,' she said firmly, 'that's where it all went wrong. He never could see any way to be but the way the Judge believed a Tarrant should be— someone important and proper, the kind of men Chastain would look up to. That was real important to the Judge, to be looked up to.'

Annie thought of the photograph of the Judge on the bench. The photographer, of course, had stood in the well of the courtroom, shooting up.

A stern judge. A demanding father.

'You see,' Lucy Jane reflected, 'Mr. Whitney, he couldn't quite do the things the Judge wanted and so he got in the habit of getting his friends to do his schoolwork for him. And his mamma, she protected him when the school found out and called. Miz Amanda never told the Judge. And once, when Mr.