The Collected Short Stories of Harriette Simpson Arnow

Ketchup-Making Saturday

J(etchup-Making Saturday Robert Penn Warren at Southern Review read this story in 1936 and returned it to Harriette Simpson along with an invitation to send others. C/Jaisy shoved her buttocks hard against my stomach again, and 1 heard eggs sizzle in the little skillet with the broken handle. Delphie's elbows raked my spine, and I wiggled a little and thought that coffee and cornbread and bacon would taste good in this half way time between midnight and morning. I couldn't sleep anyway. I couldn't do anything but remember yesterday and wonder about today. 1 got up and lighted the lamp and saw a pile of uncorrected fourth grade arithmetic papers. Thoughts of anything that had to do with numbers filled me with a great unhappiness. When Monday came 1 might no longer be the teacher of Sawbriar School. "Teacher, it ain't mornin'," High Pockets) called from the front room where he doubtless lay and looked at the shine of my lamp through the cracks in the door. "I know," I answered, "but I'm hungry." "Ellie's might nigh got her ready. I been a layin' a waitin' to hear her set th' table. I've got a big mornin' a squirrel huntin' ahead." . 50 . KETCHUP-MAKING SATURDAY Dishes rattled in the end of the lean-to away from the kitchen, and while they rattled, High Pockets rolled out of bed and into his shirt and overalls. When he had gone into the kitchen to put on his shoes, I followed with the lamp and set it on the eating table between a jar of watermelon rind preserves and the noseless cream pitcher filled with tin teaspoons. In the kitchen Ellie stood by one of High Pockets' long bare feet and carefully poured gravy into the rusty bowl with the yellow flowers. High Pockets looked up, saw me in the door, smoothed lank black hair away from his forehead, and said, "Rollin' out early, Teacher." "Yes," I said, and made way for Ellie and the gravy. When High Pockets had put on his shoes and washed his face, and I had washed my face and we were sitting at the table, I remembered yesterday 's trouble with a sharper pang, and Ellie's good breakfast grew tasteless and stale. "Ye're not eatin', Teacher. Trouble at school?" High Pockets asked. I nodded. Ellie sighed as she ladled gravy onto a hunk ofcornbread. "I reckin' it's that Lurie Haines' Zorie. She's spiled too much to ever lam. Many's th' time I've wished we'd have a teacher that'ud risk givin' her a genuwine good spankin'." I wept suddenly into my overdone egg. "You have such a teacher now." High Pockets stared at me, pity in his smoked pearl eyes, ''Ye mean we did have. Lurie Haines'ull run you off this ridge come daylight." Ellie's wispy dun-colored hair framed a face sick with woe, "An ye wuz sich a good teacher. I'd hoped ye'd stay till Reuben an' Bertie wuz big enough tu start. Peared like th' big uns wuz a larnin' so." High Pockets chewed bacon and frowned. "Long ez Caleb Haines is trustee an' thet Lurie's his wife an' runs him an' th' school, an' ez thet youngen a their'n won't so much as larn tu count her fingers, we ain't goin' tu have no teacher two yer straight." E:llie nodded. "Thet youngen's too mean tu lam. She's got sense. Didn't last yer pore Mr. Walls send away fer ever'thing calculated tu make a youngen larn tu count-an allus no good." "But she's seven years old, and this is her third year in school and-." "She's Lurie's least'un-spiled rotten," Ellie said. "Her a comin' so . 51 . OHIO & KENTUCKY: THE 1930S long atter th' others an' all, like a second fam'ly you might say. An' Lurie allus bragged thet she's naiver laid a hand on her, an' she'd like tu see th' color a th' teacher's eyes thet would-right 'fore th' youngen too." "Teacher shore laid a hand, though." It was eleven-year-old Delphie, wide awake with her dress on backwards and her shoes in her hand. She stood in the doorway and blinked at us. "Shet up, Delphie," High Pockets...