"So you know what she did?" Waldo was in the kitchen fixing baguettes.
Now I guess some of you real hard-assed book readers out there been saying as how it ain't culturally likely that some factory guy in Indiana would be eating baguettes. Maybe even some of you didn't get this far cause you was so disgusted by it. Too bad you couldn't wait for the explanation.
The French bread come to Mattfield thanks to Aretha herself. Her sister in New Orleans, whose name I can't recall right off, had a friend who was on her way to Canada to start up a little French bakery. So Aretha's sister told this lady who had the name Sendrine on account of her being French, to stop over in Indiana to break the bus journey some. She was gonna stop at Waldo and Aretha's place for a night or two.
Sendrine was a fine looking, big boned woman who spoke English with a funny accent. Aretha had left the sewerage and was at that time working as a housekeeper for the town clerk. Mattfield wasn't never important enough for a mayor, so town clerk was as fancy as you could get. To cut a long story short, Sendrine got introduced to the clerk, and they had a baby together, then got married and set up Mattfield's only bread shop. You ain't never seen two people so caught up on each other.
The daughter, who inherited her mother's big bones and her father's moustache took over the business when her parents went off to France. She also kept up the family tradition of delivering three courtesy French loaves to Waldo in gratitude for bringing her mother and father together.
"I'll tell you what she didn't do. She didn't eat it. Not right off." Waldo was still there in the kitchen despite all this side-tracking. He was being adventurous with his sandwich making. He'd bought some processed cheese and onions and mustard and he was experimenting with the right combinations. He even put margarine on the bread. You get fancy like that when you're cooking for someone else as well as yourself.
"She walked off with it like it was a little baby cradled in her arms. She looked at it real sad. I thought maybe she didn't like peanut butter or something." He took a bite of the latest experiment. Two-thirds onions.
"Then she unwrapped it real slow and looked at it. I was getting uneasy by this stage, Reet. I just wanted her to eat the darn thing. Then, at last she took a bite, smiled, and ploughed into it like she hadn't eaten for a year. That made me feel real good, watching her enjoy my sandwich, so I thought I'd give her another one tomorrow."
It still wasn't quite right. He doubled the mustard and tried it without cheese. This sandwich-making thing wasn't as easy as he figured.