Then one Saturday morning the third week of June there was a knock on the front door. I looked through the curtain liked I used to do and it was your daddy. That was weird for the school principle to be at the door after your daughter already graduated. I called everybody to the living room then I let him in. He was wearing a two button shirt and corduroy pants, and I remember thinking that was funny because it was hard to imagine him in anything but a suit and tie and penny loafers. I offered him some tea and we all sat on the couches in the living room to talk. It was small talk for a while and then he said to Sheila would she excuse us for a few minutes. Her face was red flushed the whole time he was there then it got redder when he said that. Her daddy said Sheila you better get on to your room. After she left he said what kind of trouble has my daughter got into.
Your daddy had a real nice way with people. He said you know sometimes its not the children who get into trouble but the adults who might get them into some. He said something has happened but I am not sure exactly what or how much of it. It took him a long time to get into it but the long and short was that one of the missionaries in Haiti was an old school buddy of his from Apalachicola Bible College and maybe thats what blinded him to what must of been going on between this older man and our Sheila. He said this missionary man had wrote a letter saying would your daddy come talk to us about how him and our daughter were in love from only a few days together and then it all made sense to me why Sheila was acting like a lovesick fool and not taking her scholarship and room and board at William Jennings Bryan College.
Right away Sheilas daddy got up and started pacing the room. Principle Ratliff said if it was his daughter he would want to punch somebody in the mouth for being the bearer of bad news but he would refrane because of his love for God. But something we had to consider now that Sheila was eighteen and legally an adult was something could come of it. He asked did we think she was motivated enough to do something rash? Her daddy said he was. Principle Ratliff said that was another matter but he understood well enough because he had a daughter of his own, and here Anna you should know he went on and on about his love for you even then when you was so little he was thinking about when you would be grown and married he would be so proud of you but he wanted it to be somebody your own age or a little older who loved you and you loved. We said that was what we wanted for our daughter too.
We called Sheila into the living room and told her in front of your daddy and all of us what he had said and was it true? She was slippery about it. She said that this man Brother Samuel she had met was very nice and they had got close but no closer than very close friends. Nothing unto ward had happened. Principle Ratliff said he had a mimeograft letter he would give to us so we could see what Brother Samuel had said and from here on out he would leave the matter to our family to make some choices about but he would help if he could he just didnt know what more he should do about it telling us was the right thing to do he thought.
I must have read that letter a hundred times since then including one time today. That letter is really what got so much of this thing off the ground between Sheila and Samuel Tillotson. One day I came home and saw her reading it and she was cucumber eyed like she had been getting. I said that is poison and fire you are playing with and she acted like it wasnt. At that age you know everything or think you do.
A couple of times the phone rang and she answered it then said a few words like she was speaking code. After that she would leave the house all the time. Later we found out she was going to my sisters house her aunt Glory that traitor. Over there she was talking to Samuel long distance Lord knows how much it was costing him or how he was paying for it. What we know now is they were making their plans. One day she was there in the kitchen cutting carrots and the next day she was gone. He swooped in on the airplane and took her up to his brothers house in north Florida and they came back married and saying they were moving to Haiti in two days.
At the time what I thought was what can I do about it now? What is done is done. Marriage has always been sacred to us we are belivers in Jesus. Now I am more sophisticated about my thinking on it. Now I think my daughter was just a child and you cant make a child enter into a binding agreement she was manipulated into. We should of pushed for an annulment like her daddy wanted and put our foot down and said no way are you leaving the country no way with that man old enough to be your daddy with salt and pepper hair and crows feet at the corners of his eyes and his teeth gone so yellow already. But then I just thought what can you do? She was already a year older than I was when I married her daddy.
We said stay at our house then even though it was strange but they had already got a room at the Holiday Inn on Okeechobee Road the same place where her daddy and me had our honeymoon so that was a strange thing to ponder all those memories and think of what was going on in that hotel room. So we took them to a very nice expensive dinner at the Red Lobster to celebrate the wedding we had not been invited to or told about. That was very hurtful even though it saved a lot of money I always wanted to give Sheila the kind of wedding like I never had with a big white cake and a train for her dress and I was going to do her hair up in a tiara and spend a lot of time getting it just right like nobody did for me. A church wedding and not a reception in the church fellowship hall but a real banquet hall someplace like in the movies.
I was real proud of Sheilas daddy during that dinner he leaned over to Samuel Tillotson. He was trembling which is as unusual as tears for him or it was then. He said now that you are a part of our family I want to welcome you into it and you are like a son to me. Which was funny because they were about the same age. He said I just want one thing from you and thats you take good care of my daughter because she is the only thing we got in the world worth a tinkers dam we dont even care about the house or the cars its just her we would give anything in the world for her and you should feel the same way. And Samuel to his credit said that he did feel the same way and we should all feel good knowing that Sheila would be very loved. Right then he put his hand on both our shoulders and prayed there in the restaurant for the family we were becoming to each other. That was embarrassing for us but it would of been impolite to say so because this seemed like a real important moment for all of us. Plus we wanted everything to be nice since Sheila was leaving and it might be a while before she could get back home to see us.
We drove them to the airport. They sat in the back seat and held hands. I didnt like the way Sheila was dressed for the trip a little tarty but I tried to keep it to myself because she was leaving like I said. I had made sure she had all her comfort things she needed and things to do her hair curling irons and so forth. I kept thinking something was missing and later I relized it was some of her stuffed bears she slept with every night until then that her uncle Frank got her when she was little for Chrismas one year. At the terminal there she said Sammy I am hungry can you bring me something? Her daddy like to leaped up to run get her a sandwich. He brought back four sandwiches and four ice cream sandwiches. Her pretty mouth was chewing. Her mouth was always so pretty. I saw Samuel looking at her mouth like a wolf but what could I say I couldnt say nothing they was married.