A Kidnapping at Christmas

[This is another of my stories  that first appeared in my book, Christmas Memories from Seven to Seventy, available in paperback from Amazon.com.]

Are they making a movie here in the airport?” Pansy asked. I looked around the Love Field terminal for cameras or banks of lights. When I saw none, I said, “I don’t guess. Why?”

“All those men with cowboy hats and boots,” she said. “They look like they’re in costume for a movie.”

“That’s probably just the way those fellows dress,” I said. “Lots of Texans wear hats and boots all the time.”

“Are they rodeo riders, then?”

“No. Just Texans.”

“But I’ve never seen you dress like that. You don’t have boots or a ten-gallon hat,” she teased. “Unless you’ve kept them hidden from me. Maybe you think they wouldn’t go over too well in South
Carolina.”

I shrugged my shoulders, then pointed. “There goes another guy in what you call his costume, but he doesn’t look much like John Wayne.”

It was Christmas 1965. Pansy and I had been married just a few months. This was her first trip to my native Texas. We were wandering casually through the Dallas airport. My younger brother Leonard and his wife Judy were both working. Judy was to meet us when she got off work and take us to their house in Arlington, between Dallas and Fort Worth. We planned to ride with them some two hundred miles to the west the next day to Sweetwater to join other members of the Webb clan at the apartment where Mother and Daddy were living.

Pansy glanced at her watch and said, “Our bags have probably come off the plane by now. Shouldn’t we pick them up?”

“It’ll be an hour or so before Judy can get here after work,” I said. “We’d have to keep them with us or find a locker if we get them now.”

Pansy agreed. After we window-shopped a while, we ate a quick lunch. During lunch, the piped-in music was a mixture of cowboy and Christmas. In between “Jingle Bells” and “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” they slipped in the Sons of the Pioneers singing “Drifting Along with the Tumbling Tumbleweeds.”

After we ate, we met Judy and strolled to baggage claim.

Soon after we married, Pansy had picked out an attractive set of luggage: snow-white, which would be easy to spot on an airport luggage rack. A large bag for me, a smaller bag for her and a smaller
piece for her cosmetics. In the short time we had been married, I had already learned that her love for beauty and symmetry was balanced with a sense of the practical.

When we packed before leaving for the trip, I had suggested that we put some of both our clothes in both bags, “just in case something might happen to one of them.”

I guess that was too much togetherness for Pansy. She thought we each should pack our own. So that’s what we did.

When we got to the baggage area, most of the pieces from our flight had been picked up. The rest were set to one side off the carousel.

“There they are!” we both exclaimed. Our white luggage truly stood out. Both pieces. One bag and one cosmetics case.

“But where is yours?” Pansy asked.

“Yeah. Where is mine?” I echoed, thinking back to my suggestion the night before about distributing our stuff equally between the two bags in case of a problem.

After frantically looking around to see whether we had overlooked the hard-to-miss missing piece – which contained all the clothes and toiletries I had planned to use on this trip – I said, “Where’s the lost luggage office?”

The claim office was close by, so I took out our stubs and stepped over to an airline employee who had overheard our conversation.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“I hope so!” I said. “One of our bags isn’t here!”

The man took the three claim stubs and methodically matched two of them with our two pieces which were there. He glanced around and asked – all too casually to suit me – “You had another bag, then?”

I wanted to say, “Of course. Why else would I be offering you three stubs?” Instead, I just said, “Yes. All white. Just like these. Only bigger. A three-piece set.”

“Everything’s off that Atlanta flight,” he said. “Just yours and a few others haven’t been picked up.”

My elation at bringing my wife to Texas to meet her new family had withered. “What can you do to find my suitcase?”

Pulling a form out from under the counter, the agent said, “If you’ll fill this out – ”

“We’re just in the Dallas area overnight,” I said, desperation rising.

“Sir, if you’ll only – ”

I didn’t want Pansy to see her new husband experience complete meltdown his first day back on his native soil. So I tried to collect myself. Swallowing hard, I said, “You were saying?”

“Sir, there is a place at the top of the form for you to list a local phone where we can reach you.”

“How long will it take to trace the bag?”

“Sir, we will carefully follow our prescribed procedure to determine whether they put your bag on the plane with you out of Atlanta. If they didn’t, we will get it on our next flight.”

“Because we’re leaving tomorrow to go ’way on out to West Texas.”

“Sir, we will trace every possibility.”

Judy reminded me of their phone number, and I completed the form. 

When we left Love Field, Judy said, “Since Leonard won’t be off work for a while, would you like to see some of the Christmas decorations in the department stores downtown?”

My mind was still with my snow-white suitcase, but Pansy was agreeable, so I tried to be too.

In one store, a tall, barrel-chested blind man rode the escalators, singing carols at the top of his voice. Judy said, “He does that every year, going from store to store spreading Christmas cheer.” But I was none too cheerful as I pondered the fate of my suitcase. I thought, “At least, his songs are more appropriate to the season than ‘Tumbling Tumbleweeds.’”

Leonard is my younger brother, but he’s several inches taller than me. He’s also the family clown. After supper, he disappeared into their bedroom, returning in a moment with a colorful paper.

With a flourish, he presented it to his new sister: “Pansy, this is an official certificate making you an honorary Texan. If anybody stops you to investigate you, just show him this.”

Turning to me, Leonard said, “You're more than welcome use my electric razor and aftershave in the morning, Lawrence. But I’m afraid my pajamas would be ‘way too long for you.”

“That’s okay, Leonard,” I said. “Maybe the airline – ”

Even as I spoke, the phone rang. Judy answered. “Yes, he’s here. Just a moment.” She smiled as she handed the phone to me, and we all heaved a sigh of relief.

That sigh was premature.

“Mr. Webb, we have determined the location of your bag,” the voice on the other end of the line said.

“Did it get on a later plane out of Atlanta?” I asked.

“Actually, it came in to Love Field when you did,” the woman said.

“So we can pick it up tomorrow?”

“We certainly hope so,” she said. “But we do not have it in our possession at the moment.”

“But you just said it came in when we did.”

“That is correct. It arrived when you did,” the agent said. “But we do not have it in our possession at the present moment.”

“I don’t understand – ” I began.

“Mr. Webb, a highly unusual situation has developed, but we have turned the matter over to the FBI.”

“The FBI!” I yelled into the phone. Turning to my startled family, I said, “They said the FBI is trying to find my bag!”

Almost in chorus, Pansy, Judy, and Leonard echoed, “The FBI!”

Back into the phone, I asked, “How in the world did the FBI get mixed up with my bag?”

“Mr. Webb, we regret to report that another passenger was disgruntled because his luggage had not arrived, so he deliberately took another bag – yours – and is, in effect, holding it hostage until we return his bag to him.”

“But how – ”

“The other party called and told us what he was doing,” the agent said. “We tried to reason with him, but he was adamant. At that point, we turned the matter over to the FBI.”

“But – ”

“Mr. Webb, we will keep you apprised of any new development. Good night.” I heard a click, then the dial tone. The airline rep had hung up.

I went to bed wearing the underwear I had put on that morning back in South Carolina. As I tossed and tumbled, a picture formed in my mind: J. Edgar Hoover at a luggage carousel, peering through
a large detective-style magnifying glass, searching through an assortment of bags, finally coming up with my snow-white suitcase, triumphantly holding it up with both hands, and extending it to me.

Next morning, I put on the same clothes I had worn the day before, and I used Leonard’s shaver. He had to work that day, but we were to head for Sweetwater as soon as he got off that night.

Before long, the phone rang. Judy answered. “Yes, he’s here. Just a moment.” She smiled a faint smile as she handed the phone to me, and we all heaved a sigh, short of relief. We didn’t know
what the message would be.

“Mr. Webb, where would you like us to deliver your luggage?”

“Does that mean you found it?”

“Yes, Mr. Webb. We have the luggage in the possession of the airline. Where would you like us to deliver your luggage?”

“What about the FBI? What about the other guy?”

“We are not at liberty to disclose that information, Mr. Webb. Where would you like us to deliver your luggage?”

“What choices do I have?”

She named a hotel in downtown Fort Worth.

I covered the phone and told Judy the hotel where they could drop off the bag.

“We can go there,” she said. “A lot easier than going back to Love Field.”

Later, as we drove westward on a windy, wintry night, Pansy called attention to something the rest of us hardly noticed. Ball-like weeds, larger than basketballs, were blowing across the flat stretches of four-lane highway. Dozens of them. Hundreds is more like it.

“What are those things?” she asked.

“Remember the song by the Sons of the Pioneers?” I asked. “Those are the famous Tumbling Tumbleweeds.”

Leonard started singing, and I joined in: “See them tumbling down, pledging their love to the ground, lonely but free I’ll be found, drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.”

Judy poked Leonard in the ribs and asked, “Were your folks pioneers?

“I don’t reckin,” he said.

“Well, then maybe you ought to leave the singing to Bob Nolan and the real Sons of the Pioneers.”

We rode in silence for the next several miles, Leonard and Judy chauffeuring us to the next day’s Christmas reunion. In the back seat, I sat with one arm around my wife and the other hand on my snow-white bag, lest someone else should decide to hold it for ransom.