LINTON JONES

(This story is longer, because I decided not to continue it - - but tomorrow a new continued story begins.)

Sad little Boy
courtesy photobucket.com

 

 LINTON JONES   

Linton or Linny as he was called was born in 1956 to a lady whose husband passed away (actually he was on the way home, passed his house and just kept on going) and she was left with a three month old child.

 

 As Linny was growing up he tried to be obedient and precise and follow instructions to the letter. An example of this was when his mother told him to go sit in his wading pool, she found him still sitting there four hours later even though it had turned very cold.

 

 When she found him he was turning blue and wrinkled up. It took her two hours to thaw him out. She never told him that he could get out so he stayed in.

 

This was the way he grew acting out the exact details of what he had been told.

 

 He wanted to play football in high school and the coach let him be on the team in his senior year.

  

Lindy was happy doing small things like keeping the water bucket filled and cleaning the footballs. It was the last game of the season and he asked the coach if he could play some in the final game since he had not been in a game though he had been on the team all year.

 

 The coach told him he would see what he could do. Linny's team was ahead sixty five to nothing and it was the last play of the game when the coach told him to go in and carry the ball. The ball was snapped and the quarterback gave Linny the ball.

  

The bruisers on the opposing team were humiliated by the lopsided score and decided to get even. When Linny tried to run through the line one of the linesmen grabbed his helmet off and the team started pounding him.

 

 The whistle had blown and Linny's team had run off leaving him with the guys beating him up. After it was over the quarterback was carried off on the shoulders of the players and Linny was carried off on a stretcher.

 

The coach later came to the hospital and told Linny that they couldn't find his helmet and he would have to pay for it before he could graduate.

  

On a dare one of the senior girls asked Linny to take her out on a date.  During the evening he was very proper and cordial. He spent what little money he had on her and got her home early. The next day she spread it all around school, that was the worst date she ever had and dare or no dare she would never do that again.

 

 Such was Linny's life growing up but he still maintained his penchant for learning and detail.  

 

After getting his M.B.A. from College, he applied for the position of administrative aide with a firm which taught people how to make money in real estate.  His title meant flunkey or gopher for that is what he did.

 

Guard that suitcase !
courtesy photobucket

One day he was called into the office of the head huckster and he was given a very important task. He was to take a suitcase to a town in the southwest. He was told to keep it with him at all times and never let it out of his sight. He was instructed to buy a ticket (he was to be reimbursed later) and fly to Saint Louis, then transfer to a local airline and fly to San Martin and then go to the Hacienda Plato and deliver the suitcase to Maria Lopez.

 

 Linny was excited to be entrusted with such an important task. He arrived in Saint Louis and found that the flight leaving for San Martin was leaving in two minutes. There was no time to see to his luggage. He had to run from one end of the terminal to the other and when he reached the loading area the plane was warming up and ready to leave.

 

 He could hardly believe what he was seeing for the plane was a single engine two passenger aircraft. The engine was sputtering but the pilot said it was just warming up and would smooth out as soon.

The pilot started to taxi out on the runway and make his run for take off, but the plane kept missing and sputtering.  As they neared the end of the runway he aborted and turned around and said we will have to start over at the very end of the runway for we will need some more speed to get off the ground.

  

After dodging planes that were landing, they made it to the end of the runway and once again the pilot revved up the engine and gave it full throttle, it was still missing.  Linny held tight to the suitcase as the plane approached the end of the runway and realized they were committed to takeoff. The plane barely got over some trees at the end of the runway and flew under some power lines but they were airborne. The engine smoothed out after thirty minutes and after two hours they landed on a highway.

 

 When Linny asked where the town was the pilot said it is down this dirt road about six miles and you can walk there in no time. He said this was as close as he could land to it for the ranchers would shoot at him thinking he was the law.

  

It was a lot farther than the pilot had said and it took three hours to arrive at the small town. There was only one store with a gas pump. As he entered the store there were three people staring at his suitcase and that made Linny very uncomfortable.  He inquired how to get to Hacienda Plato but nobody had ever heard about it.  

 

 The store owner said to ask the bus driver when he came in about an hour.  Finally the bus arrived and the driver came in and had a cerveza.  Linny asked if he knew where Hacienda Plato was and said he was going near there. Linny thought at last he was making some head way.  When he saw the bus it looked like something that hauled Mexican farm workers to work, in fact it had Mexican license plates.

 

 Entering the bus, Lindy noticed that it smelled like it had been hauling goats but the driver assured him they would be at his destination in one hour.  Shortly after they left the store they were surrounded by police and ordered to disembark from the bus.

 

 Linny jumped right off and the police grabbed him, took the suitcase and handcuffed him.  

  

The bus driver stepped on the gas and left in a hail of bullets. The tires were shot out and the driver was arrested. Linny never saw him again.  At the station house the police roughed Linny up and asked him all kinds of questions he didn't know the answers to.

  

Linny showed the police his business card and asked them to call his boss and see if wasn't telling the truth about the reason he was there. After several hours they decided to make the call and the boss was afraid that he would be involved so he said he never had heard of Linny.

  

The police had forcefully seized the suitcase from Linny even though he tried to keep it.   Some hours later they returned it and released him.

 

 Linny never gets angry, but he was a little perturbed by what he had been through and he still had not completed his task.  Soon he found a taxi down the street from the police station because he wanted to get away as quickly as he could in case they changed their minds.

 

 He asked the taxi driver to take him to the Hacienda Plato and let him out.

  

It was so dark when he arrived and he could barely see the outline of a building ahead of him.  He stumbled and fell and since it was almost morning he decided to sit where he fell and perhaps get a bit of sleep.

 

When he awoke he was surrounded by chickens singing and roosters crowing.  Feeling battered and bruised he struggled to get up.

  

Heading to the door of what turned out to be a two room shack, he thought "So this is the Hacienda Plato?"  Knocking on the door several times, a young woman answered and said; “did you bring it?”  Linny said; “Bring what?”  She impatiently said; “the suitcase of course!”

 

 With that he handed it over to her and gave her the key. Opening the suitcase, she looked inside she discovered that it was full of bubble wrap and two bricks.  To Linny's amazement, she started screaming. “Where's the money?”  He didn't get to answer her due to all of her screaming and carrying on.

  

After some time she asked him what happened to the suitcase full of cash. He started at the beginning and told her what had taken place not leaving out any detail, and how the police had taken it from him and later gave it back.

  

She said; I'm out of here now and jumped into her jeep 4WD drove off across the desert toward Mexico.

 

 He searched the shack for some food, because he was famished and had not eaten for a day and a half.  

  

Out back Linny discovered a new B.M.W. and he found the keys on a dresser.  In the glove compartment there were several credit cards, a wad of hundred dollar bills, and the ownership certificate.  

  

He thought this was a good time for him to leave also. The car was plush and drove like a dream. When he got to Saint Louis he signed the transfer slip over to himself for he thought the police had helped themselves to enough cash from the suitcase to need anything else.

  

After a week he arrived back at work driving his brand new fully paid for car.  Linny returned the empty suitcase to his boss and gave a full explanation, then said; I will be available to deliver this for you again if I'm needed but first I need to be reimbursed for all my expenses which come to five figures.

  

There was something about those two weeks that changed Linny forever and he would never be the same again.

THE END

 

This post was shared at: Tell Me a Story  (It could be true)

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