Ain't Misbehavin'

Ain't Misbehavin'

by

srtrekker

Rating: G/PG for schoolboy hijinks.
Disclaimer: It all belongs to Paramount. This may be promoting their show, but I’m not making any money off of it. Alas.
Genre: General
Summary: A tale of the young Charles "Trip" Tucker. Still-in-school-young.

*******

It wasn’t, as the most senior Mrs. Charles Tucker was wont to say, that her eldest grandson wanted to misbehave. On the contrary, even the teachers who regularly and despairingly dispatched him to detention hall unanimously agreed that he never intended to cause trouble. No one was more surprised than Trip when one of his well-intentioned projects went awry, nor more genuinely repentant in the aftermath.

It was just that his projects went awry so frequently. There was a pool going in the teachers’ lounge as to just how many hours in detention Charles Tucker III would accumulate by the time he graduated. Nick Riley, who taught mathematics, was taking side bets on the total number of visits to the school made by official governmental agencies on young Mr. Tucker’s behalf. They had stopped the bets on how many teachers would retire after an encounter with Trip; it seemed too much like letting down the side.

Today, though neither he nor the world was aware of it, Trip was going for a new record of separate detentions scored by a single student in a single day. Not that he was planning mischief. In fact, the very opposite was true. Just now, he was engrossed in helping his grandfather. Or, rather, he was engrossed in repairing his previous attempt at helping his grandfather. Which was why, instead of listening to Miss Patterson expound on the political exigencies that had resulted in the development of the shopping mall, he was trying to figure out how his new improved milking system that should have cut the time required to milk his grandfather’s herd of prized Holsteins by fifty-seven percent could have malfunctioned. The resultant short-circuits had sent electricity arcing between the tips of the cows horns—according to the hired man recounting the story of the stampede from his hospital bed.

The screen of his computer flashed an incoming message. With an animated character holding its finger to its lips, a balloon came up with the word “P’sst!”

With a vagrant thought that wondered if “P’sst” were actually a word, Trip acknowledged Jeff Carpenter’s message.

Jeff was one of Trip’s best buds, or as Trip’s father said, ‘one of the devil’s disciples’. “Whatcha doin’?” asked the character in a dialogue balloon.

Obligingly Trip shared the computer simulation of his milking machine. Jeff sent a character, a finger laid aside its cheek, obviously deep in thought. Lionel Pargetter evidenced curiosity also, and Trip, seeking any help, shared the simulation with him.

Very shortly, nearly everyone in the room was studying the simulation.

When the “Eureka!” message appeared on Trip’s screen, there wasn’t time to warn Jeff not to run his solution.

The computers were all linked, so the simulation ran on each one. Chips fried, circuits shorted, and smoke boiled. Students bolted for the doors as the fire suppression system went off.

Sighing, Trip tucked the detention slip into his pocket. An hour a day for a week for computer abuse, an hour a day for the next week for disruption of class. It wasn’t so much that he minded staying after school; it was, after all, a fairly regular occurrence and ordinarily he simply worked on his computer. Well, THAT was out for the time being. His parents weren’t going to be happy about the fried laptop but that too was a fairly regular occurrence. “It’s okay,” he said to Lauren Mickelson, who was looking worried and upset. It had been her first group computer melt-down; the first time was always the hardest. “Personal school computers are covered by school insurance.”

There wasn’t all that much rush about fixing the milking program anyway; the herd was now lurking in the woods on the Burchett place, two farms over, stampeding at the approach of any human. And while Trip was pretty certain that while his grandfather probably couldn’t really retract his name as threatened, he was more certain that his grandfather wouldn’t let him near the dairy barn any time soon.

“Good afternoon!” Mr. Shaw called cheerily to the class just as Trip slid into his seat in the biology lab. “We have some really exciting work for today.”

Mr. Shaw labored under the delusion that his students found the subject of biology as fascinating as he did. Trip didn’t, particularly, but he did like Mr. Shaw. It was Shaw who had told Trip when you wanted someone to believe something that wasn’t true, always cite sources. “According to my ancient civilizations class at Harvard, women have always occupied subordinate positions in polytheistic societies…According to my cooking classes at the Sorbonne, you ALWAYS add the salt last.”

“Remember I promised you a surprise?” Mr. Shaw asked, rhetorically as usual because as usual he didn’t wait for an answer. “Well, we have just received a shipment of Bashir langosteens and we get to dissect them!”

“Ick!” someone muttered behind Trip, and he agreed.

Genetic engineering to produce more and larger lobsters with greater portions of meat had fulfilled its purpose—and more. The Bashir langosteens, raised in inland ponds, reproduced so readily and grew so quickly that their tasty meat had become as common and cheap as chicken.

With success came excess and surplus langosteens had become a mainstay of medical testing labs. It was only a step for them to move into school biology labs where the students were studying dissection and anatomy.

Still, Alan Bean High was a small school with a limited budget. Had not an old school chum of Shaw’s, teaching in a school in the next county, gotten a volume discount on the langosteens and generously offered to share, Shaw’s students would have been limited to dissecting nightcrawlers.

It is with such small things that the great tides of world change are set in motion.

“Find a partner and let’s get going!”

Trip didn’t really like this dissection stuff. He really didn’t think that at any point in his life it would be necessary for him to be able to identify the internal organs of a mutated crustacean. Weighed against that, of course, was the virtual certainty that someone would get sick and puke, which was always a highlight of the day.

Johnnie Sue Patterson was standing at one of the stations. She always smelled better than anyone Trip had ever met.

Just now, though, she was green.

Under the cover of the general confusion as partners were selected and stations located, he moved to her side. “You okay?”

“That is the grossest thing I’ve ever seen,” she said, squinching up her eyes. The enhanced langosteens looked like something out of a horror movie when they were intact; sliced open they defied description. Perhaps as a result of their rapid growth, the Bashir langosteens had large gall bladders. Filled with green, viscous slime. “If I even look at it, I’m going to barf.”

No one ever appealed to Trip Tucker’s compassion in vain. “Then don’t look,” he said quickly. “I’ll do the dissecting. Just pretend you’re watching.”

The plan might have worked had it not been for the person of Bailey Waters. During football season, Bailey was an offensive lineman. During the rest of his school time, Bailey was the class clown. Well, actually, he was ‘a’ class clown. In this class, there was an entire cadre of class clowns. They had considered designating someone to be the normal person each day so the clowns would have an audience.

Bailey’s forte as a clown was grossness. He had the most convincing retch in the school. He also had a shark’s instinct for locating the weak members of the herd.

Recognizing Johnnie Sue’s problem, he whispered, “Hey, Johnnie Sue!” Holding up the gall bladder of his specimen, he squeezed it and slime burst between his fingers. “Slime! I’m going to puke!”

Johnnie Sue had instinctively looked at him. Watching the green slime dripping from his hands and listening to the retching, she stepped back and turned to bury her face against Trip’s shoulder.

Which would have been a good thing except just then he was in the process of disengaging the internal organs of their specimen. Including the gallbladder. Which he immediately punctured.

It was at this point that they both discovered that the slime not only looked gross, it smelled—well, he never really got around to analyzing exactly what it smelled like, because by that time Johnnie Sue was puking on their specimen, Bailey was rolling on the floor laughing his ass off, and sympathy puking was rippling across the laboratory.

Scrubbing the lab floor, Trip paused long enough to glare at Bailey. “You…are so dead.”

“It was funny,” Bailey defended himself. At the grim silence, he pursued, “It was funny.”

Trip returned to his scrubbing. “Aw, c’mon, Trip,” the lineman said plaintively. Having Trip mad at him was worse punishment than cleaning up the mess. “You mean to tell me you didn’t get a kick out of watching Barry puking on Charity’s designer shoes?”

“We’re cleaning puke and langosteen guts off the floor,” Trip growled. “I’m not finding much funny just now.”

Mr. Shaw came over, a scowl on his normally pleasant face. Examining the now spotless lab, he nodded. “That will do. I hope next time you’re tempted into a prank, you think about this.”

Neither of the boys quite understood that, but that wasn’t the issue. “We will, sir,” they chorused.

He pointed to the tub that contained the remnants of the langosteens and various other biological entities. “Take that to the compost heap. Then you can go to your next class. We’ll credit this towards your detention.”

The stairs at ABHS were located at either end of the four-story building, zigzagging their way up the stairwell. They were steep but not unduly so. To separate the students going up from the students coming down, a rail of polished wood and brass had been installed in the middle.

The rail made the passage too narrow for them to descend side by side with the tub between them. Bailey, as the biggest and strongest, therefore went first, backing down the stairs, holding the handle a little high just as Trip was holding his low to keep the tub level and the noxious contents inside.

Dooley Padudavak, a large, corpulent man of indeterminate age and uncertain history, spent his days sitting, palmetto leaf fan in his hand, little white fiest dog lying at his feet, once-white Panama hat on his head, full glass and a half-filled bottle of liquor on the table beside him, on the porch of the rambling and ramshackle Halstead place.

Dooley had appeared in Brayford County—well, no one knew exactly when Dooley had appeared in Brayford County. When the question was asked on the courthouse lawn, nobody could remember exactly when they first saw him sitting there rocking, but then nobody could remember the time when he hadn’t been there.

It had to have been a long time—certainly beyond Trip’s daddy’s memory. Charles Tucker, Jr., except the years he spent in the Massachusetts Gulag attending MIT and a period of three years spent in Panama City selling his soul to corporate greed mongers, had lived all his life in Brayford County and knew everyone in it. Trip had once asked him if Dooley ever moved from his rocker, and Tuck had said, sure he did. He had to go inside when one of the Gulf storms blew up—otherwise the rain watered down the liquor in his glass.

Nobody knew where Dooley came from—although when sampling more freely than usual from the bottle, he tended to ramble about the “dark, dank, black pits of the coal fields”—even though no coal had been mined on earth since before the war and even then automated drills had done the digging—and “the depredations of the Cossacks”—who hadn’t raided the steppes of Russia for several hundred years.

Visitors to the house were greeted by a slavering pack of watchdogs—well, actually, it was a conglomerate of mongrels, hounds, and a poodle that had escaped from the bondage of ribbons and coiffures and now lived in kinked comfort with the riffraff. There was a sign posted on the live oak at the foot of the drive: “Seventeen dogs live here. Five of them bite.”

The dogs competed for attention, food, and space with the large and noisy Padudavak brood, and, despite zoning laws to the contrary, with various ponies, goats, cats, pigs, chickens, pigeons, ducks, and an emu named Gwendolyn.

All this was forgiven by the power structure of Brayford County because Dooley Padudavak made, without question, without rival, without peer, the finest moonshine ever to touch the lips of mankind.

And the lips of Brayford County were touched frequently.

Dooley’s moonshine toasted at weddings, celebrated at births, and consoled at divorces. The first glass of Dooley’s moonshine was a rite of passage into adulthood for the youth of the county. There was scarcely a house in the county—or in the surrounding hundred miles—not graced by Dooley’s homebrew.

Representatives of Messrs. Beam and Dickel had wept with envy at the taste of the raw liquor and offered Dooley generous remuneration for agreeing not to enter the legal market competing against them nor sell his recipe to their competitors. The men who had negotiated the deal had gone away congratulating themselves on their business acumen, never realizing that they had paid for nothing. Dooley’s indolence was assurance that he would never expend the time and effort to actually age the stuff, but more to the point, he couldn’t have sold the recipe because he didn’t have one. His whisky-making was instinct, pure and simple.

Well, actually, his forte was directing whisky-making; he never did the actual physical labor. For that, he had his many children.

Which brings us to Dooley Padudavak’s role in Trip’s woes.

It wasn’t the evil of John Barleycorn, as his maternal grandmother, the Carry Nation of Brayford County, called Dooley’s whisky, that got Trip into trouble. Generations of Tuckers had been Dooley’s customers and were true connoisseurs of his unparalleled skills, but none had ever had a problem with drinking. They drank well and frequently, no problem.

It was the Padudavak workforce that was Trip’s undoing.

Dooley had long ago figured out that paying workers was a waste of money when he could raise his own, particularly since he expended no effort in actually raising or caring for them. Those tasks he left to whatever fortunate woman had the honor of being his wife at the time. Dooley didn’t believe in living in sin; he always married the woman in his life. And so, for more than forty years, he and his string of four wives had produced a steady stream of unpaid laborers.

And THAT was why Trip’s mother always said that it was all Dooley Padudavak’s fault.

Because Dooley, in a genetic fluke that still had the experts on genetic engineering scratching their heads, somehow produced, with whatever wife, daughters who were what Tuck called ‘voluptuous earth goddesses’, though he warned Trip not to repeat the description to his mother.

Not for the Padudavaks the expertly groomed wraiths of the fashion magazines—these girls specialized in generous curves that stayed the course despite healthy appetites and frequent babies. Since their natures were as warm as their figures, there was hardly a man in Brayford County who didn’t know and think fondly of at least one of the Padudavak girls.

All the Padudavak girls’ names rhymed. Georjean, Darlene, Maureen, Jolene, Raydean—it went on and on. The particular instrument of Trip’s downfall was Doreen.

Sitting at her desk in class, one leg crossed over the other, Doreen had a habit of slipping her heel from her shoe, then dangling the shoe on her toe. Trip had passed hours in fascinated contemplation of that dangling shoe and had at one point answered the question of “What is the highest mountain on Mars?” with “Shoes”.

Doreen, coming in late to school because Dooley had had a batch coming off at noon, was on her way upstairs to English class on the second floor as Trip and Bailey were on their way downstairs with the tub of detritus. She was wearing a simple gray wool skirt that on anyone else would have been modest, but as Tuck had once said, just before getting to spend the night in the guest room, “I don’t understand how the same muscles can look so different when those girls use them.”

Trip was admiring how those very muscles operated to ascend the stairs instead of paying attention to what he was doing and as a result he missed the step. Lurching forward, he shoved the tub against Bailey, who had also been busily engaged in watching those same muscles.

Bailey, thrown off balance, tried to find a step, but instead started to fall backwards—into thin air.

Trip realized what was happening and instinctively grabbed for the railing with one hand while maintaining a deathgrip the handle of the tub with the other. Bailey, completely off balance, hung suspended for a moment, only his grip on the tub preventing his tumble down the stairs.

The problem was, the burly lineman outweighed Trip by a considerable margin—and the handrail was slick polished wood. Even as he felt his fingers slipping on the rail though, he hung grimly onto the handle of the tub, determined not to turn loose of his friend, even if it meant they both fell.

Trip caught a glimpse of flowers just an instant before his fingers slipped on the railing. Trip could have saved himself by simply turning loose of the tub handle, but he stubbornly held onto it as Bailey, released from the fragile support, lurched backwards.

The effect was similar to a catapult as both the tub and Trip went flying through the air over Bailey’s head.

Because a single coincidence can cause a small disaster but it requires a string of coincidences for the disaster to reach truly epic proportions—the sinking of the Titanic, the bombing of Pearl Harbor come to mind—today was by chance the day of Miss Ina Mae Dillington’s monthly visit to the school.

Miss Ina Mae was called Miss Ina Mae even though there had long ago been a Mr. Dillington who had died while robbing one of his honeybee hives. Trip’s grandpa had once said it was a clear-cut case of suicide—better to die from a thousand stings all at once from the bees than to suffer a thousand stings spread over a lifetime from Miss Ina Mae. Trip’s grandma had told him to hush, bees might be listening and get insulted.

Miss Ina Mae was what could only be called a ‘pillar of the community’. She sang a strong, if not particularly melodious, soprano in the choir of the First Methodist Church. She was annually elected president of the Brayford County Garden Club. She was a founding member and director of the Brayford County Historic Society. Her primary duties nowadays, though, were as president of the Brayford County Citizens’ Oversight Committee.

The Oversight Committee had a vaguely defined mission of overseeing matters of concern to the people Brayford County in its charter, but Miss Ina Mae recognized no ambiguity. Under her direction, the Committee had intruded into nearly every civic and governmental activity in the county.

At the school, she ruthlessly rousted couples from the library stacks (Trip and Mattie Schofield, discussing “The Scarlet Letter”, had been working their way through an alphabetical listing of sins. They had reached “F” when Miss Ina Mae caught them.), evicted all machines supplying junk food, and called all the numbers listed on the bathroom walls to speak with the miscreant’s parents.

She had devoted considerable time last month to supervising while the cowering custodians painted over the graffiti on the bathroom walls. Today she was on a tour of inspection to ensure the walls were still pristine.

In honor of the occasion, she was wearing a new spring ensemble of primrose pink, with a white, broad-brimmed hat trimmed in a profusion of spring flowers.

She was examining the floor for tell-tale signs that the baseball players were wearing their cleats indoors again, and so did not register the identified flying objects coming towards her.

Trip sailed over Miss Ina Mae’s head.

The tub and contents did not.

Trip slammed into the floor with sufficient force to knock the breath from his lungs, then skidded across the hall to crash into the wall.

Collecting his wits, he looked around. To his dismay, Miss Ina Mae was sitting bolt upright on the floor, her primrose suit liberally decorated with langosteen parts, puke, and slime, the once-crisp hat brim collapsed over her face.

Trip managed to get to his feet and instinctively went to help the woman. Going over to her, he caught her by the elbow and helped her to her feet. “Miss Ina Mae, I can’t even begin to tell you how sorry I am.”

As luck would have it, she recovered her breath just then. “Turn me loose!”

She jerked her arm away from him. Unfortunately, the preservative used in the langosteens had spread over the floor, which was, as Bailey, who had been unhurt by his tumble, would later tell the authorities, “slicker’n owl shit.” No one actually knew how slick that was, but it was sufficiently slick that Miss Ina Mae’s intemperate action caused her feet to fly from under her and she struck the floor hard, butt first.

Trip made a grab to catch her, but the impetus of her fall brought him down on top of her. This time, she cushioned his fall. He scrambled up, and because he was nothing if not determined, helped her to her feet again.

By the time she was upright, she had recovered her breath, but not her temper. “You! I should have known it would be you!” She then proceeded to review his past indiscretions, his current situation, and his probable nefarious future.

At another time he would have been fascinated by her encyclopedic knowledge of his life, but he was distracted. Born and bred a Southern gentleman, the descendant of Southern gentlemen, he took the only course of action available to a Southern gentleman when faced with an irate woman with the remnants of a dead langosteen stuck in her cleavage.

He reached out and plucked it free.

None of the teachers at Alan Bean High School had any hesitation in identifying the piercing sound as the Emergency Siren that heralded hurricanes, tornados, and other acts of God. That it might be an enraged Miss Ina Mae Dillington or that she might have just snatched off her sodden hat and hit Charles Tucker III with it, causing them both to fall again, didn’t enter their minds.

So it was that the fifteen hundred twenty-seven students with their attendant faculty members, obediently exiting their schoolrooms per procedure, found Miss Ina May Dillington, pillar of the community, just pushing herself into a sitting position astride the recumbent form of our hero.

It says much for the discipline of the school, or else of their fear of being involved in yet another Trip Tucker escapade, that no one stopped and no one laughed until they were outside the building.

By the time Trip reached this point in his recital of events during the hearing before the Disciplinary Committee of the County Board of Education, Ray Corcoran had to change hands on the gavel because his right hand had given out from the constant pounding necessary to keep some semblance of order in the proceedings. “Mr. Tucker, I think we’ve heard enough. Perhaps you would wait outside while we continue.”

This was no time to argue the constitutionality of the proceedings; Trip escaped while he could.

There was a stir and through the glass of the doors, Trip could see people coming down the stairs from the room where the hearing was being held. Trip’s father came out the door and looked around, obviously seeking his son. Catching sight of him sitting disconsolately on the steps, he came over and sat down beside him. “Is it over with?” Trip asked dolefully.

Tuck shook his head. “No. Doreen just finished describing you plucking the langosteen from Miss Ina Mae’s cleavage. Ray had to call a recess while the audience regained its composure.”

“Oh.”

Tuck looked up at the sky. It was one of those clear Southern nights when the stars are so near they barely escape becoming tangled in the trees. “I called your uncle Buddy. He’s invited you to come stay with him for a while.”

Trip looked at him. “Because,” Tuck continued, “a delegation of parents, teachers, school board members, and various city and county officials came to us asking if you might consider transferring to another school.”

“Oh.”

“If it makes you feel any better, every one of them offered to write a letter of recommendation to whatever school you decide to attend.”

“Oh.”

“You can finish up your classes this year on-line. Buddy even says you can work on the ocean reclamation project with him this summer.”

Trip nodded. “All right.”

“Good. We’ll call Buddy when we get home.”

“Dad?”

“H’mm?”

“I never meant for any of this to happen.”

“I know, son. You never do.” He clapped his son on the back and stood up. “Come on. I just saw Jolene Padudavak go by. If we hurry, we can watch her walk up the stairs.”

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Have a comment to make about this story? Do so in the Trip Fan Fiction forum at the HoTBBS!

A whole mess of folks have made comments

Oh lordy this was a hoot! And so Trip.

The line about the Devil's Disciples! BAHAHAHAA!!!

Jee-zo, that was well-done.

I've never laughed so much or so hard, I can't type straight, Jeez that was funny and so believably Trip.

You're responsible for a considerable pain in my ribs (from hysterical laughter). That was wonderful, and so very Trip.

I'm looking forward to reading more of your work. Thank you for a great story.

this is yelling for a sequel...keep up the good work!

Wonderful, hilariously funny and so full of descriptive characters and situations. Poor Trip! A comedy of errors from start to finish that just had me cracking up! Thank you so much for all the fun and laughter, Ali D :~)

Wow! You are a natural-born storyteller. This is a very funny and entertaining read. I'd sure like to read anything else you've written. Thanks for the laughs and please write more!

Hi to all! It's actually my first time to read a Trip-centred fic and I must say I wasn't disappointed. THIS IS SO HILARIOUS! I'm looking forward to reading your other fics. ^_^

If ou don't keep writing, then there is seriously something wrong. It really made up for the times I was asked to leave a school or sat in detention.

Lmao! Poor Trip! For him, getting in so much trouble on Enterprise suddenly makes so much sense! LOL! Great story. My sides are hurting from laughter. Keep the stories coming!

poor trip, what did he actually do wrong bar the clevage part he did what most would do. Oh well, loved it

This is some of the best fan-written fiction I've ever read. Your dialog is so authentic! Well done!

okay, i'm sitting here with TEARS streaming down my face. i just lost it completely when the southern gentleman in him made him pluck it from her cleavage. from then on it was just down hill for me (i almost peed my pants-- and i'm a tough sell at comedy because i'm somewhat funny myself) this was WONDERFUL. i always wonder why more writers don't incorporate the character's childhoods... great job. i know i'll come back and read it again. thank you.

This is one of the funniest, best written fanfics I've ever read in any fandom anywhere. How's that for an endorsement?! This was probably my favorite line:

"They had considered designating someone to be the normal person each day so the clowns would have an audience."

You so quickly and so vivid captured not only young Trip, but his entire community. I see this is the only story you have archived here. I, for one, would love to read more. Thanks!

Just discovered this on a recommendation from Ragua and, in a word: brilliant! Thank you for this hilarious look at Trip's early life!

Wow, humor tight packed and intense. I was tired when I read it so it was almost too much to absorb at one sitting. Very like a high school though, but I had to re-read parts to keep up with the thread of the story. More? Do you have more humor stories? I'd like to read them too.

very well written. it was a pleasure.