Fic: "The Secret Life of Renfield Turnbull," Turnbull and Thatcher, G
For prompt #3 of the ds_aprilfools challenge:
Title: The Secret Life of Renfield Turnbull
Fandom: due South
Characters: Turnbull, Thatcher
Prompt: 03. Secret Lives
Word Count: 1691 (which means this should count as at least three fics!)
Rating: G
Author's Note: This story closely follows, and is a loving homage to, the classic James Thurber story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty."
“We’re going in!” Sergeant Turnbull’s voice rang out like a bugle call. He was dressed all in black, with soft, buttery black leather gloves, a black skullcap, and black makeup on his face, the better to help him blend into the night.
“We’ll never make it, sir! The kidnappers have all kinds of alarms and traps and whatnot!” one of his men protested weakly. “Just listen!” Indeed, in the distance, there was a high-pitched hwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa sound--the enemy’s perimeter defense system.
“I didn’t ask you, Constable Murphy,” the Sergeant replied coolly. “Our PM needs rescuing, and we are the ones to do it, so buck up and look sharp. Everyone put your night goggles on! Check your weapons and form up!”
His men did as he commanded, exchanging confident smiles and thumbs up, murmuring, “Sarge’ll get us through-he’s not afraid of anything!”
Sergeant Turnbull adjusted his goggles, picked a rope and a grappling hook off the ground, and carefully judged the distance between his group and the rooftop, muscles tensing to arc the grappling hook into exactly the right position--
“TURNBULL!” Inspector Thatcher yelled over the din of the vacuum cleaner. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING!”
Turnbull hastily dropped the long wand extension, turned the vacuum off, and removed his safety goggles. “Uh...” he offered, as Sergeant Turnbull and his heroic band faded out of his mind’s eye.
She stood there before him, arms crossed and lips pursed.
“Well, ma’am,” he said hurriedly, “I was just going to vacuum the drapes-they do seem to collect rather a lot of dust.”
Thatcher sighed in exasperation. “We’ve been over this, Turnbull. I don’t like you vacuuming the drapes. It leaves marks, and I find it difficult to concentrate on Consulate matters with all that racket. You don’t vacuum the drapes, you take them down and take them out to be laundered and pressed, and then you bring them back and hang them up again. And, oh, yes, while you’re out,” she added, “you can pick up my black pumps from the shoe repair place on Ingalls.” She pulled a claim ticket from the breast pocket of her suit jacket and handed it to him. “And we need a package of lightbulbs for the chandelier in the front hall. I expect you to handle these matters with dispatch.”
Turnbull nodded, and Thatcher waved him off. “Dismissed.”
Half an hour later, he was walking down the sidewalk with a large wicker basket full of first-floor drapes. It was so much more work to take the drapes out than to simply vacuum them in place, but at least it was a lovely spring day, the week or so between the end of the snow and ice and the beginning of the humid, sweltering days that made you want to melt under the stifling red serge. He passed the park, where a boy of nine or ten stood flying a remote-control airplane to and fro.
... “Captain Turnbull,” the beautiful stewardess said, bracing herself on the seatbacks as the plane pitched and bucked, “the pilot hit his head and can’t remember anything past the fifth grade, and the co-pilot suffered a heart attack. Please, could you...?” Her eyes flicked to the cockpit door.
“Of course I can,” Turnbull reassured her, rising easily from seat 4B and striding confidently toward the cockpit. He opened the door to see the navigator, a wiry, nervous-looking man with a long, pointed nose, struggling to remove the co-pilot from his seat. The pilot stood off to one side, hat in hand, scratching his head in confusion.
Turnbull hurried to help the navigator lift the co-pilot and place him gently against the bulkhead. “Gee!” the navigator said, realizing who his helper was, “I didn’t know you were on this flight! I still have your autograph from the Comox Valley show four years ago. This ought to be a piece of cake for you after being the lead pilot for the Snowbirds, eh?”
“You’re very kind,” Turnbull said modestly, settling into the pilot’s seat.
At that very moment, red lights started flashing and an alarm started blaring: whee-oo, whee-oo, whee-oo!
The navigator gasped in alarm, and the stewardess cried, “Oh, no, now the aeliron stabilizers are failing, and the pilot was the only one who knew how to fix them!” She looked frantically over to the captain, who was asking the navigator if he could be a pilot when he grew up. “We’re doomed!”
“Just settle down!” Turnbull commanded calmly. “Does anyone have a piece of gum?”
“Here,” the co-pilot said weakly. He spit his gum into the navigator’s hand, and the navigator, looking grave and uncertain, proffered it to Turnbull.
Turnbull took the gum, manually toggled the broken switch, and used the gum to stick it in the correct position. The alarm ceased and the red lights went off. “There, that should hold long enough to get us down safely.”
“Oh, Captain Turnbull, you did it!” the stewardess exulted, and the navigator pulled out a pen from his pocket and asked for another autograph...
The Chicago streets coalesced around him once more, and an elderly woman was pulling at his sleeve. “Oh my, you are real!” she exclaimed, jumping back. “The way you were so still there with your laundry basket, I thought maybe you were a washing powder advertisement. You know, a mime?”
Turnbull excused himself and walked the last block down the street to the dry cleaners. Washing powder? Mime? Why did he end up the subject of ridicule everywhere he went? He was a Mountie, wasn’t he?
He emerged from the dry cleaners a few minutes later and nearly ran into her, a woman with an exquisitely bad dye job and pink acrylic fingernails. “Hey baby,” she purred, “I’ve been bad, very, very bad. Why don’t you and I go to a hotel where you can arrest me?” She dangled a pair of handcuffs from a fingertip and smacked her gum lasciviously at him.
“Prostitution is indeed illegal, but I’m afraid I have no jurisdiction here,” he replied, and she gave a languid shrug and tottered off down the sidewalk on her four-inch spike heels.
Shoes, Turnbull remembered. He had to go pick up the Inspector’s shoes. He patted down his pockets looking for the claim stub she had given him, and then he got turned around and walked for half an hour before he realized the shoe repair was two blocks down from where he’d thought it was. The clerk retrieved the shoes for him with a slightly raised eyebrow, which he dutifully ignored. Back on the street, the black heels in a bag, he tried to remember what the other thing was that the Inspector had charged him with obtaining. He couldn’t seem to remember and knew he would earn another withering dressing down from her when he returned. Hmm. Punch bowl? Jodhpurs? Staple gun?
He passed the Music Hall’s giant marquee and saw that Michelle Wright was playing there that night.
...“You’re gonna knock ‘em dead!” his manager said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Listen to them scream for you!”
The great Tucker Turnbull, a living legend of country music, nervously adjusted his cowboy hat and tuned his six-string with his strong, callused hands as he stood in the wings. The crowd noise was deafening. Every seat was filled, and people were standing in the back, in the aisles, anywhere they could find an inch of space, all to see him belt out his greatest hits, ditties like “I Won't Be Home for Supper Because They Are Gonna Hang Me Tonight” and “Santa Drives a Pick-Up.” The atmosphere was electric.
“This is it,” his manager said. “They’ll storm the stage if you make ‘em wait any longer! Let’s get this show started!”
Tucker Turnbull strode onto the stage in his tight black rhinestone jeans and plain white sleeveless T-shirt, the lights went up, and the screaming got even louder. Some women in the front row actually swooned, and others thrust out their hands, hoping for a touch or a wave as he made his way to the mike.
“Well!” he drawled into the mike, “Hello, Chicago!” He waved and grinned and bowed to his fans.
The lights went up even further and flashbulb after flashbulb erupted, making little dots of white dance in front of his eyes...
“Lightbulbs,” Turnbull said out loud.
A woman passing by looked at him and laughed. “He said ‘lightbulbs.’ That man just said ‘lightbulbs’ to himself,” she said to her friend.
Turnbull hurried on, passing up the hardware store down the street for one that was closer to the consulate. It was half-past two by the time he strode up the Consulate steps and entered.
“Well, there you are,” Inspector Thatcher said as he entered her office. “I was about to send out a search party.” She looked up from her computer screen. “Well?”
He unfolded his arms, and everything spilled onto her desk. “Here’s the dry cleaning ticket, your shoes, and,” he added proudly, “the lightbulbs, sir.”
The Inspector opened the bag with the shoes and made a strangled noise, standing up in her distress. “Constable Turnbull, these are not my shoes!”
“Black pumps, you said.”
“Yes, but--” She held the shoes aloft. “Not size fifteens, for heaven’s sake!” Her gaze went to the lightbulbs. “And these are not the right bulbs for the front hall fixture!” She began pacing from one end of the desk to the other as he stood there at attention, calling to mind a peevish cat whipping its tail back and forth. “Can’t you even manage...”
...Major Turnbull stood at attention and stared into the middle distance, not even acknowledging his captors. Even after six hours in the same position, he didn’t move a muscle.
“I know you know!” the first interrogator, a mustachioed, swarthy man with unruly dark hair and a strange accent, insisted, pounding on the table. “You must tell me--where are the other men? What are the orders for your unit?”
He remained, silent and unbowed, a man who kept his secrets, Renfield Turnbull the Hero, inscrutable to the last.
My Prompt Table (scroll down)
Title: The Secret Life of Renfield Turnbull
Fandom: due South
Characters: Turnbull, Thatcher
Prompt: 03. Secret Lives
Word Count: 1691 (which means this should count as at least three fics!)
Rating: G
Author's Note: This story closely follows, and is a loving homage to, the classic James Thurber story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty."
“We’re going in!” Sergeant Turnbull’s voice rang out like a bugle call. He was dressed all in black, with soft, buttery black leather gloves, a black skullcap, and black makeup on his face, the better to help him blend into the night.
“We’ll never make it, sir! The kidnappers have all kinds of alarms and traps and whatnot!” one of his men protested weakly. “Just listen!” Indeed, in the distance, there was a high-pitched hwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa sound--the enemy’s perimeter defense system.
“I didn’t ask you, Constable Murphy,” the Sergeant replied coolly. “Our PM needs rescuing, and we are the ones to do it, so buck up and look sharp. Everyone put your night goggles on! Check your weapons and form up!”
His men did as he commanded, exchanging confident smiles and thumbs up, murmuring, “Sarge’ll get us through-he’s not afraid of anything!”
Sergeant Turnbull adjusted his goggles, picked a rope and a grappling hook off the ground, and carefully judged the distance between his group and the rooftop, muscles tensing to arc the grappling hook into exactly the right position--
“TURNBULL!” Inspector Thatcher yelled over the din of the vacuum cleaner. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING!”
Turnbull hastily dropped the long wand extension, turned the vacuum off, and removed his safety goggles. “Uh...” he offered, as Sergeant Turnbull and his heroic band faded out of his mind’s eye.
She stood there before him, arms crossed and lips pursed.
“Well, ma’am,” he said hurriedly, “I was just going to vacuum the drapes-they do seem to collect rather a lot of dust.”
Thatcher sighed in exasperation. “We’ve been over this, Turnbull. I don’t like you vacuuming the drapes. It leaves marks, and I find it difficult to concentrate on Consulate matters with all that racket. You don’t vacuum the drapes, you take them down and take them out to be laundered and pressed, and then you bring them back and hang them up again. And, oh, yes, while you’re out,” she added, “you can pick up my black pumps from the shoe repair place on Ingalls.” She pulled a claim ticket from the breast pocket of her suit jacket and handed it to him. “And we need a package of lightbulbs for the chandelier in the front hall. I expect you to handle these matters with dispatch.”
Turnbull nodded, and Thatcher waved him off. “Dismissed.”
Half an hour later, he was walking down the sidewalk with a large wicker basket full of first-floor drapes. It was so much more work to take the drapes out than to simply vacuum them in place, but at least it was a lovely spring day, the week or so between the end of the snow and ice and the beginning of the humid, sweltering days that made you want to melt under the stifling red serge. He passed the park, where a boy of nine or ten stood flying a remote-control airplane to and fro.
... “Captain Turnbull,” the beautiful stewardess said, bracing herself on the seatbacks as the plane pitched and bucked, “the pilot hit his head and can’t remember anything past the fifth grade, and the co-pilot suffered a heart attack. Please, could you...?” Her eyes flicked to the cockpit door.
“Of course I can,” Turnbull reassured her, rising easily from seat 4B and striding confidently toward the cockpit. He opened the door to see the navigator, a wiry, nervous-looking man with a long, pointed nose, struggling to remove the co-pilot from his seat. The pilot stood off to one side, hat in hand, scratching his head in confusion.
Turnbull hurried to help the navigator lift the co-pilot and place him gently against the bulkhead. “Gee!” the navigator said, realizing who his helper was, “I didn’t know you were on this flight! I still have your autograph from the Comox Valley show four years ago. This ought to be a piece of cake for you after being the lead pilot for the Snowbirds, eh?”
“You’re very kind,” Turnbull said modestly, settling into the pilot’s seat.
At that very moment, red lights started flashing and an alarm started blaring: whee-oo, whee-oo, whee-oo!
The navigator gasped in alarm, and the stewardess cried, “Oh, no, now the aeliron stabilizers are failing, and the pilot was the only one who knew how to fix them!” She looked frantically over to the captain, who was asking the navigator if he could be a pilot when he grew up. “We’re doomed!”
“Just settle down!” Turnbull commanded calmly. “Does anyone have a piece of gum?”
“Here,” the co-pilot said weakly. He spit his gum into the navigator’s hand, and the navigator, looking grave and uncertain, proffered it to Turnbull.
Turnbull took the gum, manually toggled the broken switch, and used the gum to stick it in the correct position. The alarm ceased and the red lights went off. “There, that should hold long enough to get us down safely.”
“Oh, Captain Turnbull, you did it!” the stewardess exulted, and the navigator pulled out a pen from his pocket and asked for another autograph...
The Chicago streets coalesced around him once more, and an elderly woman was pulling at his sleeve. “Oh my, you are real!” she exclaimed, jumping back. “The way you were so still there with your laundry basket, I thought maybe you were a washing powder advertisement. You know, a mime?”
Turnbull excused himself and walked the last block down the street to the dry cleaners. Washing powder? Mime? Why did he end up the subject of ridicule everywhere he went? He was a Mountie, wasn’t he?
He emerged from the dry cleaners a few minutes later and nearly ran into her, a woman with an exquisitely bad dye job and pink acrylic fingernails. “Hey baby,” she purred, “I’ve been bad, very, very bad. Why don’t you and I go to a hotel where you can arrest me?” She dangled a pair of handcuffs from a fingertip and smacked her gum lasciviously at him.
“Prostitution is indeed illegal, but I’m afraid I have no jurisdiction here,” he replied, and she gave a languid shrug and tottered off down the sidewalk on her four-inch spike heels.
Shoes, Turnbull remembered. He had to go pick up the Inspector’s shoes. He patted down his pockets looking for the claim stub she had given him, and then he got turned around and walked for half an hour before he realized the shoe repair was two blocks down from where he’d thought it was. The clerk retrieved the shoes for him with a slightly raised eyebrow, which he dutifully ignored. Back on the street, the black heels in a bag, he tried to remember what the other thing was that the Inspector had charged him with obtaining. He couldn’t seem to remember and knew he would earn another withering dressing down from her when he returned. Hmm. Punch bowl? Jodhpurs? Staple gun?
He passed the Music Hall’s giant marquee and saw that Michelle Wright was playing there that night.
...“You’re gonna knock ‘em dead!” his manager said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Listen to them scream for you!”
The great Tucker Turnbull, a living legend of country music, nervously adjusted his cowboy hat and tuned his six-string with his strong, callused hands as he stood in the wings. The crowd noise was deafening. Every seat was filled, and people were standing in the back, in the aisles, anywhere they could find an inch of space, all to see him belt out his greatest hits, ditties like “I Won't Be Home for Supper Because They Are Gonna Hang Me Tonight” and “Santa Drives a Pick-Up.” The atmosphere was electric.
“This is it,” his manager said. “They’ll storm the stage if you make ‘em wait any longer! Let’s get this show started!”
Tucker Turnbull strode onto the stage in his tight black rhinestone jeans and plain white sleeveless T-shirt, the lights went up, and the screaming got even louder. Some women in the front row actually swooned, and others thrust out their hands, hoping for a touch or a wave as he made his way to the mike.
“Well!” he drawled into the mike, “Hello, Chicago!” He waved and grinned and bowed to his fans.
The lights went up even further and flashbulb after flashbulb erupted, making little dots of white dance in front of his eyes...
“Lightbulbs,” Turnbull said out loud.
A woman passing by looked at him and laughed. “He said ‘lightbulbs.’ That man just said ‘lightbulbs’ to himself,” she said to her friend.
Turnbull hurried on, passing up the hardware store down the street for one that was closer to the consulate. It was half-past two by the time he strode up the Consulate steps and entered.
“Well, there you are,” Inspector Thatcher said as he entered her office. “I was about to send out a search party.” She looked up from her computer screen. “Well?”
He unfolded his arms, and everything spilled onto her desk. “Here’s the dry cleaning ticket, your shoes, and,” he added proudly, “the lightbulbs, sir.”
The Inspector opened the bag with the shoes and made a strangled noise, standing up in her distress. “Constable Turnbull, these are not my shoes!”
“Black pumps, you said.”
“Yes, but--” She held the shoes aloft. “Not size fifteens, for heaven’s sake!” Her gaze went to the lightbulbs. “And these are not the right bulbs for the front hall fixture!” She began pacing from one end of the desk to the other as he stood there at attention, calling to mind a peevish cat whipping its tail back and forth. “Can’t you even manage...”
...Major Turnbull stood at attention and stared into the middle distance, not even acknowledging his captors. Even after six hours in the same position, he didn’t move a muscle.
“I know you know!” the first interrogator, a mustachioed, swarthy man with unruly dark hair and a strange accent, insisted, pounding on the table. “You must tell me--where are the other men? What are the orders for your unit?”
He remained, silent and unbowed, a man who kept his secrets, Renfield Turnbull the Hero, inscrutable to the last.
My Prompt Table (scroll down)