Tribble Fan Fiction #12: Vote for Tribble
Tribble Fan Fiction #12
I. Skills
Napoleon Dynamite found the tribble in the tot bin.
He had reached into his cargo pants pocket for a tater tot — his fourth of the morning, stored loose in the pocket lining alongside a chapstick, a rubber band ball, and a drawing of a liger — when his fingers closed around something that was not a tot. It was warm. It was round. It was furry. And it purred.
“What the heck,” Napoleon said, pulling the thing out and holding it at eye level.
It was about the size of a softball, covered in orange fur the color of a sunset viewed through dirty glasses, and it had two small dark eyes that looked at Napoleon with the serene confidence of a creature that has never once doubted its place in the universe.
Napoleon stared at it. It stared at Napoleon. It purred.
“Gosh,” Napoleon said.
He put it back in his pocket. He ate a tot. The tribble ate the other tot. Napoleon didn’t notice. This established the foundational dynamic of their entire relationship.
II. Uncle Rico
“Napoleon, what is that thing in your pocket?”
Uncle Rico was leaning against his van — a 1975 Dodge Sportsman that smelled like steak and broken dreams — holding a football with the resigned grip of a man who peaked in 1982 and has been falling ever since.
“It’s a tribble, gosh!”
“A what?”
“A tribble. It’s like a — it’s like a fuzzy ball but it’s alive and it purrs and it eats tots.”
Rico squinted at the orange tribble, which was now sitting on the van’s dashboard, purring at the Idaho sun through the windshield. “How much you think you could sell those for?”
“It’s not for sale, gosh.”
“I’m just saying, Napoleon. If coach had put me in fourth quarter, we’d have been state champions. No doubt in my mind. But since that didn’t happen, I’ve been looking for the next big opportunity. And a purring ball of fur? That’s an opportunity.” Rico picked up the tribble. It purred louder. Something in Rico’s face shifted — a micro-expression of comfort crossing features that hadn’t relaxed since the Reagan administration. “It’s… kinda nice, actually.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“How much you feed it?”
“Tots, mostly.”
“Napoleon, you can’t feed a — whatever it is — on tater tots.”
“You feed yourself on steak, Uncle Rico, and look how that turned out.”
Rico put the tribble down. The tribble had eaten half the van’s sun visor.
“If coach had put me in fourth quarter, we’d have won state. But if I’d had a tribble, I wouldn’t even care about state. Think about that.” — Uncle Rico, to no one
III. Pedro Offers His Protection
Pedro saw the tribble at lunch.
“What is that?” Pedro asked, with the calm curiosity of a man who had once built a cake-decorating platform for his cousin’s quinceañera using nothing but plywood and faith.
“It’s a tribble. I found it in my tots.”
“Is it yours?”
“I guess. Yeah.”
“It’s nice.” Pedro held the tribble. It purred against his palm. Pedro nodded slowly, the way he nodded at everything — with the gravity of someone who understood that the world was complicated but could be improved through kindness and modest ambition. “If you need someone to protect it, I can do that.”
“Protect it from what?”
“I don’t know. Whatever comes.”
Napoleon looked at Pedro. Pedro looked at Napoleon. The tribble purred between them, orange and warm and completely unbothered by the vast existential flatness of Preston, Idaho.
“Thanks, Pedro.”
“It’s what friends do.”
By the end of lunch, the tribble had eaten Pedro’s chips, Napoleon’s remaining tots, and a corner of Deb’s glamour-shot portfolio. Deb didn’t notice. She was too busy photographing the tribble with her Olympus camera, positioning it on a small rock with a laser background behind it.
“It’s really photogenic,” she said. “The fur catches the light. I could do a whole session.”
“How much?” Napoleon asked.
“I’d do it for free. It’s for my portfolio.”
“Sweet.”
IV. The Multiplication Problem
By Wednesday, there were twelve tribbles.
Napoleon’s grandmother’s house — a modest structure that smelled like vitamins and old carpet — was now home to twelve orange tribbles of varying sizes, all of whom purred continuously and all of whom ate everything that wasn’t nailed down. Grandma was in the hospital after the dune buggy accident, which meant there was no adult supervision, which meant the tribbles had full run of the house.
Kip found one in his chatroom computer. Not near the computer — inside it. The tribble had somehow squeezed through the ventilation slots on the tower case and was purring against the hard drive, which was warm.
“Napoleon!” Kip yelled from his room. “Your stupid fuzzy things are in my computer and LaFawnduh can hear them purring through the microphone!”
“Tell LaFawnduh they say hi.”
“LaFawnduh says they’re cute.”
“See? Even LaFawnduh gets it.”
Kip extracted the tribble from the computer with a pair of salad tongs. It purred the entire time. He placed it on the floor. It immediately rolled toward the refrigerator.
“Napoleon, how many of these things are there?”
“Like… twelve? Maybe thirteen. They keep having babies.”
“They need to stop having babies.”
“You stop having babies, Kip. Oh wait — you already stopped.”
Kip closed his eyes. The tribble ate the salad tongs.
V. The Happy Hands Club
The tribbles came to school on Friday.
Napoleon brought five of them in his backpack — not deliberately, but because the backpack had been on the floor of the kitchen overnight and the tribbles had climbed in, attracted by the residual warmth of a half-eaten enchilada that Napoleon had been saving for “later.” He didn’t discover them until second period, when his backpack started purring during a film about the Lewis and Clark expedition.
By lunch, the tribbles had dispersed through Preston High School with the efficiency of a rumor. One was in the principal’s office, purring on a stack of disciplinary forms. Two were in the cafeteria, eating what passed for food. One was in the gym, sitting on the free-throw line like a small, furry basketball. And one — the original, the orange one Napoleon had found in his tot pocket — was sitting on the stage in the auditorium, where the Happy Hands Club was rehearsing their sign-language dance routine.
The Happy Hands Club loved the tribble. They incorporated it into the routine. It sat on a stool center stage while the performers signed around it, and it purred at the audience — all six people — with the confidence of a born entertainer.
“It’s got, like, the best stage presence of anyone in this school,” Napoleon said. “And it doesn’t even have hands.”
VI. Vote for Tribble
The tribble ran for class president.
This was Pedro’s idea. Pedro was already running, of course, on a platform of protection and quiet competence, but he suggested — with the same deadpan sincerity he brought to everything — that the tribble could be his running mate. Vice President Tribble. Pedro/Tribble 2005.
“Can a tribble be vice president?” Napoleon asked.
“There’s nothing in the student handbook that says it can’t,” Pedro said. He had checked.
Napoleon made the campaign posters. They were magnificent. Hand-drawn in colored pencil, featuring a portrait of the tribble — orange, round, with a tiny campaign button that Napoleon had fashioned from a bottlecap and a safety pin — underneath the words VOTE FOR TRIBBLE in block letters. Below that, in smaller text: IT HAS GOOD SKILLS. PURRING SKILLS. EATING SKILLS. BEING ROUND SKILLS.
The election was not close. Pedro won by a landslide. The tribble received seventeen write-in votes for president — more than Summer Wheatley’s running mate, whose name no one could remember.
At the victory celebration — a modest affair involving cake, punch, and Napoleon performing a dance routine to “Canned Heat” that defied both gravity and explanation — the tribble sat on the podium and purred at the crowd. Pedro stood beside it, silent and content, the president and his round, fuzzy vice president, ready to lead Preston High into a future that was uncertain but warm.
“This is pretty much the best day of my life,” Napoleon said, holding the tribble in one hand and a piece of cake in the other.
The tribble ate the cake.
“Gosh.”
The tribble population in Preston, Idaho, stabilized at approximately forty-seven, mostly because there are only so many tater tots in a small town. They became a local attraction — tourists drove through to see the “fur balls of Preston” — and Uncle Rico tried to sell them on the internet until Napoleon reminded him that “they’re not yours, gosh.” Kip and LaFawnduh adopted three. Pedro kept one in his locker for the rest of the year. And Napoleon, who had spent his entire life looking for something that liked him exactly as he was, carried the original orange tribble in his pocket every day until graduation, feeding it tots, drawing its portrait, and telling it about ligers, which are pretty much his favorite animal. The tribble purred. It was enough.
