STORY "Forrest Gump" - Chapter Eight
Into
Space
Spring and summer went by, and I
continued to play my harmonica with the group. It was my happiest time of all.
But you’ve guessed it something went wrong.
How did it happen? I don’t know.
But one night I was sitting outside the Hodaddy Zclub, smoking a cigarette,
when a girl smiled and came up to me. She sat down across my legs and put her
arms round me. She was laughing and kissing me, and I didn’t know what to do.
Suddenly, the door opened behind
me, and there was Jenny.
“Forrest, it’s time to ….” She
stopped when she saw me with the girl. Then she said, “Oh, no! Not you, too!”
I jumped up and pushed the girl
away. “Jennye!” I said.
“Stay away from me, Forrest!” she
said. “You men are all the same! Just stay away from me!”
She didn’t speak to me again that
night. And the next morning she told me to find another place to live.
I went to live with Moses, one of
the other men in the group, and soon after that Jenny went to Washington to
talk and work against the war. Moses wrote down the address for me.
So I went back to Washington,
too.
There was a lot of trouble there.
Police were everywhere, and people were shouting and throwing things.
And the police were taking some
of them away.
I went to find Jenny’s address,
but there was nobody at home. I waited outside for most of the day. Then, at
about nine o’clock, a car stopped near the house and some people got out. And
there sehe was!
I started to walk towards her,
but she turned and walked away. The other people _two men and a girl_ didn’t
know what to say.
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked
one of the two men.
“She just got out of prison,” he
said. “She was there all night before we could get here out.”
Jenny was ini the back of the car
now, so I went over and talked to her through the new window. I told her how I
felt; I was sorry about the girl, and I didn’t want to play in the group
without her.
She listened quietly, then opened
the car door for me to get in, and we sat and talked.
The others were talking about
something that would happen the next day. Some American soldiers planned to
take off their Vietnam medals and throw them away in front of the crowds of
people.
Suddenly Jenny said, “Did you
know that Forrest won a medal?”
The others went quiet and looked
at me, then looked at Jenny.
***
Next morning, Jenny came into the
living-room. I was sleeping on the floor of their house. She woke me up.
“Forrest,” she said, “I want you
to do something for me.”
“What?” I said.
I want you to come with us today,
and I want you to wear your army clothes.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because you’re going to do
something to stop all the killing in Vietnam.”
You can guess what I had to do,
can’t you? I had to throw away my medal with the other American soldiers. But
because my medal was a more famous medal than theirs, it was more important to
Jenny and her friends.
But it got me into more trouble.
Oh, I threw my medal away ok, but it hit somebody really important! So they
threw me into prison.
Why do things like that always
happen to me?
***
As it happened, I didn’t stay in
prison long, because they soon realized that I was an idiot, and they put me in
a special hospital for idiots. It was the doctors at the hospital who decided
to send me to NASA, that’s the space centre at Houston, in Texas.
“You’re just the kind of person
that they’re looking for!” the doctors told me.
I soon understood why! NASA sent
me on a journey into space with a woman and an ape! Me, a spaceman! It was very
strange.
All kinds of things went wrong
because of that ape. Instead of coming down in the sea when we returned, the
space ship came down in the jungle somewhere, and it was four years before the
NASA people found us! But the ape and I were soon good friends.
His name was Sue (yes, I know
it’s a girl’s name, but they sent a male ape up by mistake, and NASA didn’t
like to tell the newspapers that). And it was in the jungle that I met Big Sam
a man who taught me to play chess. And that was important, as you will see
later.
_to be continued
