WINSTON GROOM "Forrest Gump"

 

Forrest Gump

WINSTON GROOM

Chapter 1    School and Football

 

I was born an idiot ─ but I’m cleverer than people think. I can think things OK, but when I have to say them or write them down, sometimes they come out all wrong. When I was born, my Mom named me Forrest. My daddy died just after I was born. He worked on the ships. One day a big box of bananas fell down on my daddy and killed him.

I don’t like bananas much. Only banana cake. I like that all right. At first when I was growing up, I played with everybody. But then some boys hit me, and my Mom didn’t want me to play with them again. I tried to play with girls, but they all ran away from me. I went to an ordinary school for a year. Then the children started laughing and running away from me. But one girl, Jenny Curran, didn’t run away, and sometimes she walked home with me. She was

nice.

Then they put me into another kind of school, and there were some strange boys there. Some couldn’t eat or go to the toilet without help. I stayed in that school for five or six years. But when I was thirteen, I grew six inches in six months! And by the time I was sixteen, I was bigger and heavier than all the other boys in the school.

One day I was walking home, and a car stopped next to me. The driver asked me my name, and I told him. ‘What school do you go to?’ he asked.

I told him about the idiot school.

‘Do you ever play football?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I told him. ‘I see other people playing, but I don’t play and they never ask me to play with them.’

‘OK,’ the man said.

Three days later, the man in the car came and got me out of

school. Mom was there, and they got all the things out of my desk and put them in a brown paper bag. Then they told me to say goodbye to the teacher.

The man in the car took me and Mom to the new high school. There, an old man with grey hair asked me lots of questions. But I knew that they really wanted me to play football. The man in the car was a football coach called Fellers. Coach Fellers asked me to put on a football suit, then asked me to undress and dress again, twenty times, until I could do it easily.

I began to play football with the high school team, and Coach Fellers helped me. And I went to lessons in the school. One teacher, Miss Henderson, was really nice. She taught me to read. And who do you think I saw in the school cafe? Jenny Curran! She was all grown-up now, with pretty black hair, long legs, and a beautiful face. I went and sat with her, and she remembered me!

But there was a boy in the cafe who started calling me names, and saying things like, ‘How’s Stupid?’. Then he threw some milk at me, and I jumped out of my chair and ran away. A day or two later, after school in the afternoon, he and his friends came up to me and started pushing and hitting me. Then they ran after me across the football field. I ran away fast!

I saw that Coach Fellers was watching me. He had a strange look on his face, and he came and told me to put on my football suit. That afternoon, he gave me the ball to run with. The others started running after me, and I ran as fast as I could. When they caught me, it needed eight of them to pull me down! Coach Fellers was really happy! He started jumping up and down and laughing. And after that, everybody liked me.

We had our first game, and I was frightened. But they gave me the ball, and I ran over the goal line two or three times. People were really kind to me after that!

Then something happened which was not so good.

‘I want to take Jenny Curran to the cinema,’ I told Mom one day.

So she phoned Jenny’s Mom and explained. Next evening, Jenny arrived at our house, wearing a white dress, and with a pink flower in her hair. She was the prettiest thing that I ever saw.

The cinema was not far from our house. Jenny got the tickets, and we went inside. The film was about a man and a woman, Bonnie and Clyde, and there was a lot of shooting and killing. Well, I laughed a lot. But when I did this, people looked at me, and Jenny got down lower and lower in her place. Once I thought she was on the floor, and I put my hand on her shoulder to pull her up. But I pulled her dress, and it came open, and she screamed.

I tried to put my hands in front of her, because there were people looking at us. Then two men came and took me to an office. A few minutes later, four policemen arrived, and took me to the police station!

Mom came to the police station. She was crying, and I knew that I was in trouble again. And I was in trouble, but I was lucky. Next day, a letter arrived from a university. It was good news: if I played in their football team, there was a place for me in school there.

And the police said, ‘That’s OK with us. Just get out of town!’

So the next morning, Mom put some things into a suitcase for me, and put me on a bus. She was crying again. But they started the bus, and away I went.

 

 

Chapter 2    Life at University

 

When we got to the university, Coach Bryant came to talk to us. ‘Last man to get to the practice field will get a ride there on my

shoe!’ he shouted at us. And he meant it when he said that kind of thing. We soon learned that.

The building that I went to live in was nice on the outside but not on the inside. Most of the doors and windows were broken, and the floor was dirty. I lived in a room with a man called Curtis. He

crashed into the room with a wild look in his eyes. He wasn’t very tall, but he was very strong. ‘Where are you from?’ he asked.

‘Mobile,’ I told him.

‘That’s a stupid town!’ he said.

And that was all of our conversation for several days.

On the practice field, things didn’t start very well. I got the ball, but I ran the wrong way with it, and everybody got angry and started shouting at me.

But Coach Bryant called me across. ‘Just get in the line and start catching the ball,’ he told me.

And then I told him something that he didn’t want to hear.

‘They never taught me to catch a ball at high school,’ I said. ‘It was difficult enough for me just to remember where our goal line was.’

I don’t think he was very pleased. But he started to teach me to catch.

I wanted my Mom, and I wanted to go home. I didn’t like that place.

And Curtis was always angry, and I couldn’t understand him. He had a car, and sometimes he gave me a ride to the practice field. But one day when he had to change a wheel on the car, I helped him.

‘If you’re an idiot,’ he said, angrily, ‘how do you know how to do that?’

‘Maybe I am an idiot,’ I said, ‘but I’m not stupid.’

Then Curtis ran after me, and called me all kinds of terrible names.

After that, I moved my bed to another room.

♦

The first football game was on Saturday. I ran well, and we won 35 to 3. Everybody was pleased with me. I phoned Mom to tell her.

‘I heard the game on the radio!’ she said. ‘I was so happy, I wanted to cry!’

That night, everybody went to parties, but nobody asked me to go. I went back to my room, but I heard music from somewhere upstairs. I found a young man who was sitting in his room playing the harmonica.

His name was Bubba. He broke his foot in football practice and couldn’t play in the game. I sat and listened to him. We didn’t talk, but after about an hour, I asked, ‘Can I try it?’ and he said ‘OK’, and gave me the harmonica. I began to play.

After several minutes, Bubba was getting really excited and saying, ‘Good, good, good!’ Then he asked, ‘Where did you learn to play like that?’

‘I didn’t learn anywhere,’ I said.

When it got late, he told me to take the harmonica with me, and I played it for a long time in my room.

I found a young man who was sitting in his room playing the harmonica.

Next day I took it back to Bubba.

‘Keep it,’ he said. ‘I’ve got another one.’

I was really happy, and I went and sat under a tree and played all day.

It was late afternoon when I began to walk back to my room. Suddenly, I heard a voice shout, ‘Forrest!’ I turned round ─ and saw Jenny!

She had a big smile on her face, and she held my hand.

‘I saw you play football yesterday,’ she said. ‘You were wonderful!’

She wasn’t angry about the cinema, and she asked me to have a drink with her!

‘I’m taking lessons in music, and I want to be a singer,’ she told me. ‘I play in a little group. We’re playing at the Students’ Centre tomorrow night. Why don’t you come and listen?’

‘OK,’ I said.

 

 

Chapter 3    The Big Game

 

On Friday night, I went to the Students’ Centre. There were a lot of people there, and Jenny was wearing a long dress and singing. Three or four other people were in the group with her, and they made a good sound. Jenny saw me and smiled, and I sat on the floor and listened. It was wonderful.

They played for about an hour, and I was lying back with my eyes closed, listening happily. How did it happen? I’m not sure. But suddenly I found that I was playing my harmonica with them!

Jenny stopped singing for a second or two, and the others in the group stopped playing. Then Jenny laughed and began to sing with my harmonica, and then everybody was saying ‘Wonderful!’ to me.

Jenny came to see me. ‘Forrest, where did you learn to play that thing?’

‘I didn’t learn anywhere,’ I told her.

Well, after that, Jenny asked me to play with their group every Friday, and paid me $25 every time!

♦

The only other important thing that happened to me at the uni- versity was the Big Game at the Orange Bowl in Miami that year. It was an important game which Coach Bryant wanted us to win.

The game started, and the ball came to me. I took it ─ and ran straight into a group of big men on the other team! Crash! It was like that all afternoon.

When they were winning 28 to 7, Coach Bryant called me across. ‘Forrest,’ he said, ‘all year we have secretly taught you to catch the ball and run with it. Now you’re going to run like a wild animal. OK?’

‘OK, Coach,’ I said.

And I did. Everybody was surprised to see that I could catch the ball. Suddenly it was 28 to 14! And after I caught it four or five more times, it was 28 to 21. Then the other team got two men to run after me. But that meant Gwinn was free to catch the ball, and he put us on the 15-yard line. Then Weasel, the kicker, got a field goal, and it was 28 to 24!

But then things began to go wrong again. Weasel made a bad mistake ─ and then the game finished, and we were the losers.

Coach Bryant wasn’t very happy. ‘Well, boys,’ he said, ‘there’s always next year.’

But not for me. I soon learned that.