Chapter 8 chapter eight

As we flew across the Pacific, Colonel Gooch told me what a great hero I'd be when we got back to America.He said there'd be a parade or something, and I wouldn't be able to get myself a drink or a meal because everyone would be rushing to do it for me.He also said the Army would want me to go around the country pumping up recruits and selling public debt and shit and I'd get the "royal treatment".On this point, he was right. When the plane landed at San Francisco Airport, there was already a large group of people waiting for us to disembark.They were holding signs and flags and all that.Colonel Gooch looked out of the window and said it was strange that there was no brass band to greet us.As it turned out, that group of people was enough to express their meaning.

The first thing that happened after we got off the plane: the crowd started chanting at us, and then someone threw a tomato right in the face of Colonel Gucci.The scene ensued in chaos.There was some police at the airport but the crowd broke through the defenses and jumped on us, yelling all sorts of nasty words, they were like 2,000 or so, with beards and all that since we were killed by Babu in the rice fields in Vietnam The most horrific scene I have ever seen. ' Colonel Gooch wiped the tomato off his face like hell and looked dignified, but, I thought, fuck it, we're outnumbered, one against a thousand, and unarmed.So I ran.

That group of people must be looking for someone to chase, because they all started chasing me, just like when I was a child, shouting and waving signs.I pretty much ran all over the runway and back to the airport building, and it was worse than when those Nebraska corn growers were chasing me at Orange Bowl.Finally, I fled into the bathroom, hid on the toilet, and kept the door shut until I figured they'd given up on the chase and headed home.I was in there for at least an hour or so. I got out of the toilet and went to the hall, where Colonel Gooch was surrounded by a line of gendarmes and policemen.He looked depressed, and he suddenly became enlightened when he saw me. "Quick, Gump!" he said. "They have a plane waiting to take us to Washington."

There were a lot of civilians on the plane to Washington, and Colonel Gooch and I sat in the front seats.Before the plane took off, everyone around us had already got up and sat in the seats at the rear of the plane.I asked Colonel Gooch why, and he said maybe we smelled bad or something.He said don't worry, things will get better in Washington.I hope so; because even an idiot like me understands that so far things are not what Colonel Gooch says. When the plane arrived in Washington, my chest was about to explode with excitement!From the window I could see the Washington Monument and Capitol Hill, which I had only seen in photographs, but they were there right now.The Army sent a car to pick us up, and we were sent to a fancy hotel with elevators and all, and someone to carry your shit bags for you.I've never taken an elevator.

In the room and settled down, Colonel Gooch came over and said we were going to have some drinks at a little bar, he remembered a lot of pretty girls there, and he said it was very different here than California because the Easterners were civilized and all.He was wrong again. We sat down at a table and Colonel Gooch ordered a beer for me and something for himself, and then he started telling me how I was supposed to behave when the President donned my medal tomorrow. But in the middle of his talk, a pretty girl came up, and Colonel Gooch looked up and asked her to get us two more drinks, because, I guess he thought she was a waitress.But she squinted at him and said, "I won't even get you a glass of saliva, dirty bastard." Then she turned to me and said, "How many babies did you kill today, ape?"

Well, after that we went back to the hotel and ordered some beers with the waiter, and Colonel Gooch finished my behavior tomorrow. The next day, we got up very early and walked to the White House where the President lives.It's a beautiful house, with a big front lawn and all, it looks like the town hall in Mobil.A lot of Army officers were there clapping my hands and saying what a great guy I was, and then it was time for the medal. The president's a tall old guy with an accent like a texan or something and they got a bunch of people together some of them looked like maids and cleaners or something but they all came out and stood in the sun shining beautiful roses in the garden.

An Army guy started reading a piece of bullshit and everyone listened excitedly except me, who was starving from no breakfast.The Army guy finally finished, and the President came up to me and took the medal out of a box and pinned it to my chest.Then, he shook my hand, and people around me started taking pictures, applauding, and so on. I thought the ceremony was over and we could get out of there, but the President was still standing there, looking at me funny.Finally, he said, "Young man, is your stomach growling?" I looked at Colonel Gooch, but he rolled his eyes, so I just nodded and said, "Yeah." And the president said, "In that case, come on, boy, let's get something to eat!"

I followed him into the White House, into a little circular room, and the President ordered a guy dressed like a waiter to bring me breakfast.It was just the two of us in the room, and while we were waiting for breakfast, he started asking me questions, like if I knew why we were fighting the Vietnamese and all, and if the Army was treating us well.I kept nodding my head, and after a while he stopped asking questions, and the scene suddenly fell silent. Afterwards, he said, "Do you want to watch TV while we wait for your breakfast?" I nodded again, and the president turned on the TV behind his desk, and we watched "Beverly Hillsman."The president enjoyed watching it and said he watched it every day, and I reminded him of Jeslo in the show.After breakfast, the President asked me if he would show me around the White House, and I said, "Yes." And off we went.When we got outside, all the photographers followed us around, and then the president decided to sit in a little chair, and he said to me, "You got hurt, didn't you, kid?" I nodded, and he said, "Well, Look at this." He pulled up his shirt to show me an old post-surgery scar on his belly, and he asked, "Where is your injury?" So I pulled off my pants to show him.Uh, the photojournalists swarmed up and started taking pictures, and a few officials came running up and took me to Colonel Gooch.

Back at the hotel that afternoon, Colonel Gooch rushed into my room with a newspaper, wow, he really went crazy.He started yelling at me, cursing, and throwing the newspaper on my bed.Newspapers, front pages, showing my ass, the president showing his old scars.One of the newspapers also blacked out my eyes so that readers wouldn't recognize me, the way they do obscene photos. Captions read: "President Johnson lounging in a rose garden with war heroes.", "Forrest Gump, you idiot!" Colonel Gooch said, "How could you do this to me? I'm done, my career is probably ruined like that !"

"I don't know," I said, "but I want to make it right." Anyway, I was miserable again after that incident, but they haven't given up on me yet.The Army had decided that I should continue to do the draft tour, to encourage as many young men as possible to join the army, and Colonel Gooch had got someone to write a speech that I was going to give.That article has a long history, and the content is nothing but nonsense such as "the country is in a crisis period, serving the country in the army is the most noble and patriotic act," and so on.The problem is, I can't recite it.Oh, I do have all the words in my head, but when it comes time to say them, all the words get mixed up.

Colonel Gooch has lost his mind.He made me stay up until midnight almost every day, trying to get me to memorize my lecture notes.But at last he threw up his hands and said, "I don't think there's anything wrong with this." Then he had an idea. "Forrest," he said, "here's what we'll do. I'll cut the script short, you just have to say a few words. That's it." Well, he cut and deleted the script, and it got shorter and shorter, Deleted until he was finally satisfied that I remembered the speech and stopped looking like an idiot, and in the end, all I had to say was, "Join the Army and fight for freedom." The first stop on the tour was a small university, they got some writers and photojournalists to attend, and we sat on the stage in the big auditorium.Colonel Gooch got up and gave the speech that was supposed to be me.When he had finished speaking, he said, "Now, we invite our hero, Soldier Forrest Kimball, who has just been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, to speak a few words." He motioned me forward.Some people clapped and waited for them to stop before I leaned forward and said, "Join the army and fight for freedom.", I think they thought it was going to be a long story, but I was ordered to say that - so I just stood there , everyone looked at me, I looked at everyone.Then suddenly someone from the front shouted, "What do you think about this war?" I blurted out the first thing that came to mind: "That's a shit." Colonel Gooch stepped forward to snatch the microphone and asked me to sit back, but all the reporters wrote down this sentence, the photographers tried their best to take pictures, and the audience went crazy, jumping and cheering.Colonel Gooch immediately took me out of the auditorium, got into a car, and left the city quickly.The Colonel didn't say a word to me, but he kept murmuring to himself, and gave a strange, insane chuckle. We were in the hotel the next morning, about to give our second presentation of the trip, when the phone rang.It was for Colonel Gooch.Whoever the caller was, he was the one talking anyway, and the Colonel just listened, saying "Yes, sir," and glaring at me from time to time.He finally put the phone down and he stared at his shoes and said, "Ugh, Gump, now you screwed up. The tour is cancelled, I've been transferred to a weather station in Iceland, and I don't know or care about you." What's going to happen to the poor guy." I asked the colonel if I could order a Coke now, and he just looked at me for a while, and then he started muttering to himself again, with that weird, psychotic giggle. Afterwards they sent me to Fort Dix and sent me to the steam company.All day and half night, I have been shoveling coal to heat the boiler and supply the heating for the barracks.The company commander was an old guy who didn't seem to give a shit about anything, and he said I only had two years left to get out of the army when I got there, and as long as I didn't mind my own business, everything would be fine.I'm planning to do just that.I think a lot about my mom and Bob and the shrimp business and Jenny at Harvard, and I also find time to play ping pong. One day in the spring there was a notice on the base announcing that there was going to be a ping-pong game and the winner would go to Washington for the "National Army Championship" and I signed up and won handily because the only guy who was good at the game was in the war Blow up fingers and keep dropping rackets. The next week I was sent to Washington, and the games were held at "Walter Reed Hospital," where all the injured could sit and watch us play.I won easily in the first round and the same in the second round, but in the third round I got a little guy with a lot of spin and I was having a hard time hitting it.He led me by two sets 4-2, and I was sure to lose, but suddenly I looked at the audience, and the second lieutenant Dan Si from Da Nang Hospital was sitting in a wheelchair! There was a short break between each set, and I went up to Denise and saw that both of his legs were gone. "They had to saw it off, Forrest," he said, "but other than that, I'm fine." They also removed the bandages on his face, which had horrific burns and scars from a fire in his tank.Also, there was still a tube leading into him from a bottle hooked on a pole next to his wheelchair. "They said they had to keep it," Dan said. "They thought I'd look good with this tube in." Anyway, he leaned in and looked me in the eye, and said, "Gump, I'm sure you can do whatever you want. I've been watching you play, and you can beat this little guy because you're so good at ping pong, Will be a top player in the future.” I nod.Time to get back on the pitch.That is, I didn't concede a goal again, and I played until the final and won the championship. I was there for about three days, and Danse and I spent some time together.I push the wheelchair around for him, sometimes in the garden, let him bask in the sun, and at night I play the harmonica to him, just like I used to play to Bubba.He liked to talk about stuff—all kinds of things—like history and philosophy, and one day he was talking about Einstein's theory of relativity and what it meant for the universe. Well, I just took a piece of paper and showed him the equation, because I had to do that in my "Intermediate Optics" class in college.He looked at the equation I drew, and said, "Forrest, you never cease to amaze me." Back at Fort Dix, I was steaming and shoveling coal one day, and a guy from the Pentagon showed up with all his medals and a big smile on his face and said, "Soldier Gump, it's my great honor to inform you that You have been selected as a player for the United States table tennis team to go to mainland China to play table tennis with the Chinese. This is an honor because this is the first time in the past twenty-five years that our country has dealt with the Chinese. Much more important than a game of ping pong. This is diplomacy, and the future of humanity may lie here. Do you know what I mean?" I shrugged and nodded, but my heart sank.I'm just a poor idiot and now I have to take care of all humanity.