Chapter 17 Chapter Seventeen

Although they said they wouldn't give me a dime, one of the guys lent me a dollar before I left the restaurant.As soon as I saw a pay phone, I called the poor house where my mother lived.But one nun said, "Mrs. Kimberly is no longer with us." I asked where she was, and the nun said, "I don't know—she ran away with a Protestant." I thanked her and hung up.Speaking of which, I feel a little relieved.At least Mom ran off with someone and stopped staying in the Pauper's House.I figured I'd have to find her.But, to be honest, I wasn't in a rush to find her, because she was as sure as it was going to rain that I was going to leave the house and cried and yelled at me.

It did rain.Drenched cat and dog and I found a canopy to hide under until some guy came out and chased me away.Drenched and cold, I passed a government office building and saw a large plastic garbage bag in the middle of the sidewalk.The bag moved as I approached, as if there was something in it! I stopped, walked over to the bag, and tiptoed it.Suddenly, the bag jumped back four feet, and a voice came from under the bag, saying, "Go away!" "Who's in there?" I asked. The voice said, "This is my radiator grill, go find your own." "What are you talking about?" I said.

"My radiator," said the voice, "don't touch my radiator!" "What radiator?" I asked. All of a sudden, the plastic bag lifts up slightly, and a guy pokes his head out and squints at me like I'm some kind of idiot. "You just got into town or what?" said the guy. "So to speak," I replied, "I just want to get out of the rain." The man under the garbage bag looked really pitiful. His hair was half bald, he hadn't shaved in months, his eyes were red and bloodshot, and his teeth were almost gone. "Well," he said, "in that case, I don't care if I want you to stay—" Take it. "He reached out and handed me another folded plastic bag.

"What am I going to do with this bag?" I asked. "Open it and get under the bag, you idiot—you're not saying you're trying to hide from the rain," he said, pulling down the trash bag to cover himself again. Well, I did as he said, and honestly, it wasn't bad.Hot air will come out from under the radiator grille, making the inside of the bag warm, comfortable and sheltered from rain.We sat side by side on the radiator grille, covered in garbage bags.For a long time, the guy said to me: "What's your name?" "Forrest Gump," I said. "Huh? I also know a guy named Forrest Gump. A long time ago."

"What's your name?" I asked. "Dan," he said. "Dan? Dan?—Hello, hold on," I said.I opened the garbage bag, walked over and opened the guy's bag, and it really was him!He has no legs and sits on a small wooden cart with pulleys.At least twenty years older, I hardly recognize him.But it was him, yes.It's Lieutenant Dane! After being released from the Army hospital, Dan asked Connecticut to return to coaching history.But there was no vacancy for history, so the school asked him to teach mathematics.He hated math, and besides, the math classroom was on the second floor; he had no legs, so he had a hard time going upstairs.Meanwhile, his wife ran off with a TV producer in New York and filed for divorce on the grounds of "incompatibility".

He became addicted to alcohol, lost his job, and played around for a while.Thieves emptied his home and the hospital fitted him with a prosthetic that was the wrong size.After a few years, he said, he simply "give up" and lived as a homeless man.He gets some disability pension every month, but he mostly gives it to other bums. "I can't tell, Gump," he said, "I guess I'm just waiting to die." Dan gave me a few bucks and told me to go around the corner and buy a couple of bottles of Red Dagger.I just bought a bottle and bought myself a ready-made sandwich with the rest of the money because, well, I haven't eaten-something all day.

"Well, old friend," said Dan, after he'd downed half the bottle, "tell me about what you've been doing since we parted." I will tell him.I told him that I had been to China to play table tennis, found Jenny, participated in the "Cracked Egg" choir and demonstrations, and I threw away the medal and ended up in jail. "Well, I remember that. At the time, I was in the hospital and I wanted to go to the parade, but I didn't think I'd throw away my medal, you see!" he said.He unbuttoned his coat, and the shirt inside was covered with his medals—purple hearts, silver stars—a dozen or twenty of them.

"They remind me of something," he said, "and I can't tell what it was—the war, of course, but that's part of it. I've lost a lot, Forrest, not just my legs. There was my spirit, my soul. Now there is nothing left—where my soul was, now there are medals." "But what about the 'laws of nature' that govern everything you speak of?" I asked him. "What about the 'plan of all things' that each of us has to cooperate with?" "Screw it," he said, "that's philosophic bullshit." "But I've been doing it since you told me. I'm going with the flow. I'm doing the best I can. Try to do what's right."

"Well, maybe it works for you, Gump. I thought it would work for me too--but look at me. Look at me," he said, "what's the use of me? I'm a fucking legless monster. A bastard. A drunk. A thirty-five-year-old bum." "Not bad." I said. "Oh, is it? What a way?" he said.That stumped me, so I went on and on and told him what I had been through--tossed in a madhouse, then sent into space, dropped in a cannibal's village, and Sue, Major Fritch And little black people and so on. "Well, my God, Forrest Gump, you've had a lot of adventures," Dan said, "then how did you end up with me sitting on top of the radiator with a garbage bag under you?"

"I don't know," I said, "but I don't intend to stay long." "So, what's your idea?" "As soon as the rain stops," I said, "I'll go find Jenny." "Where is she?" "I don't know," I said, "but I'll find out." "Sounds like you need assistance," he said. I looked at Dan, his eyes were shining behind his beard.For some reason, I think he's the one who needs assistance, but I don't mind. Old Dan and I found a cheap church hostel for the night because the rain never stopped, and Dan paid fifty cents for dinner and twenty-five cents for the bed.Free dinner if you'd sit there and listen to sermons and all, but Dan said he'd rather sleep in the rain than waste his precious time listening to a bible-minded man say what he thinks about the world.

The next morning, Dan lent me a dollar, and I got a payphone and called Moses in Boston, the former drummer for the Cracked Eggs.Sure enough, he was still living in the same place, and he didn't expect me to contact him at all. '"Gump—I can't believe it!" said Moses, "We thought you were done!" He said that "Cracked Egg" broke up.The money that Faberstein promised them was all drained by expenses and whatnot, and after the second record they were never signed again.Moses said people listened to a new kind of music these days—the Rolling Stones, the Eagles, whatever—and the Cracked Egg members left and got real jobs. Moses said that there was no news from Jenny for a long time.She went to the demonstrations in Washington, and after I got arrested, she came back to work with Cracked Eggs for a few months, but Moses said she seemed to be a different person.He said at one point she cried on stage and they had to stuff that performance with instrumental playing.After that, she started drinking vodka, was late for the show, and they were trying to talk to her, but she just quit. Moses said he personally felt that the change in her behavior had something to do with me, but she never talked about it, and after a fortnight she left Boston, saying she was going to Chicago, and he didn't see her for five years after that. I asked him if he knew of any way to find her, and he said maybe he still had an old phone number she left him before she left.He put the phone down and came back a few minutes later to give me the number.Beyond that, he said, "I don't know anything." I told him to take care, and said that if I went to Boston, I would definitely see him. "You still play the harmonica?" Moses asked. "Well, sometimes," I said. I borrowed another dollar from Denise and called Chicago. "Jenny Curran—Jenny?" said a guy on the phone. "Yeah—I remember her. A very pretty lady. Been a long time." "Do you know where she is?" "She left saying she was going to Indianapolis. Who knew? She got a job at Temporo." "where?" "Tempolo'—the tire factory. You know, tires—car tires." I thanked the guy and went back and told Dan. "Well," he said, "I've never been to Indianapolis. I hear it's beautiful in the fall." We first tried to hitch a ride out of Washington, but had no luck.Then a guy put us in the back of a brick truck and went out into town, but no one would give us a ride after that.I figured maybe we were just too weird--Dan on his little wheelie and me standing next to him, a big guy.Anyway, Dan said why don't we take the bus, he's got enough money for a ticket.To be honest, I don't like taking his money, but I think he wants to go, and it's a good thing to have him out of Washington. So we caught the bus to Indianapolis, and I put Dan on the seat next to me and tucked his wheelbarrow into the rack above.He drank "Red Dagger" all the way, saying that this world is really a place for birds.Maybe he's right.I do not know either.I'm just an idiot after all. We got off the bus in downtown Indianapolis, and Denise and I were standing on the street thinking about what to do next when a policeman came up and said, "No loitering on the street." So we moved on.Dan asked a guy where the Temporo Tire Company was, and it turned out it was on the outskirts of town, so we headed that way.After walking for a while, there was no sidewalk, and Dan couldn't push his little cart, so I tucked him under one arm, and the cart under the other arm, and walked on. At about noon, we saw a big sign saying "Tianbolu Tires" and speculated that we had reached the ground.Dan said he was waiting outside, and I walked in, and there was a woman at the counter, and I asked her if I could ask for Jenny Curran.The woman looked at a list and said that Jenny worked in the "tire repair" department, but no one was allowed in except factory employees.Uh, I just stood there, not knowing what to do, and the woman said, "Well, honey, they're going to have their lunch break in a minute, why don't you wait by the building. Maybe she'll come out." And I did Done. A lot of people came out for a while, and then I saw Jenny go through a door alone, go under a tree, and take a sandwich out of a paper bag.I walked over and sneaked up behind her, and she was sitting on the floor, and I said, "That sandwich looks delicious." She didn't even look up.She kept staring ahead, and then said, "Forrest Gump, it must be you."