Chapter 18 Chapter Eighteen

Well, I'm telling you, friend—that was the happiest reunion of my life.Jenny cried and put her arms around me, and so did I; The rest of the "tire repair" department stood by wondering what was going on.Jenny said she'd be off work in three hours, and told Dan and I to have a beer at the bar across the street and wait.Then she took us to her place. We went to the tavern and Dan drank some Ripple because they had no Red Dagger, but he said Ripple was better because it was more "fragrant". There were other customers in the tavern, playing darts, drinking, and wrestling at the table.There was a big guy who seemed to have the strongest wrist in the tavern, and every now and then someone would fight him, but they couldn't beat him.And they bet it, five or ten dollars a hand.

After a while, Dan said to me in a low voice, "Gump, do you think you can beat the big guy over there in the arm competition?" I said I didn't know, and Dan said, "Well, it's five dollars , I bet you will win." So, I got up and walked over to the guy and said, "Can I sit down and do an arm wrestle with you?" He looked up at me, smiled slightly and said, "As long as you have money, you are welcome to try it." I just sat down, and they held each other's hands, and someone said, "Go!" The game started.The other dudes were goofing around like dog shit, but in about ten seconds I knocked his arm off the table and beat him.Everyone else gathered around the table and said "oh" and "ah", and I heard Lao Dan yelling and applauding. "

Well, the guy wasn't too happy, but he paid me five bucks anyway, and stood up. "My elbow slipped just now," he said, "but next time you come over, I'm going to give you a try, you hear?" I nodded, and went back to Dan, and gave him the money. "Gump," he said, "we might have found an easy way to make money." I asked Dan if he could give me twenty-five cents to go to the counter and buy a preserved egg, and he gave me a dollar and said, "Whatever You can eat whatever you like, Gump. We've got a way to make a living now." Jenny came off work to pick us up at the tavern to her place.She lives in a small apartment, not far from the office, which has cute gadgets, such as stuffed toys, and a beaded curtain attached to the bedroom door.We went to the grocery store and bought a chicken, and Jenny cooked dinner for Dan and me, and I told her all about what happened to me after we parted, and she was curious about Major Fritch, but wait until I told her After running off with a cannibal, Jenny seemed relieved.She said that her life has not been going well over the years.

After leaving Cracked Egg, Jenny went to Chicago with a girl she met in the peace movement.They took to the streets to demonstrate and were imprisoned many times. Jenny said that in the end she was tired of going to court. Besides, she also worried that she would become a repeat offender. All in all, she shared a house with about fifteen people who, she said, weren't all that congenial to her.They don't wear underwear or anything at all, and they don't flush toilets.She and a guy decide to share an apartment because he doesn't like where they used to live either, but it doesn't work out.

"You know, Forrest," she said, "I even tried to love him, but I couldn't because I was thinking of you all the time." She wrote to her mother asking her to contact my mother to find out where I was locked up, but her mother wrote back that our house burned down and my mother lived in a poor house, but wait until that letter reaches Jenny , my mother has run off with that Protestant. Anyway, Jenny said she had no money, and when she heard the tire company was hiring, she came to Indianapolis and got the job.Around this time, she saw on TV that I was about to go into space, but she was too late to make it to Houston.She said she watched my spaceship fall in "horror" and thought I was dead.Since then, she has devoted all her time to repairing the tire.

I held her in my arms, and they cuddled like this for a long time.Dan rolls into the bathroom by himself and says he needs to pee.After he went in, Jenny asked him in a low voice, how did he pee, didn't he need help?I said, "No, I've seen him pee on himself. He can come by himself. " She shook her head and said, "This is what the Vietnam War brought to us." There is nothing controversial about this.It is poignant to see a man with a broken leg having to urinate in a hat and pour it down the toilet. The three of us settled down in Jenny's little apartment.Jenny made a floor for Dan in a corner of the living room, and she put a bottle on the bathroom floor so he didn't have to pee in his hat.Every morning she went to work at the tire company, and Dan and I sat at home talking, then went to the tavern near Jenny's to wait for her when she got off work.

The first week, the guy I beat in arm wrestling asked for a chance to win back the five bucks, and I gave him the chance.He tried two or three more times and lost about twenty-five dollars in total, after which he stopped coming.But there are always other guys who want to gamble on their luck. After a month or two, some people from the town and other small towns came to challenge me.Dan and I were making about a hundred and fifty to two hundred a week, which wasn't bad.The owner of the tavern said he was going to hold a national contest, have the local TV show it, and so on.But before that plan came to fruition, something else happened that changed my entire life.

One day, a guy walked into the saloon, he was wearing a white suit and aloha shirt, and he had a lot of gold around his neck.He sat at the bar and watched me tackle another challenger, then came over to our table. "My name is Mike," he said, "I've heard of you." Dan asked him what he heard, and Mike said, "I heard that this guy is the most powerful man in the world." "So what?" Dan asked, and the guy said, "I've got an idea that'll make you a lot of money, far more than the thirty cents you're making here." "How?" said Dan.

"Wrestling," Mike said, "but not this arm-moving thing--I mean real wrestling. There's rings, and thousands of paying spectators." "Who's wrestling with?" Dan asked. "Anyone," Mike said, "Pro wrestlers have a circuit--'Masked Man,' 'Big Guy,' 'Boss George,' 'Dirty Pig'--you name it. Top notch." Wrestlers can make hundreds of thousands, two hundred thousand a year. Let's warm up your dude slowly. Teach him some grappling, teach him some tricks. Ah, I bet he'll be a big star in three or two hits - Let everyone make a lot of money.

Dan looked at me and said, "What do you think, Gump?" "I don't know," I said, "I kind of want to go back to my hometown and start a small shrimp business." "Shrimp!" said Mike. "Ah, boy, you can make at least fifty times as much money doing this as shrimp farming! You don't have to do it all your life - just spend a few years, and then you can sit back and relax with money in the bank and a brood of golden chickens." .” "Maybe I'll ask Jenny what she means," I said. "Listen," Mike said, "I'm giving you the chance of a lifetime. If you don't want it, just say it, and I'll leave immediately."

"No, no," Dan said.Then he turned to me and said, "Listen, Gump, what this guy said has a point. I mean, how else would you make enough money to raise shrimp? " "Well," Mike said, "you can even take this friend of yours with you. He can be your agent. If you want to quit, you can. How do you say?" I thought about it.It sounds good, but usually this kind of thing is a scam.Having said that, I still opened my big mouth and said the fatal word: "Okay." Well, that's how I became a professional wrestler.Mike had an office at a gym in downtown Indianapolis, and Dan and I would take the bus there every day to learn how to wrestle properly. Simply put, this is what professional wrestling is about: nobody should actually get hurt, but it looks like they will. They taught me all kinds of techniques - back choke, crotch piercing, hold in place, pile driving, elbow lock and so on.Also, they taught Dan how to yell at the referees and cause chaos. Jenny wasn't too keen on wrestling because she said I would get hurt and I said no one would get hurt because it was a bluff, and she said, "What's the point of that?" There is no reasonable answer, but I still hope to make some money for us. One day, they taught me a technique called "abdominal pressure". I wanted to volley and press on the opponent, but the opponent would roll away at the last moment.But somehow I kept screwing it up, and two or three times the guy didn't have time to open it and I was on top of him.Finally, Mike walked into the arena and said, "God, Forrest—you're an idiot! You're hurting people like this, and you're as strong as a bull!" I was like, "Yeah—I'm an idiot." Mike said, "What do you mean?" Dan called Mike over and explained it, and Mike said, "Jesus! Are you kidding me?" Dan shook his head.Mike looked at me, shrugged and said, "Well, there are all kinds of people in the world." Anyway, about an hour later, Mike ran from his office to the arena. "I figured it out!" he roared. "Thought what?" Dan asked. "His nickname! We've got to give Forrest Gump a Gumball. I just thought of it." "What is it?" Dan said. "'Stupid melon'"!Mike said. "Let's put a diaper on him and a paper cone hat. The audience will love it!" Dan thought about it. "Hard to say," he said. "I don't like it very much. Sounds like you're trying to make fun of him." "It's just for the audience," Mike said. "He's got to have a nickname. All the big stars have nicknames. And what's better than 'Dumb'!" "How about calling him 'Alien'?" Dan said. "That's more appropriate. He could wear a plastic helmet and put some antennas in." "There's already a guy named Alien," Mike said. "I still don't like it," Dan said.He looked at me and said, "What do you think, Gump?" "I don't care," I said. Well, that's the way it is.After months of training, I finally got my first cry as a wrestler.The day before the big game, Mike walked into the gym with a box of diapers and a black push-up hat.He said he would be back at noon tomorrow to drive us to my first wrestling match, at Muncie. That night, after Jenny came home, I went into the bedroom, put on a diaper and a cone hat, and went back to the living room.Dan was sitting in his car watching TV and Jenny was reading a book.They both looked up as I entered the door. "Forrest Gump, what is this?" Jenny said. "Here's his costume," Dan said. "It makes a fool of you to dress like that," she said. "Let's think about it," Dan said, "like he's acting or something." "He still looks like a fool," Jenny said. "I can't believe it! You let him go to a public place dressed like this?" "It's all about making money," Dan said. "They also have a guy nicknamed 'Vegetable', who uses radish leaves as suspenders, and puts a hollowed out watermelon on his head, and digs two eye holes for him to see. There is also a guy called 'Shen Xian', With a pair of wings on his back, and a wand. The guy weighs about two hundred pounds—you should see him." "I don't care what anybody else does," Jenny said, "I don't like it at all. Gump, you go take it off." I went back to my bedroom and took off my costume.Maybe Jenny's right, I thought—but a man has got to make a living.Besides, it's much better dressed than my wrestling opponent tomorrow night.He calls himself "shit," and wears a tights that look like a pile of dung. God knows what it will smell like on him.