Chapter 24 Chapter Twenty-Four

Finally, I returned home. The train came in at Mobil Station about three o'clock in the morning and they took Sue's wicker box and left us on the platform.There was no one around in the station except one guy sweeping the floor and another guy napping on a bench, so Sue and I walked all the way downtown and finally found a place to sleep in an abandoned building. The next morning, after I bought Sue a banana near the docks and found a food stand and bought myself a hearty breakfast of corn, fried eggs, bacon, and pancakes, I thought to myself Got to find a way to settle down, so I set off for the Sisters of the Poor.We passed the old house on the way, and now all that remains of it is a patch of weeds and some blackened wood.Seeing that scene, I felt very strange, so we continued walking.

When we got to the Pauper's House, I told Sue to wait in the yard so I wouldn't startle the nuns, and then I went in and asked how my mother was. The abbot was very kind, and she said she didn't know where Mama was, except that she had gone with a Protestant, but I could go to the park and find out, because Mama used to go there in the afternoon and chat with other women.So I took Sue to the park. There were some women sitting on the bench in the park in twos and threes, and I went up to one of them to identify myself, and she looked at Sue and said, "Should guess it."

But, she said she'd heard Mama worked as a trouser press at a dry cleaner in another town, so Sue and I walked over there again, and sure enough, poor mama was sweating and ironing her trousers in the dry cleaner. Seeing me, my mother dropped everything and threw herself into my arms.She was crying, wringing her hands, and sniffling, exactly as I remembered.Mom. "Oh, Gump," she said. "You're back at last. I haven't missed a single day since you left, and I've cried myself to sleep every night." That didn't surprise me, so I asked the Protestant. "That scumbag," she said, "I shouldn't have eloped with a Protestant. He ditched me for a sixteen-year-old girl in less than a month—he was nearly sixty. I'll tell you." , Forrest Gump, Protestants have no morals at all."

At this moment, a voice came from the dry cleaner, saying, "Gletty, did you forget to put the iron on someone's pants?" "Oh, my God!" Mom yelled, running back into the store.All of a sudden, a column of black smoke was coming out of the window, people in the store were yelling and cursing, and then I saw my mother being dragged out of the dry cleaner by a huge, ugly, bald man who yelled at her and beat her up. "Go away! Go away!" he yelled. "This is the last time, and this is the last pair of your burnt trousers!" Mom was crying and I went up to the guy and said, "I see, you'd better get your hands off my mom."

"What bird are you?" he asked, "Forrest Gump," I said. He's like, "Ugh, get the fuck out of here too, and take your mother with you, because she's fired!" "You'd better not swear in front of my mother," I said. He retorted: "Oh? What are you going to do?" So I demonstrated it to him. First, I grabbed him and held him high in the air.Then I carried him to the laundry area, turned on the large linen and rug washing machine, tucked him in, closed the lid, and turned the switch to "spin."The last time I saw him, he was slowly turning to the "dehydration" section.

Mama cried, wiped her eyes with her handkerchief, and said, "Oh, Gump, now I'm out of work!" "Don't worry, Mom," I told her, "it will be all right because I have it all planned." "How do you plan, Gump?" she said, "You're an idiot. How do idiots plan?" "Just wait and see," I said.All in all, I'm glad that the first day back home went so well. We left the dry cleaners and headed to Mamazuo's rented apartment.I introduced Sue to her, and she said she was glad I found a friend at last--even if he was an ape.

Anyway, Mama and I had dinner at the boarding house, and she gave Sue an orange from the kitchen, and after dinner Sue and I went to the station to catch a bus to Batter River, where Bub's family lived.When we left, Mom was standing on the apartment balcony, still crying and wiping her tears.But I've given her half of the five thousand to take care of everything and pay the rent and all, so I'm not too upset. Anyway, once the bus got to Beit River, we had no trouble finding Bob's house.At about eight o'clock in the evening, I knocked on the door. After a while, an old gentleman opened the door and asked me what I wanted.I identified myself and told him that Bob and I had known each other since we played college ball and we were in the army. He was a little nervous, but let me in.I had told Sue to stay out of sight in the yard, because no one around here had ever seen anything like her.

Anyway, the old gentleman was Bob's daddy, and he poured me an iced tea and asked me a lot of questions.He wanted to know about Babu, how he died and all that, and I told him all I could. Finally, he said, "One thing I've been wondering all these years, Gump—what do you think Bubba died of?" "Because he was shot," I said. But he said, "No, I don't mean that. I mean why? Why are we going to fight over there?" I thought about it for a while and said, "Well, I guess we're probably trying to do the right thing. We're just following orders."

He said, "Well; do you think it's worth it? What we've done, let so many children die like that?" I said, "Listen, I'm just an idiot, you know. But if you want to ask me honestly, I think it's a shit war." Bob's dad nodded. "I think so," he said. In short, I explained my purpose of coming.Tell him that Bob and I had planned to start a small shrimp business and that I met a Vietnamese guy in the hospital who taught me how to raise shrimp and all that.Bubba's father was very interested and asked a lot of questions, but at that moment there was a loud clucking sound in the yard.

"Something's chasing my chicken!" Bubba's dad yelled, took a gun from behind the door, and ran out onto the balcony. "There's something I have to tell you," I said.I told him about Sue in the yard, except we couldn't see her. Bubba's dad went back inside and took a flashlight and shone it into the yard.He looked down at a big tree, and under the tree stood a goat--a huge ram, mowing the ground there.He shone at the leaves again, and sure enough, Sue was sitting on a branch, half scared to death. "That sheep does it every time," said Bubba's father. "Get out of there!" he roared, throwing another stick at the goat.After the goat went away, Sue climbed down the tree and we let him in.

"What is this thing?" "It's an ape," I said. "It's full of gorillas, isn't it?" "A little bit," I said, "but it's not." Anyway, Bob's dad said we could stay overnight at his place, and he'd show us around in the morning to see if he could find a place to start a shrimp business.A refreshing breeze blows from the river, and you can hear the calls of frogs and crickets, and even the occasional splash of fish jumping out of the water.It was a nice place of peace and quiet, and I made up my mind at once that I would not cause any trouble here. We got up very early the next morning, and Bob's daddy had cooked up a big breakfast of home sausage, fresh eggs, biscuits and molasses, and after dinner he took Sue and me in a boat and we went down the river The bay flows down the river.There was silence all around, and a mist hung over the river.Now and then a great bird would fly away from the swamp. "Now," said Bubba's pa, "here's where the tide comes in," pointing to a stream in the swamp. "There are some pretty big ponds in the swamp, and I'd be raising shrimp there." He rowed the boat into the creek. "You see," said he, "there's a little rise over there, and you can see the roof of a shed." "Old Tom Lefage used to live there, but he's been dead four or five years. The house doesn't belong to anybody. You can fix it up a little bit and live there if you want. I saw it there last time, He's got two old paddle boats on the bank. They're probably worn down, but you can fix them up, and they might work." The boat sailed some distance into the swamp, and then he said: "Old Tom used to pave a boardwalk from the swamp to the pond, where he often fished and hunted ducks. You can repair that road, it is also a good idea." A way to navigate the swamp." Well, my friend, that place really does look ideal.Bob's dad said there were shrimp larvae all year round in these creeks and Gulf Streams in the swamp, and there would be no trouble getting some larvae to raise.He also said that in his experience, shrimp eat cottonseed, which is a good feed because it is cheap. The main thing is, we have to fend off the pond with barbed wire, and fix up the cabin to be habitable, and get some food stuff like peanut butter, jam, bread, that shit.Then we can start raising shrimp. So we started working that day.Bob's dad took me back to his house and we went into town to get some supplies.He said he could use his boat till we got the old boat fixed, and Sue and I were staying at the fishing shack that night.It rained a little during the night and the roof leaked, but I didn't mind.I went out early the next morning and got the roof fixed. It took about a month to get everything on track—fixing cabins, boats, and a boardwalk in the swamp, and laying a mesh fence around a pond.Finally, the day to release the shrimp arrived.I've bought a prawn net and Sue and I went out in the boat and went around for most of the day.At night we had about fifty pounds of shrimp in our bait bucket and we paddled back and dumped the shrimp into the pond.Shrimp bounced and kicked on the water.Hehe, that scene is really beautiful. The next morning we bought five hundred pounds of cottonseed feed and threw a hundred pounds in the pond for the shrimp to eat.We fenced the other pond the next afternoon.In this way, we have been doing this non-stop throughout the summer, autumn, winter and spring. In the past year, we have four ponds with shrimps, and the prospects are looking good.At night I'd sit on the porch of the cabin and play my harmonica, and on Saturday night I'd go out into town and get a six-pot of beer and get drunk with Sue.I finally felt like I belonged and I was doing an honest job, and I thought to myself, after the first prawns are harvested and sold, maybe I can go to Jenny again and see if she's still mad at me .