Forrest Gump by Winston Groom Jr. Part 2.
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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.
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.
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 university 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.
I couldn’t stay at the university. I wasn’t clever enough at the lessons, and there was nothing that anybody could do about it. Coach Bryant was very sad.
‘I knew this would happen, Forrest,’ he said. ‘But I said to them.
“Just give me that boy in my team for a year!”, and they did. And we had a good year – the best year, Forrest! Good luck, boy!’
Bubba helped me to put my things in my suitcase, then he walked to the bus with me to say goodbye. We went past the Students’ Centre. But it wasn’t Friday night, and Jenny’s band wasn’t playing. I didn’t know where she was.
It was late when the bus got to Mobile. Mom knew that I was coming, but she was crying when I got home.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.
‘A letter came,’ she cried. ‘You’ve got to go in the army!’