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CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Shrimp Business

Well, I finally went home to Mobile again. The train got into Mobile station about three o’clock in the morning, and Sue and I got off. We walked into the town and finally found a place to sleep in an empty building.

The next morning I bought some breakfast and got Sue some bananas to eat. Then we went to see Mom. She was pleased to see me.

‘Oh, Forrest,’ she said, ‘you’re home at last!’

‘Yes, Mom,’ I said.

But I didn’t stay long. Two days later, Sue and I got the bus to Bayou La Batre, where Bubba’s parents lived, and I explained to Bubba’s daddy about the shrimp business that Bubba and I planned to start after we came out of the army. He listened, and he was very interested. And the next day he took Sue and me out in his little boat, to look for a good place to start the shrimp business.

It took almost a month to start things up - to get nets, and a boat, and everything. Finally the day came when Sue and I were ready to go shrimping. And by that night we had hundreds and hundreds of shrimps in our nets!

It was the beginning of my shrimp business. We worked hard, all that summer, and that autumn and winter and the next spring. And after a year, Mom was working for me, and Mr Tribble, and Curtis (my old football friend), and Bubba’s daddy.

At the end of that year, we had thirty thousand dollars!

Everybody was very happy. But me? I was thinking of Jenny, of course. I wanted to find her again. And one day I dressed in my best clothes and got the bus to Mobile, and I went to Jenny’s Mom’s house.

‘Forrest Gump!’ she said, when she saw me. ‘Come on in!’

Well, we talked about Mom and the shrimp business and everything. Then I asked about Jenny.

‘I don’t hear from her very often,’ she said. ‘I think they live somewhere in North Carolina now.’

‘They?’ I said.

Didn’t you know?’ she said. ‘Jenny married two years ago;

Why wasn’t I ready for that news? I don’t know, but I wasn’t. And part of me seemed to die when I heard it. But Jenny only did what she had to do. Because I’m an idiot. A lot of people say that they married an idiot, but they don’t know what it’s like to marry a real one. I cried that night, but it didn’t help.

‘I’m just going to work hard,’ I told myself. ‘It’s all I can do.’

And I did. And at the end of that year we had seventy-five thousand dollars.

Time went on. I looked in the mirror and saw lines on my face and grey in my hair. The business was doing well, but I asked myself, ‘What are you doing all this for?’ And I knew that I had to get away.

Mr Tribble understood. ‘Why don’t you tell everybody that you’re taking a long holiday, Forrest?’ he said. ‘The business will be here when you want it again.’

So I did. Sue came with me, and we went to the bus station.

‘Where do you want to go?’ the woman in the ticket office asked.

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

‘Why don’t you go to Savannah?’ she said. ‘It’s a nice town.’

‘OK,’ I said.