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CHAPTER EIGHT

Into Space

Spring and summer went by, and I continued to play my harmonica with the group. It was my happiest time of all. But - you’ve guessed it - something went wrong.

How did it happen? I don’t know. But one night I was sitting outside the Hodaddy Club, smoking a cigarette, when a girl smiled and came up to me. She sat down across my legs and put her arms round me. She was laughing and kissing me, and I didn’t know what to do.

Suddenly, the door opened behind me, and there was Jenny.

‘Forrest, it’s time to -‘ She stopped when she saw me with the girl. Then she said, ‘Oh, no! Not you, too!’

I jumped up and pushed the girl away. ‘Jenny!’ I said.

‘Stay away from me, Forrest!’ she said. ‘You men are all the same! Just stay away from me!’

She didn’t speak to me again that night. And the next morning she told me to find another place to live.

I went to live with Moses, one of the other men in the group, and soon after that Jenny went to Washington to talk and work against the war. Moses wrote down the address for me.

So I went back to Washington, too.

There was a lot of trouble there. Police were everywhere, and people were shouting and throwing things.

And the police were taking some of them away.

I went to find Jenny’s address, but there was nobody at home. I waited outside for most of the day. Then, at about nine o’clock, a car stopped near the house and some people got out. And there she was!

I started to walk towards her, but she turned and walked away. The other people - two men and a girl - didn’t know what to say.

‘What’s wrong with her?’ I asked one of the two men.

‘She just got out of prison,’ he said. ‘She was there all night before we could get her out.’

Jenny was in the back of the car now, so I went over and talked to her through the window. I told her how I felt - I was sorry about the girl, and I didn’t want to play in the group without her. She listened quietly, then opened the car door for me to get in, and we sat and talked.

The others were talking about something that would happen the next day. Some American soldiers planned to take off their Vietnam medals and throw them away in front of the crowds of people.

Suddenly Jenny said, ‘Did you know that Forrest won a medal?’

The others went quiet and looked at me, then looked at Jenny.

Next morning, Jenny came into the living-room. I was sleeping on the floor of their house. She woke me up.

‘Forrest,’ she said. ‘I want you to do something for me.’

‘What?’ I said.

I want you to come with us today, and I want you to wear your army clothes.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Because you’re going to do something to stop all the killing in Vietnam.’

You can guess what I had to do, can’t you? I had to throw away my medal with the other American soldiers. But because my medal was a more famous medal than theirs, it was more important to Jenny and her friends.

But it got me into more trouble. Oh, I threw my medal away, OK - but it hit somebody really important! One of the President’s men! So they threw me into prison.

Why do things like that always happen to me?

As it happened, I didn’t stay in prison long, because they soon realized that I was an idiot, and they put me in a special hospital for idiots. It was the doctors at the hospital who decided to send me to NASA - that’s the space centre at Houston, in Texas.

‘You’re just the kind of person that they’re looking for!’ the doctors told me.

I soon understood why! NASA sent me on a journey into space with a woman and an ape! Me, a spaceman! It was very strange.

All kinds of things went wrong because of that ape. Instead of coming down in the sea when we returned, the space ship came down in the jungle somewhere, and it was four years before the NASA people found us! But the ape and I were soon good friends. His name was Sue (yes, I know it’s a girl’s name, but they sent a male ape up by mistake, and NASA didn’t like to tell the newspapers that). And it was in the jungle that I met Big Sam - a man who taught me to play chess. And that was important, as you will see later.