Gump and Co - By Winston Groom Page 0,46

I'll have your head for this!"
Chapter 8
Chapter 8

After that, it was all over for the Reverend Bakker. One thing led to another, an in the end he gone on to jail hissef - where he can now help rehabilitate the prisoners full-time, not to mention his own pious ass.

Me, however, it looks like, will be returnin to jail also, but that was not to be.

The national media had got wind that there was a riot at Holy Land, an somehow my picture got into the papers an on TV. I am actually waitin for the bus to take us back to prison, when a feller shows up with a document in his hand, says it is my "release."

He is dressed all nattily in a suit with suspenders an has big flashy teeth an spit-shined shoes, look kinda like a stockbroker. "Gump," he says, "I am gonna be your 'Angel of Mercy.' "

Ivan Bozosky is his name.

Ivan Bozosky says he has been tryin to find me ever since the Capitol Hill hearins with Colonel North.

"Have you seen the newspapers today, Gump?" Ivan Bozosky ast.

"No, sir, I haven't."

"Well, then," he says, "perhaps you'd like to," an hands me a copy of The Wall Street Journal. Headline reads:

Stooge Shuts Down Important Economic Theme Park

A recent releasee from a Washington hospital for the criminally insane ran amok yesterday in a small Carolina town, ruining economic opportunities for thousands of hardworking American citizens by setting off a chain of events that caused the downfall of one of Carolina's most revered citizens.

According to sources, the culprit's name is Forrest Gump, a man of low IQ who has been identified in similar disturbances in Atlanta, West Virginia, and elsewhere.

Gump, who was serving time for expressing contempt for the U.S. Congress, was on a work-release project at a Bible-oriented enterprise under the tutelage of the Reverend Jim Bakker, a devout entrepreneur of our American way of life.

In his role as the giant Goliath, Gump, who is said to be a large-figured man, apparently began to disport himself yesterday in a manner described by authorities as "inappropriate," at one point hurling his fellow Bible character David over several stands of trees and into a lake inhabited by a mechanical whale, which, in the words of Holy Land authorities, "became distressed by the intrusion," and began to seethe and set upon the guests and visitors.

Somewhere in the confusion, Reverend Bakker and his secretary, one Jessica Hahn, became embroiled in the exhibit's biblical bulrushes, which tore off their clothing, and they were swept up in a police dragnet, which the spokesman described as "unfortunate."

An shit like that. Anyway, ole Ivan Bozosky, he took back the newspaper an turns to me.

"I like your style, Gump," he says, "because way back before all this, you had every chance there was to rat on Colonel North an the President, but you didn't. You covered it all up an took the blame yourself! Now, that's what I call real corporate spirit! My outfit can use a man like you."

"What outfit is that?" I ast.

"Well, we buy an sell shit - stuff on paper, actually. Bonds, stocks, bidnesses - whatever. We don't buy an sell anything really, but when we get through talkin on the phones an shufflin all the papers, we wind up with a shit-pot of money in our pockets."

"How you do that?"

"Easy," Ivan Bozosky says. "Meanness, dirty tricks an stuff, peekin over people's shoulders, goin behind their backs, pickin their pockets. It's a jungle out there, Gump, an right now, I am the big tiger."

"So what you want me to do?"

Ivan puts his hand on my shoulder. "Gump, I am starting a new division in my company in New York, called the Division of Insider Trading, an I want you to be its president."

"Me? Why?"

"Because of your integrity. It took a lot of integrity to stand up there and lie to the Congress and take the rap for that fool North. Gump, you are just the kind of feller I've been looking for."

"What's it pay?"

"Sky's the limit, Gump! Why, do you need money?"

"Everbody needs money," I says.

"No, I mean real money! The kind with half-a-dozen zeros behind it."

"Well, I gotta earn somethin to keep little Forrest in school, an pay for his college someday, an stuff like that."

"Who's little Forrest - your son?"

"Well, sort of. I mean, I'm in charge of takin care of him."

"Good godamighty, Gump," Ivan Bozosky says, "with what you're gonna make, you can send him to Choate, Andover, St.