Somebody had called the police, who showed up an immediately begun beatin people on the heads with nightsticks. Meantime, the lion had got loose in the bulrushes, where he surprised the Reverend Bakker an Jessica Hahn, who was havin some kind of relationship minus their clothes. They come tearin out right in the middle of things, with the lion in hot pursuit. When the police got an eyeful of this, first thing they do is arrest the reverend for "indecent exposure," an cart him off to jail. Last thing he says before they tossed him in the paddy wagon is "Gump, you idiot, I'll have your head for this!"
Chapter Eight
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. Paul's, and Episcopal High School all at once, and when you're done, he'll be so rich he can send his shirts off to Paris to be laundered."
So that's how I begun my corporate career.
I had never been to New York City, an let me tell you: It was a sight!
I didn't know there was so many people in the whole world. They was millin in the streets an sidewalks an up in the skyscrapers an in the stores. The racket they made was unreal—horns blowin, jackhammers jackin, sirens wailin, an I don't know what-all else. I had the immediate impression that I was in a anthill, where all the ants was half crazy.
Ivan Bozosky first took me to his company's offices. They was in a big ole skyscraper down near Wall Street. They was hundrits of people workin there at computers, all was wearing shirts an ties an suspenders, an most of em had little round horn-rimmed glasses, an their hair was slicked back. To a man, they was talkin on their telephones, an smokin cigars so much at first I thought the room was on fire.
"This is the deal, Gump," Ivan says. "What we do herein is, we make friends with the folks that run big companies, an when we learn they are gonna issue a big dividend or earnings statement, or sell their company, or start a new division—or do anything else that will make the price of their stock go up—why, we start buying their stock ourselves before the news officially gets in the papers an lets every sonofabitch on Wall Street have a fair chance to get in on the profits."
"How you make friends with them people?" I ast.
"Simple. Just hang around the Harvard or Yale clubs or the Racquet Club or any number of places where these morons do their thing. Buy em a bunch of drinks, play dumb—take em to dinner, get em a girl, kiss their asses—whatever it takes. Sometimes we fly em out to Aspen to ski or to Palm Beach or something. But don't you worry about that, Gump. Our fellers know how to run that scam—All I want you to do is be the president, and the only person you'll report to is me—about, oh, say, once every six months or so."