(AN: Do you know that, when I re-read this story, I think of characters I could have used from the FOP universe rather than the actual Forrest Gump characters. I wanna smack myself! Oh well. Hmm… normally this is the place where I apologize for the wait, but I'm sure you're all used to it. Actually, I've got some great news. I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance… wait, wrong news. (laughs) Seriously though, I finished one of my stories on here, which means I have only two that need updating. Thus, updates on both of them should hopefully be quicker. Party, everyone!
(cough) Here's chapter eight, and thanks again for all the reviews. You have no idea how much I appreciate each and every one of them.)
O.o.O
Thinking about the next chapter of his saga, Cosmo smiled to himself, opened up his briefcase, and pulled out a very well-worn ping pong paddle. He twirled it in his hand skillfully as he turned back to his companion. "The army kept sending me places to play ping pong, so much in fact that I even got a special services award from the army that the president handed out in the Capital." Cosmo suddenly sounded a bit bored. "So I went… again… and I met the president of the United States, again…"
O.o.O
But this time, a different man was president of the United States, as Cosmo soon discovered. He was shorter, his face was droopier.
"Are you enjoying your stay in our nation's capital, young man?" Richard Nixon asked Cosmo as he shook his hand.
Cosmo shrugged. "I suppose so…" He quickly figured that telling the president that his own city was nice and all that, but three times is maybe a bit too many to visit, would not be very well-mannered.
"That didn't sound very enthusiastic," said Nixon. "Where are you staying?"
"Holiday Inn! Where the towels are oh so fluffy! And you can eat your soup right out of the ashtrays if you wanna. It's okay, they're clean!" Cosmo sounded ecstatic.
"Oh, no no no, I know of a much nicer hotel," said Nixon, cutting Cosmo off. "It's brand new. I'll have my people take care of it for you."
O.o.O
Cosmo had to agree, this new hotel was a very nice one. However, some of the guests apparently didn't have sleeping in mind.
"There's some people in the room across from me, probably the fourth or fifth floor, and the lights are out and they're shining flashlights all over… and they're keeping me awake! Could you go help them get their lights on or something?" Cosmo pleaded to the hotel front desk over the phone.
"We'll look into it," said the voice on the other end.
"Thank you!" said Cosmo, sounding relieved, as he set the phone down and, deciding that he wanted to doodle something, pulled a piece of paper out of the desk drawer, with "Watergate Hotel" inscribed on the top.
O.o.O
"Therefore, I will resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow…"
It was two years later but not much had changed with Cosmo—he was still in the army, playing ping pong. In fact, that's where he was when Nixon made his fateful resignation message, not even watching the TV, just sending his ping pong ball back and forth against the wall, like always, pretending that the wall was Juandissimo's face… hey, it certainly improved his game when he did that!
Cosmo suddenly became aware of the fact that an army general was standing right next to him.
"Private Uhsmith!"
Slamming the ping pong ball and paddle down, Cosmo stood at attention and hollered, "YES SIR!"
"As you were."
Cosmo immediately relaxed, but refrained from picking up his paddle. He had long since learned that if a general interrupted him, it was usually because he had something important to tell him.
But to Cosmo's surprise, the general didn't say anything (at first)—he just handed Cosmo an envelope. "Here are your discharge papers. Your service is up, son." He turned and headed for the door.
"I… I can go home now?" Cosmo asked incredulously.
"You sure can."
"Does this mean I can't play ping pong anymore?"
"For the army, it does."
As if in a trance, Cosmo opened up the envelope, but hardly read the papers. He knew what it was about anyway… and he couldn't be happier.
Picking up his paddle and ball, he walked… then power-walked… then ran… then sprinted to the door.
He was going home.
O.o.O
And in a few hours, he was home, running across that familiar lawn to his house, his comfort, his mama…
"I'm home, Mama!" he shouted at the top of his lungs as he tore open the gate and sprinted to the front door.
In a nanosecond, Mama Cosmo was out the door, on the lawn, and crushing Cosmo in a hug. "Oh, my dear little Cosmo-lolo! You're back to me safe, unharmed, and single! You've made your mama very happy, did you know that? I'll go and make some "I rather dislike Wanda" cookies to celebrate!"
Cosmo, although happy to be home, fidgeted a bit at that. "Mama, I'd rather have some cheese cookies… please?"
"Normally I would object to your blatant unconcealed desire of Wanda, but since you're back after all this time I don't care! Cheese cookies it is, sweetheart!"
Cosma grabbed one of Cosmo's bags with one arm and took Cosmo's arm with her other arm. "Oh, and I almost forgot to tell you," she said. "A few weeks ago we had this man come to the front door… a manufacturer of ping pong paddles." By this time mother and son were inside, and Cosmo had to stop to gape at all the ping pong merchandise that was in the entrance hallway. Cosma continued, "He promised to pay us twenty-five thousand dollars if you'd agree to using his paddles. I said yes, of course—"
"But Mama," protested Cosmo, "I like my own paddle!" He reached into his pocket and pulled out his trusty well-worn paddle.
"Come now, Cosmo," said Cosma. "It's twenty-five thousand dollars! I'm sure you could get used to a new one if it means that kind of money!"
Cosmo pouted. "Aw, Mama, I don't know…"
Apparently Cosmo inherited his pouting ability from his mother, for Cosma's lower lip jutted out and her eyes grew wide with tears. "My own son… so ungrateful to his poor mother… even after all this time you've been gone… after all I've done for you throughout the years… you won't consent to my one, insignificant request… all I'm asking is that you use a different paddle…"
"Aaw, but Mama—!" Cosmo began.
Cosma's lip quivered for a second or two… and then she started bawling.
"Oh, alright, alright!" cried Cosmo. "I'll use it!"
O.o.O
"Actually," recalled Cosmo, "it was a good idea that I decided to use it. I got the money—well, about half of it, Mama wanted the rest—and with that money—well, what was left of it; I bought a cheese sandwich and a new suit and a haircut and a little plush monkey—I went down south to start shrimping! I made Timmy a promise and now that I had money, I was going to do it! First I stopped in to talk to his family…"
Cosmo had met a lot of strange people in his travels… but Timmy's parents almost took the cake.
"We'd love to stay and talk, strange little green-haired man, but we have to go play bingo!" Mrs. Turner said to Cosmo as she and her husband were walking out the door.
"But all I wanted to tell you is that I made a promise to your son that I'd start up a shrimping business with him, but since he's dead I have to do it myself. We were gonna blow all the competition out of the water, but now I have to do it alone."
"Heeeyyyy!" cried Mr. Turner. "You know, if you in the name of my dearly loved and sorely missed son made a profitable business, then I would finally have something to rub in Dinkleburg's face!" He suddenly scowled. "Dinkleburg…" he growled fiercely.
"They left really soon," said Cosmo, "but that was fine with me. I still had to pay my respects to Timmy."
"Hey, Timmy!" said Cosmo, trying to sound cheerful, as he looked at the grave in the churchyard—TIMOTHY THOMAS TURNER, JUNE 8, 1945-AUGUST 25, 1967 stamped on the grave, flowers and American flags flanking it. "Well, I remembered what you and I talked about, so I went and bought me a shrimping boat…"
O.o.O
"It's beautiful," Cosmo whispered, gazing lovingly at the dilapidated boat. He turned to the old man selling it. "I'll take it!" He deposited most of the rest of his money in the man's hands.
The man blinked at stared. "Are you stupid or something?" he finally asked.
"No, I'm just in love with your boat," said Cosmo in a dream-like voice.
O.o.O
"…and I'll be starting out tomorrow." Cosmo took a deep breath, trying to remember what else he was gonna say. "So… so there it is. If I see Trixie Tang—whatever she looks like—and she really likes me because I'm a shrimper, then I'll tell her that it was your idea and maybe she'll like you… even though you're dead."
Sighing again, Cosmo placed a single daisy on Timmy's grave, then turned around, willing himself to not look back. The past was a terrible thing, and Cosmo had other things to focus on.
He was going to go out fishing for shrimp.
O.o.O
Being out on the ocean in his beautiful (at least in his eyes) boat was an exhilarating experience for Cosmo. He had never imagined how free one felt out on the sea, breathing the fresh air, throwing out the nets and trying to catch some shrimp…
"Trying"—that was the key word.
Cosmo admitted right up front that he knew next to nothing about shrimping. True, Timmy had told him all that he knew—which wasn't that much either, actually. And he had bought that "Shrimping for Dummies" book. But still…
"I only caught five," he lamented to the old man at the end of the day.
The man laughed. "Atta boy! You can make yourself a cocktail with that!" He chuckled and made his way to his car. Glancing at Cosmo's broken-down boat, however, he turned back to the green-haired mariner. "Maybe your problem is that you haven't given your boat a name. Don't you know it's bad luck to have a boat without a name?"
Cosmo looked at his boat. "What do you name a boat?" he asked, having never given that matter any serious thought before.
The man laughed. "In your case, a name like 'Garbage' comes to mind—"
Cosmo scowled. "My boat's beautiful! You're just jealous!"
"Alright, alright! Lots of people give their boats poetic type names… like 'Blue Horizons', 'Starlight Starbright', 'Restless Wanderer'…"
Cosmo could feel himself blush. "I'm not really very poetic," he admitted. "In fact, I'm really stupid. I could never come up with a pretty name!"
The man shrugged. "Well, some guys like you name their boats after their wives or girlfriends. I hear the ladies find that quite an honor to have a boat named after them… with a boat like yours I wouldn't swear to it however…"
But Cosmo had ceased to listen. He stared, open-mouthed, at his boat, marveling at why he hadn't thought of that before. "Wanda!" he breathed to himself. "A beautiful name for a beautiful boat!"
"There ya go." The man smiled at Cosmo and left the dock.
Cosmo's voice grew softer. "It was the perfect name for my boat, because Wanda was the only thing in the whole wide world that was more beautiful than my boat! It had been years since I'd seen her, but I still thought about her all the time… wondering where she was…"
O.o.O
Cosmo, since he had last seen Wanda, had had an almost complete life upheaval, going from the army's international ping pong star to a down-on-his-luck shrimp boat captain. But Wanda's life had remained nearly the same. Different boyfriend, different drugs; both worse than the last time.
This time, Wanda hardly noticed that her boyfriend had passed out on the bed—he could have been doing a song-and-dance number and Wanda still would have wanted out of there. She couldn't stand being with him. She couldn't stand being with herself. She just wanted to break free. Free from this whole damn world.
And she could do anything if she wanted to.
She flung open the door to the balcony and climbed up on the railing, looking down at all the cars driving below, four stories down. Idiotic people. All in a hurry to go to work. Selling their lives so they could make money to send their kids to college so they could get jobs so they could make money to send their kids to college… didn't they see how terrible it was? You work your butt off your whole life, and then you die.
But not Wanda. Wanda was different. She knew it, in the most confused, clear way she'd ever known. She was different. She had always wanted to fly, and now she could. She could fly away to heaven.
She stood on the railing, holding on to the overhang on the roof, but only just long enough to get her bearings… yes, she would fly. She would fly away from everything terrible in the world, because she could. She could do anything.
One foot slid off the railing.
And Wanda, finally coming back to earth, gripped the overhang tighter, pulled her foot back, and climbed back down to the floor of the balcony, sitting on a chair, gripping her knees, crying, crying, crying…
She couldn't fly. What was she thinking? She never could. If she had been able to, she would have flown away long ago. When she was a child. God would have turned her into a bird like she asked.
But she wasn't a bird, she could never be a bird, she was just a pathetic human being, a pathetic, messed-up person who probably should have jumped off—the world would be a much better place without her…
Wanda raised her eyes and stared at the moon, letting it be witness to her shaky tears.
O.o.O
Cosmo gazed at that same moon that night, thinking of her.
And he, too, wished that he could fly. He wished he could fly away.
Fly away and find her again.
O.o.O
He was still thinking of her the next day, silently steering his boat through the calm shore waters.
It was stupid to keep dwelling on thoughts of her, Cosmo sadly thought to himself. When was the last time he had seen her? 1967? 1968? Sometime around there, and what year was it now? 1974… that was quite a long time. She had been right, of course; their lives were so different. It hurt too much to think of her. Cosmo knew he should just give up. He'd probably never see her again anyway.
But that was the problem—he couldn't stop thinking of her. He'd probably still be thinking of her when he was dead and every other part of his body had stopped working.
No, she was in California and would very likely stay there forever. And he was on his shrimp boat down in the Gulf of Mexico, on a fruitless search for shrimp, Lieutenant Denzel was sitting on the dock…
Lieutenant Denzel?
Cosmo blinked; rubbed his eyes; looked again; no doubt about it, that was Lieutenant Denzel sitting on the dock! Waving like the happy idiot he was, Cosmo laughed and… jumped off the boat.
Crocker had at first returned the smile, but seeing Uhsmith's next action, he merely rolled his eyes and sighed to himself.
In mere moments, a soaking wet Cosmo climbed up the ladder and ran up to his old friend. "Lieutenant Denzel! What are you doing here?"
Crocker, to Cosmo's surprise, shot a grin back. "Would you believe that I'm out hunting for FAIRY GOD PARENTS?" he asked, doing his trademark convulsions on the words of the ever-elusive creatures.
"Yeah," said Cosmo.
"Me too, which is why I'm surprised that I'm not!" Crocker chortled at his own joke. "Well, anyway… I'm actually here to try out my sea legs."
Cosmo cocked his head at Crocker like a confused puppy. "But you don't have any legs, Lieutenant Denzel."
For an instant, it looked like Crocker was a few seconds away from throwing something at Cosmo. But the moment left as quickly as it came, leaving Crocker to just say, rather sarcastically, "Yes, Uhsmith, I KNOW!"
Crocker reached into his pocket and pulled out a letter. "You wrote me a letter, you idiot. Saying that you were a shrimp boat captain. And if you remember, I told you that if you were ever a shrimp boat captain, I'd be your first mate. Well, I honestly didn't expect you to actually go through with it, but I am a man of my word… usually." He shot a quick glare at Cosmo. "But don't you think that I'm going to start calling you 'sir'."
"No, sir," said Cosmo quickly, shaking his head.
Those words had scarcely left Cosmo's lips when his boat, having floated on unguided this whole time, crashed into the adjoining dock with a deafening splinter of wood.
Cosmo and Crocker both winced.
Jerking his thumb to the damage, Cosmo said sheepishly, "…That's my boat."
O.o.O
"I was real lucky to have someone as smart as Lieutenant Denzel help me with my shrimping!" recalled Cosmo. "He always made great executive decisions about where we would get our shrimp…"
"I have an intuition!"
Crocker, perched on the mast of the boat, pointed to his left. "I have an intuition that if we head due east we'll find some shrimp!" he hollered to Cosmo, who was at the wheel. "So take a left!"
Cosmo, of course, turned right.
"I said LEFT! Your OTHER left!"
"Oh!" cried Cosmo. "My other left! Why didn't you say so?" He turned the ship in the appropriate direction.
"That's where we'll find those shrimp!" cried Crocker confidently.
O.o.O
"This doesn't look like shrimp," said Cosmo dubiously. "It looks like a few dirty seashells, an old boot, and a toilet seat."
"Okay, so I was wrong," muttered Crocker. "But I'm still giving you—A SUPER F!"
"You're not a teacher anymore, Lieutenant Denzel!" Cosmo reminded his friend.
"Oh… right…"
Cosmo sighed and sat on the railing of the boat. "How are we going to keep this up if we never find any shrimp?"
"Well," snapped Crocker, "maybe you should just pray for shrimp."
"So I went to church every Sunday," said Cosmo; "I even joined the choir! Sometimes Lieutenant Denzel came too, although I think he left the praying up to me. But… I guess it wasn't enough, because we STILL weren't getting any shrimp."
Cosmo opened the nets, revealing a watered-down side of a cardboard box, a vinyl 45 with a big crack down the middle, and a McDonald's Happy Meal bag.
Crocker, seeing the booty for the day, rolled his eyes and threw his arms up in despair. "Where the hell's this God of yours?" he demanded.
It seemed that he was preparing to complain some more, but right at that time, a powerful gust of wind tore out from the evening sky.
"It's funny that he said that," said Cosmo, "because right then, God showed up—with a vengeance!"
God—also known in some cases as a hurricane.
Cosmo was in a panic—he had only skimmed the chapter in "Shrimping for Dummies" on what to do in case of hurricane; besides, he didn't know some of the words used in the book. As the ferocious waves crashed against the boat, Cosmo tried to run through everything in his mind—but the only thought was, "AAAAAHHHH! HURRICANE!"
"I've never been so scared in my life!" cried Cosmo, sounding horrified. "But Lieutenant Denzel… he was MAD!"
Mad in the sense of crazy, of course.
"BLOW, YOU SON OF A BITCH, BLOW!" Crocker screamed to the storm—and the power behind it—still perched on top of the mast. "IS THIS ALL YOU GOT? IT'S TIME FOR A SHOWDOWN—YOU AND ME! YOU CALL THIS A STORM? YOU'LL—NEVER—SINK—THIS—BOAT! HA HA!" Crocker made an offensive hand gesture defiantly.
O.o.O
The next day, a national news crew was on the sight.
"Last night Hurricane Carmen ripped through the Gulf Coast, decimating everything in its path," said a newsman to the camera. "This area of the coast, which was mainly a shrimping port, will likely feel a blow! In fact, according to witnesses this reporter has asked, only one boat survived!"
Three guesses which boat it was.
O.o.O
"After that, shrimping was easy!" said Cosmo happily to the man in the checkered suit. "And since the competition was literally blown out of the water, and we were the only boat left, but people still wanted their shrimp—Timmy Uhsmith Shrimp Company is what they got! We've got a whole line of boats—twelve Wandas—stocks, and lots and lots of MONEY!"
"Hold it." The man held up his hand to silence Cosmo. "You're telling me that you're the owner of the Timmy Uhsmith Shrimp Company?"
Cosmo grinned and nodded. "Yes sir! We've got more money than Uncle Scrooge!"
The man laughed as if Cosmo had just told a hilarious joke. "Boy oh boy, I've heard some whoppers in my time, but that one takes the cake!" Still laughing, he stood up to walk away, but made a parting remark to the old lady who had been sitting on the other side of him—"All this time we were sitting next to a millionaire!" His laughter could be heard long after he was out of sight.
The old lady scooted closer to Cosmo. "I think it's a lovely story," she said in a maternal way. "And you tell it with such enthusiasm!"
"Yay!" cried Cosmo happily. "Uh… what does enthusiasm mean?"
The lady chose to ignore Cosmo's small vocabulary. "Do you have a picture of your Lieutenant Denzel?"
"I sure do!" Cosmo unlocked his briefcase again and pulled out an issue of FORTUNE magazine, he and his legless friend smiling on the cover, hoards of shrimp behind them. "And let me tell you something else about Lieutenant Denzel, something that will probably require a flashback and make this horribly long chapter even longer!"
O.o.O
It was evening on the Wanda One.
Cosmo was counting up the shrimp intake for the day—a hard task for a man who could only accurately count up to seven—when Crocker, sitting on the edge of the boat, said quite suddenly, "Cosmo… I never did thank you for… saving my life."
Cosmo turned and stared at Crocker, surprised that he called him by his first rather than his last name, and also the calm seriousness his voice took on. Realizing Cosmo's confusion, Crocker smiled at him; then, as if taken by a sudden impulse, swung his leg stumps away from the boat, and jumped off.
"Whoa!" cried Cosmo, rushing to the edge and peering over, wondering what on earth had taken Lieutenant Denzel over.
He wasn't drowning. He didn't look like he was attempting suicide either.
Instead, Crocker was, with his arms, swimming in the golden sunset water, his eyes closed and his mouth smiling in an expression of pure peace.
"He never said anything… but I think he found his peace with God that day," said Cosmo thoughtfully. "Either that or he just felt like swimming. It's hard to tell. Did I just ruin that moment?"
O.o.O
A few days later, it was lunchtime on the Wanda One.
The walkie-talkie buzzed, and Crocker, pausing from his cheese enchilada (it had been Cosmo's turn to choose lunch), answered. "This is Wanda One."
"There's an urgent phone call for Mr. Uhsmith," said the voice on the other end.
"How urgent is it?" asked Crocker irritably. "He's in the middle of a cheese enchilada."
"His mama's sick."
"What?" gasped Cosmo.
Abandoning his enchilada, Cosmo dove off the Wanda One, swimming frantically to shore.
O.o.O
And soon, he was tearing his way through the gate, through the front door, and up to his mama's room.
"Oh, Cosmo, you're here! I knew my little boy would come." Cosma's voice was its usual overbearing affectionate self, but it was weak, shaky. Cosmo gulped.
The creepy doctor with her sighed. "I said no visitors. Oh well, there's nothing more to be done today. I'll be back tomorrow, Mrs. Uhsmith."
"You do that, Dr. Bender," said Cosma.
Making his way past Cosmo and to the door, Dr. Bender paused to inspect Cosmo. "My, what lovely teeth you have!" he said with a creepy, evil smile.
"Uh… all the better to eat you with?" said Cosmo.
"Sure, whatever," Dr. Bender shrugged. Soon he was gone from the room.
Cosmo immediately plopped down in the chair that Dr. Bender had been sitting in. "What's wrong, Mama? Did you catch ammonia?"
"Pneumonia," corrected Cosma.
"Oh no!" cried Cosmo. "Even worse!"
"No, no," snapped Cosma. "I'm just sick… I'm dying, Cosmo, there's no point denying it." Pouting, she turned and looked out the window.
Cosmo felt his throat contract. "Mama… Mama, you can't die. You just… you can't leave me, Mama!"
"There's nothing I can do about it," said Cosma irritably. "Which… which is why I've just decided to accept it."
That surprised Cosmo. He knew his mother just as well as he knew Wanda and Lieutenant Denzel—and that was very well. And though he might not know much, he knew that his mama wasn't one to give in like that, even to things that she had no control over.
"Why?" Cosmo asked, his voice hardly above a whisper.
"It's just my time," shrugged Cosma. "It has to happen to everyone sometime. I guess it was destined for me to go now."
Destiny. There was that word again. Cosmo gulped. He still had no clue about destiny—he knew that he had messed up Lieutenant Denzel's (although it seemed he was creating a new one for himself) and completely destroyed Timmy's, but still…
"Mama… what is destiny?"
"Destiny?" Cosma cocked an eyebrow at her son. "It's when you're old and on your deathbed, and you look back and think, 'Now what did I do with my life and where did it lead me?' That's destiny."
"Is it set in stone?" asked Cosmo.
Cosma shrugged. "I think you create your own destiny. We're all just floating along on the breeze, trying to do the best with what we have." Cosma closed her eyes in contemplation. "I guess… I guess I was destined to be your mama." She opened her eyes and smiled at Cosmo. "I know now that I wasn't always the best mama to you…"
"You did good, Mama," Cosmo managed to choke out, tears running down his face.
"I've always loved you, my little Cosmo-lolo. I always will. Even… even if you do something utterly stupid, like go with that awful Wanda girl."
Cosmo felt his hand shake as he took his mama's hand in his own. "I love you too, Mama."
O.o.O
(AN: Wow, that last scene was hard. How can you make Mama Cosma likable? I hope I did okay…
I'm sorry that this chapter is so insanely long. But really, there was no place before now to cut it off. What can I say, the movie just picks up and doesn't leave many chances for bathroom breaks. (laughs) Oh yes, and the Wanda scene in this chapter? With that particular scene in the movie, it's rather open to interpretation. My brother thinks that Jenny's just plain suicidal, while I think she's taken too much LSD (which, if taken in large doses, can implant false beliefs, such as thinking one can fly). I went with my take on it, obviously, although I do admit it can be seen another way too.
If anyone caught the lyric from a Weird Al song in here, then… you win the white carnation. (And if anyone caught the white carnation reference, then you win two white carnations.)
See you next chapter, which is the Cosmo/Wanda moment that you—and I—have been waiting for!)