2 Against the Wind
Against the Wind
Of the many things I loved about Forrest—how much fun he was and that he always had great ideas for things to do and the energy to do them—this was the best: He paid attention to me. He may have been the first person in my life—the only one, my parents included—about whom I could have said this.
Up until now I’d only gotten to see him once a year—but that had been enough to secure his position as my favorite person.
For as long as I’d known him, which was all my life, Forrest had wanted to know what I was up to, who my friends were, what I cared about.
Where some adults would ask you, How’s school?
and never bother to wait for the answer, Forrest always listened.
The questions he asked were never the obvious ones.
He wanted to know: Did I ever skip school?
And if I were to do that, how would I spend the day?
He asked me what music I listened to and if I had an interest in skateboarding, or if I ever thought about getting a tattoo.
Would I walk naked for two blocks down the main street of my town if I got paid a million dollars to do it?
Would I do it for a thousand? Where was the cutoff?
He might also inquire about my favorite flavor of ice cream, then pull over at the next exit to buy a pint of it.
The last time I’d seen Forrest—Labor Day, the summer before—he asked me if I believed in God. Then again, he wanted to know if I ever shoplifted.
“Just one time,” I told him. “OK. Three.”
That was the thing about Forrest. You could tell him something like that and he wouldn’t deliver a lecture. No doubt he’d shoplifted plenty himself when he was my age.
“Whatever you took, I hope it was the expensive brand,” he said.
Now here we were, just the two of us—Forrest and me—out on the highway together. He put on a Bob Seger tape—more music from back in the day. Never mind that the sound of the cars we passed drowned out our voices.
“Living by the sword . . .” I had no idea what it meant; I just loved shouting the lyrics as loud as I could as we raced over the highway. There was this feeling as we drove north that something big was going to happen that summer.
Somewhere in Connecticut, when we went through a toll, Forrest said the woman in the booth looked like she’d had a rough day, so he gave her a fifty-dollar bill without waiting for her reaction.
“We’re going to have ourselves some major fun this summer,” Forrest told me as we headed back out on the highway. We’d been listening to the Casey Kasem countdown of the hits of 1973. “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree” came on.
“Oh man,” Forrest said. “We’re in big trouble now.”
Trouble? Us? I thought everything was perfect.
“We’ll never be able to get that awful song out of our heads.”
When we stopped for gas—in New Hampshire now—Forrest picked up a couple of matching hats for us that said “Live Free or Die.” There was a store with a fake totem pole out front where he decided to buy moccasins for the whole family, including me.
He didn’t need to say this, but I felt it: I was part of this family too.