# Chapter 17: Bubba
Benjamin Buford Blue introduced himself on their second day in country.
He sat down next to Forrest at chow with the particular ease of someone who had identified a person worth knowing and decided to act on it and started talking about shrimp.
Not as small talk. As genuine sustained interest. The kind of conversation that had a beginning and a middle and showed no signs of having an end.
Tim sat across from them and ate his food and listened.
Bubba knew everything about shrimp.
Shrimp gumbo. Shrimp creole. Shrimp jambalaya. Fried shrimp. Boiled shrimp. Shrimp soup. He laid it out with the systematic thoroughness of someone who had been thinking about this for a long time and finally found an audience worthy of the full presentation.
Forrest listened with complete attention.
Tim watched Bubba while he talked. There was something in him that Tim recognized — the particular quality of a person who was entirely themselves without apology or performance. He and Forrest had identified each other the way certain people do, immediately and without much discussion, like two things that were always supposed to be in the same place finally getting there.
Tim approved without saying so.
"You know anything about shrimp?" Bubba said, noticing Tim watching.
"Not much" Tim said.
Bubba nodded seriously.
"I could tell you" he said.
"I'd like that" Tim said.
Bubba looked at him for a moment with the careful assessment of someone deciding whether a person was worth the full shrimp education.
Apparently Tim passed.
"Okay" Bubba said. "So first you got your boiled shrimp—"
Forrest leaned in.
Tim leaned in.
Bubba talked about shrimp for forty five minutes.
---
He fit into the unit the way Forrest fit into things — completely and without conditions. He and Forrest were inseparable within a week. They moved through the field together, ate together, talked about shrimp and Alabama and what they were going to do when they got home with the easy conversation of people who had already decided they were friends for life.
Tim watched it and felt the weight of knowing how it ended pressing quietly against the back of his chest.
He knew what happened to Bubba in the original story.
He also knew he wasn't in the original story anymore.
He'd changed things before. Jenny's father. The rally on the quad. The slow accumulation of small adjustments that had added up to a Jenny who was whole instead of broken.
He could change this too.
He just had to pay attention.
---
Daniels noticed the dynamic within days.
He pulled Tim aside after a patrol.
"Your friend Gump and Blue" he said.
"Yeah."
"They're going to get themselves killed being that comfortable out here."
"No they're not" Tim said.
Daniels looked at him.
"You sound sure about that."
"I am" Tim said.
Daniels studied him with the eyes of a man who had learned to read people in situations where reading people correctly was the difference between going home and not.
"You know something" Daniels said.
"I know how to keep people alive" Tim said. "Let me do that."
A long pause.
"Don't make me regret the point position" Daniels said.
"You won't" Tim said.
---
He stayed close to Bubba after that.
Not obviously. Not in a way that disrupted what Bubba and Forrest had naturally. Just present. Attentive. Using everything his enhanced senses gave him to make the jungle around all of them as legible as possible.
Bubba noticed eventually.
He came and sat beside Tim one evening when Forrest was writing a letter home.
"You watch out for people" Bubba said.
"Yeah."
"How come?"
Tim thought about it.
"Someone has to" he said.
Bubba looked at him with the thoughtful expression he got sometimes between the shrimp discussions.
"You think we're going to be okay?" Bubba said.
Tim looked at him directly.
"Yes" he said. "I think you're going to be okay."
Bubba held his gaze for a moment.
Then he nodded slowly with the satisfied air of someone who had asked a question and received a straight answer and found that sufficient.
"Good" he said. "Because Forrest and me got plans. Shrimping business. You should come in on it."
Tim looked at him.
"Yeah?" he said.
"Three way split" Bubba said. "You, me, Forrest. Bubba Gump Shrimp." He paused. "We could maybe fit your name in there too."
Tim almost smiled.
"Let's get home first" he said.
"Deal" Bubba said.
They shook on it.
*TBC*