Ain’t No Pa Like My Pa

By Gordon Laws

Ain’t no one come into this world like I done, not even Jesus. I didn’t know this for most of my young years, no, sir. Y’all remember Jesus didn’t have no father on earth—his mother got him from heaven. 

Folks in Raymond used to whisper about me. I didn’t know what they was sayin till I got old enough to understand. What they was sayin was, “That boy ain’t got no pa.” And it was true, I couldn’t remember ever having a pa. I had Ma and I had Papa and Memaw, but there wasn’t no pa.

So I musta been six or maybe eight and I said to Ma, I said, “How come I ain’t got no pa?”

Ma just wrinkled her nose at me. “Don’t be ridiculous Ray-Ray. Everyone’s got a pa.”

“How come I ain’t knowed him?”

Ma put down her rolling pin. “You know we had a war going around here, right? You ain’t the only boy round here who done lost his pa.”

“Was Pa a soldier?”

“He was,” Ma said.

“Pa died in the war?”

“You could say that,” Ma said.

What did that mean? But that’s all she would say. And I never heard no one else talk about other kids not havin a pa. I heard people say, “Will’s daddy died in the war” or “The Yanks got poor ole George’s daddy.” No one said, “Sad how Thomas ain’t never had no pa,” but that’s what they done said about me.

I really got to wearin Ma down about this so finally when I was ten or maybe twelve, Ma pulled off her apron, tossed it on the table, and gone back for a memory book. She called me to the table and opened to a page with a ole newspaper article. 

“Now see here,” she said.

I don’t read too good but this weren’t too bad. And once I finished readin, I sat back real quiet. And Ma said, “You finished?”

“Uh huh.”

“You got questions?”

“So this here feller, he says that one of our Mississippi boys got shot in the Battle of Raymond.”

“That’s right,” Ma said.

“And the bullet done took one of his testicles and then it flewed over and hit a lady in yonder house in her belly and nine months later, she had a baby.”

“That’s right,” said Ma again.

“Well that’s the damned craziest story I ever heard.”

“Watch your mouth, boy. I’ll smack it off your face.”

We both got quiet, see, and then Ma, well, she done hiked up her blouse and showed me a scar right on her belly.

“You see, boy?”

“I see, Ma. But there’s a thousand ways someone could get cut.”

She dropped the blouse and grimaced. “I done named you Raymond for your father.”

“My father’s name is Raymond?”

“The battle is your father. I can’t tell whether to call your father the fella that fired, the gun he used, the bullet he shot, or the fella he hit. So I figured without the Battle of Raymond, there weren’t no you. That’s your father. Then Vicksburg fell and then we lost the war. So your Daddy’s as good as dead. I didn’t know any man before or after. That’s the only explanation. Ask anyone around here.”

On account of it bein such a crazy story, I kept after Ma about it so when I was twelve or maybe fourteen, she done took me to see the doctor what delivered me. Dr. LeGrand Capers. And that feller done tole me the same as what that paper said. In fact, he tole me he wrote a doctor article about it and the newspaper done used that same article. He said, “I suppose that couldn’t happen but one in a billion times. I suppose that makes you very special.”

One thing I noticed as I got toward bein a man was there weren’t never no one that said I looked more and more like my father. I guess I can understand that. But what I didn’t never understand was all of em sayin I looked more and more like Ma’s brother James.

I only seen James maybe twice in my whole life on account of him not bein well in the brain and living at the almshouse. Ma said it weren’t his fault. He used to be fine but he was 11th Mississippi and it was a shell at Gettysburg what did it to him, scrambled his brain and all.

He died a few years back. I was hangin around the funeral when I heard Mrs. Noland talkin to Mrs. Carpenter under a magnolia. I had my back to em and was a bit away so they didn’t know I was hearin.

“His life was so short and so sad,” Mrs. Carpenter was sayin.

“I cannot ever think of him without remembering all that business with his sister years ago,” said Mrs. Noland.

“When they strung up poor ole Joe?” said Mrs. Carpenter.

“You’re too young to remember. Ole Joe was with them before the war and stayed with them even when the Yanks set all the darkies free.”

“That was a nasty business,” said Mrs. Carpenter.

“And then the baby came out as fair-haired and lily white as the Lord Jesus himself. And just see who he looks like! More so every day. Like we are back in time and he is about to join up.”

“I suppose that’s when the other story came out.”

“Story indeed,” said Mrs. Noland.

That conversation weren’t for me to hear, so I got up, made some noise, and went to get a slab of pecan pie.

Mrs. Noland’s grandson Robert is one of my friends. I said to him once, I said, “You ever hear the story of my birth?”

He said, “I heard lotsa stories of your birth.”

“The one about a bullet hitting a soldier and all.”

“Uh huh,” he said. “And let me tell you somethin. The doctor what wrote that up? His name is LeGrand Capers.”

“I know. I done talked to him.”

“Well don’t you see?”

“See what?”

“His name is French for ‘Great Jokes.’”

I was quiet for a minute, then said, “I reckon a feller can’t help what his folks done named him, though.”

Robert just shook his head. “I reckon not.”

And look, I get it. It does make the whole situation seem, how do they call it in school? Ironical? Yeah. Ironical.

****

Gordon is the son of an Army reservist from just after the Vietnam era; his uncle did a tour in Vietnam. His brother is retired Force Recon, 1st Recon BN, 1st Marine Division. His son-in-law is newly out of the Navy, and his son-in-law’s father has twice won the Bronze Star for valor in Afghanistan. He has recently published work in Irreantum and The Wrath-Bearing Tree.