My Ma had the church for God, and Pa had the river- that's how things worked in our family. We little 'uns went with Ma, of course. She said Pa had had his Immortal Soul long enough to endanger it if he'd a mind to, but as long as we was in her care we'd be takin' no such chances. No way of tellin' how good reception was down on the river, she'd say. God might not hear our praisin'. And so to church we'd go, comin' home every week with a new pamphlet educatin' us on the things we needed to know to ensure the proper safety of our Immortal Souls.
Pa wasn't so prolific, when it came to take-home goods. Oh, some weeks he'd bring home a fish or two, little things no longer than my arm, but most weeks it was nothin'. Well, that ain't exactly true- he didn't just bring home "nothin'": he'd also bring home stories. Stories about The One.
The One's full name was The One That Got Away. But that bein' a bit of a mouthful, mostly his title got reduced to The One. He was a recurrin' figure in Pa's stories, much as Jesus was in the Bible: I figure Pa had as much reverence for the one as Ma had for the other. 'Cept Ma generally didn't want to wrestle Our Savior into submission and fry him up for dinner. Least wise, not as far as we could tell.
Privately I think we all doubted the veracity of some of the supposed exploits of The One, not that we'd ever admit it to Pa no more than we'd admit to Ma some of the issues we had regardin' the life and times of Our Savior. But it turned out Pa weren't exageratin'. In fact, it may be that he was holdin' back a little.
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