He Posits Certain Mysteries

The body of the boy who took his flight off the cliff at Kilcloher into the sea was hauled up by curragh-men, out at first light fishing mackerel in the estuary. “No requiem or rosary” said the priest, “nor consecrated ground for burial,” as if the boy had flown outside the pale of mercy or redemption or God’s love. “Forgive them, for they know not what they do,” quoth Argyle to the corpse’s people, who heard in what he said a sort of riddle, as if he meant their coreligionists and not their sodden, sadly broken boy. Either way, they took some comfort in it and readied better than accustomed fare of food and spirits; by their own reckoning: the greater sin, the greater so the toll. But Argyle refused their shilling coin and helped them build a box and dig a grave. “Your boy’s no profligate or prodigal,” he said, “only a wounded pilgrim like us all. What say his leaping was a leap of faith, into his father’s beckoning embrace?” They killed no fatted calf.  They filled the hole.