ABSOLUTION
story by Patrick Breheny
Billy was an older kid who still played catch sometimes in the Corn Field. The Corn Field had no corn. It was a vacant lot on Tiebout Avenue in the Bronx, with a westward incline that was a continuation of the urban cliff from Webster Avenue, a block to the east and down windy Snake Hill, officially E. 184th Street. There is a reason streets in the west Bronx are designated as east, but that had more to do with the configuration of Manhattan and is as irrelevant as why the Corn Filed had no corn, though sometime back before the apartment building went up somebody must have grown some there. In that present that is past now, it was a hilly lot with a huge boulder at the back, the terrain probably the reason there was no building so far, and a fence separated it from the back yards of the buildings on Valentine Avenue, a block west.
When his tennis ball got lost in the high wild grass, Billy’s catch partner Ray left and he had to search for it alone. He found it quickly, and was traversing the slope down to Tiebout Avenue when two little kids about six, maybe first graders, whose older brothers he knew, came along on the sidewalk. Their names were Mikey and Francis, and they lived in his building.
Mikey said to him, with alarm, “We killed a butterfly.”
Oh…Oh?...He shrugged.
Mikey asked, “Is that a sin?”
“No.”
These were Catholic kids. He was a Catholic .It wasn’t a sin. But if maliciously? He hoped they hadn’t…they couldn’t…they were innocents He saw they couldn’t so easily dismiss it. There was more than sin here. There was… grief… remorse
So he asked, “How did it happen?”.
Mikey continued, “We captured it and put it in a paper bag.”
In a paper bag…It died from lack of air, or getting crushed inside the bag, or from trauma. Maybe it was going to die anyway. He understood their regret. It was a beautiful sunny day, the butterfly had been free and happy and alive, and they’d interfered.
Their faces showed they were waiting for consolation from him. He couldn’t comfort unless he knew the particulars.
“Why did you put it in a bag?”
“To take it home for a pet.”
“Which home?”
Mikey hesitated then, and quiet Francis spoke for the first time. Reluctantly.
“Mine.”
“How did you two manage to catch a butterfly?”
It was Francis who spoke again “I caught it in my hand.”
And that’s when it died. But they wanted to believe it died in the bag. Frankie didn’t want the culpability and Mikey didn’t want to give it to him. And they’d meant well. They just wanted a pet butterfly. They loved butterflies.
He could see they needed some…resolution…some path to peace…
He told them, “Say a Hail Mary.”
Mikey asked, “For the butterfly?
“No.”
“Do animals have a soul?”
“They don’t have souls. Say it for yourselves.”
“But why…?”
“You’ll feel better.”
He wished they could always keep that sensitivity. He knew from experience already that the cynicism of life wouldn’t let them. And they’d encountered a reality they’d surely face again. Dead is dead, and nothing changes that.
He hoped he was correctly expressing canon law when he told them “A sin is not a sin unless you intend to commit one. You didn’t mean it to happen, and it’s not a sin anyway. Just say a Hail Mary each, and go home.”
He wasn’t anointed to announce “Go in peace, your sins are forgiven”, but that was what he meant.