Absolution

by Alice McDermott

I was walking on air in those days, but I was not an airhead.

“As I understand it, Jizo’s a bodhisattva rather than a Buddha because he’s elected to serve the underworld before reaching enlightenment himself. A kind of martyr, I guess. Assigned to the saddest and most futile

They never saw the hand of God in it, Peter later said of his superiors in Saigon. “But they made useful fools of those of us who thought we did.”