Grief Street

Woodpiles lined four main walkways cut through the forest. Connecting paths were good for priestly strolls.
    Father Morrison led the way down to the west quadrant, and a side path offering us clearest moonlight. Smoke pluming out the chimney from back at the house chased us, wisping through the pines and settling into the wool on our backs like burnt ghosts. Frogs croaked in a brook, owls gabbled in high branches, deer hacked along the stony ground. Father Morrison advised, “Now if a black bear should stumble upon us, just freeze in your tracks, city boy. Let the creature growl, allow him a good sniff at yourself, like he was only a curious dog. He’ll likely amble away peaceable.”
    I missed Ruby and Manhattan.
    “You were saying how evil has no will of its own,” I said, trying to keep my mind off the idea of something wild and growling in the dark, which is maybe not so much different from city life. “Would that mean it’s possible that an evil occurrence is a needed warning?”
    “Evil as both Satan and a hapless messenger?” Father Morrison paused. He lit another pipe. We looked up at the constellations in the sky. “That’s thinking like a right Jesuit, boy.”
    “Well—is it possible?”
    “I like the idea. An act of evil as warning, the warning being what you could say was good come out as a by-product of bad; or so to speak, the truth versus the lie. Aye, it’s a devilish parallel of the Doctrine of Equivocation—which is positively Talmudic, and therefore thoroughly Jesuitical.”
    “Doctrine of Equivocation?”
    “That goes back to the time of the Society of Jesus needing a way out of heresy examinations, then conducted by their religious enemies who held the power in Rome. If a Jesuit priest was to tell the truth, see, he’d necessarily be placing the lives of followers in mortal danger. Yet according to Society tenets, a priest could not trade off the good of truth telling against the good of saving Catholic lives, for that would be a mortal sin. Well—neither principle would yield.”
    “The hard question being, How does the priest get a falsehood across without committing a sin?”
    “Oh, I tell you—if you hadn’t gone and become a copper, you’d be one of us wild-hair Jesuits,” Father Morrison said, proud as a papa. “Well, so, the Society came up with the Doctrine of Equivocation, which holds that one can mislead by silence and be free from sin—an aspect of the distinction between action and omission.”
    “In other words, the Jesuits redefined lying.”
    “Yes, by way of providing an opening out from the danger °f truth to the wondrous safety of the lie.” Father Morrison Puffed thoughtfully on his pipe. “The heart of any matter— true or false—is found in the opening one gives to the other.”
    “A middle ground?”
    “That’s much too certain a place to find. Besides, it’s the territory of wee small minds. Lunatics and baseball umpires now certainty.”
    “So, there is no certainty in the world?”
    “Nothing’s above suspicion, let us say; no theory, no doctrine. If it’s the comfort of certitude you want, I can tell you only this: there is something evil and wild out there, but there is wild goodness, too.”
    “Do you believe in Satan?”
    “The union requires me to propagate such dogma. But between you and me, boy, I confess to being agnostic on that particular question.”
    “What are you saying then?”
    “I’m saying the devil’s boots don’t creak. If you can’t hear his comings and goings—as you can with the thunder of God, on the other hand—then it’s entirely possible to doubt there’s a devil at all. On the other hand, if I’m wrong and it turns out the devil’s real—well then, I say he doubts in himself, which is why he goes about so quiet like.”
    “Devil or no, there is something evil and wild out there.”
    “Aye. And I’m highly persuaded that its name is man.”
    “A man’s boots creak.”
    “Indeed they do. It’s why I take a man serious should he fancy himself the devil. It’s a discouraging belief, for history’s replete with men dressed up in the devil’s mantle. Let’s not be forgetting women dressed the same, and even here and there some little shits.”
    “This is definitely not Catholic dogma as I remember it before falling away.”
    “Another confidence between us, please: I’m for doubt, and against dogma.” Father Morrison had been looking off the mountain, down toward the village. He