Folk tales: Sacco and Vanzetti

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Like a tightrope. Or a noose. Each morning as she woke, Lorna Mulrooney could feel the hands of local tradition squeezing more tightly around her throat. Often she woke soaked in sweat, always she woke to a background buzz of fear that resonated deep in her heart.

This rousing fear was the fear of nightmares: insistent, unidentified, unidentifiable. An intangible, shapeless dread. It bred in the thick green light of the leaf-lit jungle, even here in the clearing of the village, it bred in the jungle smell of leaf-litter, the ammonia of a million insects, the persistent stench of animal and vegetable decay.
 

Every morning she struggled through its veil. Full, waking, alert fear was a different beast. It was clear, close and precise. It was in the unspoken threat of everyone around her.

Nine months she had been here now. And in those nine months, the childish fear of the unknown had not diminished by as much as a breath but the adult fear of known dangers had grown as fast as maggots in a corpse. But still she stayed.

Her original mission to bring Jesus to these wild villagers in the dense depths of the island was long discarded.
  These people already knew about Christianity. They had embraced it so completely that it was now their own, a thing in its own right. Every scripture she had read, every psalm she had sung, had been read and sung and danced back to her with new twists and new turns, interpretations that had made her own pastel-coloured faith seem a mere shadow of the vibrant, shocking and mocking primary colours of this jungle church under the canopy of the sky.

She stayed because the little she knew about medicine had seemed to be useful. But now the doubts about even this were settling on her daily, like ash from a volcano. And she stayed because they had allowed her to stay. There was no society more closed than this - and they had allowed her to co-exist with them. She stayed because of the extremities of light and dark, heat and chill. She stayed because she was hooked.

Turning out of the cot and on to the tarpaulin groundsheet of the tent, she lit the stump of candle and woke her six-year-old daughter, Amy. In the cotton night-dresses that somehow still survived, they knelt, side by side in the guttering light of the candle and made their prayers. But Lorna knew her god was not here.

No almighty of the meek dare nuzzle amidst the brimstone passion of these Zephaniah peoples. No New Testament compassion among these worshippers. Here was all blood and revenge and slaughter. Here was a God of passion and fear. Her words murmured the rituals of a lesser god. Deep inside, her heart trembled to the passion of a greater faith.