2001 was a year of horror in Noel. Most of our newborn babies had blue lips and purple mouths and gray skin. The babies coughed and had diarrhea, and most of them died. The doctors at Freeman Neosho Hospital said the babies had "blue baby syndrome," but why it affected Noel in particular was a mystery. Señor Jose Martinez lost little time in blaming the Somalis, who, Martinez said, had been practicing witchcraft "ever since they got off the bus." He said the only way to "finish the spell" was to find the bruja and bind her, maybe kill her. Jose never considered the possibility the bruja might be a "he." Or a Mexican. Or a white. "No," he said, "I'm tellin' you, a old black woman, maybe that toothless women with the bad eye, is turnin' the babies blue. I don' know. But prob'ly it's her." Jose was a curandero, a "witch master," and he was held in high esteem in his neighborhood.
The Somalis in turn blamed the Mexicans, and Bill Sibley was on the riverbank gigging frogs (one of which he said had three back legs, an oddity that was becoming less odd) when he saw a dozen or so Somali men in white tunics and loose pants performing "some kind of weird service by the river." Bill said Omar was the leader of the group, but anyone in Noel would have recognized Omar because he was an albino with skin the color of washed-out apricot and eyes of translucent copper. He also had enormous salmon colored freckles across his cheeks and nose that made you want to look away when you passed him on the street. Anyhow, Bill said Omar was ripping up a book "written in Muslim" and dropping the pages into a fire and chanting "something in African." According to Bill, another fellow began patting a drum, and the rest of the group joined in the chant. Omar knelt down before the fire, and the other men placed their hands on his shoulders, and in unison, said "Saahir! Saahir!" Bill said the whole thing scared him "shitless," so he ducked back into the woods and ran home where he fried and ate the three-legged frog.
Finally, there was Brother Hollister, the preacher at the Gifts of the Spirit Church. He was short and fat, a tree stump of a man, and he was always pushing his glasses up on his nose while he harangued anyone who would listen about the Bible and what it really meant. He plastered his hair down with Brylcreem and smelled of Listerine, and he wore a black tie with an American flag tie clasp. For years, he had been warning the citizens of Noel against the invasion of "foreigners" because they brought their spells and witchery and Catholic nonsense with them. He said, "Mark my words, this town is going to hell—and I mean that literally—and if you people aren't careful, the suck of its sinking will take you down with it." Sometimes, I was tempted to believe him because one by one the stores on Main Street closed, and by the time of this story, Noel was more like a third world ghost town than an Ozarks village.
(Can I say that? Can anyone say what they think anymore?)
Neither the Mexicans nor the Somalis knew that the white managers of Tucson Foods, Inc., were the ones at fault: In a monumental screw up, millions of gallons of wastewater had been discharged into the Elk River, which raised the level of nitrates in the groundwater to disastrously high levels, and the nitrates in the mothers' blood sickened their babies. But the managers did not publicize the screw up, of course, and decided to let things play out. It was rumored that Brother Hollister knew all about it, but because the men responsible were white, he kept the knowledge to himself. Bill Sibley said he heard that Tucson Foods paid Brother Hollister to "help them out," and that may be true. Edd Hollister died five years ago, so the point is moot.
Anyhow, the hatred and recriminations and finger pointing continued, until the most bizarre ritual to ever occur in Noel, Missouri, took place in the city park.