We may never know who issued the challenge, but regardless, the combatants and their followers chose June the 21st, the summer solstice, as the date of the Great Fight or Flyte Fete. The youth group ("Fun with Tongues" was the name the boys and girls ultimately chose) at The Gifts of the Spirit Church erected a tent with a red and white canopy in the Noel Ball Park. The tent extended from third base into the outfield and was situated thirty or so feet from the bank of the Elk River. That part of the riverbed was dotted with foul balls and the occasional broken bat.
Jose Martinez arrived in a matte-black limousine. When the driver opened his door, Jose emerged wearing a black cassock with an enormous St. Benedict medallion dangling against his chest. He walked up to Omar, who was already in the tent, and said, "¿Bueno?" Omar didn't flinch. He stepped forward and said, "Aynu samayno,": "Let's do this!" The two men were glaring at each other with all the meaning their eyes could muster when Brother Hollister entered the tent. He was prodding Jack Hagee, who had a pulpit hoisted up on his right shoulder. Jack looked like a whipped dog that was nevertheless hungry.
Brother Hollister said, "What's wrong with you, Jack? Don't put it there! For God's sake, put it over there, so's I can see the Victory Oak." Jack picked up the pulpit and put it where Brother Hollister wanted.
For my part, I wondered why Brother Hollister wanted to see the tree? "Huh?" I asked myself.
The entire citizenry of Noel was standing around the tent to see what would happen. It was the closest we had come to any sort of unity since the poultry plant was built. The Mexicans had stacked up two columns of milk crates, laid a plank across the top, and draped a black cloth over the whole thing to create an altar. Jose began the proceedings by taking a white candle, a small stone bowl, and a brass censer from a suitcase and placing them on the altar. He lit the candle and waved his hands around the flame, chanting in English, "Santisima Muerte, shield me from all harm, from the living and the dead, from open enemies and hidden hands. Guard me under your cloak." When he finished the prayer, he went into full curandero mode. He reached in the suitcase and took out a cobalt blue bottle of powder and poured some in the stone bowl. Then he took a pinch of the powder, sprinkled it on the fire, and prayed again. (Bill Sibley whispered it was salt because salt keeps away witches. I said, "Well, in that case my family will never be bothered by witches because my daddy salts his potato chips.") The Mexicans all crossed themselves and some of them bit their thumbs, but they were silent as they watched the proceedings with their somber brown eyes. Then Jose filled the censer with herbs and sap and who knows what else, and he used a pair of tongs to hold a piece of charcoal over the candle flame. When the charcoal glowed red, he carefully set it in the censer and blew on the ember until a spiral of smoke drifted upward. He put the lid on the censer and began swinging it around the altar so that more and more smoke puffed out; then he began chanting, "En el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espiritu Santo," and the smoke billowed from the censer to fill the tent and waft into the street. Even though it was July and the Noel Funk was heavy on the town, the smell of the incense countered the reek, and for a moment, we forgot that our babies had been bewitched and our tap water tasted of ammonia. The trance was broken when a figure leapt from beneath the altar. He looked as if he was seven feet tall, and he was clad in black with a bright, white skeleton sewn on the front. In his right hand he held a brush and in his left a basin, and he dipped the brush in the basin and threw water in Omar's face. Omar spat at the skeleton's feet. Then the skeleton began walking up and down the street and slinging water on people, which made the Mexicans cross themselves and bow their heads while the Somalis, who were largely Muslim, blenched and cursed. The skeleton howled at them like a spirit from hell, and the Somalis said, "What the f**k is wrong wid you, man? Shut the f**k up!" along with other coarse sentiments. When the skeleton finished sprinkling the crowd, he disappeared down a side street, and this time when Jose prayed, the Mexicans joined him: "Santisima Muerte, shield me from all harm, etc." Thus ended the ritual of Saint Death.
Now, it was Omar's turn, and he lifted his arms and moaned something like See-cha-eer. When he said that, a couple of the Somali men sneered and turned away, but Omar was undeterred. He summoned a boy who pushed in a flat wheelbarrow piled with wood chips and charcoal briquettes. The boy tipped up the wheelbarrow so the chips and charcoal sloughed off in a heap whereupon the boy knelt down and smoothed the heap into a thick mat. Omar strewed handful after handful of herbs and ambers and minerals onto the mat, which he then soaked with lighter fluid. Finally, he brandished a match and set the tinder ablaze. This fragrance was overpowering, pungent with strange odors, and vanquished the Funk completely. My head felt light, and the sun shone with a peculiar cast. At this point, it seemed to me that the Somalis were winning, both in terms of dramatic effect and the intensity of smells. But Omar wasn't finished. He gestured to a young lady who walked up to him and closed her eyes. She wore a long dress of orange and black, and Omar placed his hands on her shoulders and said, "Walaashay, shaahirad!" Then he took a small pitcher of water and poured it over the burning coals, and a hissing cloud of greenish smoke arose. The girl lifted her dress above her knees and stepped into the smoking embers. I gasped because I thought the coals must surely burn her feet, but she never grimaced or cried out. She began waving her skirts so the smoke billowed in clouds. Omar cried out in his strange African tongue, and someone in the crowd began pounding a drum. Some of the people began jerking and bobbing in a spasmodic dance, while others just stood around and hooted. In the tent, the girl pulled her dress over her head and stood naked in the smoke, a goddess in her temple. Omar turned to the Mexicans and began chattering at them in a wild, jackal-like staccato, his white teeth clacking and his translucent eyes bugging from their sockets. He waved his hands at them; he pointed to the girl; and he drove his fists heavenward in triumph.
Or so he thought. I wondered how Brother Hollister could compete with this crescendo of witchery, but I should have learned long ago never to underestimate a Pentecostal preacher. For one thing, he had assembled The Gifts of the Spirit praise and worship team (they called themselves the Hallelujah Ululaters) in the park restrooms to await their cue. When Brother Hollister stepped up to the pulpit and bellowed his characteristic "Glory!" the Ululaters sashayed in their choir robes across the field and into the tent, toting their instruments with them. Jamie Swaggart, the sound man, had a couple amps in the back of his pickup, and he hauled those in, one in each hand. Katie Coolman unspooled an extension cord from an outlet by one of the picnic tables, and Ben Hinny set up the mics and mike-stands. Quicker than a jack can jump a jenny, the Ululaters were set up and ready to praise Almighty God. An opening chord, the shake of a tambourine, and they were off:
One, two, three, four:
Who's the Lord that we adore?
Not your God and not your God
Nor any God who's kinda odd:
We're really blessed, our God is best,
And now we know you'll be impressed:
'Cause fire from heaven!
Is falling down on you!
Fire from heaven!
Will make you see what's true!
Oh, fire from heaven!
Our babies won't be blue—
No more, no more, no more!
From that ringing chorus, the Ululaters subsided to a pianissimo repetition of "Fire from heaven, Is falling down on you," over and over, which provided a rhythmic background to Brother Hollister's adjurations. He grabbed the mic from Sister Terri and began preaching, "As it was in the days of Elijah, the prophets of Ba'al have gathered here in Noel to beg their foreign gods to heal our land. Oh, how they pray! How they weep! They even had the effrontery to parade before you a naked woman! I ask you, what kind of god would countenance such a thing? Oh, yes, they implored their false saints and dark-skinned deities to intervene. But did anything happen? No! Nothing! So, like Elijah of long ago, I ask these false prophets, 'Is your god sleeping? Why doesn't he do something? Why doesn't he heal our babies?' And like Elijah, who soaked the sacrifice until it dripped with water, I pray this simple prayer"—and here Brother Hollister stepped from the pulpit to kneel in the grass—"Lord God of Hosts send down fire, bless us with your mighty wrath of justice, smite the infidels, reveal the holiness of highest heaven, and so demonstrate your power to us all!"
And so the fires of heaven fell that day.
Kind of.