The Legend of Jasper Kell

There were ten thousand of them (a Myriad) gathered out in the desert. They were waiting for the return Jasper Kell (A Vigil).
They had somehow gotten the ideas that: Jasper Kell was born of the desert to a gay man; that he possessed a sense of auravision; that he had cured his own blindness; and that he had brought a dead man back to life. Moreover, they thought he had become an eagle, and that he was going to fly down from the mountaintop to become their savior.
Wherever did they get such ideas? Whoever would tell such stories?
Joe Dixon.
It all started back in I957, on that selfsame desert, on a night of shooting stars and Maria Callas....