BY PAUL BRINKLEY-ROGERS

 Adolfo Falcon Martinez had taken the day off from work.

 He stood under a tarp seeking shelter from the rain on the street in front of
 Elian's house, a man in a white shirt and dark suit pants so wet that he looked
 as if he had just climbed out of the ocean.

 ''I'm a Cuban. . . w. What else can I do, considering the circumstances?'' he
 said. His boss, a Colombian, had nodded his head when Falcon told him he
 needed to leave his sales job at the flower import business. ''You do what
 you can for Elian,'' the boss said.

 Falcon parked his 1993 Mitsubishi Galant under a giant ficus tree two blocks
 away on a residential street where everyone is parking at an angle to the curb
 nowadays because there are so many people heading for that one block on
 Northwest Second Street in Little Havana where Elian lives.

 The small house there with the Christmas icicle lights hanging from the eaves
 and the red, white and blue flag of the United States flying from one corner
 of the chain-link fence and the red, white and blue flag of Cuba flying from the
 other, draws two or three hundred Cuban Americans every day like a magnet.

 SPEAKS TO SOUL

 It tugs at their ''alma'' - their soul.

 ''This is where I belong,'' Falcon said.

 ''These are my people -- the 'Miami mafia.' ''

 He spat from a cup of potent ''cafe Cubano,'' registering his contempt for the insult
 used by the Cuban government for Elian's Miami partisans.

 ''These good people,'' said Falcon, 45, who left Cuba in a small boat for Florida
 eight years ago, ''know what waits for Elian if he goes back there. They'll put a red
 scarf around his neck and parade him. He'll end up in a mental institution. They'll
 take away the smile on his face, fast!''

 When the crowd, pressed up against the police barricade, began yelling, ''Down
 with Fidel!'' he shouted the words as if the man who rules Cuba could hear him.
 Vehemence darkened his face.

 WORDS FOR FIDEL

 ''I would die before I let anyone take my children,'' he said, after mentioning that
 he has two teenage boys in Cuba. ''But how would I know what is going on in their
 lives? I am here. They are there -- in Matanzas -- because the tyrant won't let
 them go!''

 Ivan Alujas brought a Cuban flag with him about as big as a place mat.

 The 36-year-old dishwasher bought it from an elderly man with many missing
 teeth about a block away from Elian's house. The vendor had a stock of Cuban
 and American paper flags -- $1 each -- stashed in a plastic bag to protect them
 from the rain.

 Alujas walked past the houses of Elian's neighbors decorated with slogans such
 as, ''Hell no, he won't go,'' or, ''With his daddy, or without his daddy, Elian will
 stay.'' A silver-haired woman clutching a plaster crucifix leaned up against a
 concrete power pole and wept. A middle-aged man with a gut, wearing a complete
 U.S. Marine Corps camouflage uniform without insignia, swung a metal baseball
 bat.

 When the crowd at the barricade spotted one of Elian's great-uncles -- the older
 Delfin Gonzalez, always smiling, and the younger Lazaro, a serious macho -- he
 waved the flag. And then he cupped his ear to his boom box tuned into rapid-fire
 speculation on Radio Marti on whether federal agents in suits would suddenly
 come splashing through the rain to take ''the boy.''

 WORDS FOR RENO

 Alujas and some other men were complaining about U.S. Attorney General Janet
 Reno. They were using unkind words for her.

 She might as well be Fidel Castro's lawyer, one man said. He carried a sign on
 which he had drawn a cartoon of Reno handing Elian to the Cuban president. She
 tells Castro that President Clinton does not want the boy to be ''brainwashed.'' A
 grinning Castro tells her, ''I promise I won't do it in English.''
 Alujas says Reno won't try anything on Northwest Second Street because she
 does not want another Waco. Like other men in the crowd, he is wearing a T-shirt
 that makes reference to the fatal clash between federal agents and a religious
 cult.
 But a middle-aged woman wearing a gold cross around her neck asks him -- her
 eyes flashing annoyance -- why he keeps talking about Waco when, as she puts
 it, ''all we are armed with here is our prayers.''

 He stares the woman down.

 ''We just can't let them take the boy away,'' he says. ''It would be a victory for the
 communists.''

 ''You keep talking about a 'free Cuba,' '' says the woman, shifting around to go jaw
 to jaw with the much bigger Alujas.

 ''You think Waco would be the way? I know I should not be praying for Fidel
 Castro to die,'' she says, ''but that is what I do every day. And he will die . . .
 When he does, it will be because of the power of prayer. I completely believe
 that.''

 Pedro Berengeur, who is wearing an auto mechanic's coveralls, puts his arm
 around the woman.

 ''Listen,'' he says, his voice full of concern. ''You pray for Elian. If your prayers are
 powerful that will be all we need.''

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald