The Long and Storied Life of Jose Montoya

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The Long and Storied Life of Jose Montoya 106It took the Army only a matter of days to realize that with no one left to fight they needn’t betraining and paying so many men to march, shoot and die of Spanish Flu, which after all couldn’t beshot. Camp Sherman, which had engorged itself with a constant stream of recruits and which nowcomprised thousands of buildings spread across its many square miles, would make as fine a place todismantle soldiers back into civilians as it had a place to assemble soldiers from civilians, a symmetrythat somehow pleased Jose even though it meant that as 1918 ground into 1919 he spent many of hisdays helping the Discharge Detachment process paperwork.But while the symmetry of process pleased Jose, the symmetry of cause and effect betweenteaching people to fight and the devastation that could be wrought on a human body did not. Jose, whowas used to passing the time with the spirits of men who had holes in their middle and in their head,was saddened at the constant procession of the maimed that wound its way from the large stage of adevastated France to the small stage of a town in Ohio. These were men who suffered in ways in whichNed Skelly and Grayley hadn’t, and the pain that Jose carried in his own leg could only let him imaginethat much more clearly what it must be like for these men blinded by poison gas and hobbled bymissing limbs, many of whom now lived permanently in a muddy and freezing trench dug for them bytheir own minds with a cunning far more powerful at digging than any entrenching tool would ever be.The Discharge Detachment was a model of gray efficiency capable of sending thousands uponthousands of soldiers a month out the door and back to whatever remained of their former civilian lives.Instead of nickels balanced on rifle barrels it was now fingers balanced precariously on his typewriteras soldier after soldier came and sat next to him, handed him papers they had filled out, watched moreor less silently as he typed, said everything looked good, and then variously walked or limped or rolledto the next station, making way for the next soldier in line in an endless, tedious stream.
The Long and Storied Life of Jose Montoya 107If his post-War days now seemed longer, grayer and more trying to Jose, though, his life athome with Eudora and baby Eugenia was both brighter and more mysterious than it might otherwisehave been. It seemed especially bright to him because Eudora’s body, changed since pregnancy andparturition, was like a strange and completely new continent that she was eager to have him explore asoften as possible – which was often indeed, given their youth and mutual enthusiasm.Like most new parents they were likewise united by Eugenia, who presented them with her ownunique set of mysteries. Chief among her mysteries was the fact that not once had Eugenia ever cried,or indeed even made more noise than an occasional tsk-tsk with her tongue. She seemed healthy,though, and all the usual tests confirmed that her hearing and other senses were perfectly fine. For lackof anything better to say, the private doctors in town and the Army doctors at Camp Sherman to whomshe was brought all ended up providing the same diagnosis: Eugenia was simply extraordinarily wellbehaved.In point of fact, however, the true diagnosis of Eugenia’s condition was simply that she wasborn bearing a general disgust for life and all its attendant messiness. Although Eugenia would begin tosuddenly speak in a very preternatural and precocious manner at the moment of her brother Alphonse’sdeath, it would take Eudora and Jose several more years to understand that Eugenia’s silence had neverreally vanished, but had instead been simply covered over with words. It would be most painfullyevident to Eudora, for whom Eugenia seemed to harbor a polite disdain that ran deeper than theskepticism with which she generally regarded her father; but it was noticeable to even the otherchildren with whom she grew up, and who would give her the nickname of Spooky long before theboys around her started to describe her in terms of haunting beauty.If Jose and Eudora were skeptical of Eugenia’s diagnoses of simply being well behaved, theywere also simultaneously grateful that, while most parents they knew were listening in fear for their
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The Long and Storied Life of Jose Montoya

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