The Long and Storied Life of Jose Montoya

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The Long and Storied Life of Jose Montoya 110to drive the bride to the church on her wedding day so that the ends of her wedding dress didn’t muddy,and then standing up for Jose in the wedding party. He watched Eudora’s body fill and her belly swellover the course of her pregnancy, and then cooed at little Eugenia while thinking that she wouldn’thave been such a strange little child had she been the offspring of him and Eudora. And he jumped atthe chance to drive Eudora to the convalescent center every day, because it meant that he would get tospend time with Eudora every single day.The time with Eudora proved to be unhealthy for Ebbs. Over the course of long days spent withEudora and without Jose close at hand other than on the short car rides, Ebbs found that his feelings forthe new mother was growing both rapidly and steadily. In the sad paths that hopefully melancholicminds sometimes take he also began to convince himself more with each passing day that Eudorareciprocated his feelings, stirred up by each incidental touch or passing smile that came his way.On the last night of his life, as he drove Eudora home through the late-winter darkness of anight on which they had both stayed late at the convalescent center, his feelings and his certaintybecame too much for Ebbs to contain any longer. Keeping his eyes straight ahead, he reached his righthand over and tried to run it up Eudora’s leg under the hem of her coat. The attempt was bumbling andcrude and rather rougher than he had intended, and he only got as far as Eudora’s knee before her icycoldhand grabbed him around the wrist and thrust him forcefully away. Chastened by the rejection andhimself terrified of what he had done, Ebbs continued to look fixedly ahead and neither party spoke,the silence sitting between them like a tangible witness of what had just occurred.Eudora wordlessly got out of the car when they arrived at the Montoya house and went insidewithout a look back, her coat wrapped tightly around herself.Ebbs went back to the private barracks room he was entitled to as a sergeant with a finemoustache and put some coal into the small stove in the center of his room before getting up on a chairto loop one end of a rope over the support beam in his ceiling and the other end around his neck. He
The Long and Storied Life of Jose Montoya 111had come this far before and it felt good, thinking of Eudora’s soft body until he teetered on the edge ofeverything. On this particular night, though, the last night of his life, he would go over the edge amidstthe overwhelming scent of roses and a starry euphoric burst. In all the many times he was to appear toJose after this night, his neck oddly stretched and bruised, Ebbs would never say whether the chair hadbeen kicked over on purpose. He would, in fact, never say anything at all to Jose, nor offer anythingother than a sad smile.Eudora chose to maintain her own silence and never revealed the incident with Gerald Ebbs, butthe night of his funeral was filled with a special kind of frenzy that led, nine months later, to theintroduction into the world of Alphonse Montoya.
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The Long and Storied Life of Jose Montoya

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