The Long and Storied Life of Jose Montoya

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The Long and Storied Life of Jose Montoya 52Since Jose was now under doctor's orders for light duty only, he had been assigned to the riflerange as an assistant. There he spent his days helping other soldiers passing through the camp toremember the basics of firing their rifles: Elbows in. Exhale. Squeeze the trigger. When he was nothelping to instruct he would be in a trench at the far end of the range, using ropes and pulleys to raiseand lower targets for the shooters. This was his favorite assignment at the range, since from the safetyof the trench he was free to listen to the song sang by the bullets as they punched through paper andwhistled overhead. Ned Skelly often joined Jose down in the trench. Ned would lay on his back on thefloor of the trench, his arms folded behind his head, and stare up towards the blue sky. He claimed toJose that he could also see the bullets themselves as they passed, since it was a different kind ofexperience being dead. Jose, who remembered children riding artillery shells outside of Agua Prieta,would just nod, listen to the bullets, and wait for the signal to lower the targets down to be changed.By the end of January 1917 the Americans had decided that they had won the campaign againstPancho Villa in Mexico and were going to return home. Victory was declared, gear was packed,stockades dismantled, and ladies thanked for their services and shooed away. Cavalry troopersmounted horses and sometimes trucks and headed for the border. Infantrymen made sure their bootswere snugly laced and started marching for the border. In their thousands, over several weeks, thesoldiers all converged on Palomas, on the Mexican side of the border, and waited.On February 14th, Valentine's Day, the gates on both sides of the border were opened wide andthe assembled American soldiers pulled out of Mexico. Jose understood the double entendre inherentin this, and was able to celebrate in his heart as both an American and a Mexican. With the return of allthese troops from Mexico, Camp Furlong was once again the sea of soldiers that it had been during thebuildup for the expedition. The stream of people that flowed from the camp to the train station slowlydrained this sea as units were sent back to their homes, but the rate at which troops left was nowhereclose to the rate at which troops had first arrived.
The Long and Storied Life of Jose Montoya 53It would be years and a world war away before Camp Furlong returned to the few hundred menthat had been stationed there before the Villista attack, and Jose himself would be thousands of milesaway by that point. In the meantime, he was busier than ever with his activities on the rifle range. Allday long the men marched on and off the range, unit after unit practicing what it would be like to bekillers. The bullets sang their song, the bees swarmed past over his head, and Jose raised and loweredhis targets with fervor and dedication. These were happy days for Jose; he was always busy, and NedSkelly was a constant companion in his trench to keep him from getting lonely.Jose's nights, however, were not nearly so happy as his days. Despite the medal thatencouraged him to be patient, despite the diamond that served as his reminder that La Catrina knew ofhis suffering, Jose could nowhere feel her presence. He tried walking out into the desert alone underboth full moons and new moons, hoping the pain in his limping leg would serve as a beacon for her tofind him. Sometimes Skelly and Grayley would come with him, surprised and laughing at everyrattling snake and startled hare they came across, but neither alone nor in their company did La Catrinacome to Jose.Despondent, Jose tried other measures to pass the nights. A church put on a dance for thesoldiers in camp to meet some of the young women in town under proper supervision. Jose decided togo, but once there he was so self-conscious about his limp that he spent the whole night standing by thesnacks and ate so many cookies that he ended up sick to his stomach. Mortified at the thought that hewould be known as the soldier who couldn't handle his cookies, and embarrassed by a scolding hedidn't deserve about the possibility that perhaps he had snuck too much of something into his ownpunch, Jose passed on subsequent social events put on by the finer folks in Columbus.His next intended refuge was a much seamier part of town, similar in nature to the stockade inthe camp in Mexico. It was to this neighborhood – one block of one small side street – that the civicauthorities of Columbus had decided to consign the American prostitutes who might otherwise overrun
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The Long and Storied Life of Jose Montoya

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