The Long and Storied Life of Jose Montoya

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The Long and Storied Life of Jose Montoya 60window. He watched the tans and browns of west Texas high desert turn into the green hills of eastTexas, and then watched those hills melt away into Louisianan palms, pine and mangrove. From therehe met the fabled Mississippi, bigger and wider than he ever could have imagined, with its fertile floodplains awash with so many colors that they looked like the paint boxes of giants.If Memphis and St. Louis amazed Jose with their size, Chicago staggered him. Overwhelmedby the sea of people in a Union Station too small to handle the traffic, Jose alternately fought theircurrents and let himself be swept along by them until at last he was deposited, once again packedshoulder to shoulder, in a train that sped him south and east towards Cincinnati. The Ohio Riverseemed grand and stately, but on a much more human and manageable scale than the Mississippi, andJose found himself instantly and surprisingly fond of it. He then found that the same held true ofCincinnati, as compared to Chicago: It was, for him, a much easier place to wrap his mind around.From Cincinnati only one final, short train ride remained, and even though he was physicallyand mentally exhausted from his journey thus far Jose found himself taking as great an interest in thisOhio countryside as he had in any scenery the whole rest of the trip. Fields thick with corn alternatedwith eruptions of trees and miniature mountains of bedrock. Everywhere Jose looked it seemed like hiseyes were met there by a new and different shade of green, colors that he had not only never seenbefore, but not even previously imagined.The train was already nearing the outskirts of Chillicothe before Jose, suddenly mindful of thewarnings and discussions of snow that had been had in Agua Prieta before he left, started to glance atthe tops of the steeper and taller hills to see if any snow might be holding on up there. It seemeddoubtful to Jose that there would be snow in July even at this far northern latitude, but once he hadthought of it he felt compelled to check in any case. The reality of the situation was in fact quitedifferent from anything that he and his family had posited. To begin with it was hot, as July in Ohiotends to be, and this in itself was something of a shock to Jose. There were other surprises, too. The

The Long and Storied Life of Jose Montoya 61air was much thicker here at this altitude than Jose was used to; when he thought about it, he decidedthat perhaps “chewy” would be the best word to describe it. It was also more humid than anything Josehad ever experienced in his life, and combined with the heat and the density of the air he thought healmost might be able to swim up into the sky if he could just kick his legs strongly enough.He watched with interest as the train began blowing its whistle and slithering among the woodframehouses of Chillicothe, gliding gently to a stop at the station. The platform outside his windowlooked like countless others that Jose had seen over the past couple of days, packed full of soldiers andcivilians and crates and containers. Ladies sat neatly on benches, like birds on a fence. Men stoodaround looking as important and thoughtful and concerned as they could manage. A couple of childrenwho didn't seem to belong to anyone there ran in and out among the crowd, involved in a game of tagand happily ignorant of the disapproving looks of the adults.Jose grabbed his valise and filed off of the train with everyone else. A sergeant waiting outsideon the platform requested, in his sergeant's way, that the fifty or so arriving soldiers fall into aformation outside of the station so that he could march them a mile or so up the road to Camp Sherman.Jose tried to march with the formation, but two straight days of sitting on trains turned out to have beenan unkindness to his wounded knee. The men had only gone a hundred yards up the street when Josefell out.The sergeant in charge of the formation allowed it to keep marching while he dropped back tosee what was wrong with Jose. Short of an order to turn or to stop the formation would keep marchingstraight up the road, an automaton with a hundred legs. That was all right with the sergeant, sincestraight up the road is where he was guiding the automaton in any case, and since the camp was a waysup the road he figured he would have plenty of time to yell at the soldier that had dropped out and stillbe able to catch back up to the formation.The first thing that Jose noticed about the sergeant was his tiny mustache, neatly groomed and

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