The Long and Storied Life of Jose Montoya

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The Long and Storied Life of Jose Montoya 90accounted for by bodies alone. Jose liked the man instantly.The three moved into the kitchen, where Mama had already ladled out chicken soup and piled aplate full of buttermilk biscuits to a great tottering height. They all sat down around a small table, andJose exercised great restraint as they all held hands while Papa prayed his thanks for Jose and Eudora'ssafe arrival, for the chicken and the biscuits, for the beauty of the snowfall, for the roof over theirheads, and for Mama, who evidently not only made the soup but was also something of an expert atwringing chicken necks.The prayer at last over with, Jose dived into the soup and biscuits. He noticed Papa dunking hisbiscuits in his soup, and Jose decided that it would not be unacceptably impolite if he did the samething. It seemed to Jose like the most delicious meal he had ever had, and the biscuits hit the soup andthen his mouth with a rapid regularity. Eudora watched him eat with a wide smile, and Mama seemeddelighted to run around the kitchen producing plate after plate of biscuits and endlessly refilling Jose'ssoup bowl. Papa, despite his rather small frame, had no difficulty in keeping pace.Many biscuits and much soup later, Papa and Jose at last leaned back in their chairs and pushedsoup bowls away. Papa rubbed his stomach as if he was tenderly feeling a pregnancy. Jose felt like hiseyes were going to roll so completely back in his head that he would be able to see his own brain, andhe did not care at that moment if he were never to see another biscuit or taste another chicken for therest of his life. He could not even muster enough guilt to feel bad when Ned Skelly's ghostly formappeared at the table, his surprised gaze alternating between the remnants of the meal and the hole thatwas forever stamped through his midsection.Papa stood and cheerfully waved Jose into the front room while Mama and Eudora began toclear the table and wash the dishes. Although the house was far too small for the front room to be aproper sitting room, Jose briefly expected cigars and brandy to make an appearance until heremembered that this was a church-going household. Churchgoing households did not stock brandy
The Long and Storied Life of Jose Montoya 91and cigars: The dry Christ of the North simply did not tolerate such things in the way that the bloodyChrist of Mexico had done.Papa took a seat in the wing-backed chair in which he had been dozing when Jose and Eudorahad first arrived. Jose sat down in the other chair and cleared his throat. This was another scene he hadbeen mentally rehearsing, trying out endless combinations of phrases in his mind. Now the wordsseemed stuck, piled up behind a dam of nerves. He decided to plunge in, hoping carefully-chosenwords would dislodge themselves as he went. He began: He loved Eudora. He was a soldier and ahard worker. He would take care of her, if Papa could see fit to give her hand to him in marriage.The house seemed supernaturally silent to Jose, and all the eyes that had been on him during hisspeech now swung over to Papa. As best he could without looking away from Papa, Jose guessed thecount of eyes besides his own was now ten: Two each for Mama, Eudora, Ned Skelly, the red parrot,and Grayley, who had shown up at the last minute and was now snickering at Jose’s obvious discomfortas he sat and waited for Papa to speak.Papa looked Jose up and down with eyes that seemed slightly more critical than they had whenJose had first appeared in the living room. When he had done that twice he started a long speech thatJose was only mostly sure he followed, and which involved talk of armies, wars, general stores, smalltowns, and bees. It would be hard to be more industrious than bees, Papa said. They could fly manymiles a day. They pollinated all manner of plants. And they worked so hard that they provided humanswith honey and wax and still had enough left over for the functioning of their hives.Jose nodded in agreement with each point as Papa made it. He still wasn’t sure that hecompletely understood everything that Papa was saying, but for the time being it seemed important toat least appear as if he did. The payoff finally came as Papa wrapped up by observing that when acolony of bees reached a certain size, after having fed a new queen for some time on royal jelly itwould send her out into the world with workers to help her start her own colony.
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The Long and Storied Life of Jose Montoya

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