The Long and Storied Life of Jose Montoya

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The Long and Storied Life of Jose Montoya 94Jose to a back room to prepare for his baptism. Once in the back room, Jose was surprised to learn thathe had to strip completely naked before pulling a heavy white cotton robe over his head, while theReverend instead simply stepped into hip waders to protect his suit before donning a similar robe. Thispuzzled Jose, who very much would have liked a pair of hip waders, too, until the Reverend pointedout that it was symbolic, and that like a naked newborn baby Jose was being born again. It was a prettyswell idea, and Jose didn’t allow himself to dwell for more than a moment on the fact that newbornbabies always made their first appearances covered in blood and gore.Properly draped in their robes, the two men exited the back room through a side door whichopened to three steps leading down into the baptismal. The congregation, which had seated itself whilethe two men robed, once again stood and resumed its benevolent smiling as first Jose and thenReverend Kent descended the steps to stand together in the waist-deep water. The Reverend gave a verybrief speech about the spiritual significance of baptism, but since the water in the baptismal was verynearly ice-cold it was a shorter speech than it otherwise might have been. With a movement practicedinnumerable times while he was a student at Charlottesville Bible Seminary, he swiftly threw one armbehind Jose’s back and with the other hand pushed on Jose’s forehead, levering the soon-to-be newbornoff of his feet and into the water.Jose had been unprepared for this sudden physical immersion. He instinctively held his breathas he went under, but his eyes hardly blinked and he watched the displaced water slowly roll back tocover his sinking head. The water seemed thick to Jose, like gelatin, and with a sudden rush ofexcitement he realized that he was once again moving through the world in a time outside of time. Itcould mean only thing: She was here. She had to be. La Catrina.If Jose was moving faster than time, Jose’s thoughts were moving even faster than that. Hethought\about the first time he saw La Catrina in the desert. He thought of her grace and elegance andher sheer eroticism. He thought of how often he had longed for her, how often he had missed her, and
The Long and Storied Life of Jose Montoya 95how much he had longed for her to take him.The gelatinous water covered his face, settled, stilled, cleared. His eyes focused and his heartraced: It was indeed La Catrina who held him cradled under the water, one arm behind him holding himup and one bony hand encased in a long black glove at the base of his neck holding him down. Her reddress, too tight against her womanly hips to billow, instead seemed to flow into a stream of brightarterial blood that did nothing but make being under water seem both more festive and more sensual.For a long moment she held him, and Jose hung there in the time out of time. Her eye sockets,swirling blacker-than-black, looked down at him, and he wished his own eyes could be that blackinstead of crap-colored brown. He wondered if she was here to take him, to finally claim him as herown. Then he wondered how it would happen: Would she hold him under the water until he had nomore mortal life? Or was his mortal life already extinguished under this syrupy water, and he was tospend eternity with her just holding him against her hips?But no. With the arm behind him she was pulling him up, and suddenly his face broke thesurface of the water and his ice-water-numbed feet regained the bottom of the baptismal. He wipedwater out of his eyes as Reverend Kent clapped him firmly on the back, and with hair that somehowmanaged to still be standing straight up from his head even though it was soaking wet Joe Montoyaturned and faced the smiling congregation, born again. They were a dry, lifeless, bloodless, colorlesslot, Jose thought, except for one: Eudora.If Eudora smelled roses during the baptism, she never mentioned it.The wedding was planned for the month following Jose’s baptism, and it was also to take placeat the Rockville church. The guest list included family members of Eudora’s, who would come in fromas far away as Cincinnati, as well as the small circle of friends that Jose and Eudora had in Chillicothe.The Montoyas would not be coming from Mexico, since in none of his letters filled with descriptions of
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The Long and Storied Life of Jose Montoya

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