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<strong>The</strong> <strong>Long</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>Storied</strong> <strong>Life</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>Jose</strong> <strong>Montoya</strong> 97had already started to grow.<strong>The</strong> wedding at a month away seemed impossibly distant to <strong>Jose</strong>, but the daily ebb <strong>and</strong> flow <strong>of</strong>trainees in <strong>and</strong> out <strong>of</strong> his rifle range kept his mind occupied with familiar business. If anything seemedto change, it was nothing more than the fact that tulips were starting to poke up through snow cover,<strong>and</strong> that Ned Skelly, Grayley, <strong>and</strong> Juan Paolo had taken to teasing <strong>Jose</strong> by frequently slapping eachother on the back <strong>and</strong> furiously pumping h<strong>and</strong>shakes up <strong>and</strong> down ever since the trip to Rockville.<strong>The</strong> day <strong>of</strong> the ceremony found <strong>Jose</strong> getting ready in the back <strong>of</strong> Papa’s store next to therailroad tracks <strong>and</strong> up the hill from the house, which had been forcefully claimed by the bridal partyeven though <strong>Jose</strong> had never thought twice about comm<strong>and</strong>eering it for his own preparations, whichwere in fact few: Wash. Try to smooth hair down. Get dressed. <strong>The</strong> washing <strong>and</strong> the getting dressed hadbeen easy, but true to its nature his hair had been wildly obstinate <strong>and</strong> refused to cooperate with beingslicked back. After a forty-five-minute struggle, the best that <strong>Jose</strong> could manage was to get his hair toagree to a part down the middle <strong>of</strong> his head, from whence it stuck straight out sideways <strong>and</strong> then curvedupwards as if he were an odd sort <strong>of</strong> suave water buffalo.At last, surrounded by Eudora’s anxious Papa, Gerald Ebbs, <strong>and</strong> two other church-goingsoldiers from Camp Sherman, <strong>Jose</strong> stepped out <strong>of</strong> the store for the short walk up Columbus Street tothe Rockville First Church <strong>of</strong> Christ. Ned Skelly <strong>and</strong> Juan Paolo were waiting for him. <strong>Jose</strong> noted withrelief that Grayley was not among them. Grayley’s non-stop giggling was far more trying on <strong>Jose</strong>’snerves than the big hole through the middle <strong>of</strong> Ned Skelly, <strong>and</strong> <strong>Jose</strong> had asked Grayley not to be visibleat the wedding so his jitters wouldn’t be any worse than they already were. <strong>The</strong> upside for Grayley wasthat without having to spend the energy to make himself visible he was able to project that much moreinto the physical world, <strong>and</strong> was finally able to muster enough wherewithal by the time <strong>of</strong> the receptionto actually pinch Eudora’s cousin Sarah on the backside, causing a minor but thankfully brief
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