The Long and Storied Life of Jose Montoya

The Long and Storied Life of Jose Montoya 98misunderstanding by the punch bowl.Once at the church, Jose and his groomsmen – minus Gerald Ebbs, who had driven his car backdown the hill to get Eudora and her party – were immediately met by Reverend Kent and ushered intothe very same back room where a month ago Jose had had to strip naked in order to prepare for hissecond birth. The night before, at a brief rehearsal held at Eudora’s insistence, Jose had had amomentary panic that he would once again have to strip. He was prepared to face this requirement withdutiful determination, if that was what he needed to do to marry Eudora, and was quite relieved when itturned out that this time the room was just a convenient place from which he and his groomsmen couldfile into place at the start of the ceremony.The wait in the backroom seemed much longer to Jose than what had been promised to himduring rehearsal, and when Gerald Ebbs finally came in it was discovered that the car carrying thebridal party had very nearly not made it up the hill and over the Baltimore and Ohio tracks, owing tothe mud of a late winter thaw making Columbus Street difficult to ascend. It was only Gerald’s superiordriving skills that had gotten the bride-bearing automobile up the hill, it seemed, for which Jose was toalways be sadly grateful to him. It simply would not have done for Eudora to have had to haveclambered barefoot up the hill through the icy mud, her good shoes in one hand and her wedding dresshiked up around her knees like a woman of no other means. It was a gratitude so enduring that Josewould have it for long after he began to be visited by the apparition of Gerald Ebbs, with his oddlystretched and bruised neck.At last the church pianist began to play something that sounded for all the world like “What aFriend We Have in Jesus,” and Jose two-stepped out of the back room. Because this part of therehearsal had been rushed through, it was to the delight of some assembled in the church -- and to theconfusion of many others -- that the groomsmen followed Jose’s lead and also two-stepped, creating anoddly bobbing and weaving processional from the back room to the alter. Mercifully the distance they