Work Text:
Mother had told him on more than one occasion that, if it wasn't for his natural talents needing to find an outlet that could provide him with a regular income, he could have had a life on stage. Still, she'd always been more than a little untrustworthy, as Ezra had come to know over the years, his former trust in her pronouncements significantly blunted by time and bitter experience. That didn't stop him, of course, from ruminating on what his life would have been like if he'd taken that route and found himself a thespian.
In some ways, what he did - before Four Corners and a sharp right turn into an almost-honest profession, of course - to make a living was closer to the theater than Mother would have liked to admit. She probably saw herself as being above that kind of individual, the kind who'd relish the greasepaint and the plaudits of an audience, her only audience being the dollars and cents she hoped to accumulate. He didn't distinguish as clearly between the two, knowing or at least suspecting what kind of effort would be required for both trades, an effort Ezra was prepared to make even as he begrudged its necessity.
By the time he was old, something new had come around.
A traveling show had brought the first example, a shaky projection in a darkened room that made the more nervous among them shriek with terror at the oncoming train pictured there. Beside him, in the darkness, Ezra could see the avid profiles of a room full of men and women, some of whom he'd known their entire lives.
That kind of permanency had seemed impossible when he was young, the concept of staying in one place a thing that happened to other people - as soon as he'd acquired the ability to leave a place of his own accord, he'd done so and never looked back. Now, as Ezra was feeling every year of his age, he wondered what he'd lost by that decision.
Here, he was known to everyone and knew them all in turn. The numbers of his fellow lawmen had dwindled, not by choice but by accident and illness, but they were still the backbone of the town and the ones people came to for help if things got difficult. He'd expected at least one of them might leave, find themselves somewhere else to be - they'd probably thought the same of him, Ezra knew that now - but they'd all stayed put and some would now be here for an eternity.
"You ready to go, Ezra?"
The voice was familiar enough that he didn't startle, but instead let her help him stand and steady himself till he was ready to move under his own steam. JD's daughter, Casey's too since she'd chased him and caught him once she'd been certain he was what she wanted, looking like the man he remembered JD being when they'd first met. Give her a haircut and stick her in a suit, the resemblance would be uncanny, even if her father had become a little more stout than he used to be and now walked with a limp after a fall from a half-tamed horse.
"Miss Genevieve," Ezra said, holding out his arm and bowing slightly. "Let me escort you from this establishment."
"Why thank you, sir," Genevieve said, dropping a quick curtsy and a grin that made her now look more like her mother's daughter. "I don't mind if you do."
The brightness of the day outside made them both blink when they emerged from the tent; they stopped, letting the flow of people break around them like a rock mid-stream.
"Home?" Genevieve asked. "Or somewhere else?"
She was the only one who gave him the choice, which was probably why he liked her so much. Ezra pondered the question for a moment: 'somewhere else' usually meant the saloon, but also meant passing the chair which Nathan occupied most days and entering that place under his judgmental gaze. Not that Nathan had anything in particular against the imbibing of alcohol as such, just felt that Ezra did a little too much of it for his own good and had no hesitation in telling him so, long and often.
"Home," Ezra said, with a sigh. They turned left instead of right, following the path from where the traveling show had set up into the outskirts of town. "What did you think of the performance?" Ezra asked, but concentrated on where he was placing his feet as he walked. Old age was a horror when it meant you had to pay more attention to where you trod, especially when he remembered being young and agile and thinking nothing of it. "Did it make you shriek like the Madison sisters?" He'd heard them making sounds like that often enough at play throughout their childhood that the sound had been immediately recognizable.
"Those ninnies?" Genevieve scoffed. "I most certainly did not." It should have been difficult to walk without tripping, given how high her nose was currently in the air, but she managed it well enough, with a grace Ezra found himself admiring absently. "But then they'd squeal like stuck pigs if the wind changed direction sharply."
"It's the next big thing," Ezra said, his words laced with all the scorn he could possibly summon up. "Or so the papers tell me." He shook his head. "Destined to replace the theater, according to some fool in New York, who apparently moonlights as a fortune teller."
"Replace the theater?" Genevieve said, her own voice scornful. "That could hardly happen here, since we don't have one."
True enough. That particular amenity had never been a thing of interest to the populace, even though Ezra had sometimes hoped one might just spring, fully-formed, from the ground overnight. But he'd reconciled himself to living here now, with all that meant. It hadn't been so bad, putting down roots, not so bad at all.