A Look at the Past
Opening the door, Ezra flipped up the switched to turn on all of the lights in the room. It surprised the others to notice the small spot lights that illuminated seven positions on the walls. Stepping farther into the room, Ezra moved the boxes around until he found the one he wanted. Pulling it towards him, he lifted it to sit atop two others.
Buck looked closely at the box but the only label he could see said only OWCM7CL, which made absolutely no sense to him. Shrugging, Buck gave Ezra his full attention.
Ezra pulled out his pocket knife and reverently slit the tape on the box, then returned the knife to his pants pocket. Opening the flaps of the box, Ezra pulled out a newspaper wrapped rectangle about a foot by a foot and a half in size. He didn’t say a word as he removed the newspaper and looked at the framed painting in his hands. Ezra kept his body between his friends and the treasure in his hands as he moved to the spotlighted area on the wall beside the door. It was the only position on that wall, while each of the other walls had two sections.
Hanging it carefully, Ezra made sure it was perfectly straight, before stepping back and letting them see what was so special to him. At first they could say a word for the shock that gripped them as they got a good look at the painting.
It was Chris.
Except that he was dressed as an Old West gunslinger, all in black.
Except that this painting was obviously very old, at least a hundred years old, Josiah thought, but in good condition, barely touched by the ravages of time.
Their heads swiveled as one to look at Ezra.
“That was my reaction at first, too. Except that we were in the middle of a corridor at Atlanta FBI Headquarters. My father loved the Old West legend of the Magnificent Seven, I’m half convinced that is why he named me, Ezra,” he chuckled. Then pointing to the other unopened boxes, Ezra continued, “Each of these boxes contain everything he had on each of the members of the seven. Chris,” Ezra raised his eyebrows, as he picked up the box and held it out to him.
Chris nodded and took the box from him and moved over to the wall where the painting hung. “I’ll be very careful, Ez,” he assured him. He then stood to see what Ezra was going to come up with next
Ezra smiled, he knew that. Chris, Josiah, Nathan, and Vin would understand what this meant to him, but he wasn’t so sure about Buck and JD. They would humor him, that he was sure of, but would they really understand?
Pulling out his knife again, Ezra opened the next box. Pulling out another newspaper wrapped bundle, he revealed another painting.
This one was Vin. Right down to the long hair.
But the figure was dressed in buckskins and held a mare’s leg shotgun like an Old West tracker.
“Vin, it’s you!” JD could hold his excitement any more.
“It certainly is, Mr. Dunne.” With that Ezra continued opening each of the boxes and retrieved a painting each box to match each of his colleagues. When he came to the last box, however, he pushed it aside unopened and went to work helping each of the men unpack the boxes of the men that had shared their names and looks over a hundred years ago.
