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Charles takes another mouthful of his whiskey, fingers drumming on the table to the rhythm being set by Javier’s guitar as he starts up another song. La Calandria, he thinks this one’s called. He’s never been one to focus on the finer arts, but he’ll always listen to Javier’s songs.
Tonight’s a night of celebrating. Little Jack is back with them, after that whole scare with the Braithwaites, and with Angelo Bronte or whatever his name was. Everyone’s around the campfire, shouting and hollering and dancing. It’s loud. And he has a feeling that it’s only going to get louder.
Shady Belle is even hotter than Clemens Point was. It’s more humid, more muggy. It makes his clothes stick to him. It makes the back of his neck sweat, even if he puts his hair up. And right now, with the noise and the heat combined, it’s starting to get a little too much. He can probably deal with it, though. He knows he shouldn’t have drank anything tonight. Things always seem to go wrong when he drinks, even now he can feel it beginning. The heat settling under his skin and in his bones, stretching up to his brain and making him unable to think quite right. He doesn’t like to drink. Makes him think of his father.
He half-listens to Javier’s singing and the others drunkenly trying to follow along; intelligible mantras of 'Hasta un gorrioncito amoroso la oyó, y dijo “Mi bonita, te quiero mucho yo"'. The cicadas have started up a tune of their own, an incessant buzzing that wiggles into his ears and bounces around in his brain without end. Tonight is going to be very overwhelming.
Sudden warm hands on his shoulders make him almost jump out of his skin, and Uncle's voice comes into his ears. It’s almost as annoying as the cicadas.
“Why you just sittin’ here, Charles?” He burps. “Go over there and have fun!”
He needs to get his hands off Charles. He doesn’t like to be touched, especially not by a drunk old man with no understanding of personal space. It only adds to his already rising discomfort.
“Fine here.” He says, shrugging his hands off his shoulders. Gross, gross, gross, yuck. Everything feels awful. His clothes feel too much like clothes on him, he can feel his shirt sticking to his skin and his pant leg touching his ankle with every gust of wind and he does not like it. But he can’t really risk public indecency, so he grits his teeth and focuses back on his fingers and the table. He zeroes in on the grooves and marks in it for a while, left by games of Five Finger Filet, but even that can’t settle his unease.
His hair is tickling the back of his neck in the most annoying way possible and he tries to tie it up, but he can’t get the hair string over his fingers, it keeps just not working, and he wants to fling it into the bushes. And then he does and realises how stupid of a decision that was, because now he’s hair string-less and the wind is still blowing on his face but it’s still hot, and it’s still loud, and the stupid cicadas and birds and everything is just making too much noise and he wants it to stop. And his skin feels too much like skin and he can feel his eyes in his head, even the wood under his hands is too rough and scratchy for his liking now. Everything has gotten far too- just- everything.
The song Javier’s playing crescendos, still the same one as before, as he howls out the final lyrics, '¡Y adíos tranquilidad!’ and he strums his guitar one, two times, but not three times, which would’ve been perfect and made everything better but it was only two times. And they all laugh and cheer and it grates in his ears like daggers being sharpened, sends his heart hammering faster. And that’s not helping him in the slightest.
He needs to take a breather.
He stands and the feeling of the wood is still on his fingers, in his fingers. Maybe he has a splinter. His socks are doing that stupid thing again in his boots as he walks away and his boots don’t feel right and he doesn’t feel right. His brain is doing that thing again. When it fizzles and shuts down and he can’t do anything.
Behind Shady Belle, he shakes the feeling of the wood off his hands like they’re wet, keeps shaking his hands after too; it’s not exactly something he can control. Involuntarily humming to himself the words he can’t seem to find, he paces back and forth, tries to sit down at the back porch and gets up and sits down and gets up again-
Frustrated tears gather in the corner of his eyes as he tries not to cry. He just wishes it would stop being so loud and that his clothes wouldn’t feel like sandpaper against his flaming skin-
Nearby an alligators jaw snaps shut around something, a bird, probably. The sound still startles him nonetheless. He wants to shoot it and make it stop making noise but they wouldn’t be happy with him so he can’t do anything about it and-
“Charles? You okay there, son?”
He looks over at Hosea, still wringing his hands together and picking his nails and moving around endlessly. He hums in response, unable to keep eye contact for very long.
“You wanna come sit down?” Hosea’s voice is soft, gentle, not like the unyielding swamp around them, filled with too much noise and too many smells.
He dips his head once, hands still working up a storm, and he tries his best to tamper it down as best as he can but he knows it’s no use because once he starts he can’t stop. He trades the hand flapping for his leg bouncing when he sits down next to Hosea, staring off at the nothing in the distance. Hosea doesn’t say anything for a long while.
“You all right?”
“Mhm.” He responds quickly. He’s not a good liar.
“Loud, aren’t they?” Hosea murmurs. Yes, they’re loud. They’re too loud. Everything is too loud.
“Mhmmm.”
“Yeah, I understand. John gets the same way sometimes too. Doesn’t like loud noise.”
He scratches the back of his neck when it jerks uncomfortably. Hosea’s words hold some comfort to them, he supposes.
Hosea continues, submerging the everything that drones in his ears and replacing it with his calm voice, “whenever something like this happens with him, I’ll usually sit down and talk to ‘im. Figured it might work with you too. I know we ain’t really interacted all that much.”
Charles worries at his bottom lip, still not looking at him.
“Anything you want to talk about?”
Beyond the sound of everything clanging around in his mind, he thinks. Animals, maybe. Deer, or birds, or cougars, or wolves.
“Bison.” He says quietly after a moment, pulling the word out of his mouth when it grips his tongue for dear life.
“And what can you tell me about them? Can’t say I know too much about bison.”
He’s always liked talking about animals. Bison especially.
“They... They provide meat, and leather; hide for clothes and shelter. You can make the bones and horns into tools. Long time ago, I think- people would use the bladder to hold water. They got four stomachs. Same as cows, I think.” He continues on and on and on as he cools down, about how they’re infused into his mother’s culture. Talks about his mother, what he remembers of his tribe. Dumps all sorts of information onto an intrigued Hosea. But the old man doesn’t seem to mind.