The Punchline
Every family has one — the child who learned that laughter buys what silence won't. Charles Smith was the youngest of six, born into a household where every role was already taken. So he made them laugh. Sugar for salt, shoes vanished, stunts that turned invisibility into applause. It worked. It always works. The performance has been running so long that even he doesn't know whether there's someone underneath it or whether the act is all there is.
Youngest in a household that ran on faith and hierarchy, Charles arrived after every role had been claimed. Half-brothers gone before he could remember them, a sister with her place, brothers with theirs. So he learned the trick that earns a seat anywhere — make them laugh, and they'll make room. The pranks escalated because they had to. Every audience gets bored eventually, and the youngest can't afford to let them.
Even his own father got the act — Charles couldn't sit in a room with Noah without filling the silence. Something closer to the real version surfaced around his mother, in glimpses, when he forgot to perform. Then Chloe Baker — a girl from church who sat through his routines and waited for what came after. She didn't need him to be funny. Marrying her was either the bravest thing he's ever done or the most terrifying.
Staying behind wasn't something he'd rehearsed, so he followed his family into a desolate land and did what he's always done — made it bearable. They have children now, and Charles makes them laugh the way he made his siblings laugh, instinctively, compulsively, before anyone has the chance to sit with him in quiet. The funniest person in every room. The table isn't full anymore. Charles still performs like it is.
