"You're not actually going to do that, are you?"
Chrissy was looking at Jim like he was crazy. The three beers coursing through him sure made him feel that way. In his right hand he held a sewing needle he swiped from his mother's kit, a fountain pen he'd broken open squeezed between the bench seats of the Oldsmobile. Ink welled up in the pen chamber, dark and limitless.
"Hmm," he returned casually, frowning, eyes down on his left hand where it was spread out on his thigh. "Maybe."
He'd heard about it from the other kids, how you could give yourself a tattoo with nothing more than pen ink and a needle. It would distinguish him, he thought, make him tough, not just look it. Didn't matter what it ended up as - it could be a triangle for all he cared. All that mattered was that it was visible. It was 1958 - nothing would scare adults more than a teenager with a mark permanently etched into his skin.
A hand on his arm stopped Jim's circular thoughts, and Chrissy's pleading eyes changed his mind. He dropped the needle outside the cracked window. Her mouth on his was a better use of his evening than whatever design his shaking hands could come up with.
--------
Every time she walked by, Jim felt his heart squeeze in his chest. And when she looked at him, it seemed to leap up into his throat.
He had no idea what was getting into him. The girls at school were all the same. Even if they were total dolls, it didn't mean they were interesting or hip. The ones that were fast forgot him just as quickly as he forgot them. The nerds avoided him and the smart ones were too with it to be caught dead with the guy who hardly showed up to class. But this girl, she was different. She was a sophomore but he'd seen the way she talked to people. Like she never cared what anyone else thought. And the more he watched her, the more Jim realized that it was like she didn't even know the kind of girl she was. That she was just that way without thinking about it. Somehow, that only made things that much better.
And best of all - she didn't avoid him. Joyce wasn't afraid of him. She didn't find him stupid or boring or worthless.
It took some time, but eventually he caught her attention. Talked to her about his new records, flicks, the bottle of bourbon he pinched from his dad. Anything but school or the sleepy shit town they lived in. Anything but what was their boring routine. He could waggle his pack of cigarettes, mouth 'fifth period' and be outside the gym waiting for her like a loyal dog. Joyce's own Lassie, here to steer her into the delinquent life of a punk.
It was behind the maintenance shed where he passed her a cigarette pinched between his fingers, eyes on her face for probably a moment too long. "I've never met anyone like you, Joyce," he heard himself say, but out loud this time instead of the five hundred times he practiced it in his head.
It was a credit to Joyce that she didn't laugh in his face. Instead the laugh was one that bubbled up between them, friendly and comfortable and nervous, their hands shaking from the rush of something shared and forbidden.
----------
There was a time not very long ago when all Jim Hopper could think about was getting the hell out of Hawkins. There was something about the barrenness of the town center that he'd hated, something about how familiar everyone was with everyone else that was grating. In youth, Hawkins felt like a prison, a self-enclosed hellhole that obscured the mysteries and the wildness of the rest of the world. But in middle age, it had become something else.
As Jim hammered a nail into the panel of wood, he considered the changes. Not in Hawkins, not in the way that cars became lighter and sleeker, how technology seemed to hustle to envelop the whole world, but in himself. The box of nails was thinning, but the fence around his property was nearing completion.
Ten years ago, Jim would have hardly imagined his life as it stood. Still chief, sure - he was hardly good at anything else but ordering people around - but the circumstances. A house, a steady girlfriend, a daughter. His daughter. What Jim stood on, he realized not very long ago, was a firm foundation, a bedrock of support. What he had now that he had enjoyed once and then abandoned in New York, was a network of friends and family that saw that nobody struggled on their own.
Five years from now, this was exactly where Jim would be. Hawkins, Indiana. One movie theater and one school, where everybody greeted him by name as soon as he walked through the door. Shit town, his town. But five years from now, El would have this too.
As Jim fitted the fence with his freshly completed gate, he admired his handiwork. Years from now, when he was gone, he'd give El everything. She'd get his savings, his truck, this house, this property with a fence he'd made himself and wooden gate that would darken and dry out with age. In thirty years, El would inherit everything he owned. But until then, Jim had the time to enjoy the life he'd finally been proud of building.
After all this time, he finally arrived. Hawkins wasn't so bad. It'd given him everything he had, after all.
---------
He could see by the way she narrowed her eyes that the argument wasn’t over by any stretch of imagination.
Diane was absolutely livid. No, not just that, not just angry, because that would've been too simplistic. There were tears in her eyes, and an edge to her voice that was wild, cutting. No, his wife wasn't just angry, she was hurt.
"These were the lights, Diane," he said, each word stressed and he could tell he was visibly losing his own patience, could tell that she could tell, and this would only make things worse. But try as he might, Jim could barely keep his voice level, could hardly make his face impassive in the fire of a woman who had nothing and nobody to blame except for marrying him.
"No, they're not," she returned, firm, immovable where she was usually so pliant and forgiving. The softness in his wife had changed over the last few months, had almost drained out of her like pus from a wound. She'd become crushingly emotional like an exposed nerve, but also strong and resolute in a way Jim used to be. And in some deep part of his mind he locked away, he knew he had changed, too, but in another direction. "It was the small ones, Jim, the small ones."
He descended the ladder and it took all the strength he had left in him not to slam the metal frame against the side of the house. Usually he towered over Diane, but now on his feet in front of his decoration-less property and furiously adamant wife, Jim felt tiny.
"Does it matter? It's all of them, that's why we have them both in the-"
At this, Diane exploded, in a way he'd come to expect as a fury that had everything and nothing to do with him.
"Sara hated the big lights, don't you remember?! She hated them!"
What happened next, Jim would say he couldn't remember. There was a blank in his mind, static through the memory that threatened all the time to engulf him whole, but the truth was that he remembered every second. He remembered the way he slammed the big-bulbed Christmas lights back in the box at his feet, he remembered the way he threw up his arms in defeat with tears streaming hot down his face for all of fuckin' New York state to see, and he remembered distinctly the words he muttered in his restless, pathetic retreat back into the house and into a bottle of bourbon.
No, I don't remember. Dad of the Year, aren't I?
----------------
Jim Hopper was never one for snow.
Not that he disliked it or anything; his love affair with the stuff had simply faded after childhood, after one too many marches to school with it caked onto the soles of his old boots, seeping freezing wetness into his socks. And as an adult, it was just another chore to take care of, one more danger to worry about in the apartment or on the beat. There was nothing like a patch of icy road that could cause the worst traffic accidents Jim had ever seen in his life.
It was different with Sara. There was something about children and their curiosity that reignited excitement about the world. Through his daughter, Jim rediscovered his own wonder at the smallest of things, like waking up on Christmas morning to newly fallen snow.
The Christmas after she'd turned five was as picturesque as a greeting card. She'd woken her parents up early, crawling into bed between mom and dad with soft giggles of excitement. One of her gifts that year would be put to almost immediate use: a wooden sled with red metal runners that matched perfectly with Sara's bright red snowsuit. Jim could barely get Sara to eat breakfast before she was pulling on his hand to take her to the hill down the street. When she got tired of sliding down the fresh powder, Jim would take the rope he'd tied to the brush bow and pull her around like a sled dog, barking with either affirmation or confusion every time she issued an order to her one-man team. ("Mush! No, no, I said mush! Faster!") And afterwards, exhausted and out of breath, Jim would still lift his daughter into his arms and drag her into the snow bank until powder found its way into the hoods of their jackets and under the edges of their sleeves.
That evening, all three Hoppers would lay in the living room, fireplace lit, Christmas cartoons on the television. But instead of being engrossed by Rudolph and his really too-red nose, Sara would perch herself by the window and watch the snow dust the trees outside.
Briefly, Jim had entertained the notion of moving somewhere warmer, somewhere down the coast. But that plan had been abandoned as soon as winter hit. Sara's little gasp of joy was something he would never tire of, too moved by his daughter's infinite wonder to think of depriving her of another first snow.
--------------
Reluctantly, he handed over the key.
Jim knew exactly what was happening. He knew exactly why it was happening. His actions of the past eight months spread before him like a perverse roadmap. Some of the paths ended in nights of binge drinking; others faded into a haze of confusion and lapsed memory. Some were roads of eventual collision with his wife, while others forked off into outbursts of violent anger. But many - most, if he was really being honest with himself - ended in isolation, in a pit of crushing, bleak darkness with Jim's arms around himself to shut out the voices in his head. Voices that threatened to overwhelm him, swallow him whole while Diane just moved through her days, stony and resolute.
And that was just it. It's like you don't even see where I am anymore, she had said, and she was only half right. He could see exactly where Diane was, floating out there in the sea. He could tell exactly when she needed comfort or a hand with laundry or some words of encouragement to get her out of bed. Jim could see exactly where she was but he was too unmoored himself to help.
But even with the knowledge of all he had done, Jim could hardly help but feel the expectant palm of Diane's hand like the final crushing blow of this fight. There was his home, his marriage, his family - a whole chapter of his life inscribed on a brass key, now turned over to the person who has always been stronger than he was. The fight to save his family was over, and Jim had failed them all.
Unable to summon the proper words, he instead placed the key on Diane's open palm and closed his hands around hers. He was standing close (probably too close, he knew, by the way Diane's eyes widened slightly at his touch), then after a beat leaned down to press one last kiss to his wife's cheek, voice low.
"Take care of yourself, Diane."
And before he could think too hard about how easily he'd just given up, he left, willing the numbness of earlier in the day to carry him through this next agony.
-----------
They'd only been apart for a week and already he had a new lover hanging off his arm.
It wasn't about spite and it wasn't about lust. Okay, so maybe it was a little about lust. Even if he had no steady girl to go for anymore, Jim was a high school guy - it didn't mean he stopped wanting what he wanted. And what he wanted he couldn't have anymore, so things moved quickly from Joyce Horowitz to the one girl who had always given Jim eyes practically every time they walked past one another down the hall, nevermind if he had a girlfriend or not.
Debra was like Joyce in some ways: smart and tenacious, but she was so unlike Joyce in others that Jim was grateful for his stroke of luck. The fact that Deb was as voracious as he was and not at all sentimental to boot made things easier, allowed him the ability to just focus on the simple pleasures of having someone to distract rather than the darker thought that followed him: Joyce didn't want him anymore. She had eyes for someone else now, and what was easier than watching the way Joyce looked at Lonnie Byers (like he was the greatest thing to happen to Hawkins High and planet Earth, all coiffed hair and casual disregard that made him completely irresistible to almost everyone on campus) was to pretend like Deb was taking up all of his free time and energy. So the next time he passed Joyce by her locker, Jim could give her a self-satisfied friendly nod, arm slung over Deb's shoulder like it belonged there.
This he could do. He could play the casual ex-boyfriend so much easier than he could show his wounds. Because every time Leather Jacket Lonnie showed up at Joyce's side, it dripped something red-hot and venomous inside Jim's stomach.
The conclusion of this faulty love story would be perverse: Debra would eventually break up with him too, wanting his class ring and an arm for winter prom of '59, two things Jim could not provide. They were promised already, belonging to Joyce Horowitz - the old flame Jim could never bring himself to resent regardless of the pain he was in.
By the time prom rolled around, Jim had been through two more girls. Neither seemed interested in sticking around long, which was all the same to him. So that night, clad in jeans and a tee and a shirt with rolled-up sleeves, Jim Hopper sat alone on the hood of his car, two beers and half a pack of Camels deep, wishing for the first time it'd been him in that gym instead.
------------
"Hey, Hop. Hopper. Hopper. Got a light?"
Looking past the crate and rifle that sat between them, Jim could barely make out the outline of his fellow infantrymen in the dark. But in the noisy nighttime din of the Vietnamese jungle, Jackson's whisper carried. It was nice to hear something familiar after so long deployed: a bit of good old American English, and in that familiar Midwestern drawl Jim knew he spoke with too. Cigarettes were a commodity out here, and most especially American ones. Jackson always seemed to have Newports, and while they weren't Jim's preferred brand, he was ready to strangle a VC with his bare hands for the mere chance of having a smoke.
Leaning back against the wooden platform of their improvised sniper's perch, Jim fished his lighter from his breast pocket without hesitation. "Alright," he smiled, waggling the device between a thumb and forefinger, "but you're sharing one of what you got."
The lighter was running low on butane, and more than that, smoking was something of a hazard out here in the dark, but for Jackson, he could make an exception. He tossed the lighter over the gun when Jackson nodded his acceptance and watched as his fellow American soldier pulled out a cigarette and lit it. Something in Jim's brain switched, Pavlovian response pulling excitement out of his frayed, exhausted, sweaty body at the first whiff of tobacco. God, he missed the hell out of Camels. He'd have a whole pack the second he got home. Two, even.
They shared the cigarette and small talk for only a minute or two when a booming crack rang out from the paddies below. Wood from the hootch exploded toward them, and when Jim recovered, he was covered in blood. It took a moment to realize it was not all his own.
Jackson groaned softly beside him, and even in the dead of night, Jim could see splinters and shrapnel that had plunged themselves into the man's exposed neck and face. Below them, he could hear his company shout and return fire, giving Jim time to lay Jackson back and keep him talking. By the time the medics came, Jackson had fallen silent while his pulse tapped weakly in his neck. As they took him away, Jim realized he never asked what state Jackson called home.
Jim never saw him again.
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