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Of all the people Eddie Munson imagined smoking up with three nights before graduation, Jim Hopper was probably near the bottom of the list, right before President Reagan and Mother Teresa.
“This is really good shit,” the police chief said, voice tight as he held in a substantial hit. He stretched out an arm and passed the joint back to Eddie, who took a puff.
“Yeah, low inventory,” he said, exhaling a cloud into the chilly evening. Dragon smoke, he thought as he watched it billow around their heads before dissipating. “Ditch weed’s all gone. This is primo. Purple Haze, man.”
“No shit?” Hopper asked, one eyebrow rising sardonically. “That’s my era.”
Eddie shrugged. “What can I say? Hendrix is classic, just like this sweet bud.”
They sat on a park bench behind the public library at a quarter past midnight, where lights from the street and parking lot couldn’t reach. Located halfway between Hop’s and Eddie’s, the library was where they’d always transacted their business. They'd never lingered—just a quick chat over the exchange of cash for a bag of weed.
Until tonight, when Hopper had asked if he had a minute.
Eddie couldn’t wrap his head around the new trim and svelte Hopper. The chief’s old uniform draped his muscular frame the way it should, instead of encasing it like a sausage. His buzzed hair was slowly growing out, longer now than the stubble on his jaw, but still short. He almost looked clean-cut. Some might say Hopper was thriving.
Eddie knew better.
There was no way the Hopper he’d always known would talk about what he and the others had been through in the Soviet Union…at least not with his former drug dealer, no matter that they’d saved Hawkins together. But Will had unloaded some details on Mike, Dustin, and Lucas–which Eddie had overheard during one hushed conversation before D&D. It was fucking weird to imagine Mrs. Byers–Joyce, she’d insisted they all call her–busting into a demogorgon-infested Soviet gulag, and even weirder picturing Hopper kicking one’s ass. Even without the benefit of this knowledge, though, and despite the evening’s darkness, Eddie could see in the set of Hopper’s shoulders that things were different now. He was different. Surely everyone could see it, not just Eddie.
“I, uh.” Hopper cleared his throat. “I understand you’re not gonna be dealing anymore.”
Nodding, Eddie took another drag and passed the joint back.
The chief studied the blunt pinched between thumb and forefinger. “I’m, uh… reorganizing my life, so, uh. I’m cutting back on the booze.” He took another hit. Held it. Blew out the smoke. “Booze made me mean. And sad.”
He muttered the words like he’d only recently realized how much they applied to him. Or at least that he hadn’t meant for them to apply but they had anyhow.
“And it made me chubby, and not in an adorable way. Well, crappy nutrition and zero exercise may have contributed to that situation, but the booze didn’t help.”
Eddie raised his eyebrows, taking the joint Hop passed to him. His heart pounded with the memory of another mean drunk–his father. But Carl Munson was a skinny son of a bitch who never seemed sad, only angry. Or if he was sad, Eddie never knew it, even after Mom died. Maybe meanness was a mask for sadness. Or for fear. Maybe skinny Carl would’ve benefited from a little extra meat to absorb some of the meanness. Maybe Hop would’ve been meaner if he’d been skinnier.
Shit. Eddie was getting way too stoned. He couldn’t even follow his own logic anymore. Fucking Purple Haze. After another puff he passed the J back, vowing not to take another hit.
But his mind was already spinning in this bizarro world of having an actual man-to-man talk with the chief of police, as though they were friends. As though Eddie were an equal, a fully adult man capable of offering advice or commiseration. The only men who ever talked to him at all were his shitty dad (the few times Eddie visited him in jail), Uncle Wayne (who mostly let him be), and his teachers (the less said about them the better, vaya con dios, RIP, et cetera). But none of them spoke to him like an equal.
Fuck, he was too stoned for this. When had he become a lightweight?
“Anyway–” It seemed an eternity had passed between Hopper’s last statement and this one. “–I’m cutting out the booze. Weed stays, though.”
Eddie kept his eyes on the rear window of the library, where the children’s section with its waist-high shelves and munchkin chairs sat in darkness. He waited for Hopper to continue, but the man didn’t speak until Eddie slid his gaze toward him.
“I need something to turn down the volume from time to time, you know?”
Oh, yeah. Eddie knew all about the unbearable volume of living. Sometimes he had to be louder just to compete. A few years ago he’d read about tropical birds that would vie for who was the noisiest, growing louder and louder until the jungle was just one big rock concert. Acoustic competition, it was called. Eddie felt an immediate kinship with those feathered fuckers.
“I get it,” said Eddie.
“So what I’m asking is, who do I talk to now that you’re out?”
Eddie pulled a piece of paper with the dealer’s contact info from his front jeans pocket.
Hopper took it and started laughing when he read the dealer’s name. “You for real? She’s a waitress down at Bullock’s. And she’s cute as a little bug.”
Eddie felt strangely offended. “Aren’t I as cute as a little bug?”
“Man, you are pushing it.” But Hop kept chuckling. “Her? Seriously?”
“You’d be surprised what people do when they have to,” said Eddie, fully miffed now. “Even cute ones.”
Hopper tilted his gaze toward the stars. “That’s the honest truth.”
The mood turned suddenly on its head, as moods were wont to do when you were stoned and someone brought out the Sledgehammer of Deep and Meaningful Shit, and fuck, this time it’d been Eddie to wield it, what the fuck. He shook his head roughly to dispel the bad vibes, but the funk was here to stay, he could tell, and he had only himself to blame. He slouched down on the bench, unable to stop spiraling.
Chrissy was as cute as they came, and look what she’d had to do to survive, even before the Upside Down. And then all through it, to save herself, and him. Joyce, too. And Steve. And Dustin. Shit, weren’t they all cute, and hadn’t they sliced and diced their way out of hell itself to fix all of this shit?
What Eddie said, though, was, “I’m worried I won’t be a good husband and father.”
Okay, where the fuck did that come from?
Hopper turned to face him, passing the joint, which Eddie took and hit without thinking.
“First of all,” said Hop—was he trying to sound gentle?—“congratulations again on your upcoming nuptials. Joyce and I will be there with all the proverbial bells on.”
Hell’s bells, thought Eddie, exhaling smoke. Didn’t they all sport them now, every jingle-jangle day—
“Second, are you saying what I think you’re saying? Chrissy’s pregnant?”
Eddie stared at Hopper. And stared some more, until his hazy brain caught up with the question. “No! Oh, God, no. We’re careful.”
Mostly. Except for that one time in the back of his van, Christ, what a night, they had truly outdone themselves, and that was saying something. But then two weeks later Chrissy’s period had been late. They’d shared three days and nights of talking and weighing options and calculating finances and planning…but none of that had worried Eddie like he’d thought it might. He’d almost gotten attached to the idea and was strangely disappointed when the box of tampons came out of the medicine cabinet. But the scare had given them time to really think about the whole thing, hadn’t it?
Sure, he and Chrissy were twenty and eighteen, the same age as his parents when they’d had him, and look how that had turned out. Yes, he and Chrissy had only been together less than three months, too soon to decide to get married, much less prepare for a kid.
But. Big but. The Upside Down made them realize they could honestly never do without each other in the Rightside Up, and their wedding would happen at Halloween. Boo, motherfuckers. So no, instead of a pregnancy feeling like a load of TNT exploding under a long train derailing off the cliff to mediocrity, as his father had often implied (though not as eloquently and with saltier language), the thought of having a kid with Chrissy had felt like…an awakening. An expansion. Like he could truly be a man now.
Was that weird? It probably was. But hell, he was a freak. Weird was his comfort zone.
“No, man,” Eddie reiterated, passing back the roach on a clip he pulled from his other pocket so Hopper could take the last couple of hits. “Just thinking about the future.”
“I hear you. Well, if you want my advice…”
Hopper trailed off, contemplating the roach before he sucked in delicately, careful not to burn his lips.
Eddie knew what Hopper was likely to say: You’ve faced actual demons, you can handle married life. You’ll figure out how to raise a kid, most people do. You’ll be fine, kid.
Hopper raised his head to look up at the stars again and Eddie could almost see his eyes, but then he exhaled his dragon’s smoke and turned back to him, the face of Smaug in shadow once more. It was eerie.
“You don’t even know right now what you’ve gotta worry about.”
Stunned, Eddie blinked.
“Your wife loses a leg in a car crash. Your daughter falls in love with a Nazi. Or worse, one of those Wall Street slimeballs.” Hop tossed the spent roach to the ground. “Your kid gets cancer.”
Eddie kept his mouth shut. He knew about Hop’s daughter. What could you even say to that?
Hop handed the roach clip back to Eddie, who pocketed it and tamped the joint’s remains into the dirt with the toe of his sneaker. “Loving someone means you agree to get hurt, because not loving them hurts even worse. Believe me, I’ve tried.”
Eddie had never heard Hopper talk so much in his life, and he couldn’t think of a damn thing to say in response. Maybe it didn’t matter.
“So no need to worry, because you can’t even anticipate what’s down the pike. But make no mistake: something is coming for all of us, sooner or later. None of us gets out scratch-free. Besides, worry makes you old. Look at me, living proof.”
Finally Eddie found his voice. “Jesus fuck, man. Simmer down. You are absolutely killing the ambiance.”
Hopper stared at Eddie. Eddie stared back. And simultaneously they burst into laughter–the deep, soul-reaching kind that clutches your ribs and keeps you from breathing for a while, a sublime surrender of control. When at last they caught their breath, they both screeched with laughter. Some fucking dragons they were. More like pterodactyls.
“Ambiance,” wheezed Hopper, which set them both off again.
Eddie fell on the ground, giggling helplessly on his back and flailing at Hopper to stop, while Hop just held onto the bench for dear life.
After some time their giggles became snorts and snickers, which eventually settled into contented sighs. Eddie wiped tears from the corners of his eyes, his hair, and the insides of his ears. His abdomen hurt from laughing so hard. Fuck, he’d needed that. Hopper seemed more relaxed, too.
“Despite my curmudgeonliness,” said Hopper, sweeping his arm expansively, his voice booming though his body slouched lazily against the bench’s backrest, “I do think marriage is a worthwhile endeavor.”
The ground no longer seemed the right place to be, so Eddie clambered back onto the bench.
“Yeah?” he prodded. When Hopper affected a coquettish little shrug in response, Eddie continued, “So you’re thinking you and Joyce–”
Hop brought a finger to his lips and made exaggerated shushing noises. “We never spoke of this, you and me.” But he grinned like an imp.
Eddie brought an invisible key to his mouth, turned it, and threw it over his shoulder, grinning back at him through closed lips.
They leaned back to watch the stars in the inky sky for a long while until Hopper finally murmured, “Yeah, I’m thinking spring.”
It wasn’t metal like Halloween, but to each his own. “Spring sounds perfect.”
Across the edge of Eddie’s vision streaked a shooting star. Meteor, corrected Chrissy in his head, and he smiled. On another clear night, the word had tickled his lips when she’d breathed it against them before kissing him. Maybe she was watching the same sky back at the trailer with Max. He couldn’t wait to find out.
“Joyce is wound pretty tight. Can’t blame her.” Hopper looked at Eddie. “You know what she needs?”
Eddie reached into the breast pocket of his flannel and handed Hop the other joint he’d brought.
“Good man,” Hopper said, sniffing it appreciatively and depositing it into his own shirt pocket. “You do know why you never got arrested all these years?”
“Yeah, man. I know.”
The two men grinned and started chuckling again like they’d gotten away with the most fantastic heist, stealing the dragon’s hoard from under its belly and somehow making it back alive.
Who was Eddie kidding? He and Hopper weren’t dragons. They were a couple of hobbits hitting the pipe-weed, dreaming glorious dreams of home and hearth.
Nothing wrong with that.