Wednesday, December 14, 1983

Shortly after Hopper's grandmother died, his grandfather sold their house in town and moved to his secluded hunting cabin on a permanent basis. Looking back at it as an adult, Hopper now realized it was the act of a grieving man protesting the injustice of having to go on living after the loss of his wife. As a child, Hopper saw it as his own personal summer camp where he could run relatively feral for weeks at a time, learning to hunt, fish and track from his doting grandfather. The senior Hopper was a gruff curmudgeon to practically everyone except the small boy, who could do no wrong. Hopper's father would comment on how much young Jim was like his grandfather. Sometimes it was intended as a compliment, sometimes not so much. Hopper idolized his grandfather and so always took great pride in the comparison. He wasn't much older than Eleven when his grandfather passed and the cabin went from being a beloved part of Hopper's childhood to a place where the family's junk went to die.

The choice to bring Eleven there had a lot of practical advantages. It was remote. It was defensible. It was situated on land Hopper knew like the back of his hand. But whether it was consciously part of his decision or not, there was at least a part of him that saw righting the wrong he'd done to Eleven as his opportunity to become the sort of man his grandfather would have been proud of and so it seemed a fitting setting.

"You awake, kid?" Hopper tapped on the open bedroom door, trying not to startle Eleven. "I've got you a proper breakfast this time, not just juice and Twinkies."

She sat up in the bed, tangled in the sheets and a quilt Hopper was reasonably confident his grandmother hand stitched. "I know you like Eggos and I made you bacon and eggs to go with it," Hopper continued, and then when Eleven still didn't seem to understand the invitation, he added encouragingly, "Come sit down at the table and give it a try."

She took her seat just like he'd shown her last night and he set the plate of food in front of her before setting down his own plate and settling in.

"Good huh?" Hopper asked her and smiled. Eleven speared a steaming hot bite of egg into her mouth and simply stared back at him.

It was not lost on Hopper that Eleven was, as his grandmother would have said, as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. She jumped at every noise and, when he carelessly hit his head on a hanging light fixture and swore from the surprise and pain, there was no mistaking the look of fear on her face. She couldn't have said more than a few dozen words to him and half of those seemed to be "yes," as though, when in doubt, she just agreed with him to try to placate him.

Beyond that, Eleven's complete lack of basic knowledge was shocking. As near as he could tell, she didn't know what a kitchen was or a hair brush or pajamas or most of the items in the cabin. The memory of her room at the lab haunted him. He could only imagine what had gone on in that tiny, windowless cell that led to her being like she was. What if she was just too far gone for him to help? He felt like he owed it to her, but he berated himself for thinking that somehow playing house in the remote cabin was going to be enough.

And then there was the guilt. Irrational though it may be, he couldn't escape the feeling that he was being disloyal to Sara by bringing another little girl into his home. Hopper pushed that thought away and focused his attention on devising some way to get Eleven talking so he could tell if she were genuinely incapable or just unwilling. An idea struck him midway through a slice of bacon.

"So, hey, I notice you're not much of a talker," he started in a failed attempt at humor. "What I thought we'd try is learning at least one new word every day. Does that sound doable?"

"Yes," Eleven responded obediently. Hopper didn't expect her to express any objection regardless of her personal feelings on the subject.

"Whenever you hear a word you don't know or if you have any question at all," he continued, "you can just ask me and I'll explain it to you. But we'll have a word of the day and we'll look it up in the dictionary and you try to use that word so that you really learn it and remember it. Sound good?"

"What is..dicks..." She began and faltered, not quite remembering the entire word.

"Dictionary?" He guessed and she nodded. Of course the first word she would need to look up in the dictionary was dictionary itself. Hopper pushed back from the table, retrieved a hard bound book from the shelf and sat back down across from Eleven.

"This is a dictionary," he held it out for her to see. "It's a book that tells you what words mean. So we turn to the 'D' section and here it is: a book giving information on particular subjects or on a particular class of words, names or facts, arranged alphabetically. So there you are, your first word of the day."

He passed her the open book and she traced her fingers over the text. "Dictionary," she repeated softly to herself.

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When Hopper had left to buy groceries the previous day, he'd also picked up a some clothes for himself and bought a few things for Eleven. He picked out boy's clothing figuring that if anyone questioned him, he could pass it off as picking up some things for Joyce's boys. Hopper thought of it as supplying Eleven with basic necessities. In Eleven's experience, Papa only brought her gifts when he meant to reward her for something she'd done particularly well or when he expected her to do something new and difficult. She nervously wondered what Hopper would want her to do to earn so many new things

Once she was dressed in clothing that was appropriate to the weather, Hopper took Eleven outside to help him secure the property.

"I'm going to have to get back to work tomorrow, so you'll be on your own for the whole day. I want to make sure you'll be safe, ok?"

She didn't answer but she did watch intently as he attached screws and a contraption he'd been working on to a tree. She held a pair of pliers for him and a spool of wire.

"Now this is called a trip wire," he explained patiently as he wound the wire around the mouse trap he'd mounted to a tree. She looked over his should at what he was doing, committed to learning what he was teaching her. "It's like an alarm. You set it up like this, and then if anyone gets close it's gonna make a loud noise. Like gunfire. Bang!" Eleven jumped slightly and Hopper laughed lightly while giving her arm a reassuring squeeze before suddenly becoming somber. "Those bad men aren't gonna find you, all right? Not way the hell out here. We'll have to take some precautions. There's gonna be a couple ground rules."

Ah yes, rules. Now they were getting down to it. But the rules weren't like any Eleven had experienced before. They were all focused on making sure the bad men wouldn't find her, but nothing about what she was supposed to do with her day. And nothing that sounded like it benefited Hopper at all. It was difficult to accept that maybe he really was just being kind without expecting anything else in return.

A friend is someone you'd do anything for.

Maybe he wasn't like Papa at all. Maybe he was a friend like Mike.