The Dog Stars

“If I ever woke up crying in the middle of a dream, and I’m not saying I did, it’s because the trout are gone every one. Brookies, rainbows, browns, cutthroats, cutbows, every one.”

This quote sets the tone for what’s to come. Right away, Heller establishes Hig as a narrator concerned with the disappearing environment, opening the door for more lyrical longings to follow. Hig caught between strength in the face of devastation and a poetic longing for times past.

“Only us for at least a radius of eight miles, which is the distance of open prairie to the first juniper woods on the skirt of the mountain. I just say, Hey. Above the juniper is oak brush then black timber. Well, brown. Beetle killed and droughted. A lot of it standing dead now, just swaying like a thousand skeletons, sighing like a thousand ghosts, but not at all.”

Here, Hig introduces the setting for the first half of the novel: Erie, Colorado, at the airport where Hig and Bangley have spent the past nine years. Hig calls this area “the perimeter.” Heller establishes the theme of ghosts, along with the prominence of nature, when compared to the smallness of man. It’s inside this perimeter Hig and Bangley feel as safe as they can feel, given the near-constant state of danger and need to protect the perimeter from any outsiders at all costs.

“What can I say to Bangley? He has saved my bacon more times. Saving my bacon is his job. I have the plane, I am the eyes, he has the guns, he is the muscle. He knows I know he knows: he can’t fly, I don’t have the stomach for killing. Any other way probably just be one of us. Or none.”

This quote presents an early characterization of the codependency that Hig and Bangley feel for one another, while at the same time continuing to establish Hig’s voice. Hig and Bangley’s relationship is a central nerve in the novel, and Hig’s feelings about Bangley go from friendly to less friendly to the feeling the two are family by the novel’s end.