The Dog Stars

Chapter 4 opens as Hig begins planting his garden, two weeks earlier than last year, with string beans, spinach, potato, tomatoes, and corn. It closes with Hig shooting two of the three men, including a blonde, dreadlocked man who tries to scare Hig by saying he overheard on the radio about “the A-rabs. They’re here. Or coming. Kill us all” (85). Hig finds this man in a trailer when Hig goes for a soda run.

Hig recalls final moments with Melissa and reveals how, at her request, and in her dying moments, while she suffers from “dysentery-like nausea and diarrhea and her lungs filling up like pneumonia” (61), a crying Hig suffocates Melissa with a pillow: “Her hand scratched at mine her eyes would not leave my face” (62).  

Hig flies a patrol because Hig tells Bangley he plans a two-to-three-day hunting and fishing trip into the mountains in search of deer and elk. While flying, Hig recalls his friend Mike Ganger’s homemade plane, which Hig flew early on, after beginning to live at the airport. Hig would perform tricks in the plane, for something to do. Hig thinks about the beauty he sees flying, “that simple beauty was still bearable barely, and that if I lived moment to moment, garden to stove to the simple act of flying, I could have peace” (65).