Hig Returns to Erie and Rescues Bangley

Hig Returns to Erie and Rescues Bangley is the homecoming that turns Hig’s return to the airstrip into a search for the person he has come to regard as family. After crossing the Continental Divide and finding the settlement damaged, he discovers that Bangley survived an attack but is gravely hurt and concealed in the hangar. Hig’s relief at returning home is therefore inseparable from fear that home may already have become a place of loss.

The return to Erie

Hig approaches the crossing with an unease he has not felt there before. In the past, flying over the Continental Divide had been routine: he allowed himself two thousand feet of clearance, even though snow, high ground, and the possibility of engine failure made the route dangerous. This time, as he aims for the low part of the pass and sees the country beyond the ridge rise into view, he is nervous about what waits at Erie and, in particular, about seeing Bangley again. By his reckoning, more than six weeks have passed since they were together.

As he descends, the familiar airstrip appears near the radio tower that no longer blinks. The sight of home brings back a memory of returning to his mother’s house at eighteen, with the same mixture of excitement and apprehension that home might not be as he remembered it. But the airstrip itself bears unmistakable signs of an attack. From above, Hig sees burned houses, foundations, and one side of his hangar torn open and charred. Bangley’s house is still standing, but its windows have been shot out; scorch marks, a damaged dormer, and a hole in the roof show that it too has been hit.

The contrast between apparent survival and visible destruction sharpens Hig’s fear. He recognizes the tower and the defenses he and Bangley built together, but avoids looking closely at the remains scattered around the perimeter. In that moment, he understands the depth of his attachment: he is returning not only to a place but to Bangley, who has become his family. That recognition does not calm him. He also fears that Bangley may be angry with him for having been gone.

Searching the damaged house

Before landing, Hig makes a low pass over the garden. The water is still flowing across the upper marks and through some of the furrows, but weeds have taken over the unwatered rows and climbed over the banks of earth. The garden’s partial survival offers no answer about Bangley’s fate. Hig pulls up, circles higher, lands long on the runway, and taxis directly to Bangley’s house.

He shuts down The Beast and runs inside, calling for Bangley. The open front door swings in the wind. In the workshop, the large window facing the mountains remains intact, while bullet holes cross the wall above the hearth. Bangley’s tools are where he left them; a Sig Sauer .308 remains suspended in two vises over the worktable, unfinished. These ordinary signs of work, left in place amid the damage, make the house feel less abandoned than interrupted.

Pops’s hand on Hig’s shoulder precedes the explanation. Bangley was working in the house when the attackers came during the day, an assault he had not expected. He survived the first burst, fought the attackers until they retreated, then went upstairs to get a better view and angle from which to defend himself. Pops estimates that only a couple of the attackers had guns. The account gives Hig a sequence to follow, but not certainty about whether Bangley is alive.

From the house to the hangar

Hig runs upstairs through a hall lined with family photographs and stops at the room where the damaged dormer points him. It is a child’s bedroom, filled with personal objects: a cowboy-patterned quilt on the bed, framed butterflies, an electric guitar, skis, a surfboard, and a signed racing poster. The room’s specific, preserved details stand against the violence elsewhere in the house. Hig and Pops are still there when they hear two shots and a scream. They run downstairs and out into the sunlight, where Cima is crouched beside The Beast, sheltering under its wing.

Pops identifies the person they have heard, and Hig reaches the hangar first. He shoves open the person-sized door in the larger hangar door, stumbles across the interior, and injures his back and knee in the rush. Once his eyes adjust to the dimness, he recognizes the familiar furnishings: the couch, Jasper’s chair, the workbench, and the table where meals had been shared. At first, nothing appears out of place enough to explain the scraping sound he hears.

The sound comes from the massive red tool chest, known to Bangley as Red Square, which has been pulled away from the north wall. Bangley’s steel-toed boot is visible behind it, beside the grenade launcher he had been working on. The tool chest that once held the instruments of their daily work has become cover: Bangley is alive, hidden behind it, and unable to emerge unaided. Hig has found the person whose absence had transformed the damaged settlement into a personal crisis.

Rescue and recovery

Bangley manages to touch Hig’s beard and address him, a small gesture that confirms recognition even as his condition remains precarious. For two weeks or more, his survival is uncertain. He is at risk from blood loss and dehydration, but he lives. Cima refuses to move him and instead settles him on the couch in the hangar, where she can care for him.

Her treatment is practical and sustained. She splints his shattered thigh, cleans and closes the wound in his side, and gives him water and Sprite with a turkey baster. The hangar is hot in the afternoon, though the open door and the hole in its west wall allow some relief. Hig’s return has made rescue possible, but Bangley’s recovery depends on the care Cima provides while he remains too weak to recover quickly.

It takes four days for Bangley to register Hig’s face again, and even then the recognition lasts only briefly before he lapses back into a coma-like state. On the sixth day, while Cima is feeding him, he opens his eyes and recognizes her as Mrs. Hig. Cima laughs at the expression with which he says it, reading it as a challenge that still contains a trace of humor and self-awareness. The exchange marks a modest return of Bangley’s personality, not an instant recovery. The rescue ends with him alive and cared for, while the familiar household roles have shifted: Hig has come back to find him, and Cima is the person sustaining him through the long interval before he can fully recognize those around him.