Three years

Three years is the time that passes between Hig’s reception of a transmission from the Grand Junction tower and his telling Bruce Bangley about it as he prepares to fly there. The interval is more than elapsed time: it separates a distant signal from a decision made after years of survival, grief, and violence. When Hig finally explains the delay, the transmission is only one item in a much longer account of what has happened to him.

The signal and the delay

Hig tells Bruce Bangley that he is flying to Grand Junction because he received a transmission from the tower there. His first description makes the contact sound recent. Bangley asks whether it happened a little while ago, and Hig answers that it was three years earlier. When Bangley repeats the length of the interval, Hig confirms it. The brief exchange establishes the central fact: the flight is not an immediate response to a fresh message but a decision made years after Hig first heard from Grand Junction.

The source of the information matters. Hig identifies a transmission from the tower, not a newly received invitation or a recent exchange. The evidence does not explain why he waited for exactly three years, or suggest that he spent that entire time planning the journey. It does show that the old contact remained part of his knowledge and that, when he announces his destination, the length of the delay surprises Bangley. The gap therefore shapes the encounter as much as the transmission itself: what Hig treats as the basis for a present course of action is, to Bangley, an astonishingly old piece of news.

Bangley’s response

Bangley’s reaction shifts the interval from a date into a measure of their relationship. After Hig confirms the three years, Bangley jokes that Hig has not been very good about returning phone calls. The remark recasts the missed span as a failure of contact between two people who have lived and worked together. It also draws a comic comparison between an extraordinary radio transmission from Grand Junction and the ordinary expectation that someone should answer a call.

The humor does not erase the seriousness of the revelation. Bangley looks west toward Junction and tries to take in the distance and the passing seasons; for a moment, Hig sees him as a man growing old. The three years thus register physically and relationally as well as chronologically. The distant tower has remained a fixed point in Hig’s account, while time has continued to pass for the people at the airport. Bangley’s question and the look toward the west make that contrast visible without resolving it: he has learned the significance of the old transmission only when Hig is already preparing to leave.

What the years contain

When Bangley later challenges Hig’s decision to fly beyond the point at which he can return, Hig explains that he picked up the radio transmission three years earlier. He then recounts the intervening experiences he considers essential: hunting and fishing, Jasper’s death, killing a boy and others, and reaching what he describes as the end of all loss. The interval is therefore not an empty pause between signal and response. Hig gives it weight by placing the transmission inside a life marked by subsistence, bereavement, and violence.

That retrospective account broadens the meaning of the delay without furnishing a simple explanation for it. Hig does not say that the transmission alone caused him to set out, nor does he identify one event as the reason he waited. Instead, he presents the old contact alongside the losses and actions that have accumulated since he heard it. The three years connect a possible destination to a transformed state of mind: the flight follows not merely from hearing that someone is out there, but from a period in which Hig has endured experiences he can only summarize as an end to further loss.

A threshold measured in time

The delay also clarifies the stakes of Hig’s departure. Bangley points out that Hig is leaving a safe haven and a partnership that works for a country where people may be dangerous and disease remains a threat. He has calculated the fuel capacity and hourly burn of The Beast, estimated the distances, and judged that Hig is near the aviation point of no return. His calculations account for the practical danger of the flight; the three-year-old transmission belongs to the less measurable history behind Hig’s choice.

Hig offers no elaborate defense. He says that his dog died, explains what he has been through, and admits that he had no other idea. In that conversation, the old signal and the more recent losses converge: the transmission marks how long the possibility of Grand Junction has existed, while Jasper’s death and the other experiences form the immediate context in which Hig acts. Three years is consequently both a delay in answering the world beyond the airport and a span of accumulated change. Its significance lies in the contrast between the age of the information and the urgency of the decision it eventually accompanies.