Coyotes

Coyotes are part of the wild world surrounding Hig’s isolated home, but the novel gives them no individual identity or sustained plot of their own. Their significance comes through sound and uncertainty: they can be heard answering music in the creek, considered among the possible causes of a nighttime disturbance, and used as an image for an intense human cry. In these brief appearances, they register as living presences rather than merely as prey or threats.

Presence in the Post-Collapse Landscape

Coyotes inhabit the creek country near Hig’s home. When he plays blues loudly, their howls rise from the creek in response, creating an unexpected exchange between human music and animal voices. The sound is at once distressed and companionable to Hig: he hears something like pain in it, but also something like pleasure. The moment gives the coyotes an audible presence in a landscape where familiar forms of life have been lost.

The novel does not establish how many coyotes are present, or describe a particular animal. Their appearance is instead bound to the sounds of the surrounding country. They are heard from a distance, their voices joining the music without becoming tame or human; the scene preserves the difference between Hig’s deliberate playing and the animals’ answering calls.

A Possible Nighttime Threat

On another night, a sound prompts Hig to consider coyotes or wolves as possible explanations. Jasper growls, and Hig sits up, listens, and moves cautiously to the top of the berm. The source of the disturbance remains uncertain: the scene confirms Hig’s vigilance, not that coyotes were actually there. Jasper’s reaction makes the possibility consequential, while the lack of identification keeps the animals within the broader uncertainty of life beyond the defended perimeter.

This moment contrasts with the creek-side howling. There, coyote voices become part of an informal musical response; at night, the possibility of their presence belongs to Hig’s calculations about danger. The coyotes are neither established as attackers nor reduced to harmless background wildlife.

Sound, Grief, and Human Kinship

The animals’ howling carries emotional weight because Hig hears it through his own music and loss. Their response to the blues seems to him both anguished and joyful, a combination that echoes the emotional doubleness of the music itself. The scene offers companionship without suggesting that the animals understand him: the connection is made through sound, across a boundary that remains intact.

Later, when Hig turns his face into the sun and lets out a cry, the narration compares him to a coyote calling at full throat. The comparison draws on the coyotes’ established vocal presence without implying that an animal answers him in that moment. It makes the wild call a measure of forceful expression: in a world marked by silence and absence, both animal howl and human cry can briefly fill the air.