Where's Moses?

July 10, 1965

Southwest Alaska

When I stuck my head out of my sleeping bag to see what was going on, I could smell hot dogs being cooked. My cousin Moses was already up making breakfast for himself and his dog friend, Lupie. I say dog friend because Lupie was an old black dog, part Labrador and husky, who didn’t really belong to anyone and no one seemed to remember who’s dog he was to begin with. Lupie was just a smart, friendly old dog that every kid in town liked. But Lupie liked hanging with Moses more than anyone else for some reason. They always went hunting together. It had to be around 3 or 4 am because the sky was lit, but the sun hadn’t come up yet. Moses never needed a lot of sleep. What ever we were doing, he always slept only an hour or two at a time. This morning, I knew he was going to make a trip to a lake nearby that was a favorite of the geese and swans. He had brought his 16-gauge shotgun that his mom had bought for his sixteenth birthday last year. We were the same age. Moses’ mom, my aunt Marie, was one of the nicest people we knew. His dad, Pete, on the other hand, was a first class dickhead. I mean this guy was a pompous ass, a braggart, and a violent son of a bitch when he got drunk. I used to wonder how these two ever got together until Moses told me it had been an arranged marriage in the old Yup’ik way. And them being Catholic prevented her from divorcing him. Moses stopped going to church after a while. He said once that one these days he would use that shotgun on his dad. But he was the second oldest of five and had to take care of the younger three of my cousins, Jimmy, Martha, and Alexie. John, his older brother, had joined the marines to get away from his asshole dad. Or he figured he might kill the idiot if he didn’t leave. Lifetime in jail for strangling him was his other choice.

So we were here in this place we called ’Rebel Hill’ where we always came to when we had nowhere else to go, mostly to get away from the all night and all day drinking parties at Moses’ house. My dad was always there, too, getting shit-faced and stupid. My mom had died when I was about a year old, so there was usually no one at my house except when my sister Lana came home from the city to visit. When Moses’ dad or my dad got too drunk and passed out, we would sneak and steal money right out of their pockets. We would then go to the store early the next day and buy all kinds of food that we could eat on Rebel Hill. We would usually bring a few other stragglers from the neighborhood that weren’t eating regularly either and feed them, too. Tony Boy, David E., and April were curled up in their sleeping bags and I knew they weren’t even going to move until at least high noon.

When Moses noticed me, he laughed a little and said,

"Hey, good morning Curly Joe. How’s the leg?"

My name is George, but, Douche Bag, what I always called him, always called me Curly Joe like the fool from the three stooges.