Moose

. . . from a memoir I'm working on.

Moose was selected for the Elder Voices anthology published in early 2025 by the Palliative Care Institute at Western Washington University.

I never knew the real names of the men my dad spent time with, but I often heard their nicknames in the stories he told — Slim, Horseface, Machine Gun, Moose. They were friends and patients of his from World War II and the railroad company where he was their doctor.

On Sunday mornings, especially in the fall, we might drive down into the Palouse farmland south of Spokane, and sometimes, we would stop to see Moose. Moose lived near Fairfield, Washington where he had a small farm. He lived in a shabby farm house with rusted old cars and farm equipment out front.

My dad and Moose would have a couple shots of whiskey while I went outside and tried to pet the half-wild cats on the porch or watch the chickens run around. Eventually, my dad and Moose came back out on the porch and we went on our way with a carton of fresh eggs.

I knew something about Moose from the stories I overheard my dad tell. There’d been a blond woman living with Moose some years back and it wasn’t clear to me if she was his girlfriend or his wife. And there was the night Moose killed a man when he was drunk, driving too fast over some railroad tracks. The pickup flipped over and the man riding in the bed was thrown out and killed. When they found Moose, he was upside down in the cab of his truck with his hands still on the steering wheel.

On this Fall, Sunday morning, when I was 12, my dad and I stopped by to see Moose. The air was crisp and the sun was shining. Moose’s truck was out front but when we knocked on the front door no one answered. My dad slowly turned the door knob and yelled, “Moose, are you home?”

I walked in behind my dad and saw Moose in a dingy T-shirt, sitting in a rocking chair in front of a black and white TV set that was still on. My dad walked over to Moose and took his pulse, saying to no one in particular, “Better call the coroner,” and then as he grasped Moose’s elbow, “Rigor mortis starting to set in.” When my dad got off the phone, he walked over to me and said, “Looks like old Moose was trying to put on his underpants when he fell back in his chair and died from a heart attack.”

I was staring at Moose, his unshaven face and half naked body, with thoughts running through my mind of a woman living with him and his killing someone. Looking at Moose’s face, I saw way more than I could understand then of loneliness and the disarray of a life filled with drinking. At the time I thought, it’s too bad this nice old guy is dead.