The call to scavenge a car-killed moose came over our VHF at 5 a.m. Here in the foothills of the Alaska Range we don't have cell phones or landlines, so Tom Neeson, the old-timer down on Ten Mile Road, relays messages by radio.

Mom pulled aside the curtain of my sleeping nook and asked if I wanted to go along for the butchering. "Not really," I mumbled. My family would likely be gone all day, and I had another mission.

"You're going to look for Jared?" Mom asked.

"Mm, hmm."

Dad and Hannah were already gulping down milky coffee and hunks of sourdough bread. "Now listen, Adam," Dad said. "Please don't go anywhere near the Coopers' place alone." We live in a narrow valley, and our nearest neighbors are across the ridge to the west. Mr. Cooper made it perfectly clear when we met him six months before that he wanted nothing to do with other people. I worried about his son. Lately, each time I saw Jared he looked dirtier and thinner, and his quiet voice broke into a gut-wrenching hack.

"He hasn't come up to the ridge in four days," I said from the warm depths of my sleeping bag. Daylight was at least three hours away, and I was glad I didn't have to deal with cleaning another moose. We'd already shared one with old Tom earlier in the season.

Mom slipped into patched snow pants, down vest, and waterproof jacket and reached for her skis. It's three miles to Tom's place, where we leave our pickup, and from there another ten miles to the highway. "Just check out the Coopers' cabin from above," she said. I gave a grunt that meant Gimme credit for a few brains.

"Tom thinks we should call the child welfare people," Dad said. That surprised me. Most rural Alaskans think the less you have to do with authorities the better. Jared constantly claims that everything is O.K., but clearly his father is in over his head out here.

© 2010 by Diana C. Conway