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(out April 2011)

The Beartender
(a caption)

Melinda Moustakis

Metroid: An Appreciation
by Mike Meginnis

While staying at my uncle's cabin on the Kenai River in Alaska one summer, we spent a few days cleaning out ten years or more of junk that had accumulated. The cabin is on an island, so everything is transported to and from the cabin by boat. I kept finding patches of bear hair in every room, and my uncle mentioned that he had the hide of a black bear somewhere, but couldn't find it. The bed in my room was positioned so that there was gap that was used for storing old blankets and fishing waders and other things. I made sure to look through this assortment of odds and ends, but didn’t find the hide. I thought about what it would be like to fall into this gap at night, or what is almost night with the last of the midnight sun, and to come across the bear hide and be surprised by the teeth. My uncle was thrilled when he finally found it and we kept thinking about what we should use it for. He decided, as you can tell, to use the head as decoration for an island gathering. My uncle is an amazing cook and loves to have people over. This act of taking something that could of been frightening and turning it into a joke is the way many of my fictional characters survive in Alaska and was the impetus for the scene in "They Find the Drowned" where the woman discovers the bear hide and also for the scene where her husband dances around the fire with the head on his shoulder. Humor is a type of resourcefulness. But it can also become grotesque. I like the mixture of the two, which is probably why some of my writer friends from the south have called my work Northern Gothic — something I think this photo encapsulates.

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