This afternoon a wind rose, making me a bit nervous considering our experience early this month with big bunches of air suddenly moving swiftly about, but on the other hand it was a pleasant change from the placidity of the last few days. I enjoyed watching the pines sway and flicker in the bright sunlight and listening to the rustling of those plants which still have some leaves with which to catch a breeze. By the time dusk arrived, the wind had blown us a new array of thin clouds, which began to gleam as the light of the gibbous moon overtook the sun's fading afterglow. The wind soon ceased, and the clouds will probably depart early tomorrow, as several clear, crisp days lie ahead. I am pleased.
I've seen nothing about it on my friends page, so I'm guessing there are no major fans here of actor Brad Renfro, who was found dead in Los Angeles on Monday. When I came across the headline while looking at another story, I remembered his name but couldn't quite place him. I Googled and, from the filmography on his IMDB page, I discovered that I'd only ever seen one of his movies, a 1995 variant of Twain's Tom Sawyer called Tom and Huck, in which he played Huck Finn. The film apparently went to television quickly, which was where I saw it. I then recalled that his performance was one of the few engaging things about that movie, and that I'd expected that I'd eventually be seeing more of his work.
As it turns out, he did quite a bit of work, but I've only ever heard of it in passing and never made the connection with that one performance of his I'd seen. I also recalled that I'd heard about his various scrapes with the law over the last few years, but again I hadn't made the connection with the talented and engaging kid who'd played Huck Finn. In any case, the story of his early death made me sad and vaguely anxious, as such things usually do. Then I found among the Google results this page headed Brad Renfro: A Personal Recollection, written by a fan fiction (of the non-porn variety) writer named John H. Leeper, whose daughter dated Renfro for a while a few years ago.
The tale he tells, though it was written and posted some time ago, makes a good elegy. There are things in it—sad things and endearing things and significantly ordinary things—that I doubt would ever turn up in the stories the entertainment media are inclined to tell. There's also an uncredited photograph of Renfro, probably at about age twenty, which I can easily imagine as a picture of Huckleberry Finn himself, after he lit out for the territory and got a bit older. I know nothing about Brad Renfro beyond what I've learned from the cold stories of the mass media and the warmer story Leeper tells, but I wish his life could have been more like the one I can imagine from that photograph.
