My cousin Bradbury - such an innocent and wondrous child! My happiest youthful memories include my days spent with him. I should tell you about Bradbury:

He was my cousin.

He was as young as me.

He was pure.

Bradbury was a likeable young boy. He was similar in appearance to myself, and he was full of energy. To me, Bradbury was an enigma among children, a force of nature. He moved through everyone's lives like a summer wind. There was something about him that caused such joy in me, though I never knew why exactly. His long blond hair was cut at the back in a style we used to call a rat-tail, but that we later realized was a hick haircut. It wasn't his fault.

He was relentless in his energy. I was like a small flame waiting to be unleashed by his excitement about life. He wasn't some sort of Superboy. He was just really cool, that's all. He was one of those kids that made you feel better about yourself by just being near him. Bradbury could make you feel wonderful, I think sometimes even if it was at his own expense.

Bradbury. His eyes were dark, his skin less so. His heart was more fair than his skin, and his head was more level than his heart. Impulsive but meticulous, at times riotous but inwardly sad, and his name was Bradbury, not Hemingway. It was not easy to understand the comings and goings of my cousin's fits of excitement and energy. It was in his upbringing I suppose - the way he was raised. But I'll tell you all about his family and his life after I've finished telling you about the boy himself.

Bradbury, Bradbury, Bradbury: quite the contrary. He liked to walk outside in twenty-below freezing weather. He had more power that you'd expect for a boy, but he was short. Short! He was no more than four feet tall, while the rest of us were at least six inches taller than him.

When he wasn't braving the elements he wore a ratty parka and old gloves with holes in the palms. His jeans had cloth patches on the knees and were cut and ragged along the bottom cuffs. I don't think I ever saw him dressed very well, but he never acted impoverished because of it.

He liked to hide in the bushes and throw dirt-bombs at passing cars. I was always worried about getting into trouble, but Bradbury never failed in convincing me that it was just harmless fun. I managed, from time to time, to get him to play checkers or snakes & ladders with me. But he tended to look inwardly restless whenever we stayed in for more than a few minutes at a time. His favourite board game was chess, which I guess is an odd thing for someone so outdoorsy. I think it was the competition and warfare in chess that held his attention. Heaven knows he always beat me at that game.

The only times Bradbury seemed sad was when we watched movies like Princess Bride, or Willow. André the Giant and the midgets set off something within him. Or else it was the romantic elements and the fantasy. These movies made the past so warm, and inviting, and exciting. I think he saw things that he was missing in his own life, though I'm not sure what's so appealing about magical dwarves and murderous brigands.

I remember one of the only times I saw Bradbury cry. We had gone out for the day, and we were playing in the parks and alleys between the neighbourhood apartment buildings. It was a sunny and warm day, an early afternoon in the late spring, and we were just running around, picking up things from the ground and throwing them. I would like to add that there was pollen floating in the air - those summer snowflakes that soften the sun and make everything seem so dreamlike. But there was no pollen. I think that only happens in Japanese Animé films.

And we were running about, jumping, and singing songs like this: "When you're sliding into first and you feel a sudden burst, diarrhea! Diarrhea!" And during all of this frolic and willful folly, Bradbury picked up something without looking and threw it at me.

It hit my leg and dropped to the ground, and I stared at it and yelled, "Gross!" Well, my cousin came over and looked at the object and realized that what he had thrown at me was a tiny bird. He just started freaking out and crying. I tried to convince him that it was already dead, because no live bird would let itself be picked up. But he was sure that he had killed the little bird, and he just kept crying for a while.

What else can I say about my cousin? I can't really describe him in any way that will let you understand him better. So I won't say any more. Though there was the birthmark. But nobody noticed that when he was fully dressed, so I won't mention it.

I suppose I should tell you that for all of Bradbury's great qualities, and for all of his shortcomings - the number of which equaled that of their better opposites - Bradbury was just a kid. And most of the time carefree. And that is how I prefer to remember him.

Oh, and Bradbury really liked lime sorbet.

The first time I saw Bradbury's dad I was in awe. Over six feet tall, imposing and brusque. That day, I had gone over to Bradbury's house after his summer school class. I went inside the little hovel, a small rented half-duplex with lead-paint walls and drooping wallpaper. Bradbury led me into his bedroom, an enclosed winterized porch, and dropped his backpack onto his bed. The room had windows all around. It sometimes got cold in the winter, though the small electric heater kept things barely tolerable.

Bradbury stood silently - that overarching silence that overcame him from time to time - and looked out into the small backyard.

"What's up?" I asked.

He shrugged, sat on his bed, and made a brief forced smile.

"Are you going to tell me?"

"Okay," he said, and he got up and peeked out of his room. He came close to me, and in a small lowered voice said, "I'm scared sometimes."

"Of what?"

He didn't speak, but he turned his arm toward me so that I could see what looked like an old scar.

Then after a few seconds Bradbury said, "Never mind." He went back to his bed and looked out the window. "Let's go out and play or something."

"Okay," I said with excitement, in some sense oblivious about what Bradbury had been trying to tell me.

We went out into the springtime urban wilderness, and embarked upon one of our grand adventures. We ran down the street, galloping along with our childish energy, and reveling in our enjoyment.

We came across a thicket in an overgrown area between the apartment buildings in the St. James Town project. We crawled through the dense thicket and discovered a small clearing about five-feet around. It was littered with beer bottles, condoms, and other spent things. But it offered us a hideout where we could spy upon passers-by without being seen.

Bradbury broke the branches off of a dead bush. He trimmed the bush down until all that was left was a single thick trunk with a forked branch at the top. I realized its purpose as soon as he had finished his work: a slingshot. A miraculous slingshot to rain down dirt-bombs on unsuspecting aliens!

Such a beautiful sight - our wondrous balls of dirt tracing out an arc across the sky. It was a glorious triumph for us kids, us poor kids hunched in our green thicket bunker, making assaults against the world and its obscenities.

We repeatedly startled those innocent pedestrians; pelting them and their children with divine dirt-bomb punishment. Boy was it fun! But one day, during our act of heavenly corporal correction, we were brought up against the most troublesome of obstacles. One of the neighbourhood kids, actually one of the neighbourhood bullies, fell victim to our ballistic attack. He was smart and quick, and he deduced the source of the dirt-bomb by looking at the direction of the impact scar on the sidewalk. He looked straight in our direction and headed toward us.

"I know you're in there!" he yelled into the thicket. "I'm gonna get you!" He circled around the shrubbery, looking for a way in. We huddled down as low as we could, hoping to blend in among the broken bottles and refuse. As we cowered in fear he burst into the clearing, and said in a terrible voice, "Get out of here now!"

Bradbury and I wriggled out into the open, where the bully grabbed us both.

"I'm gonna put a beating on you!" he said.

I don't know how, but the two of us managed to struggle free from his grasp. We ran as fast as we could. We didn't stop until we were absolutely sure that we weren't followed.

We had run ourselves into a secluded "urban park" nestled between three of the buildings. It was a labyrinthine complex that wrapped its way around and amongst the buildings. It was speckled by a multitude of shallow reflecting pools, park benches, and stunted, manicured trees. We walked about, and felt the nervous eyes of tenants peering at us as they hastily entered the locked doors to their apartment lobbies, or scurried into the health club, or jogged on the private running track.

The two of us explored this maze while keeping watch for bullies and drunks, in case either should grab a hold of us. We came across a gap in the wall between two of the buildings. There was a chain link fence covering the gap, and in front of this fence there was a thirty-foot drop to the pavement below. We decided it would be fun to go from one building to the other by climbing the fence. Bradbury went first. He grasped the fence, and shoved the tips of his shoes into the holes in the fence. He carefully moved sideways along the fence, out over the precipice, and then finally up the fence and over to the ground on the other side.

I was always afraid of heights, but I couldn't let Bradbury go it alone. So I grabbed the fence with my hands and my shoe-tips. My fingers closed tightly around the links in the fence. I shimmied slowly sideways. I looked down as I came over the precipice. It was a straight drop down the side of the building. There was nothing but the concrete below to cushion me. I ignored the fear in the pit of my stomach, and I climbed up the fence, one hand over the other. I dropped over the other side to meet Bradbury.

"Took you long enough," he said quietly. He pointed to his left, and there behind a window was the living room of a random apartment. "Let's get out of here," he said. As we began to walk toward a second fence, we heard a deep voice bellow behind us.

"Hey kids!" said a huge bearish beer-bellied man. "What are you doing here! If you don't get out of here now you're in big trouble!"

Bradbury and I ran to the other fence and started climbing. Bradbury was faster and he made it over quickly. But I was slower, and I felt the hand of the man tugging at the back of my shirt. He didn't get a good grip though, so I slipped over the fence with a torn shirt.

The beer-bellied man screamed some assorted obscenities at us as we ran. "If you obscenities kids ever obscenities come back here you're obscenities dead!" Then he yelled something about stealing his beer, but we were too far away to be sure what he was yelling.

I went straight home and left Bradbury to his own self. I was wracked with fear for the rest of the day, convinced that this man would track me down and beat me into the ground. I just wanted to hide, and so I ran right into my bed and cowered there under the covers for what seemed like eternity.

I want to talk about several of the other awesome adventures we went on. But first I need to tell you some details about Bradbury's family. There was his father, who was home most of the time, and his mother (she was my mom's sister, not that they ever talked) who was away most of the time. I don't know where she went, but when she did come home, Bradbury's father tended to be absent, so far as I could tell.

Bradbury's father was what I would now call a blowhard, but back then I just called him scary. He had a scar across his right eyebrow that he had gotten while doing construction. It turned red and swollen from time to time. When he raised his eyebrows the scar changed shape, and sort of migrated across his forehead.

He was prone to heavy drinking. At least that's how it appeared with all the beer-bottle cases stacked on the front porch. I don't know if they were the same cases always sitting there. Maybe they were thrown out every week and the newly drunk bottles were put in the same place. Well there was a chair on the front porch, beside the beer bottles. An old chair with all the upholstery rotted away so that the wood frame was the only thing left to sit on. Often times I'd see Bradbury's dad sitting there, relaxing and watching the neighbourhood go by, always with a bottle of beer in his hand. Was it always the same bottle in his hand? Likely not, although that's what I believed when I was younger.

On those rare occasions when I'd arrive to find that chair empty, I knew I'd probably see Bradbury's mother inside. And I'd find her in the pantry, sorting the food, throwing out old grains that had got moths in them, dusting the shelves, and generally making herself busy. On nicer days she'd be sweeping the sidewalk and the porch. She'd sweep in a slow, feline manner, usually while wearing an apron over a low-cut blouse, with heels and Daisy Duke shorts. Bradbury's father was nowhere to be found on those days.

When I'd visit those times that Bradbury's father was there, I'd be greeted briefly with a glance and a nod, after which he would return to concentrating on the neighbourhood going by. Bradbury's mother was friendlier. As I recall, she'd say 'Hello' with a coy smile, and would send me on my way to Bradbury's room with an appropriate mom-like pat on the butt.

One night the entire family was in attendance for dinner. It was one of the only times that I'd ever seen them all at the same time. There was Bradbury, his dad, and his mom. All three in one room, and at one table. I was seated opposite Bradbury, on the long side of the table, and his mother and father were seated at the opposing ends. It was almost like we were waiting for a boxing match bell to ring.

"Thanks for coming to our party," his mother said.

"It's our seventh wedding anniversary you know," his dad said. Bradbury was how old back then, eleven?

I smiled politely, kept my arithmetic to myself, and said the only thing that I could think of: "Cool."

"See, even the kid doesn't think it's such a great thing," Bradbury's father said. His mother gave his father a mean look, which kept him quiet for the moment.

"So how are you? Doing okay in school?" she asked me.

"Okay I guess. It's boring though."

"Well that's nice," she commented absently. "How are your grades?"

"Bs and Cs mostly," I answered.

"Well that's good. Pass the gravy, will you?"

I passed the gravy. She took it from me by placing her fingers over my hand, and said, "Thank you."

Silence ensued for an immeasurably long time. I would guess that the situation was tense, though I don't really know why. Finally, as the sound of forks and chewing grew so loud as to fill the room and threatened to burst the walls with their volume, Bradbury asked, "Pass the potatoes?"

"You should be old enough to know how to use proper manners," Bradbury's dad said.

Bradbury was about to apologize and correct himself, when his mother intervened, possibly on his behalf, by saying, "You should be one to talk about manners."

Well, the bell rang and the match was on: the two opposing forces grew in anger and they started yelling all sorts of profanities at each other. This all escalated rather quickly. But instead of punches thrown there were smashed plates of mashed potatoes and gravy. Instead of a referee and coaches there were the ears of corn-on-the-cob. And instead of spectators there was Bradbury and me. We sat there waiting for the bell to be pulled and the round declared over.

I didn't have dinner again with both parents together in the same room until several years later. After that, there would be Bradbury's dad, or Bradbury's mom. There would be mashed potatoes and gravy with beer, or corn-on-the-cob with wine, but not both. They were really a trial and a tribulation to be avoided, and sadly I think Bradbury thought so too.

I'd like to talk more about the meaning of "Bradbury." Or, maybe I should say the plural, meanings. No multiple personality disorder, but multiple understandings.

He was like a demigod to me because sometimes I could comprehend certain aspects of him, and other times I couldn't see those aspects. And at those times, some previously unknown elements would appear from nowhere. Things would be clear while other things became obscured. Such was the mystery of Bradbury.

One of those times occurred when we were sitting in that little clearing amongst the bushes, hiding from the world behind our palisade walls. We were sitting there quietly, and happily, when he said, "Sometimes I think that we're all dead."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I think we're all dead here in the city."

"Uhh, what?" I asked. I was confused.

"The Don River is dead," he commented casually. "The river gets more and more dead as it gets closer to the city."

"It's the pollution, you know," I said wisely.

"Yeah, I think we're polluted too."

"I guess so."

"That's why summer camp feels so good, because it's like we're alive for a bit."

"But I feel alive now," I protested.

"You know you wouldn't be able to tell if you were dead."

"Yes I could," I said.

"How would you tell?" he asked.

"Because I couldn't move and stuff."

"But how would you know you're dead if you can't think or do anything if you're dead?"

"I don't know."

"So I think we could be dead and not even know it, because we wouldn't be able to think to check if we're alive. So we could think we're alive even if we're not."

I was so confused and depressed that I couldn't even say anything. I just sat there staring at the broken bottles and the used condoms scattered on the ground.

"Do you want to see my birthmark?" he asked.

"Okay," I said.

He stood up in the middle of the clearing, slowly dropped his pants, and showed me his birthmark. It really cheered me up, and we spent the rest of the day frolicking carefree in our palisade.