Wildlife
Wildlife
By Jim Waltzer
The tract of parkland with its restful brook and sheltering elm trees was little more than a mile from the tenements where Eddie lived and the public school that he attended, the latter a two-story block of concrete that looked like a cross between a bank and a prison. Most kids could leisurely walk the distance in fifteen minutes or run it in less than half that time, accelerating on the downhill gradient of the final quarter-mile. But Eddie was not most kids. His halting, shuffling gait added another ten minutes to the journey but did nothing to dampen his determination to make it. Once he reached the greenery, he felt rewarded by his effort. Boys’ voices echoed in the clearing within the garland of trees, as creek water rushing over immovable rocks spoke its own language.
The baseball field was the hollow itself, adapted for play because its dimensions accommodated a designated infield and outfield. Folded shirts or jackets denoted the bases, and the tree line formed a near-perfect outfield boundary. Each contest survived on splintered bats, a dozen threadbare gloves no bigger than hotcakes, a busted catcher’s mask, and balls fortified by black electrical tape. Some bats had been secured by nails. A ball hit into the woods on the fly was a home run and, to preserve the paltry inventory, a premium was placed on its retrieval. Bounded on all sides by harsh urban density, this unlikely pastoral patch provided a contained habitat for wildlife whose unexpected appearances startled first-time visitors. Deer skirted or loped through the boys’ playing field, their speed and eloquence prompting stares of admiration and wonder. Beavers dammed narrow stretches of the brook, powerful orange teeth gnawing, busy paws dredging. Maniacal squirrels clambered up and down trees, snatched seeds and other nutrients from the soil, and chewed with fastidious rapidity. A regal red fox appeared in daylight and signaled its retreat with a piercing squeal that could shiver the baseball boys, dissolving their pretensions of manliness.
Eddie was especially attentive to the birds that inhabited the park and knew some of them by sight or sound. Kestrels, rust-colored and black-spotted, flew from cover, hovered, and scanned for prey below. Blue jays glided like propelled swatches of sky. Songbirds trilled their plaintive calls. They were elegance in flight and bearing, so different from the pigeons cooped on the tenement roof. But Eddie admired pigeons, too, their stoutness and hard-flapping wings. The day would come, he believed, when he would sneak up onto that roof and release them.
On the day that Eddie decided he’d try to play baseball rather than just watch, he walked the mile to the park faster than he ever had, challenging the limitations of his balky body. Two boys, older than him by several years, tossed a scuffed ball back and forth in the middle of the field as they waited for others to arrive. Eddie kept his distance and walked to a stand of trees, making his way over the scrub and past low-hanging branches until he reached the foot of the creek bed gone dry for several yards before the stream appeared, washing weakly over parched earth. Soon, however, the waters deepened and broadened, plashed and rippled, as he moved with surprising assurance over the uneven terrain. Quartz crystal glittered in shafts of sunlight. Elms interlaced their branches as they reached upward, as if competing for bounty from heaven. Sparrows, darting about the trees but mostly unseen, chittered their sweetness accompanied by the woodpeckers’ staccato. Eddie tramped ahead in his hard-soled shoes into the dreamlike serenity.
He sat on a large rock that jutted from the brook and rose to a height of two feet. He bowed his head, leaned forward slightly, and pressed his hands against his blue jeans at the knees, taking a deep breath and holding that position for quite some time before straightening as much as it was possible for him to do so. When he stood, he battled the hunch in his back like it was something alien that had landed there and had to be cast off. The mound receded but it would be back. There was no getting rid of it.
Ready now, Eddie walked back to the clearing, his expression as resolute as his gait was disjointed. The ballplayers’ numbers had multiplied. He closed to within a few feet of two boys facing the field, their backs to him, one of them cocking a bat and taking short practice swings.
“Can I get in the game?”
The one without the bat turned toward Eddie, looked down at him, heavy-lidded, and tossed out a smile devoid of friendliness and two teeth in the top row. He smelled unwashed. Eddie was quick to pick up on that, as his mother made sure to have extra cakes of soap on hand and insisted that her boy keep clean.
“Come back when you grow up,” the gap-toothed boy said and promptly moved away as if Eddie were something contagious. The other boy, less noxious but no less inhospitable, ignored him altogether, took two more practice swings, flipped the bat aside, and walked toward a group of newcomers arriving at the far end of the clearing. Eddie picked up the bat and ran his hand over the barrel, feeling its chinks and roughness. He gripped the handle with both hands, cocked the bat, and eased his body into what he believed was a suitable batting stance. He swung the bat nice and easy and as level as he could. It didn’t seem too heavy for him, as, apart from his deformity, he was a sturdy little guy whose hands and wrists and forearms had been strengthened as he compensated for deficiencies in the rest of his body. He took a second swing and then a third, increasing the velocity. He knew the game of baseball, knew it well, innately, but he had never before swung a baseball bat, though he’d mimicked the motion with broom handles and yardsticks and the like. The feel was very different with an actual bat, as the weight of the barrel whipped past you just above your center of gravity. The sensation made Eddie feel powerful. He thought that he just might have the makings of a good hitter. Crouching in his batter’s posture, he felt the hump in his back smooth out and virtually disappear.
“I can play this game,” he said to himself, as sure of his words as the beavers were of their fortifications. For him there was something magical in the moment. He had slipped into some private pocket within the hollow, even as more adolescent voices crowded the air.
Two things happening within a split-second of each other, like an infielder’s scorching throw snatched by the first-baseman a fraction ahead of the streaking runner, jarred Eddie from his cocoon. A surly, shaggy youth came up from behind him and ripped the bat from his hands and, as Eddie struggled for an instant to stay upright, someone close-by said in a relaxed but authoritative way, “Give it back, Hirsch.”
When Eddie had reclaimed his balance, his eyes locked not onto the boy who had issued the command, but the much smaller girl next to him. She wore pants, a linen shirt too large for her, and a baseball cap from beneath which spilled her dark brown hair. She looked at Eddie curiously and he returned the expression.
“We don’t got time for this freak,” said Hirsch with a well-practiced sneer, flicking strands of unkempt hair. He rested the bat on his shoulder, striking a pose. “Fuckin’ pest.”
“You know him?”
“I ain’t never seen ‘im before.”
“Then how do you know he’s a pest?”
“He ain’t gonna play, Becker⎯look at him. I wanna take some cuts. You mind?”
“You can wait a minute. Give him back the bat.”
Becker, his wide-leg trousers fluttered by a stiff breeze, was impassive as he waited for compliance. The girl at his side looked up at him with admiration that was more mature than childlike. Finally, Hirsch parted his lips to release a breath of contempt and thrust the bat at Eddie, who was on-alert to react to any hostile movement. He gripped the bat and found no resistance in taking it.
“Take a few more practice swings and then we’ll need it back ‘cause we’re about to start a game,” Becker said to him.
“Can I play?”
“Yeah, right,” Hirsch said, adding a new layer of derision.
But Becker smiled at the little hunchback’s enthusiasm. “We’ll see.” He looked at Hirsch and said, “Let’s get sides.”
Hirsch launched a parting smirk. “Just ignore him,” Becker said. As the two of them moved away, Eddie approached the girl. He guessed that she was a year or two older than him, maybe 10. “You playin?” he asked her.
“I better.”
“You his sister?”
When she responded with a smile, the landscape of her face changed. “Close,” she said. “He lives next-door.”
“Oh.” Eddie’s well-worn shoe pawed the splotchy grass. “Are you good? I mean, can you hit?”
“I can hit and I can field. You’ll see. I’ve played here before. The only girl so far.”
Eddie looked around. All the others, older boys, clustered on what served as the outfield grass, as they split into two teams. “Haven’t seen you before,” he said. “I been down here a couple times. Ain’t played yet.”
They stared at each other for a moment. “Well maybe this is your day,” she said.
The others’ voices drawing nearer signaled that action would be starting soon. Eddie looked up and saw Becker approaching. “We’re in the field first, Gin,” he said to the girl, handing her a glove that looked like it had been fetched from an ashcan. She tugged her cap an inch downward over her forehead and jogged like a seasoned ballplayer toward her position at second base. Becker turned to him.
“You’re in right field.”
Eddie felt something ripple inside of him, a little kick of joy like Christmas morning, when there was always a gift wrapped and ready, no matter how meager. “Is it your team?” he stammered.
“Matter of fact, it is. When a lefty comes up, you switch places with the left fielder. Got it?”
Eddie knew the calculation behind the positioning, but he would take what he could get. Anyway, he figured he’d be able to show more with a bat in his hands than in the field. He wondered if Becker had told the other boys that he would be in the game. The crosscurrent of thoughts rooted him to the ground for several seconds before Becker, now halfway to a balled-up undershirt that marked the pitcher’s mound, glanced back and waved him forward. Eddie followed him through the infield, doing his best to present a gait that was close to normal. He passed dark-haired Ginny, who was testing the lumpy ground between first and second base, then he broke into his best approximation of a jog to take him to right field. A handful of seconds later, he stopped and turned around. To his right, he saw none other than tormentor Hirsch in centerfield and could tell that the scruffy bully was resentful at sharing the same turf with him.
He looked in and watched Becker making practice tosses to his catcher, who was wearing the lone mask available as he crouched behind a dingy bath towel folded into a square. As Becker increased the speed of his pitches, Eddie noticed that his motion didn’t have much of a kick, the lead leg staying locked at the knee and simply sweeping across, low to the ground. But the arm action that followed was explosive, propelled by the back leg’s thrust and shoulder rotation that produced a follow-through that threatened to knock him off-balance but didn’t succeed in doing so. Eddie smiled as he studied the pitching dynamics. He had an instinctive grasp of bodies in motion.
Before Becker threw his first pitch against a live batter, Eddie heard a loud chirping directly overhead and looked up to see a bird flitting in a tight spiral⎯a small gray songbird with a yellow breast. He sensed that it was not in distress but . . . but . . . trying to get his attention? Rooting for him? He smiled so broadly that he thought his lips might crack, but the smile vanished as Hirsch stood over him, blocking out the sun.
“Watch this, punk.”
Before Eddie could even grasp what was happening, Hirsch aimed a small wooden slingshot skyward, the bands convulsed, the pouch hailed BBs, and the bird fell deadweight to the ground. Eddie wanted to cry but didn’t dare.
“Take it home and give it to your mama to cook for dinner.”
Hirsch sneered and trotted back to centerfield, as Eddie gently cupped the dead bird, feeling the softness of its feathers, and walked it off the field and into the underbrush. No one paid attention. By the time he made it back onto the field, Becker already had delivered the first pitch of the game. Eddie bent his knees to get set for the next pitch. He had been given no fielder’s glove.
The batter let Becker’s first three pitches pass before hitting a weak ground ball that Ginny fielded and threw to first in plenty of time. Two new visitors arrived at the perimeter of the playing field and, though it was the farthest thing from their intentions, disrupted the game as surely as if a sudden downpour had let loose. A fawn, its brownish coat speckled with white spots, had appeared at the edge of the clearing by the trees that marked the outfield boundary in left-center. It proceeded tentatively on rickety legs over the brush, its fragile frame and large gentle eyes the picture of docility. Its mother, partially shielded by drooping tree branches, was not far behind.
Centerfielder Hirsch was the first to notice the deer. When he saw the fawn just as he prepared to go into his crouch in anticipation of Becker’s next pitch, he yelled, “Hold it,” loud enough for everyone to hear. Then he reached down and plucked a stone hiding in the tall turf and fired it at the fawn that was staring at its little cloven front hooves as it stepped gingerly at the fringe. Hirsch had a strong throwing arm that could easily reach the baby deer, which was about a hundred feet away, but the blackened irregular stone hit the ground and skipped into the woods, stirring up some twigs. The fawn reacted with consternation, shaking and trying to scramble on its unsteady limbs. At this moment, the doe came into full view and nudged its baby forward. Undeterred, frustrated by his inaccuracy, Hirsch snagged another stone from the outfield grass and chucked it at the mama deer, whose coat was grayish brown. She, of course, had provided a much larger target for the eager outfielder, and the stone found its mark but not in the most vulnerable of spots, hitting the rear of her trunk.
The left fielder, a heavyset boy about 12, looked over at Hirsch, who had maintained his follow-through posture for several additional seconds after his thrown stone had struck. “Leave ‘em alone, jackass. They’re not botherin’ anything.” Hirsch dropped his arm, reddened in anger and, for an instant, thought he’d grab a third stone and brain this kid who’d dared to mouth off to him. On the pitcher’s mound, Becker stood with hands on hips and glared out at him. From her infield position, Ginny tried to match her pitcher’s fierce expression. The deer disappeared back into the woods, the doe sheltering the little one.
From right field, Eddie had seen the sequence. While neither deer had been hurt, the baby could have been killed, he believed, had Hirsch’s stone struck its head at top speed. A cruel attack on gentle, innocent creatures touched a nerve in Eddie. He wished that he had special powers to transform the doe into a lion or tiger to rush its assailant and devour him. He stood there and waited for Becker to reprimand Hirsch as he had before, to make him feel small, but Becker turned around after a few seconds to resume the game. Hirsch pounded his mitt once, ready for action. Eddie’s eyes moistened and rimmed red at the thought of the damage the baby deer had escaped.
Becker’s first pitch to the second batter sailed high. Since there was no umpire, the boys had set ground rules restricting each at-bat to one swing-and-a-miss, two fouls, or a ball hit into fair territory. There was no limit on the number of pitches the batter could let pass without swinging, though extreme reluctance to swing would trigger such withering condemnation that the hitter would swing at the next offering even if it were a foot over his head.
And now, as Becker set himself to deliver his second pitch, another stone was airborne in the outfield, this one a thin smooth oval that fit perfectly onto a small boy’s hand and had become a projectile speeding toward a human skull. Eddie watched it with a certain detachment, admiring the incongruous strength and accuracy of his throwing arm, thinking how surprised everyone would be if the game provided him a chance to throw an actual baseball, then panicking when he realized that the stone might very well find its mark, even though that was his intention.
The stone indeed was true, stopped only by the side of Hirsch’s forehead. He went down like a shot deer, not a sound escaping his throat. Eddie felt a kind of terror as he gazed at the crumpled body looking like a small pile of spilled laundry. The left fielder had not yet noticed his fallen teammate and was primed for Becker’s next pitch, which the batter beat into the ground at his feet. Players awaiting their turns at-bat moved across the infield like a wave of invaders, and the fielders quickly followed. Ginny and Becker each held back for a moment, as their eyes veered from the fallen Hirsch to right-fielder Eddie, whose expression could not hide his guilt. He finally scrambled to Hirsch, who lay on his side. Was he dead? Eddie thought about jail or wherever it was that they sent children who commit murder⎯it would kill his mother. He saw the older boys advancing toward him and was ready to take his punishment, no matter how severe. They might give him a terrible beating, but he expected that Becker would not allow that.
When Ginny elbowed her way past several of the boys to reach Eddie, her eyes told him she was worried but that he’d be all right. Then she stood aside and waited for Becker to take charge. But it was Eddie who moved first, crouching by Hirsch, placing a hand on his shoulder, and shaking him lightly. Hirsch’s eyes popped open and he shuddered as if awakened from a deep sleep in a cold room. When Eddie stood, Becker loomed right in front of him.
“He’s all right,” Eddie said.
“You a doctor?” Becker’s tight expression could not conceal a trace of anger. The other boys had drawn close, two deep, expectant and restless. Ginny looked up earnestly at Becker and his nod was almost imperceptible. She knelt by Hirsch, moved the back of her hand lightly over his cheek and forehead, and leaned over farther to whisper something into his ear. He arched his neck as if trying to chase a kink, placed both hands palms down on the ground, shifted from lying on his side to his back, lay there like that a few seconds, and then pushed hard off the ground to raise his torso and scoot his backside backward by several inches so that he was now sitting up, legs stretched out before him, eyes straight ahead and focused on nothing in particular. Ginny stood and stepped back. Eddie and the others stared at her.
“What happened?” Hirsch said. Now he looked up and from side to side.
“You got hit,” one of the boys called out.
“Hit?”
“By a rock or something,” said another one.
Hirsch reached up with his left hand and rubbed his temple for a moment. “I didn’t get hit by no rock.”
“Is it sore there?” said Ginny, edging forward.
“A little.”
“It was a stone,” said a third boy.
“It fall outa the sky?” said Hirsch caustically. There was menace in his voice and on his face. He stood without difficulty and looked about him. He realized from which direction he’d been struck and fixed his eyes on Eddie, who had backed away by a couple of steps.
“You little freak.”
Hirsch lunged but Ginny shot her leg out, tripping him and pitching him facedown to the ground once more. At first, Becker didn’t move except for the corners of his mouth arranging a little smile. The others held back their giggles. Eddie stood his ground.
“How do you like it when you get a taste of your own medicine?”
He gasped as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just said. The beefy left fielder grinned. Hirsch half-rose and surged toward Eddie with the explosiveness of a runner at the start of a footrace, easily knocking him over with shoulder-to-shoulder impact. As he was about to stomp the small boy, Becker bumped him off the mark. Enraged, Hirsch charged Becker, meaning to tackle and pound him senseless, but in doing so left himself wide open. Cool and efficient, Becker met him with a slicing, downward, right-hand punch that landed high on the cheek just below one eye, a punch of such force and timing and location that it seemed to short-circuit Hirsch, embarrassingly dropping him once again, this time on his backside. He sat there for a few seconds, bewildered. When he rose, his legs wobbled. Becker stood unruffled and coiled just a few feet away. Hirsch glanced at Eddie, who was struggling to his feet, then back at Becker, both of them now on his future target list.
“You’re lucky I don’t have a gun,” he said quietly, his throat constricted.
“No, you’re lucky,” Ginny said shrilly.
Becker stepped next to her and stared at Hirsch in such a way that stated she was off-limits. Hirsch understood that Eddie was in the same category. Defanged, he turned away petulantly and stalked into the woods.
Eddie was sure that the deer had moved well away by this time. Becker directed the left fielder to move halfway between dead center and his original spot, then said “Let’s play ball” in an off-hand way and walked back toward the infield. The others, except for Ginny, followed, some of them grumbling in disappointment that no protracted brawl had taken place, like the ones they liked to watch in motion picture shows.
“He might try to kill you,” Ginny said softly, her voice deeper than her years, cutting through the rustling sounds of the woods.
Eddie stared at her. “That boy Hirsch?”
“He’s a coward but he’s dangerous.”
“Put some kid in the hospital.”
“He live near you or somethin’?”
“He’s the one who’s my brother.”
Eddie’s mouth fell open a little. “You some kind o’ healer?”
“I got a knack. Where do you live?”
“Bedford.”
“Bedford and what?”
“Huh?”
“The closest street that cuts across.”
Eddie scratched his head. “I don’t exactly know. I just know where it is. It’s near the school.”
“Which one?”
“One thirty-five.”
“I know it. He could hunt you and find you if he wants.”
“He’s not a very good deer hunter.”
“Let’s go, Ginny,” Becker hollered from the infield. She turned and trotted back to her position at second base. During the next two innings, before the rains came, four of the six batters facing Becker swung and missed for an out; the other two hit weak grounders and were thrown out at first base. Playing right field for every opposing batter except one that hit left-handed, Eddie had no chances to catch a fly ball or make a throw to the infield to cut down a base runner. Neither did the other outfielder. They didn’t miss the presence of Hirsch one bit.
In the bottom half of the first, Becker cracked a double to drive home a run and then scored on a single. With two outs on her team’s next at-bat, Ginny worked the bat like a slip knot, sliding her top hand up the barrel and bunting the pitched ball toward the third-base side, where it died in the grass while she scampered safely to first base. Eddie, tense in anticipation of his first at-bat, watched in amazement.
“Way to go, Gin,” Becker hollered. “That, gentlemen, is how you lay down a bunt.”
Eddie managed only two dribbling fouls when he batted, but at least he hadn’t missed the ball altogether. His at-bat was the last of the day, for the sun already had retreated behind racing dark-gray clouds, and now swirling winds invaded the clearing and plump raindrops signaled the start of a downpour. Everyone scrambled to gather the gloves, bats, balls and catcher’s mask, whose preservation was critical to future games.
As the rainstorm sent them fleeing through the woods back toward the concrete city, Hirsch lay in wait atop the crag of an incongruously large boulder. He clutched a smooth egg-shaped rock in the palm of his right hand. He had been there, fuming, for quite some time. He had hoped that Eddie would have been kicked out of the game right away⎯after all, the little freak had started it⎯making him an easy target coming out of the woods on the natural path that led past this prehistoric rock, a perfect vantage point for surveillance and attack. Now, even as the sudden rain pelted Hirsch and he heard the cries and tramping headed his way, he determined to hold his position and pick Eddie out of the onrushing crowd. It would not be a cinch, but he figured that they⎯Eddie especially⎯would be moving sluggishly enough to allow him to take careful aim and let fly. The impulse was stronger than any fear he may have had of retaliation by Becker; he would save him for another time. And so he crouched in the heavy rain, inflamed by the prospect of denting the little bastard’s head with the weighty stone he held in his hand. Now he stood at the precipice some 15 feet off the ground, his knees only slightly bent, eyes narrowed and blinking back the rain. The sounds of flight drew closer. He expected that Eddie could very well be the laggard, pulling up the rear all by himself. Wouldn’t that be perfect? Of course, Hirsch had an escape route planned⎯he wasn’t so brazen as to be stupid. He would slide down the other side of the massive rock, the sloping side, and onto a lesser trail that led out of the woods. He just had to strike quickly and disappear without being seen.
He flattened himself against the overhang, which jutted out at a slight upward angle. When he stealthily raised his head a couple of inches, it was like peeping over a mountaintop. The first of them came into view. The greasy wop who lived right below him and the kid with the frozen face and the Big Mouth who couldn’t keep it shut. The fat fuck who was playing left field and had the balls to call him a jackass. The others behind at close quarters. Becker himself. They were approaching, trampling through the brush, merry but anxious voices getting louder. No midget-hunchback yet. Hirsch also had an eye out for his goddamn little sister. He expected she would lay back to help, a motherly type like all stupid women.
The first few dashed below him, and then more of them, jostling each other, each frantic step taking them closer to shelter, though they were already soaked, so why bother to hurry? He sniffed contemptuously. When you jump in the public pool on those hot-as-hell summer days, don’t you get wet all over in an instant?
He squinted at the sky, where someone evidently was working the spigot. The rain suddenly had diminished and then there they were, the last two of the brigade, Virginia and the dwarf, as anticipated. Hirsch reared, feeling steady despite the slick surface of the outcrop. He had primed himself for this moment, the whiplash of his right arm. It would be over in a second or two.
When he cocked his arm, the abrupt movement affected his balance and he knew instinctively that his aim was no longer true, so he reset himself on the rock, bending his knees more, and they were now directly below him but moving relentlessly forward. How did that little, twisted thing hit him with that stone, how did he manage to do it from such a distance in the outfield? As this thought froze Hirsch for just a second, Eddie moved past him, still well within range but at a changed angle and, in the realization, Hirsch forgot himself, forgot the conditions, and pivoted too quickly for the precarious footing. His body jackknifed backward and then pitched forward violently, and if any of them below had turned back to watch him, it would have appeared that he intentionally dove off the ledge headlong onto the rockbound earth.
Eddie hadn’t seen or even heard the demise of his adversary, the boy he had tried to maim by his own hand. He had advanced only a few yards past the giant rock at the moment Hirsch lost his footing, but the rain plopping the brim of his cap and unseen animals springing through the thickets had masked the sound of the fallen body. Hirsch had not cried out. Entranced by the girl at his side, Eddie nonetheless did not need her or anyone else to help him negotiate his way through the storm. He knew exactly where he was going and, physically, he was up to the task. Nor did Ginny feel that she was escorting a gimpy little boy from danger, but simply saw him as a new friend of sorts. She was secretly thrilled that he had knocked out her brother with a perfectly thrown stone like David and that giant in the Bible story recited at school.
They made their way out of the woods and back to the swarming city, steam rising from sidewalks clotted with peddlers’ carts, streets with horse-drawn wagons, all moving freely now that the storm had abated. The smell of manure rose from the macadam. The sun scattered the remnant of clouds and reclaimed the landscape, polishing surfaces and turning gray buildings tan. The last two refugees from the storm, the youngest baseball players in action at the hollow this day, walked together to a point where their directions necessarily diverged for each of them to get home. Across the street, Becker waited for Ginny.
When they’d gone, Eddie stood alone on the corner and saw a bird⎯he couldn’t tell what type⎯fly out of a tree and toward the rooftops of the buildings. He watched it soar, graceful and unhurried. He thought of other birds fluttering above the grim confines of the tenement courtyard, and of the survivors at the park, the way they zipped from tree to tree and climbed freely into the milky sky. A huge smile lifted his whole face as if he, too, might take wing. He stood there transfixed. Straighter than he ever had in his life.
“Wildlife” won second place for the Sidd Finch Fiction Prize.
Jim Waltzer is a Philadelphia-based freelance writer. “Wildlife” is his fourth short story to appear in a literary magazine, including two in Aethlon: The Journal of Sports Literature. He is the author of The Battle of the Century (Praeger, 2011), a behind-the-scenes look at the 1921 Dempsey-Carpentier heavyweight title fight. His novel, the mystery Of Sound Mind (Medallion), was the runner-up in the 2016 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards.
Michael C. Paul is an illustrator, writer, and historian. He grew up outside of Kansas City, has moved around a bit over the years working as a history professor, illustrator, and occasionally an editorial cartoonist, and now lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and daughter. For more, visit https://mikepaulart.com or @MikePaulArt.
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