“No thanks.” Rudy prodded it cautiously with his foot, as if it were a dead animal. Or an animal that might be dead.
As he walked home, Liesel picked the ball up and placed it under her arm. She could hear him call out, “Hey, Saumensch.” She waited. “Saumensch!”
She relented. “What?”
“I’ve got a bike without wheels here, too, if you want it.”
“Stick your bike.”
From her position on the street, the last thing she heard was the laughter of that Saukerl, Rudy Steiner.
Inside, she made her way to the bedroom. She took the ball in to Max and placed it at the end of the bed.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “it’s not much. But when you wake up, I’ll tell you all about it. I’ll tell you it was the grayest afternoon you can imagine, and this car without its lights on ran straight over the ball. Then the man got out and yelled at us. And then he asked for directions. The nerve of him …”
Wake up! she wanted to scream.
Or shake him.
She didn’t.
All Liesel could do was watch the ball and its trampled, flaking skin. It was the first gift of many.
PRESENTS #2-#5
One ribbon, one pinecone.
One button, one stone.
The soccer ball had given her an idea.
Whenever she walked to and from school now, Liesel was on the lookout for discarded items that might be valuable to a dying man. She wondered at first why it mattered so much. How could something so seemingly insignificant give comfort to someone? A ribbon in a gutter. A pinecone on the street. A button leaning casually against a classroom wall. Aflat round stone from the river. If nothing else, it showed that she cared, and it might give them something to talk about when Max woke up.
When she was alone, she would conduct those conversations.
“So what’s all this?” Max would say. “What’s all this junk?”
“Junk?” In her mind, she was sitting on the side of the bed. “This isn’t junk, Max. These are what made you wake up.”
PRESENTS #6-#9
One feather, two newspapers.
A candy wrapper. A cloud.
The feather was lovely and trapped, in the door hinges of the church on Munich Street. It poked itself crookedly out and Liesel hurried over to rescue it. The fibers were combed flat on the left, but the right side was made of delicate edges and sections of jagged triangles. There was no other way of describing it.
The newspapers came from the cold depths of a garbage can (enough said), and the candy wrapper was flat and faded. She found it near the school and held it up to the light. It contained a collage of shoe prints.
Then the cloud.
How do you give someone a piece of sky?
Late in February, she stood on Munich Street and watched a single giant cloud come over the hills like a white monster. It climbed the mountains. The sun was eclipsed, and in its place, a white beast with a gray heart watched the town.
“Would you look at that?” she said to Papa.
Hans cocked his head and stated what he felt was the obvious. “You should give it to Max, Liesel. See if you can leave it on the bedside table, like all the other things.”