Rudy considered it. “Fair enough,” and they shook on it.
All was dark-skied and hazy, and small chips of rain were starting to fall.
The track was muddier than it looked.
Both competitors were set.
Rudy threw a rock in the air as the starting pistol. When it hit the ground, they could start running.
“I can’t even see the finish line,” Liesel complained.
“And I can?”
The rock wedged itself into the earth.
They ran next to each other, elbowing and trying to get in front. The slippery ground slurped at their feet and brought them down perhaps twenty meters from the end.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” yelped Rudy. “I’m covered in shit!”
“It’s not shit,” Liesel corrected him, “it’s mud,” although she had her doubts. They’d slid another five meters toward the finish. “Do we call it a draw, then?”
Rudy looked over, all sharp teeth and gangly blue eyes. Half his face was painted with mud. “If it’s a draw, do I still get my kiss?”
“Not in a million years.” Liesel stood up and flicked some mud off her jacket.
“I’ll get you out of goalie.”
“Stick your goalie.”
As they walked back to Himmel Street, Rudy forewarned her. “One day, Liesel,” he said, “you’ll be dying to kiss me.”
But Liesel knew.
She vowed.
As long as both she and Rudy Steiner lived, she would never kiss that miserable, filthy Saukerl, especially not this day. There were more important matters to attend to. She looked down at her suit of mud and stated the obvious.
“She’s going to kill me.”
She, of course, was Rosa Hubermann, also known as Mama, and she very nearly did kill her. The word Saumensch featured heavily in the administration of punishment. She made mincemeat out of her.
THE JESSE OWENS INCIDENT
As we both know, Liesel wasn’t on hand on Himmel Street when Rudy performed his act of childhood infamy. When she looked back, though, it felt like she’d actually been there. In her memory, she had somehow become a member of Rudy’s imaginary audience. Nobody else mentioned it, but Rudy certainly made up for that, so much that when Liesel came to recollect her story, the Jesse Owens incident was as much a part of it as everything she witnessed firsthand.
It was 1936. The Olympics. Hitler’s games.
Jesse Owens had just completed the 4 × 100m relay and won his fourth gold medal. Talk that he was subhuman because he was black and Hitler’s refusal to shake his hand were touted around the world. Even the most racist Germans were amazed with the efforts of Owens, and word of his feat slipped through the cracks. No one was more impressed than Rudy Steiner.
Everyone in his family was crowded together in their family room when he slipped out and made his way to the kitchen. He pulled some charcoal from the stove and gripped it in the smallness of his hands. “Now.” There was a smile. He was ready.
He smeared the charcoal on, nice and thick, till he was covered in black. Even his hair received a once-over.
In the window, the boy grinned almost maniacally at his reflection, and in his shorts and tank top, he quietly abducted his older brother’s bike and pedaled it up the street, heading for Hubert Oval. In one of his pockets, he’d hidden a few pieces of extra charcoal, in case some of it wore off later.
In Liesel’s mind, the moon was sewn into the sky that night. Clouds were stitched around it.
The rusty bike crumbled to a halt at the Hubert Oval fence line and Rudy climbed over. He landed on the other side and trotted weedily up toward the beginning of the hundred. Enthusiastically, he conducted an awkward regimen of stretches. He dug starting holes into the dirt.