Jesse Owens had just completed the 4 x 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.

It was 1936. The Olympics. Hitler's games.

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.

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.

In Liesel's mind, the moon was sewn into the sky that night. Clouds were stitched around it.

He smeared the charcoal on, nice and thick, till he was covered in black. Even his hair received a once-over.

Waiting for his moment, he paced around, gathering concentration under the darkness sky, with the moon and the clouds watching, tightly.

"Owens is looking good," he began to commentate. "This could be his greatest victory ever…"

He shook the imaginary hands of the other athletes and wished them luck, even though he knew. They didn't have a chance.

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.

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.

All fell silent.

For the first third of the race, it was pretty even, but it was only a matter of time before the charcoaled Owens drew clear and streaked away.

His bare feet gripped the soil. He could feel it holding on between his toes.

The starter signaled them forward. A crowd materialized around every square inch of Hubert Oval's circumference. They were all calling out one thing. They were chanting Rudy Steiner's name -- and his name was Jesse Owens.

"Owens in front," the boy's shrill voice cried as he ran down the empty track, straight toward the uproarious applause of Olympic glory. He could even feel the tape break in two across his chest as he burst through it in first place. The fastest man alive.

At the request of the starter, he raised to crouching position -- and the gun clipped a hole in the night.

It was only on his victory lap that things turned sour. Among the crowd, his father was standing at the finish line like the bogeyman. Or at least, the bogeyman in a suit. (As previously mentioned, Rudy's father was a tailor. He was rarely seen on the street without a suit and tie. On this occasion, it was only the suit and a disheveled shirt.)

Mr. Steiner was a remarkably polite man under normal circumstances. Discovering one of his children smeared charcoal black on a summer evening was not what he considered normal circumstances. "The boy is crazy," he muttered, although he conceded that with six kids, something like this was bound to happen. At least one of them had to be a bad egg. Right now, he was looking at it, waiting for an explanation. "Well?"

"Was ist los?" he said to his son when he showed up in all his charcoal glory. "What the hell is going on here?" The crowd vanished. A breeze sprang up. "I was asleep in my chair when Kurt noticed you were gone. Everyone's out looking for you."

Rudy panted, bending down and placing his hands on his knees. "I was being Jesse Owens." He answered as though it was the most natural thing on earth to be doing. There was even something implicit in his tone that suggested something along the lines of, "What the hell does it look like?" The tone vanished, however, when he saw the sleep deprivation whittled under his father's eyes.

"You know, Papa, the Black Magic one."

Rudy winced. "Ow, that really hurts."

"Jesse Owens?" Mr. Steiner was the type of man who was very wooden. His voice was angular and true. His body was tall and heavy, like oak. His hair was like splinters. "What about him?"

"I'll give you black magic." He caught his son's ear between his thumb and forefinger.

On the way home, Mr. Steiner decided to talk politics with the boy as best he could. Only in the years ahead would Rudy understand it all -- when it was too late to bother understanding anything.

"Does it?" His father was more concerned with the clammy texture of charcoal contaminating his fingers. He covered everything, didn't he? he thought. It's even in his ears, for God's sake. "Come on."

THE CONTRADICTORY POLITICS OF ALEX STEINER

Point One: He was a member of the Nazi Party, but he did not hate the Jews, or anyone else for that matter.

Point Two: Secretly, though, he couldn't help feeling a percentage of relief (or worse -- gladness!) when Jewish shop owners were put out of business -- propaganda informed him that it was only a matter of time before a plague of Jewish tailors showed up and stole his customers.

"I didn't know that. Do you have to pay to be Jewish? Do you need a license?"

Point Five: Somewhere, far down, there was an itch in his heart, but he made it a point not to scratch it. He was afraid of what might come leaking out.

"Because they'll take you away."

"Why?"

They walked around a few corners onto Himmel Street, and Alex said, "Son, you can't go around painting yourself black, you hear?"

Rudy was interested, and confused. The moon was undone now, free to move and rise and fall and drip on the boy's face, making him nice and murky, like his thoughts. "Why not, Papa?"

Point Four: His family. Surely, he had to do whatever he could to support them. If that meant being in the party, it meant being in the party.

Point Three: But did that mean they should be driven out completely?

"Because you shouldn't want to be like black people or Jewish people or anyone who is… not us."

"You know my oldest customer, Mr. Kaufmann? Where we bought your shoes?"

"Who are Jewish people?"

"Yes."

"Well, he's Jewish."

"Oh. Is Jesse Owens Catholic?"

"No, Rudy." Mr. Steiner was steering the bike with one hand and Rudy with the other. He was having trouble steering the conversation. He still hadn't relinquished the hold on his son's earlobe. He'd forgotten about it. "It's like you're German or Catholic."

"I don't know!" He tripped on a bike pedal then and released the ear.

Rudy understood nothing, and that night was the prelude of things to come. Two and a half years later, the Kaufmann Shoe Shop was reduced to broken glass, and all the shoes were flung aboard a truck in their boxes.

But nothing was clear.

This time, Mr. Steiner placed his hand on Rudy's head and explained, "I know, son -- but you've got beautiful blond hair and big, safe blue eyes. You should be happy with that; is that clear?"

They walked on in silence for a while, until Rudy said, "I just wish I was like Jesse Owens, Papa."