What my husband did on the night before the national finals, Lucille Hartung told me in the bleachers at Derby Downs, in a small clear voice, with her cane across her knees and the whole long hill of the track spread out before us in the afternoon sun. A man from the derby board had knocked on the door of the basement of his father, holding a clipboard.
He had heard a rumor, he said, that the car number fourteen had been driven by a girl. If it were true, the car would be disqualified, and the title taken away, and the boy who had signed the entry would be banned for life.
Richard had been twelve years old. He stood at the door with his hands in the pockets of his dungarees, and he looked the man straight in the eye, and he lied. He said that he had driven the car himself, every race, and that the rumor was a mean spirited tale. The man asked to see the helmet. Richard handed it over. The man turned it in his hands, found nothing, and wrote something on his clipboard. Then he asked Richard to swear on his word as a Boy Scout. Richard raised his hand and swore.
“He lied for me,” Lucille said. “He told me afterward that it was the only lie he ever told in his life that he did not regret.” But the board would not let it rest, she went on. They announced in the newspaper that the champion was Richard, and they invited him to Akron for the nationals. He declined. He said he had a sore wrist. He gave up the chance to race for the national title rather than risk a second inspection, because he knew his cousin would be exposed on the starting line.
A boy of twelve gave up a national title in silence so that a girl of eleven could keep her first, and he never asked for the credit.
I sat very still, holding the clipping, with the sounds of the families around us, the cheering and the clatter of the little cars rolling down the track. I thought of Richard waxing the car every July in the garage, humming, and I understood at last why he had never told the story. It was not a story about winning. It was a story about a promise, and Richard Steiner kept his promises with the same quiet stubbornness with which he did everything.
Owen had been standing beside me with his head lowered. When Lucille finished, he turned to me with tears in his eyes and said, “Grandma, I am so sorry. I sold it for a dollar. I called it a wooden box on wheels.” I took his face in both hands. I said that a boy who is twenty and a little lost is entitled to make a foolish mistake, and that it was the apology that mattered. He bent down and put his forehead against mine. I felt, for the first time since March, as if something heavy had lifted.
The official from the derby, a courtly man named Mr. Pruett, had a proposal. The All American Soap Box Derby, he said, kept the records of its champions in a big leather book, and in 1958 the book listed one name for the Akron title. Richard Steiner. He had spent the last three weeks researching the matter, and he believed that the record should be corrected. With the permission of the family, he wished to add a second name. Lucille Hartung, driver, 1958. I said I thought Richard would have been delighted.
The ceremony was held in August, on the last day of derby week, in front of two thousand people. Lucille, who was seventy two, wore a pale blue dress and a leather helmet, and she walked down the long hill with Owen holding her elbow. The crowd rose to its feet. The mayor of Akron presented her with the brass trophy plate, and a girl of twelve, the current champion, ran up and hugged her around the waist. Lucille wept openly. So did I. So did most of the bleachers.
Owen went back to school in the fall, to study engineering, with a part time job in the derby workshop where he helps children build their cars. Before he left, he took the little blue car down from my rafters and spent a weekend fixing the axle and the steering wheel. When he finished, he wheeled it out to the driveway, and we pushed it together down the slight incline of the street, and it ran true. It was only forty feet. But I stood on the porch with my hand over my mouth, and I thought, Richard, look at that.
The car hangs in the rafters again, with a small brass plate screwed to the side. It reads, Car 14, Akron Champion 1958, Driven by Lucille Hartung, Built by Richard Steiner. On the first day of every July, when the derby opens, Lucille comes to my house for supper. We sit on the porch and watch the evening light on the street. Neither of us says much. Sometimes she hums, and sometimes I do, and both of us know the tune.
