by Terry Frei
When Wood was in bed and had turned out the light, his question came out of the dark.
“You nervous?”
“Of course I am,” Glenn said. “Weren’t you?”
Wood laughed. “Actually, not at all,” he said. “Maybe that was part of the problem.”
About minute later, Wood spoke again. “Maybe I shouldn’t say anything, but . . .”
He stopped.
“But what?”
“Naw, you’ve got enough on your mind.”
“But what?”
“Do you want to know what some of the boys are saying about you or would you rather not know?”
“Walter, you can’t bring it up, then drop it. Go ahead.”
“A few guys asked me if something’s going on between you and Leni Riefenstahl. Other guys said they know there is.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I said I think you had met her and you might have got a boner like everybody else has when looking at her, but I said I thought that’s all it is.”
“Thanks.”
“But you know I was lying. I know something’s going on.”
Glenn didn’t say anything.
Wood said, “I guess that’s my answer.”
“No, it’s not your answer,” Glenn snapped. “Your answer is I have a girl and a life back home, and this all isn’t part of it.”
“You at least feel guilty?”
“None of this leaves this room, right?”
“Of course not.”
“All right,” Glenn said. “Mostly no. I’m done trying to talk myself into it. Does it make me an asshole to say except for a few seconds here and there, like when I look at Karen’s picture, or read her telegram, or think about the last couple of years, I really don’t feel guilty?”
“Do you want to know what I really think?”
“There you go again . . . say it.”
“It’s still like I said the other night. I think you’re forgetting that this is Germany. She’s part of that, and you can’t ignore that. Even if we aren’t here that long. Even if you never see her again.”
“Damn it! She’s been forced into doing things for them! She’s no Nazi! She’s an artist, a professional. She makes films.”
“You really believe that?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“And you believe she was a virgin, too, I suppose.”
Glenn made a move to jump out of bed. “Shut up!”
Wood sighed. “Look, it’s the beer talking some. Sorry. But I’m your friend now, right?”
Glenn thought a moment. “Yeah. Of course you are.”
“Glenn . . . no matter what you do with her, don’t be an idiot. This is not some cute actress in Hollywood.”
“You don’t know her!”
“You’re right, I don’t. But look around! Look around that stadium! Look around these streets! Doesn’t that tell you enough?”
“I get it. This is some smart Cornell guy telling the Colorado hick he’s stupid.”
The pause lasted longer this time. “No,” Wood said. “I’m not.”
“Let’s drop it. I’m going to sleep.”
Glenn rolled onto his side, turning away from Wood. He settled in, with one arm around the pillow. He decided he had one more thing to say.
“Walter . . . No matter what, you have to understand something.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re wrong about her.”
25
Decathlon, Day Two
Saturday, August 8
Alan Gould of the Associated Press was waiting, with pen and notebook poised, when Glenn and Walter Wood—their tension the night before was, while not forgotten, at least off limits—got off the bus outside the stadium. Walter, though hung over, insisted on coming to the stadium with Glenn. “I feel like I have a stake in this now,” he said. They sat near the back of the bus, so they were among the last off.
“Morning, Morris,” Gould said. “Can I talk with you for a second?”
“Now?”
He was thinking: Who do you think you are . . . Eleanor Holm?
“I need a quote for the early story . . . especially if this thing drags out as late as some people seem to think it might.”
“Well, there’s not much I can say now. Just that I hope we push each other to a sweep.”
There. That’s one quote.
Gould persisted. “Is the pole vault going to be the key?”
“Every event is important,” Glenn said. “No one more important than the other. That’s what the decathlon is.”
“But if you can get through the pole vault . . .”
Glenn laughed. “I’ll get through it. I don’t know what height I’ll clear, but I’ll get through it. Maybe with a broken arm or a broken wrist, but I’ll get through it.”
Gould scribbled, then put down his notebook. “That’ll do!” he said. “Thanks.”
“Welcome,” said Glenn.
Gould gestured at the bus. “I was waiting for the relay guys, too,” he said, “but none of them were with you, looks like.”
“On this bus? No. I think I saw Marty Glickman going into breakfast when I was leaving, but that’s it.”
Gould looked at his watch. “Glickman’s not running. Neither is Stoller.”
“Who is?” Glenn asked incredulously.
“Draper, Wykoff, Metcalfe, and Owens. Robertson told me last night. I wrote it for the morning papers in the states. He and Cromwell decided that’s the team, for the heats today, finals tomorrow. He told Owens and Metcalfe last night, too, so they’d know to get some rest, and he was going to tell all the boys right after everybody was up this morning.”
“Why?” Glenn asked.
“Robertson and Cromwell said the Germans have been hiding some guys out, have a tough team and want to steal the gold on the final day to end this thing,” Gould said. “They said we had to put our absolute best team out there, and that means Owens and Metcalfe.”
“And not Glickman and Stoller?” Wood asked.
“And not Glickman and Stoller,” Gould confirmed.
Wood tapped Glenn’s elbow. “You should get going,” he said.
They said good-bye to Gould and headed into the dressing room tunnel. They talked as they walked. “Well, Jesse will get a fourth gold medal,” Glenn said. “That’s good.”
“But at the expense of two guys who worked hard, too,” Wood said. “I bet Brundage made a deal with the Germans. No Jews running.”
“I don’t like Brundage, either,” Glenn said, “but that doesn’t make sense—since they replaced them with two Negroes.”
“Okay, look at it this way: The Negroes have won a bunch of events. That’s embarrassing enough for the Germans, so what difference does another gold make? Not much. So now if we come at them with two Jewish fellows, and they’re standing on top of the medal stand on the final day, that’s a bigger embarrassment for the Nazis.”
“But the German team will lose with Jesse and Ralph running!” Glenn said.
“They could put you on the team with Marty, Sam, and Draper, and we’d win. The Germans know that. If we don’t drop the baton, we’re getting the gold; they aren’t. No matter what.”
They were at the dressing room. Walter told him someone in their Village room had to win a gold medal, so he was counting on Glenn. Then he said that with the track and field competition virtually over after today—only the relays and the marathon would be run Sunday—the weight men were organizing a junket to the Essen Haus again.
“It’s going to be a celebration for you, too,” Wood said. “You won’t have to buy a thing.”
He nodded in the direction of the athletes’ section in the stadium. “I’ll be the guy up there screaming the loudest . . . unless Wolfe is there and drunk again!”
The first decathlon event of the day was the 110-meter hurdles and Glenn knew that, as a former college hurdler, he needed to not only pass Bob Clark and move into first place in the stan
dings, he also needed to take as large of a lead as possible. As he dug his starting holes, he told himself to think of this as a dual meet against Wyoming or a relays meet in Boulder at the University of Colorado. He needed—wanted—not only to win, but also to blow away his competition. As he stood and looked over the crowd—again, surprisingly large given the early hour—he laughed as it hit him that the way for a decathlon man to maximize his points would be to add a “real” competitor in each event to his heats, at least in the running events. If he were running against Forrest Towns in the hurdles, for example, it might push him to a better time. He would have to make do with running against Erwin Huber and Josef Klein again, though.
By the first of the ten hurdles, he was a stride ahead. Push yourself! Leading over each hurdle with his left leg and having his steps work out perfectly, he pulled away. Landing after the final hurdle, he leaned forward and drove through the finish line, leaving the track and ending up near the restraining wall at the bottom of the seats. When he curled back and walked onto and across the track, a smiling Huber was waiting with an outstretched hand. “I had a good view from behind,” he said. “You drive over the hurdles. I float!”
Glenn’s time of 14.9 seconds matched his effort at the Trials and was the best among all the competitors, a tenth of a second better than Jack Parker and eight-tenths better than Bob Clark. He had hoped for better, but settled for it, especially because he had taken the lead in the competition with four events to go.
Between their events, the decathlon men watched the Americans’ relay team—with Owens leading off—rout the field in its heat, with a time of 40.0 seconds. He turned to Clark. “That’s just not right,” Glenn said. “Marty and Sam should be in there.”
Clark nodded agreement.
Glenn had mixed feelings about his performance in the discus. He never felt comfortable with the mechanics of his “spin,” but he was thrilled with his distances, including one toss of 141 feet, 2 inches that was more than 6 feet better than the next-best throw in the field. He decided Walter’s tip at the practice track had made the difference. As in the earlier field events, he took kidding from his fellow competitors for wearing his watch into the ring. “You need to be somewhere?” Clark asked.
On paper, he now had a secure lead. Yet the eighth of the events, the pole vault, was—at least to Glenn—ugly, menacing, and potentially devastating to his gold-medal hopes. As Glenn awaited the vaulting with dread, he and the other two Americans again lounged on the ground. All three wore their sweat suits, with towels around their necks. Parker and Clark were on a spread-out blanket. Only Glenn’s head was on the blanket, the rest of his body on the grass. Parker was writing in point totals on an entry sheet, ostensibly to see if anyone had a bona fide chance of preventing them from sweeping the top three spots.
Suddenly, Erwin Huber was standing over them—with Leni. Glenn had spotted her earlier, again moving from cameraman to cameraman. She was wearing baggy white trousers and a matching jacket, a checked blouse, and a headband. Glenn rose up, resting on his right elbow, as Huber plopped down on the blanket, too. “American boys,” he said with a disarming smile, then pointed up. “For those of you who don’t know, this is Fraulein Leni Riefenstahl, our cinema star and director.”
“Hello, American boys,” Leni said.
Huber pointed at each, in turn.
“Clark, Parker, Morris.”
“Of course,” Leni said, smiling.
Leni dropped to the grass next to Glenn. She pointed at the sheets spread in front of Parker. “Erwin said you would know the way the results are developing,” she said.
Huber said good-naturedly, “I meant you would know if I might win a medal. After I did so terrible in the discus.”
“How does it look?” Leni asked.
“We’ll just have to see,” Parker said, grinning.
Leni looked at Glenn. “If what you do the rest of the day is going to be in my film,” she said impishly, “you need to clean yourself up!” She reached into a pocket, pulled out a handkerchief and with her left hand, tenderly ran it across his forehead, brushing back his hair, too, as she and Glenn looked in each other’s eyes. Parker turned and watched, grinning. After a few moments of awkward silence, Leni said, “Well, good luck to all of you the rest of the way. And from what Herr Huber just told me, you, Herr Morris, just need to again relax a bit in this next event and you will be fine.”
Glenn looked at Huber, who shrugged.
Then Leni reached out and brushed Glenn’s forehead again. “I know all three of you will provide fine drama,” she said.
With that, she pulled herself up and gave Glenn a knowing look down that he realized Clark and Parker couldn’t have missed. Then she said a cheery good-bye and was gone, heading for the starting line for the relays.
Parker returned to his numbers. From behind Glenn, Clark said, “I thought she was going to go right after it in front of all these people!”
A few minutes later, the bar at the end of the pole vault runway looked about 20 feet high to Glenn. And it was only set at 3.1 meters, or roughly 10 feet, 2 inches—the opening height for the decathlon men.
At the end of the pole vault runway, Glenn ran through it in his head. Up, over, turn, let loose of the pole, fall. What’s so damn hard about that? What did Leni say? Relax! What the hell . . .
He cleared it easily. Instantly, much of the pressure was off. When the bar got to 3.5 meters, he told himself to go for it, that if he didn’t make it, it wouldn’t be a problem, that he really had nothing to lose. It all came together as he planted the pole, and a second later, he felt like pumping both fists in the air after he landed in the pit. He was over, he had hit his goal, and he had managed not only to avoid complete disaster, but also get a decent point total for the event.
Then he got cocky. He thought of accepting 3.5 meters and not jumping any more, but he decided against that. First of all, he felt great, fresh, and sharp. Second, he felt he had at least one more perfect—for him—vault left in him. Third, he didn’t let anyone know this, but now he was starting to think more about what he had talked about in his Village letter to George Whitman—becoming the first man ever to crack the 8,000-point barrier. That almost certainly would require a few more points in the pole vault.
So he stayed in the competition and took three tries at 3.6 meters—but missed all three. On the third, in fact, his hand slipped off the pole, he didn’t even get turned and came down, still facing forward, after crashing into the bar.
Well, that was real smart.
When the decathlon men had just started the javelin event, Leni again was summoned to Hitler’s box. This time, there was no sense of urgency in the SS man’s voice, so she wasn’t worried.
As she arrived, Joseph Goebbels was waiting for her at the top of the stairway.
“So now it’s the American decathlon man, this Morris?” he asked, leering.
Maybe he just saw us on the field.
“Since you are staging your own little athletic events with him,” Goebbels said, “it is a tribute to him that he still is leading this competition!”
She glared at him. “Your jealousy flatters me,” she said. “Thank you very much.”
“I supposed we should not be surprised,” he said. “But it should make this even easier for you. The Führer just arrived and would like you to give him some information on these three white Americans. For some reason, he has become fascinated with the decathlon. Time permitting, I believe he will want to meet these Americans after the competition—in private, of course.”
She went into the box. A chair was shoved to Hitler’s left, slightly behind him, and it was obvious that was where Leni was supposed to station herself for this conversation. After the greetings, Hitler said, “You were right. The Americans don’t need niggers in everything. Tell me about this boy Morris.”
Leni long ago had stopped marveling at Hitler’s memory, but she also realized it could be selective, too. He could forget—or pr
etend to forget—what he didn’t want to remember.
“He is what you see!” Leni exclaimed. “He’s from a farm in the all-white, all-Christian middle part of America. He was a fine athlete in other sports, too, and he was elected president of his university’s students. He already holds the world record, and he will improve on it by the end of the day! They say that the winner of this event is the world’s greatest athlete, and he will be a star everywhere!”
“It sounds as if you already are a fan,” Hitler said.
“I am a fan of anyone who can make my film better,” Leni said.
Hitler’s slight smile let her know he realized there was more to it than that.
Watching the 3,000-meter steeplechase off and on, Glenn tried to consider it inspiration for the decathlon’s upcoming 1,500 meters, or the “metric mile.” The decathlon men joked that all Finnish distance runners looked exactly alike and ran alike—which wasn’t far from the truth. Finns again ran 1-2 in the steeplechase, and Clark, who had been paying the most attention to the other track and field events, declared that meant runners from Finland had won all the golds and silvers in the 5,000 meters, 10,000 meters, and now the steeplechase.
“Did they have the Olympics in Finland like twenty-four years ago or something?” an Australian decathlon man asked.
Clark said, “Don’t think so, but why would you ask that?”
“Just wondering if they had all their pretty maidens breed with the distance runners at the Olympic Village,” the Australian said, laughing.
A while later, Glenn was second-guessing himself more for taking so many attempts in the pole vault. His best javelin throw—178 feet, 10 inches—was nearly 5 feet short of his Trials effort. But at least he hadn’t scratched all three times.
The decathlon’s 1,500 meters was pushed back because a time-filling gymnastics exhibition ran long. None of the competitors minded the wait. Glenn had 7,305 points, leading Clark by 217 points and Parker by 401. Because of attrition over the two days, the field was down to seventeen competitors, and Glenn was in the last of the three heats. After Clark posted a time of 4:44.4, giving him 513 points, in the second heat, Wood rushed down. Breathlessly, Wood said he had done the math and determined that Glenn needed only to crack about 5:25 to win, and that anything under 4:34 would enable him to break his own world record.