The Tunnel of Hugsy Goode (20 page)

Then the light burst on me, on both of us. Of course! The facts suddenly became clear.

• Fact 1. Blue-eyed
  gril
  had a mini tape recorder that we didn't know about until now.
  
• Fact 2. It was missing.
  
• Fact 3. Raccoons are thieves.
  
• Fact 4. Last seen, Raccoon was sitting in the chair of Hugsy the Goode, down below in the under-alley Alley.... Where he'd gone to after that, we didn't know.
  
• Fact 5.
  Grils
  know our aliases now, had even called us by those secret names on tape. How much more did they know or would know soon?
  

So, next chapter, please.

We would have gone right back down there for Descent No. 4, but we had to have Sunday dinner then, me in my house, Tornid in his. I was still shook up about the
grils
having accused me of having done something I hadn't done. The only thing worse than being accused of doing something you haven't done is being accused of doing something you have done. Then you have to face the music. But I had no music to face, and I ate my dinner ... oven-fried chicken ... and I thought about the new twist in the tunnel affair.

What Tornid and me had to do was we had to go back down as soon as possible. But after dinner Tornid had to go with his entire family to visit his gramma. He didn't get back until after supper in the evening. I was waiting for him in the tree house. His mom turned on the television right away, and they were saying still no settlement to teachers' strike in sight. Tornid joined me in the tree house. We felt carefree.

"You know what that means, don't you, Torny, old boy, old boy," I said. "No teachers, no school. Even though it's Monday, tomorrow ... no school."

"Yeah..." said Tornid. "Neat."

"So, here we are, Torny, old boy, old boy," I said, "being handed a present of another day off by the teachers who usually can't stand it if you stay out one single day and spoil the gold star your room might get for perfect attendance..."

"M-m-m," said Tornid.

"So, Tornid," I said, "since you and me are going to stay out until at least nine o'clock, maybe a little later if the moms are in a jolly mood and there's joking and coffee under the grape arbor, how about we—you know what—we go down into the tunnel?"

"Nighttime ... in the tunnel?" said Tornid.

"Sure," I said, as though that's when we always went down. "What's the sense of being any more scared to go down in the nighttime than in the daytime? It can't be any more nighttime down there in the nighttime than it is in the daytime. What's the difference?"

"Same difference," said Tornid. But he looked worried.

"You know, Tornid, we may turn out to be heroes if we not only locate the entire tunnel, but also find the missing mini tape. Then we could proclaim a truce and end the war between the
grils
and the boys."

"Hey, yeah," said Tornid.

I could see he was pleased at the idea of a truce. Sometimes he is in a bad spot figuring, when he's out of my sight, how to react to
grils
that happen also to be his sisters.

"Well, we'll see," I said. "Anyway now, down there in the nighttime, we'll have a chance to unwind some of the threads of the story of the under alley, the lost mini tape recorder for one..."

"But," said Tornid, "we don't use thread or string any more, now we have psychedelic chalk, so we don't have any to unwind."

"Not those threads," I said. "The plot threads."

"Mommy will miss me," said Tornid. "She'll whistle and I won't answer. Everyone will miss me. They'll count us up ... two girls—I mean
grils
—and three boys. But there will only be two boys. My dad will say, 'Bath time, boys.' He always collects the boys. And there won't be any
me
for my bath."

"Oh, bath time," I said. "Forget it. We'll get back in time anyway, I think. Remember what you said. Before dinner, you made an important remark..."

"About ... raccoons ... the robbers they are?"

"Ye-ah," I said. "Probably that raccoon has come up top more often than we thought. Probably did steal Blue-Eyes' mini tape recorder and took it down into the under alley, liking the sound of human voices, even taped ones."

"Hey ... yeah," said Tornid.

And it was all go-Roger with Tornid, now. We got out our paraphernalia where we keep it, in the rain-proof sack under the squash vines of Hugsy Goode. We looked at our watches. Seven-thirty. As we prepared to leave the upper Alley, it was twilight time and no stars were out yet. But soon it would be nighttime, above. And we, below in the under alley, would know if nighttime felt any different than daytime.

So I said, "Down we go, Torny, old boy, old boy. Now beginneth Descent No. 4th. The usual order, first me, then you."

Getting down was sure easier than it used to be, we'd scrambled up and down so many times. It would have been neat if we could have taken the slide off the tree house and fixed it in the entranceway. It's just about the right height. Then we could slide down and in ... skip the rope. But the slide would have been missed. When the great day came and all could be revealed to young and old, then the grand tour of the tunnel, with the mayor coming along also perhaps, could commence with a slide down the chute ... whee-ee!

Now, once down, I said, "See, Tornid? It's no darker down here than it is when it's broad daylight up top. Pretend that it's afternoon out, instead of twilight time with darkness approaching and the seven sisters soon to come out ... up top in the sky. Say to yourself, 'It came a little early, night did, tonight.'"

We stood beside the letters T.N.F. shining beside us. "Yeah," said Tornid. "But I used to like to see daylight slanting down from the hidey hole when we came back, when we used to take daytime trips."

"Never mind, Torny, old boy, old boy," I said. "We're really going to have fun now. Better fun than they used to have in the good old days of the Circle."

We went as fast as we could to the Throne of King Hugsy the Goode. Soon, by the light of my flashlight, we saw two little round beady eyes staring at us. Though I knew it was the raccoon again, I jumped behind Tornid and said, "Don't be scared."

Tornid said, "I'm not scared. It's just Racky, just like before ... same eyes."

"I know it," I said. "He likes that chair. More comfortable than a tree. Probably why he stays down here so much."

As we drew nearer, the raccoon looked at us curiously ... not afraid. When we got to him ... yes sirree ... Tornid's ESP was right. There
was
something between his paws, and it
was
a mini tape recorder! Right now the recorder wasn't saying anything. It had played whatever was taped on it out. "Testing" was the last word we had heard from above. I hoped the tape was not all used up because I wanted to add something.

I stood beside Hugsy Goode's throne. I didn't reach for the mini tape recorder because, although raccoons are tame, how'd I know about this particular one that likes staying in a tunnel instead of a tree? He might think that because he had stolen this mini tape recorder it was his, and he might bite.

I said, "Racky?" I spoke very gently, the way the Fabians speak to pets. "How would you like to have your voice recorded?" I asked. "For the landmarks records of the tunnel?"

Racky didn't say anything. He just jumped down and ran away to somewhere ... wherever he likes to go in this tunnel that he probably knows more about than Tornid and me do so far.

We examined the mini tape recorder. It was neat. Best of all there was still room on the tape for more words. I told Tornid, "Once I get the thing working and we've heard the last recorded word...'testing'...you say something, Tornid. Say, 'Coming, Mommy.' That's in case she calls you."

Tornid laughed. He said, and I taped it, "Coming, Mother. Yes, Mother. Yes, Mother. I hear you, Mother. Where am I, Mother? Here, Mother. No, not in the Arp tree. Here. Right here, Mother. Home in a minute."

Like this, if his mom called while we were down here, she'd hear the message, and she wouldn't worry. "But," I said, "why'd ya say 'mother,' cluck? You always call your mother 'Mommy.'"

"I just thought," said Tornid, "that because it was on tape, it should not be the same as real life."

"Cluck," I said.

But we left it that way, and it sounded neat. We filled up some more of the tape in this reassuring way, and I hurled a "Whatdya want?" in after Tornid's words in case my mom was shouting "Nicky (me)" or blowing on the cow horn.

Tornid and me pictured the two moms saying, "Why! Did you hear that? Why, where in the world are they?"

Well, Tornid and me had a real laughing jag—the first one ever in the tunnel. It was a wonder we didn't split our solar plexuses. But suddenly we stopped. We grew sober as we realized that now we had to get on with real business—the questing and the exploring of the tunnel.

"How do you think Racky got hold of Blue-Eyes' mini tape recorder?" I asked.

"She leaves everything around ... maybe left it on the back step a minute and the next it was gone. Can't find her glasses or her spelling book most the time," Tornid said.

I thought that some day, if the
gril
and me ever got to be friends, I'd ask her where she'd left her mini so's Racky could steal it. I wouldn't ask for a reward if I returned it to her ... especially for returning something she had the nerve to think I stole. She almost had me thinking I had stolen it in my sleep or something.

We set the tape recorder carefully on King Hugsy's chair. We felt safer than before, having touch with the upper Alley this way. We set it going and had another laugh at Tornid's voice. "I squeak," he said.

"The acoustics are good down here," I said. "Imagine a drum down here, or a band ... a bongo band!"

"Ye-ah," said Tornid. He liked listening to himself on the mini tape recorder and hated to leave. He wished he could sit on King Hugsy's throne and play his words over and over again. But there was work to do whether he was tired or not.

"Come on, cluck!" I said. "We have to go!"

We pushed the button that set the mini tape recorder talking away again from the beginning, only now it had added onto it its special and reassuring message to the moms in the Alley above. Then we stepped forth again, into the glooming. "Coming, Mother," the recorder said, while we went the other way.

About to set forth, I looked at my watch. I made a note of the time—seven forty-five. We should try to get back by nine-fifteen. That was just about as late as the moms were likely to be content with the "Coming, Mothers." We hurried on to where we had located the skeleton leg ... fifty paces. This time I'd remembered to count. There it was ... it had not been bothered. I wrote on the wall beside it in psychedelic chalk, Speciman A. "Pretend it is a beef bone leg, and it won't scare you," I said. "I'm sure it's not the leg of Hugsy Goode. We would have heard about it if he'd disappeared."

"I never was scared," said Tornid. "And I don't think a skeleton without a head is a very good one."

"Are you crazy?" I said. "Even just the toe would have been valuable, even just a plain footprint of a skeleton is better than nothing. Everything means something ... a clue to olden times. Look at museums ... filled up, some of them, with bits of skeleton. They take them home, the diggers, and imagine what the whole guy might have looked like, then display him in a case with words they think explain what age he lived in, give or take a million years."

We dug around the crumbled wall with our shillelaghs, but we couldn't find more of the guy nor a trace of crockery that would tell what age it lived in. I drew a picture of a head of the guy on the wall, marked Speciman A, with grin and sockets, not realizing how spooky this was going to look. We couldn't erase it, though, and went on again into the glooming.

Far and straight ahead, my light shone on another wall—probably the end of this main passage of the under alley, the long end of the T. Was there a Circle or not? That was what we wondered. We hurried up there. There was! There was a Circle just like the one they used to have on top. Tornid had never seen that one.

"This one is just like it," I said.

"Hey," said Tornid. "Neat. We could get our bikes down here, ride around down here, like they used to do on top."

"
¿Quién sabe?
" I said. "In the old days down here, they might have had a round stage in this Circle, a theater like in the days of Shakespeare..."

"Neat!" said Tornid. "But I'm not going to act in it if they do that again. LLIB and Lucy can, not me..."

"You can be a stagehand," I said. "Or blow a trumpet at the right moment."

We went back to Speciman A, easy to spot by the scary face I'd drawn. We examined the wall opposite it. We knew that on top we would be outside Jane Ives's garden gate because of the fifty paces paced from the drain above and the throne below. There was one place in the wall that was darker than the rest. We focused our lights on this place ... it was a void. "Torny, old boy, old boy," I said. "That isn't just wall opposite this skeleton leg. That's void. There must be a passageway there."

We stepped across the tunnel. There was an entrance ... no door ... into a passageway, narrower than the main tunnel, about half as wide but just as high. Like the T.N.F. passageway, it was not a crawling-through tunnel, I'm sorry to say. "Torny, old boy, old boy," I said. "This passageway must be under Jane Ives's house ... or between it and the Arps'. Now ... to see where it goes."

Outside this passageway, on the main wall, I wrote J.I.—
IN
, with an arrow. Inside of it, I wrote
OUT
. We were not taking chances on getting lost. So far, this tunnel has not been as involved as some I've drawn and hasn't even had any crawling-through passages. But they may show up. We're on the watch and we're on our way, on into the narrow passageway of J.I., not knowing what perils may be behind or ahead of us, on our way to somewhere.

We counted our paces. We took twenty. We must be very close to the house of the Iveses up top. It made us feel safe. If we said something, we wondered if she would hear. I said, "Ja-ane. Jane Ives. We're down here. Tornid and me, Copin. In the tunnel alley, at last. Look at the map on the cellar door. We are in the very spot named J.I."