The Tunnel of Hugsy Goode (9 page)

"Don't worry," I said. "The way I have it figured, in our maze or tunnel, whatever it turns out to be, there's a way in and a way out." And Tornid went in to the hair-cutting ceremony. Do you dig that? Everything is a ceremony in the Fabian house. I sat in the tree house a while mulling this over, mulling over all our plans. Then I jumped down and went in because the cow horn blew.

Next day, no school again, another holiday for Tornid and me. Early in the morning I went over to Tornid's backyard and went up into the tree house. I looked up in Miss Alderman's tree for the raccoon. No sign of him. His nest was still there, but its vines were wilting and spilling out of the fork of the tree.

Tornid came out, said (he speaks in a monotone, no ups and downs), said Sasha had eaten his tunnel supplies he'd saved from dinner on the ledge under the dining-room table, part of a pork chop—it was tough—and part of a baked potato, mostly peel.

"The best part," I said. "Where are the
grils?
" I asked.

"I dunno," he said. "Maybe over at Jane Ives's," he said.

"Don't you think it's strange," I said, "that the
grils
haven't caught on to our work in the hidey hole? In and out of your house a dozen times a day while we are chipping and chiseling? How in the name of Sam Hill..."

"Who's he?" asked Tornid.

"A friend of John Ives," I said. "But I'll tell you why they haven't conned our top secret T. business. It's because they haven't opened the trap doors that seal their minds and let in the meaning of what's going on right under their noses. They have clues ... like, where we are all the time ... and they don't even know they have a clue. Yes. Some people are like that. Now, you and me, Tornid, we know a clue when we read, hear, see, or guess one. We may even see more clues than there really are. But that is better than not seeing any.... Sh-sh," I said. "
Grils
approaching."

We lay down on our stomachs on the floor of the tree house and watched Tornid's two sister
grils
saunter to the Fabians' gate with Connie Ives, home from college for a few days. They stopped under Miss Alderman's tree, second only to Billy Maloon's in size, and they looked up at the drooping nest. Tornid and me watched them and we listened.

"Are you home for the summer?" C.
gril
Beatrice asked.

"Not yet," said Connie. "I will be on Decoration Day."

Can you beat that? I tell you. That's one reason I'm aiming to go there—to college. You get to go late in September, and you get to come home the end of May. Neat. Tornid and me listened for clues, like Black-Eyes saying, for instance, "We know what Timmy and Nicky do with all their spare time ... they're..." And then she'd reveal the secret of the tunnel, if she knows it. But there were no clues. All the
grils
did was, they brought Connie up to date on Alley news, like about the white-bellied squirrel, the cross-eyed cat named King, and the visitor raccoon. Yechh! We had wanted to tell Connie about all those neat things.

Then the talk veered off onto sounds in the Alley houses. Me and Tornid pricked up our ears. Blue-Eyes said, "Sometimes in the nighttime I hear strange sounds, Connie, funny little noises. Mommy says they may be mice, or sparrows in the ivy talking in their sleep.... But I wish they wouldn't do it."

"Yez," said black-eyed
gril.
"And Mommy zayz maybe it'z juzt the oldnezz of the houzez ... and they creak. Zazha hearz the zoundz, too, and zee getz zcared and zee crawlz into bed with Mommy and zhakez. Izzy and I, we keep our door clozed and the door into the attic clozed zo nothing can get out at uz. I zleep on the zide of the bed that iz farthezt from the attic. That'z fair becauze Izzy iz one year older. That iz fair, izn't it, Connie?"

"Zoundz fair," said Connie.

Yechh. Now she's got Connie, a girl in college, contaminated into using a "z" where an "s" belongs. Next thing everybody'll be doing it—these things are catching.

Then LLIB came along. He'd heard part of the talk. "And, yeah," he said. "But I know who really makes all those sounds ... it's a guy named Jimmy Mannikin ... lives down below.... Sometimes you hear him chipping on his work ... banging pipes, banging walls..."

We didn't hear the rest of LLIB's theories because everyone sauntered away. "Come on, Tornid," I said. "If LLIB can hear us chipping, soon someone else will. No time to lose."

We slid out of the tree house and hopped in the hidey hole and located our word
TRATS. NO
one had erased it or added their two cents. Above, in the kitchen, Tornid's mom was ironing. She had the television on. Her television is in the living room in plain view from almost every spot on the first floor, even from the kitchen. Tornid's mom always has the television on, whether she's paying attention or not. If someone comes to visit, she turns the sound off, but she leaves the picture on not to miss the whole thing. Sometimes you don't know whether she hears you or not. You wonder if you are interrupting something special she had in mind to watch. Then you realize this isn't so. She just likes to have TV on all the time—it's her custom. Not like in Jane's house where it's the custom to hide it and let it get dusty.

The sound was on now—no visitors within—and it came out to us via the dining-room windows. It was going on about the weather. We listened to what it was going to do. We've caught this habit from the grownups who always want to know what it's doing out. It said strong winds and rain were predicted for early in the day, continuing through nightfall, all up and down the Atlantic seaboard. Small-craft warnings already in effect from Cape Hatteras to Kennebunkport, Maine.

"We have to work fast, Torny, old boy, old boy," I said. "Ride the storm out in the tunnel, if possible..."

"Yeah," said Tornid.

Our hole, thanks to the help from, probably, the visiting raccoon, if not from smoogmen below, eager to get out, was very big now. We worked hard. Each of us wanted to be first to feel nothing ... that is, tunnel air ... to be in the tunnel at last. Suddenly the wall around
TRATS
crumbled. I yanked Tornid away. I poked my arms and my head into the wide hole. Loose stones and gravel slipped down to somewhere. We had made a breakthrough into somewhere! Probably the office marked T.N.F. on the map.

I wriggled back out, wiped my face, cleaned my glasses, looked at Tornid through the lower part of them, and said, "Tornid. We are, I believe we are, at this moment ... mark the time on the chart ... 9:45 ... about to make our entrance into the tunnel, the office of it marked T.N.F. on the map."

"We are?" said Tornid. "Copin. Will this tunnel be our tunnel? Our own tunnel?"

"Cripes!" I said. "Tornid," I said. "This tunnel is a tunnel for all the Alley, all.... Even though we are the discoverers of it and we were the ones who paid attention to the words of Hugsy Goode and we get into it first, see where it goes, still it is for all in the Alley. And for Grandby College, a tunnel to make it proud," I said. "Same as if you get to the moon first and plant a flag there, the moon will still be the moon for all the world."

"And universe," said Tornid.

"So now, Tornid, since this breakthrough happens to be under your house, you can be the first to feel into it. Reach your hands and arms in, your head, get in as far as you can, smell, feel around. I'll hang onto your legs so you won't slide in and disappear. Wiggle a leg when you want out."

He did this. Soon he wiggled a leg. I pulled him out. He said, "Can't feel bottom, can't feel a wall except the crumbly part of this one where we dug, can't feel anything, and it all smells like it's been smelling all along, like rubble."

"Must be the way tunnel air smells around here," I said. I stuck my head, shoulders, and arms in, and I felt nothing either. I said, "Tornid. We have penetrated the wall of the tunnel because all we feel is nothing ... unless ... this wall is part of your cellar.... Must check on that. Make a note of the time—10:00
A.M.
"

He wrote "10" in chalk on
TRATS
. He carries out orders well.

We went into the Fabians' house. We wanted to go down the cellar and make sure we hadn't dug the hole into it instead of the tunnel. Tornid's mom was still ironing, one eye on the board, the other on television. She can even type Frank Fabian's papers, one eye on them, the other on TV. It's a gift. I like her; I wish she liked me.

"And ... where are you going?" she asked.

"Down cellar," said Tornid. "We're looking for something."

"OK," she said. "But come right back up. Remember, I saw a rat down there last week. Just now, I thought I heard him again."

We raced down the cellar steps. The windows that are over the washtubs are just as sooty inside as outside. Some of the vines planted by Hugsy Goode have even made it through the bricks and are beginning to spread over the inside, too. No one could possibly see through them to us chipping away outside. There wasn't any sign of the hole we had dug anywhere. So,
we had not dug into the Fabian cellar.

It was a solemn moment. Solemnly we went back up and out, passing Tornid's mom and undaunted by her quizzical eyes. Yeah. Even with mind divided between TV and ironing, she can still look quizzical ... at us. But she didn't ask any questions out loud.

We sat down on the bottom step of the Fabians' back stoop and ate some apples to strengthen us for the expedition. "Tornid," I said. "Now we know we are really on our way to somewhere." We felt blissful. What a life!

"Getting dark," said Tornid. "Daytime, but it's getting dark."

"You're right," I said.

I looked around. Wind, sudden wind, rustled the fresh green leaves of the Alley trees. A big plop of a raindrop suddenly fell on my head. Honest. It was so big, I thought it had made a hole in my scalp. "Look at my head," I said to Tornid. I bent over. "Do you see a hole there, a crater?"

"No-o. But I see a puddle," Tornid said.

"Cripes!" I said. "It's the rain they said was coming."

It came all right. Suddenly, like someone turning on a giant faucet, a giant rain came down. We ran for the tree house and sat cross-legged in the middle of it under the red and white striped canopy. In a minute you couldn't even see Tornid's back door, the rain was so dense.

"It's a squall," I yelled. Wind beat the hard rain into us, and we were soaked. Tornid tore into his house and got his boots and yellow slicker, and I into mine and did the same; and we beat our way against the rain and up the Alley to where the Circle used to be. Coming back down to where the drain was, we were swept along, scarcely able to stand up. "It's a flood!" I yelled. "The Alley River! Tell Mr. Lee!" I yelled.

Tornid couldn't even hear me. The Alley River couldn't all get down into the drain outside Billy Maloon's, and it couldn't all get into the other drains at the ends of the top part of the T of the Alley. Our boots were filled with water. We might drown, so we took them off. Huge ponds collected in the yards of the houses facing Larrabee Street, the low end of the Alley, and the biggest pond was outside Tornid's back stoop. The pond there was already up to the second step. One more step and it would race into the kitchen, through the house, and out the front door to Larrabee Street.

We waded through the pond of T.N.F. and took shelter in Tornid's vestibule. "Soon your house will be flooded and float away like a brick ark," I said to Tornid.

Tornid became frightened. He was nearly crying because now his house was like a ship and might float away. He's always worried about ships sinking ever since he saw a movie on TV about the sinking of the
Titanic.
He worries about whether his mom would leave his dad behind on the sinking ship and leap into the lifeboat for the sake of the children back home. So he said he had to go in now to rescue his dad, in case his mom had her hands full with LLIB and the rest.

"Cluck!" I bellowed. "There aren't any icebergs around, like with the
Titanic.
This is
rain,
not ocean."

We both went in anyway to catch our breaths and shake our wet hair all over Sasha, who got behind Tornid's mom. Both the moms were in there, scowling their heads off. At first I thought it was me. I suppose I get what's coming to me. "You reapeth what you soweth," a saying of Mr. John Ives.

But right now the moms' scowls were directed against the Commodore. Too bad he wasn't here to see and hear.

"Look at that lake outside the door! Look at those drains out there in the Alley! Why can't the Commodore fix the drains, once and for all, have more of them built if necessary and let the water run off instead of seeping down into our cellars? I wish he had ten children to wade through a lake like that into his immaculate house, have to put rubbers on them and take them off them for weeks after the rain stops ... takes that long for the pond to dry up..."

"And break their necks when it freezes over in the winter..." chimed in my mom.

"Doesn't thaw out till spring..." said Tornid's mom.

"But you know what he says: 'Get the kids to stop stuffing things in the drain ... they take the grate off and stuff everything in...'"