The Tunnel of Hugsy Goode (3 page)

On one side of the circle I wrote my initials, C.N.C., on the other, Tornid's—T.N.F. Inside the circle I wrote the word
TRATS
...our code word for
START
. Sometimes our code names are the real word spelled backward. We got it from LLIB ... lucky he can't read. Too bad he and YNNAD (Danny) can't be in on all this. But they can't. I got out my map, studied it a second, put it back in my pocket. Each of us took out his hammer and chisel and ... one, two, three ... we chipped our first chip.

"Hooray! We're on our way!" I said to Tornid.

Tornid beamed. He has great gray eyes, always shining. Sometimes, Tornid wishes he was eleven or that I was eight. Most of the time we don't think of the age gap, we have so much to do.

We felt far, far away from the folks above. We felt we had already penetrated the secret of the tunnel and had left the lilac-scented air of the upper Alley for we knew not what sort of air in the under one.

Happily, we chipped another chip. Some flew against my eyeglasses. Lucky I wear nonshatterable eyeglasses. That's one good thing about my mom, she always buys the best possible eyeglasses ... and lamps.

Just then, the sound of many voices ... up above, not down below.

"Lay low," I said to Tornid.

We both lay low and listened.

What it sounded like, it sounded like the entire Alley population streaming into the Fabian yard. I got the gist right away. LLIB and Lucy, top performers in the tree house, were about to put on another circus. Perhaps some of the Contamination girls were also going to do an act. And we, trapped in the hidey hole at the point marked
TRATS!

When the show started, it began with a performance, solo, by LLIB. He is known by some as the boy belly dancer because he has a certain knack. He can make his belly go round and round ... revolve ... clockwise and counterclockwise. No one else in his family can do this. Even though Tornid has a larger belly, he can't do this. So, now, LLIB revolved his belly.

After that solo, we could tell from the sound, the next act was LLIB and Lucy impersonating Tornid's and my mom. They gave a very good imitation of the sounds the moms make while sitting at the picnic table. We hoped that would be all and the audience would leave. But it wasn't. Contamination Blue-Eyes gave her magic tricks, and this took a long time because sometimes she had to look one up in her book and do it over.

Our two moms were sitting very close to the hidey hole. They had balanced their coffee cups ... we could see through the vines ... on a huge pipe, covered with a flat slab. Must be about sixteen inches in diameter and may have some meaning in connection with the under alley ... we don't know yet.

It was pretty hot down here in our hidey hole. Tornid and me sure were glad when they got to the last performance. It was Danny, and he doesn't care much about performing ... he told a joke. "Who is the father of all corn?" he asked. And in a second he answered himself. "POP corn."

And that ended the circus. Applauding loudly, everybody left ... no lemonade and cookies, at least. So we picked up our chisels and chipped off another chip. The bricks were old and soft. "It shouldn't take very long to get through," I said to Tornid.

"I know..." he said.

Just then ... I knew it ... the cow horn ... plus a bellow of my name..."Nick!"

We had to go in.

"Anyway," I said, "tomorrow is Saturday. Most people sleep late. But we can get up early and begin and..."

"And?" asked Tornid.

"
¿Quién sabe?
" I said ... an expression I had learned in Mexico one year we spent there.

"
¿Quién sabe?
" Tornid repeated. We covered our tools with a big green plastic bag, in case of rain, and went home to dinner.

Next morning Tornid and me were sitting under Jane Ives's rose of Sharon tree. It was Saturday, about ten o'clock. By this time we had expected to have gotten through the hidey hole wall. Instead, here we sit under the tree looking up through its new green leaves to the blue sky above. Why?

Two letters came to my house in the mail this morning. Both were about me. No wonder I have the glooms. One was from the Commodore—he lives in the end house on Story Street, one of the four houses where the Circle used to be. The Commodore is in charge of all the grounds of the campus including the Alley and its twenty-seven houses. Although he mentioned only Tornid and me by name, he said his letter was for the whole family and that he was also sending one to all twenty-seven families in the Alley.

The Commodore said: Keep our yards clean, keep toys out of the Alley, don't stick them in drains and then complain of floods, bring our bikes into our yards, especially the days the sanitation men come ... or else the men, who were sick and tired of moving them out of the way, would just plain run over them.

The unfairness of mentioning me by name in this letter is what bugs me. When I was little, I used to help the trash collectors. I used to get kiddy cars and other toys out of the way for them and helped carry the trash cans to the big truck. They all knew me and they thanked me in those olden days. Nowadays you don't have any little ones with the ambition to grow up to be trash collectors. They
should
be taught about their toys.

In the olden days there were laws in the Alley. They were made up by Katy Starr and called Katy's laws. Now—none. Dogs are allowed to roam up and down the Alley. Is it any wonder that the Commodore writes? But why does the Commodore pick me and Tornid out to name? True, Tornid and me did climb into the empty house next to the one marked O.N. on the map. We entered by way of the dining-room window ... I am good at this and once helped a vice-president into his dining room that way. The painters had locked him out ... don't ask me why.

We, Tornid and me, wanted to see if there was a door in that cellar leading into a pit of the tunnel. There wasn't, and we came back out in a hurry, worried because we didn't know whether smoogmen, one of our names for under-alley people if there are any, might be able to see through solid and be watching us. We had not done any harm—went in, came out, that's all.

Now the Commodore says he'll have all these twenty-seven houses mowed down, carted off brick by brick, the way they did the Waldo Avenue little houses opposite the Alley houses, if people didn't shovel their snow, stay out of empty houses ... me and Tornid, specif ... rake their leaves, stop letting their dogs out in the Alley, bring in their bikes and so forth ... stop clogging the drains, stay out of where we're not supposed to be.

All that's fair enough. But what's it got to do with Tornid and me right now so's we have to sit here under the rose of Sharon tree and think gloomy thoughts instead of going on with the real work of this book ... finding the tunnel? Because at ten o'clock ... ten minutes to go ... Tornid and me, since we had the honor of being singled out, have to clean the Fabians' backyard and ... with a dog like Sasha! Yechh!

And then there's the other letter that came. Yep. School. It was to my mom and dad. The strike doesn't seem to affect the letter writers there. It said, "Your son, Nicholas (yechh) shows poor comprehension in social studies. On a test that is given all over the country, we asked a simple question based on his textbook: 'And where is Mr. Lee taking you today, class?' Your son answered, 'He lost me on the banks of the Amazon.' We prefer to think this reply is due to poor comprehension rather than to a flippant attitude to social studies. It is a Mr. Jenks who, in the book, is taking two boys up the Amazon, whereas Mr. Lee, the man we were talking about, is on the Yangtze. Please come with your son to the principal's office on Monday."

"I never had a letter from school so far," said Tornid. At home, he could be proud of this record. With me, he had his doubts.

I said, "You are only in Grade Three."

Tornid doesn't like school any more either. He had halfway liked school until I got aholt of him and showed him how awful it is—and what a waste of time! Well, Tornid will learn ... it just seeps in gradually how awful school is. And that it gets worse each year. Yep. Each year worse than the one before, he'll find out. At least, I haven't as far to go to wind up the whole thing as he does.

Tornid sighed. "I wisht I was eleven instead of eight, so I'd be nearer the finish..."

I said, "You have to study hard, get yourself into the Rapid Advancement class, then you're in for the windup sooner."

For a minute we gloomed in silence. Into my glooming thoughts came the sound of the Myrtle Avenue El. To me it said, "Come on, Copin."

I said it out loud..."Come on, Copin. Come on, Copin."

"What?" Tornid said.

Sometimes I think Tornid only hears
me,
nothing else. "Listen, you cluck, listen to the train," I said.

Tornid doesn't mind when I call him "cluck" or "dumb cluck" any more. Likes it, in fact. He used to say, "I'm not a dumb cluck." And when I said, "I know it," he'd laugh his funny crackly laugh. He had gotten it straightened out that "dumb cluck" doesn't mean "dumb cluck" when I say it to him. It means "nice guy" and that he is my pal.

"Listen to what?" he said. "The ... El...?"

"Yes," I said. "The El. The Myrtle Avenue El. There it goes up the tracks with no Mr. Lee or Mr. Jenks to explain the sights."

Tornid laughed again. I looked at him piercingly through my nonshatterable eyeglasses. If I'm gloomy, he's gloomy. That's the rule and no laughing. I said sternly, "There isn't any fun here in the Alley any more."

"I know," Tornid said. "Circle gone..." He looked at me to see if he'd hit it right.

I nodded. "Yeah," I said. "The Circle was free. It made you make up games. 'Here I am,' said Circle. 'Think something up.'"

"Could Circle talk?" asked Tornid.

I looked at him piercingly again.

"Oh, yeah," he said. "Like ... smoogmen ... I guess."

I heard another El. "Take the Myrtle Avenue El," I said. "This El on Myrtle Avenue is part of the last one in the entire city of New York. It begins at Jay Street and runs way out—maybe to Montauk Point for all I know. They used to run all over the place ... els did. There even used to be one that ran across where the Mall is before there was a Mall on the campus..."

"Like there used to be a tunnel under the Alley and we're going to find it."

"Can't find it today because of the letters.... Clean up your yard ... yechh. All those els are gone now, Tornid, except that one over there, running now on Myrtle Avenue..."

"Yeah," said Tornid. He was real gloomy now, too. "Maybe our tunnel won't be there, either. Gone like the El on the Mall..." he said. "And the Circle in the Alley..."

Another El came rumbling along. We couldn't see it from under the rose of Sharon tree, but we could hear it, hear them all...

"I never been on an el," said Tornid.

"Neither have I," I said. "Born here, under the shadow of it, hear it chug along every day and night of my life ... three years older than you, Tornid—but neither have I ever been on it."

"Wow!" said Tornid.

"And besides the El," I said, "there are lots of interesting things to see on Myrtle Avenue itself. But we just plain can't go over there. Only on Sundays, me and Star, or Steve, can go over to Myrtle and get the Sunday
Times.
That's all ... go over, come right back. You and me, Tornid, we can't go.
We,
that is,
I
am not trustworthy."

"Nowhere to go except down," said Tornid, trying to remind me of something good in our lives ... the tunnel.

I didn't feel like being cheered up. I gloomed some more.

I thought. I'd really like to take Tornid over to Myrtle Avenue, show him the sights over there ... the junk shop run by a blind man that students and just plain people buy lots of neat things in, the old guy that sits in his second-story window, wide open winter and summer ... looks like a Rembrandt etching, Jane Ives says, and he does ... I looked in a book. Never moves except to hurl a curse ... I won't say the words, they are in Italian anyway ... at someone down on the street who suddenly bugs him. Once I saw him spit out the window at someone who only asked if she could come up and clean up for him. And the old man spit. He said nothing. He just spit out the window. Once he threw a pan of dishwater down on somebody. People know to duck when they see him in the window. Most do. Well, those are just a couple of things to see. And above, you can watch the El come rumbling along and go. It's a very cheerful train.

Oh, naturally, I ... we ... would never go over to Myrtle Avenue with a five-dollar bill in my pocket, like Hugsy Goode did once, I heard, and got robbed. No mother lets her kids go over to Myrtle with or without five dollars. I'd have more sense than to take five dollars over there ... just one, maybe, one of my own dollars I earn from collecting newspapers from people in the Alley and tying them up and selling them to the Goodwill. I have about four dollars home, and I haven't put it in the bank yet. Some of this money is Tornid's, because he helps me and we are partners.