The Tunnel of Hugsy Goode (16 page)

Now that we had deduced that the creepy words,
DON'T SIT IN THAT CHAIR
!, had all the while been coming from the rope jumpers above, Tornid and me decided to give the
grils
the creeps.

Hoping my voice would waft itself up as clearly as the
grils'
had down, I said, at the right time in the chant, "
DON'T SIT IN THAT CHAIR!
"

We listened. No reaction. They hadn't heard and were up to the countdown. When the one jumping was about to say, "Nine," I shouted it. "Nine!" I bellowed.

If the
grils
heard, they did not say, "What's that?" Maybe they thought it was one of themselves. The next jumper began, "The king goes here," and so forth. Before the
gril
could say the creepy words, I said them, much louder than before. I bellowed them, "
DON'T ZIT IN THAT CHAIR
!" I said "zit," not "sit" on purpose because black-eyed
gril
was still doing the chanting. I'm not dumb.

Then there was silence above.

Then Black-Eyes said, "O-o-o-oh! Did you hear that?"

"I thought it was you," said Blue-Eyes.

"I thought it was
you,
" said Star.

For a while up there, there was total silence. Perhaps they were speaking in whispers which do not penetrate tunnel ceiling, pipe, or wall. Then Black-Eyes said, very loud, "We muzt have been miztaken." That was to throw creepy things off the track, like I do myself. But she will be all eyes and ears, just like me, and if ... I never said she isn't bright ... she drops the "z" habit, she may make it into Rapid Advancement like her sister Blue-Eyes.

Then they began chanting and jumping and counting again ... testing, probably. Again, at the right moment, I butted in and said ... and I spoke a little louder... "
DON'T ZIT IN THAT CHAIR
!" I resisted a temptation to say, "Don't zit in the Throne of Hugzy the Goode."

"O-o-o-oh," Black-Eyes said. "I heard it again. A ztrange hollow-zounding voiz. Lizzen."

They listened. So did we. They began to make guesses, talking in excited high voices we had no trouble hearing. "It's an echo," said one of the stranger
grils.
"I've been to Echo Lake."

"No, Marlene," Black-Eyes said. "It'z not an echo-o. We haven't zaid thoze wordz yet. An echo haz to echo zomething, not zay it
before
you zay it."

"Brilliant!" I muttered, not to be heard above.

"I'm getting zort of zcared," said black-eyed
gril.
She is afraid of the dark, thinks every creak a burglar or an unknown something. Her big black eyes were probably growing larger by the minute and her little button mouth smaller and tighter. Maybe there were scare tears in her eyes.

We couldn't hear anything Blue-Eyes said—she has a soft voice—or Star or Notesy, and couldn't tell whether the stranger
grils
were scared or not. We haven't got a line on them yet. They might be thinking there was some sort of catch to the whole business that the others had thought of to trip them up and make them seem stupid.

"
¿Quién sabe?
" I said to Tornid, and the two of us basked in the contemplation of the terror above.

"We'll try it onze more, and if we hear the zoundz again, the zame wordz, I think we zhould tell Mommy," said Black-Eyes.

They began, "The king goes here..."

I said quickly, "The king goes there..." I had the sense to disguise my voice and sound like a
gril,
which made Tornid roll on the ground and cover his mouth, not to laugh out loud.

The chanting stopped. No talking. Stunned silence. I had said "there" instead of "here" so the
grils
would certainly realize I was definitely not an echo. I might be a tape recorder, but who in the Alley can afford a tape recorder, all fathers being professors, or artists, or both, and with not that much money? Or architects?

Black-Eyes spoke. "Zomeone muz be in a tree or zomewhere, maybe zpeaking into a tube, a rubber hoze, or perhapz a cardboard roll like what paper towelz come on. Zomething! Muzt be zomebody ... you know who..."

Tornid and me laughed silently and slapped our thighs. We know who "you know who" are ... Copin and Tornid, explorers of the under alley.

Up there on top there was silence again while, probably, the
grils
made a search. Then they came back, and there was more talk. Black-Eyes did most of it, and we could hear her best. "No one iz around. They are not in any tree. I don't underztand. It'z creepy."

Then someone else came along up top. It sounded like—let's see—yes ... LLIB, Billy.

"Now zpeak the truth, Billy. Were you imitating uz from zomewhere?"

"What's that mean?" asked LLIB, who was only just four in March.

Black-Eyes explained. "Did you zay juzt now, 'The king goez there...?"

"What king?" asked LLIB, his voice cracking a little.

The
grils
performed the jump-rope game and said the chant to make things clear to LLIB. "No-o-o," he said.

Black-Eyes, having one of her brothers around, even though he was only four, to give her courage, said, "Let'z try again. To make zure."

This time I let them get all the way to
DON'T ZIT IN THAT CHAIR
! and I put it in again ahead of them.

LLIB said, "You did it. You said it."

Billy has to be on guard, too, like new people, because he is only four and likely to be tricked.

"No, Billy, I didn't," said Black-Eyes.

"Then one of
them,
" said Billy. He probably meant the new
grils.

"We didn't," they said.

"Oh-ho-ho," said Billy in a confidential tone. "I know who said those words."

"Who?" came the chorus of
grils.

"Jimmy Mannikin," said Billy.

"Who's he?" asked the
grils.

"A little man that lives down there. Wakes up every morning, wakes us up pounding on the pipes, sending up steam—fixes things that need fixing..."

"Oh," said the
grils.

"Ye-ah," said LLIB. He was warming up to tell a huge long story. He likes to tell long stories, and takes his time telling them. "Jimmy Mannikin goes where he has to go, where his work takes him. Sometimes he lives down there. Sometimes he runs along the telephone wires in the country. He carries messages and sounds, zoomy, zoomy, zoomy. Ay-and, if you put your ear to the telephone poles, you can hear him, going zoomy, zoomy, zoomy..."

"Oh," said the
grils.

"Ye-ah," said Billy. "Ay-and, I asked Jane Ives ... she told me about Jimmy Mannikin first ... is he real? Ay-and, she said, 'I spose so, because I made up him.' So he's real all right. You just heard him. Only ... I never heard him talk before. Only just banged the pipes before or went zoomy, zoomy, zoomy on the telephone wires. Never heard him talk before. Good-by! I'm getting out of here."

That was all we heard from LLIB.

Now, tired of this part of the tunnel affair, me and Tornid decided to get on with the exploring, leave the
grils
to their confusion and creeps about the creepy voice
they
had heard. Served them right for giving us such a scare in the beginning.

Tornid said, "They didn't mean to scare us. They didn't know we were down here. They don't know anything about the chair of Hugsy Goode."

Tornid has not learned yet that you can't, you just can't be nice to
grils.
They will take advantage of you, some sort of advantage ... don't ask me...
any
old sort of advantage that comes along ... every time.

So, coping with our own creeps about the unexplored and main part of the maze which, seen from here, from the Throne of King Hugsy the Goode, our home and safe place, stretched on and on into the glooming, we set forth, shillelaghs held high, to wherever on and on might lead us.

"
Courage, mon ami,
" I said.

"
Oui,
" said Tornid. "
Bon ami.
"

I appreciated the wit but did not laugh.

My brand-new watch that shone in the dark told me the time, day, and direction—four o'clock, Saturday, May 22, and N. still pointing where it should. We had at least an hour and a half before horn-blowing time; and the day had not switched over to Sunday. If it had switched over to Sunday, we would not have been surprised because it's like being in another world, being down here. We were facing up the main part of the tunnel, which, up top, faces south—S., the Circle end. And we were about to set forth into the glooming.

Weather is always the same in the tunnel. There wasn't a barometer on my watch, so we wouldn't know what it was going to do up top. But Tornid and me don't care about the weather anyway. Unless it's pouring or there's a blizzard ... doing something unusual ... me and Tornid almost never know what it's doing. "What's it like outside?" That's the first question grownups ask when you come in. Tornid and me have more on our minds than keep a track of what it's doing out every sec.

What we have to keep track of now is the number of steps we're taking.

"Don't talk," I said, though Tornid had said nothing. "I'm counting steps. After every five, we'll stop and take stock, be sure we're not being followed or spied on. One, two, three, four ... five." We stopped.

"I wish," said Tornid, "that we'd come upon what you drew, some of those little bunks and those little men sleeping in them in dens and places..."

"Those are secret places and not to be found or searched for until this main tunnel is well known to us, and anyway," I said to Tornid, "I'd rather a human skeleton, even forty of them, than live little smoogmen from Mars."

"Yeah," said Tornid. "We wouldn't know their language."

It was dark and it was creepy. This may be a fine man-made tunnel, but it sure gives you the creeps to be down in it and take steps in it into the glooming. "Forget it," I said to myself. "Think of the fame! When Tornid and me tell everybody about the tunnel, what they're going to say! They're going to say, 'That Copin! (Lots of Alley people know our aliases now—we have accidentally let them slip out.) That Tornid! We always knew they had it in them.'"

You know how people are! After a lifetime of complaints about you, and bellowing at you, and hard smacks ... they end up saying with a proud chortle, over their coffee and cigarettes and bursts of laughter about somebody or other, "Hm-m-m. Yes ... well ... we always knew they had it in them." I
hope
they'll say that and not, instead, put us back into solitary confinement.

"I hope they will," I said.

"Yeah," said Tornid. "But ... what did you say?"

"Where's your ESP?" I asked.

"Not working in the tunnel," he said.

"If we get to have our pictures in the paper because of discovering this tunnel and having it accepted into the landmarks association of New York, I am not going to take my eyeglasses off for the picture. No sirree. That's what Star does. Takes her glasses off every time she has her picture taken. Not me. My eyeglasses are part of my face," I said.

By now, counting steps, I figured we'd passed my house on top and must be where, next door to us on top, Mrs. Harrington's house is. Tornid said, "We should have brought the string. It is safer in mazes, tunnels, and forests to have string or white pebbles, even crumbs to show the way back."

Tornid's voice sounded little. I spoke harshly to him to reassure him, prove that life, even though being lived right now in the alley tunnel, was still normal. "Whassa matter?" I said. "What do we need strings or pebbles for now any more? Crumbs! Crud! Now that we have this watch with a compass? That's all we need to get back ... right? And we have psycho chalk, too..."

"Yeah," said Tornid. "More up-to-date than string."

We walked slowly on, flashing our lights all around, not to be taken by surprise by something. "Wonder where that nutty raccoon is," I said.

"Maybe he thought
DON'T SIT IN THAT CHAIR
! meant him, and he ran and hid," said Tornid.

We walked on. It was two minutes since we'd left the chair, we were going that slowly. Jane Ives and the moms should see how slowly we are walking ... we usually are running. "You'll break your necks," they say.

Tornid said, "You'd think we'd be somewhere by now ... even to another chair, or something ... a bed. It seems like we have come farther than the whole distance of the Alley, the good old Alley up top."

"Things seem further in the dark," I said. I realized, though, that I'd forgotten to count the steps after the first twenty-five. The first goof I'd goofed. But I thought we must be near Jane Ives's house on top, by now. "You still have your chalk?" I asked. I felt in my pocket and found mine.

"Oh, yeah..." said Tornid. "We can draw arrows," he said, "
IN
and
OUT
. Or something. Arrows to the chair."

"Right," I said.

He got his neat piece of psychedelic chalk out of his pocket and drew an arrow on the wall and labeled it
IN.
I drew an arrow pointing backward and labeled it
OUT.
Cool! The letters were phosphorescent. His shone with a spooky yellow-green color in the glooming and really looked like words written by someone from some other place. Mine were bright pink.