The Tunnel of Hugsy Goode (18 page)

"Now, Racky (I began addressing my remarks to the raccoon ... it's my custom to talk to someone, even a raccoon, when solitary), don't go moseying around the skeleton bone. That's Tornid's and my skeleton, our pet one."

Pet skeleton. So, what's so funny about that? Some places they shrink heads, have a shrunk head for a pet. Cripes! The things people do!

Tomorrow, when Tornid gets home from Sunday school, maybe we can get to go down in the tunnel again—that would be Descent No. 4—and dig out the rest of that skeleton. Usually, there
is
more to a skeleton than just a leg and a toe. I wasn't scared any more, my mind having decided he was a pet. And my new watch was shining in the dark beneath the sheets, on my wrist still.

See ya.

If you think those spook thoughts last night about skeletons kept me awake the entire night, forget it. They didn't. I never slept better. It gives a guy a nice feeling to find that something—the under alley—almost exactly, except for a few additions, exists as I had drawn it.

I went out in the sunshine ... it was early in the morning. The Fabians were at church, and there was a Sunday silence in the Alley. While waiting for Tornid to come home, I went over to Jane Ives's, what I usually do Sunday mornings. She was in the kitchen and was waiting for someone, John Ives or Connie, to get up for heaven's sake so she could get to work. She paints.

Sundays, while we wait, she and I chew the fat, and I have a little second breakfast. Today I had sausages—four—English muffins—two—two doughnuts, four prunes, and some non-coffee coffee. A nice snack. I made a list of it all to show Tornid. When Jane opens the refrigerator—it's a game we always play—I reach my hand in from under the door and take out an egg from the shelf on the door.

"Surrealistic," says Jane, seeing just my hand and the egg. I have never dropped one. And Jane has never said, "Careful ... you might drop it!" She trusts me—just says, "Surrealistic," seeing my hand and the egg.

I kept wanting to tell Jane all about the tunnel so far. But I held back because Tornid and me wanted to surprise her with the whole thing. Then, I'd say, "Jane. It's all true, as I drew it." Lead her down there and say, "Behold the Tunnel of Hugsy Goode!"

I sat down at the dining-room table and drew a new and complicated maze. Then I looked at the art gallery on the cellar door. Two
grils
had drawings there. And they were good ... I have to say it—to you, not to them ... they were very good. Black-eyed
gril
had drawn a cat on a fence and Blue-Eyes goldfish in a tank. But they took up too much space and made me grumpy. There was hardly room for my new maze.

In a while, Tornid came in, hair wetted down, face shining and clean. Don't worry. My face was not dirty either. I'm not that crazy about dirty faces and hair. No one has to hold their nose when I pass by even if my hair is long like Oliver's. I ... all of us ... do take a bath every day. Just like the Fabians. Six of us, five of them—not counting the moms and the dads—adding up to eleven baths a day.

In the water shortage Mr. Frank Fabian put the three boys in the tub together. My mom didn't believe in that. Each of us six, shortage or not, had a bath ... skimpy, but a bath. No wonder John Ives clasped his head the day of the Larrabee Street River and shouted in despair, "Consider! All that water gone, gone, racing away." And he had to go to Coney Island and wash in the sea. He said he did. My mom said, "Yechh! In that water?"

Tornid had some tomato juice, and then we raced out. "See ya," we said to Jane Ives, who closed her eyes tight not to see us when we broke our necks, if we did, going down the steps. We latched her gate so Atlas Maloon couldn't get in and scruff up the grass and the garden—John Ives has one of the prettiest in the Alley. The Maloons don't care. Many people besides John Ives complain. "Why can't they walk their dog outside the Alley like decent people do?" they fume.

"Tornid," I said. "You think there's time to go down under before lunch for the descent numbered four? Nothing to be scared of ... I don't know why you were so scared..."

"I wasn't scared ... you..."

I looked at him and he didn't finish. "No," I said. "Nothing to be scared of. What's a piece of, just a
piece
of skeleton? No grin. Is he worth being scared of? And there aren't any spook voices any more, saying not to sit. We know those voices came from the
grils.
On top."

"Yeah," said Tornid. "Or us below."

"First them, then us," I said. We climbed the Arps' tree to take stock. The Alley was quiet. Where was everybody? Contamination Black-Eyes, where was she? Contamination Blue-Eyes, the two stranger
grils,
where were they? Everybody? Where were they all with their jump-rope games, their "King goes here, Queen goes there," their "Here we go round the mulberry bush" with the teeny ones while baby-sitting?

Only us, Tornid and me, were out.

This made the Sunday silence seem more silent than ever. Creepy, too, knowing what we did of the tunnel and its piece of skeleton including toe.

Usually, Sunday mornings, which are not Job Lots days, or A. & S. specialty days, are the times for moms' relaxing, for chatting over the back fences, for strolling into one another's backyard, mug of coffee in hand, beginning with how tired they are—a few words here, a few words there, some laughter; gaiety amongst the grownups, the dads gardening or in the cellars, talking about what's new at college, admiring or studying new paintings, or sculpture, making frames—just chewing the fat.

When you think of it, Sundays are really nice days here in the Alley, good smells coming from the kitchens, chicken or roast pork, sometimes,
grils
and others doing what they want—practice, homework. Some prefer doing homework the minute they get home Friday so it's done and out of the way. I don't. I do it on the way to school Monday morning to get the gist.

But now, nobody was in sight.

"Where is everybody?" I said.

"I dun-
no
..." said Tornid.

We swung out of the tree and checked. My grownups were in the cellar, a landmark in the Alley—it has so much in it. My mom retrieves every possible thing that's any good at all from what gets thrown out of the Engineering Building opposite us—even from the trash cans along Larrabee Street. We have some neat things ... a real slate blackboard, four feet wide by two feet high, they'd just plain chucked out over there.

Tornid's mom was down in our cellar, too, with her mug of coffee. Well, that was something natural going on. But it beat us where everybody else was. LLIB, for instance, where was he? Tries to stick around with us whenever he can. Not now, though.

"A ghost Alley," I said.

"Yeah," said Tornid.

"Well ... no reason to be scared," I said.

"I'm not scared," said Tornid. "I'm never scared, unless I have to be."

But an uneasy feeling began creeping over me.

I said, "Whoever created that skeleton or that piece of one out of a bygone man, well that guy might have figured how to coax all the Alley children down there and make skeletons out of them, hoping to surpass the record of the forty on the Heights. Right?"

"Right," said Tornid. "In one of the offices down there we haven't found yet."

"A sort of studio," I said, "for the creating of skeletons."

We're not crazy about the Contamination
grils,
but we don't want them skeletonized. Nor Danny and LLIB. Not even the two stranger
grils
whom we don't know very well. We might be the only survivors among the twelve-year-olds and under.

"Should we tell someone that all the children are lost? Even tell them about the tunnel?" I said.

"I dun-
no
..." said Tornid.

At the drain where, yesterday, we had seen all the
grils
together, all of them alive, flat on their bellies, all lying together, heads touching, legs fanning out, like spokes of a wheel, listening for the words from the bowels of the earth,
our
words, though they didn't know it, now, around the drain, nothing ... no body. The bare arm of a little doll poked in by Holly, maybe, stuck out of the drain. We got it out and set it on the curb. Was the little doll a sign ... was the skeleton-maker at work? The drain held us in a spell. Gooseflesh popped out on me. If we ever see the
grils
again, we'll quit the C. game ... and we'll let LLIB and Danny play with us all the time.

"Where is everybody?" I said. "Think, ya crud."

"Maybe they all got dead," said Tornid.

"Yechh," I said with a sudden reversal of opinion. "They have discovered the secret of the tunnel. They've found the entrance, gone down there without any invitation from us, the true tunnel finders. Probably down there right now, the whole slew of them, squealing and gasping, 'Oh-oo-ooh!' I can hear them in my mind, and see them ... maybe having a torchlight parade ... weeny ones on the big ones' shoulders ... planning a circus down there ... something.... Yechh!"

I kicked my foot against the cement curb in bitterness.

Tornid caught it. "Ye-ah," he said. "Those
grils...
they spoil everything."

"Serve them right," I said, "if the skeleton-maker does find them. We do the work ... they get the fun. They'll tell everybody. And it's our tunnel, ours to tell about."

"We should have named it after us, not Hugsy Goode."

"Can't. It's already been named, written on the walls in psychedelic chalk," I said.

We lay down and put our ears to the drain. "What do you hear?" I said.

"Just you, breathing," said Tornid. "Don't breathe your breath in my ear," he said.

"I know what I'll do," I said, and I did it. I said the jump-rope chant. In high
gril
-like breathless tones I spoke the now famous words. When I got to the line,
DON'T SIT IN THAT CHAIR
!, I paused.

And, before I could say them, up from the bowels of the earth came the words, eerie and muffled...
DON'T SIT IN THAT CHAIR!

"Cripes!" I said. "That proves it! The
grils are
down there ... one of them probably sitting on the Throne of King Hugsy the Goode! Maybe even have one end of their jump rope tied to it ... no respect for ancient objects. Come on, Torny, old boy, old boy! We'll get a jump rope so we sound more authentic, say the whole thing, and listen. See if they say the words ahead of us like we used to do to them, see if they put the line in just like we used to do, see how talented
they
are ... the copycats!"

We tore to my house, went down in the cellar, got one of Star's beat-up old jump ropes, and tore back out with it.

Knock me flat! My gosh!

How'd they get out so fast? There, gathered around the drain again, spokes of a wheel again, were all the
grils
and some boys, all with ears to the ground, not all dead in one fell swoop or saying words below.

"Where ya been?" I asked. This was the second time in one week I had spoken to
grils.
Blue-Eyes just looked at me. Her lips were pressed together in a I-won't-cry position. I think there were tears in her eyes. Black-Eyes spoke. She said sharply, "My dad drove all of uz ... us ... over to Myrtle to get the Zun ... Sunday paper. And popzick ... sickles. (She is trying to break herself of the 'z' habit ... her father will give her a quarter if she does, Tornid told me.) You think you're so smart, don't you? We know what you did..."

"Sh-sh-sh..." said LLIB.

Silence.

"Bee-cause..." said LLIB, his ear to the ground. "We heard voices again. Yes, we heard them again ... just now..." His voice squeaked a little ... it does sometimes.

I said, "Don't give us that Jimmy Mannikin line again."

"He's not," said Black-Eyes indignantly. "There
are
voices below..."

"Oh, yeah?" I sneered. "Let's hear them then. Don't hog all the space."

Blue-Eyes stood up and stepped aside. There
were
tears in her eyes, about to brim over. But she held her lips tight together and did not cry out loud. I felt embarrassed for her. And I flopped down on my belly in her spoke space. Tornid squeezed in beside me.

We listened. Cripes! We didn't know what to think. Here were me and Tornid on top. And instead of the
grils
being down below, discovering,
invading
our tunnel and saying the words we had heard, here all they had been doing was going off in the Pugeot to get the Sunday paper with their father! Cripes! It used to be they on top at the drain, and us below, imitating. Now ... who was doing the imitating? Cripes! There came the words again
...DON'T SIT IN THAT CHAIR!

I looked at Tornid. I said, "Tornid, I bet you don't hear anything. You take a swot at this best place here and listen."

Tornid listened real hard. His eyes grew wide. It was clear he heard words. "I bet you don't hear anything," I said. "Do you, Tornid?"

I pressed my elbow into his ribs and repeated, "You don't hear anything, do you, Tornid? I don't."