The Tunnel of Hugsy Goode (12 page)

We flashed our lights down. It wasn't anything alive, or even dead like a fossil. It was a key, a huge and rusty antique key, always a good omen when you are on a quest. I picked it up ... I save keys, like Mrs. Harrington saves string ... and I put it in my gunny sack, the first important find in the alley tunnel.

We took a few steps, and swoosh! Suddenly we found we were walking in water. But, relax. Not a great, sworling, swirling river, just a small, not deep—I tested it with my shillelagh, and it was two inches here—inky black, gurgling stream. That's what we'd heard up top. Probably, just like we'd thought, the great rain had rushed in down here through the hole me and Tornid had dug. Probably, usually rain doesn't get down here, and when we got out, we'd close up our hole tight so no more could come in. No hope for an underworld Venice with gondolas going from tunnel office to tunnel office, which we could have had if there had been a river. Too bad. No Grand Canal.

"OK, Tornid," I said. "Here we are now." I showed him where on the map. "Here, in what I suppose is an arm of the main tunnel." I flashed my big light way ahead.

"It's just like you drew it," said Tornid. He was not surprised.

"Yes," I said. "So here we are, alone here in the alley tunnel, the part marked T.N.F."

"Not much of an office," said Tornid.

"The office may be built way inside the wall. First we explore the tunnel itself, then we find the offices ... you and me alone, without any C.
grils
to bother us." On the wall I wrote T.N.F.

"Named after me," said Tornid proudly. "But if we're alone, whose eyes are those then?"

So there were eyes up there, then. We stood stock-still and did not speak. Were those the eyes of
them,
whoever they are, smoogmen, or what? Anyway, the eyes were not tunnel mirage, because it is rare for two different boys to have the same mirage, I read somewhere. This one set of eyes might be a lookout guy, and others might be everywhere, eying us—just two boys from on top—with deadly precision as we stood like stone in the area marked T.N.F.

At last, "
Buenos dias,
" I said out loud to break the spell and in Spanish in case it were the Spanish smoogman. "
Amigos,
" I said.

"Bless Maud!" said Tornid in a squeaky voice. That is a saying of his gram's. He whispered to me, "They won't know who Maud is. They'll think she is your mother and be scay-ared and run away."

What should we do? Climb back up, or be brave and go on and chase the eyes' owner away? "Well, Tornid," I said. "There are always eyes in a tunnel. Now, there's just one set of eyes that we can be sure of, and they haven't winked or budged. I have my flashlight turned on them. If they come nearer, I wave my shillelagh, we say the powerful words that make the beams of my light fatal, we say scram and also
TEAB TI
(that's beat it, backwards, remember), and see what happens."

Brandishing our shillelaghs, we advanced on the eyes. "Let's hope whoever or whatever those eyes belong to doesn't back off, and us not know where it's backed off to, where it might turn up next and perhaps..."

"Bite..." said Tornid.

"Right," I said. "Grab us!"

"Shoo!" said Tornid. But it didn't shoo.

We proceeded very slowly toward the eyes, and the eyes' owner just stayed right there. Then, at the same identical moment, Tornid and me guessed, and we said together..."Raccoon!" We could have made a wish but saved it for some other time when there was less to do.

Yes. Those eyes were the eyes of the visiting raccoon. Now we could see his stripes ... and there couldn't be a whole tribe of raccoons living around our Alley, so he must be the one who'd looked in the window at us, he just must like the neighborhood and was exploring, an exploring raccoon, like we are exploring boys.

Here he was! We hadn't seen him for days. Last we knew of him he had helped dig our hole in the hidey hole. Perhaps he had slipped in and couldn't get back out. Or maybe he just decided to go exploring. That's the way with raccoons ... curious. So here he was, now, down in our tunnel.

We stepped back to
TRATS
in case he wanted help in getting out. And we said, "Here, raccoon. Here." But he didn't come. He gave us the same unblinking stare, just as curious about us now as he had been on the night of first acquaintance through the Fabians' window. We stared back at him. None of us stirred.

Then, suddenly, with a flash of his pretty bushy tail, the raccoon leaped, but not onto our shoulders to get up and out of the tunnel. He leaped way ahead of us and disappeared from sight.

"He must have turned a corner!" I said. "He's showing us the way. Man, oh man!" I said. "There really is more tunnel than just this small corridor!"

"Sure," said Tornid. "You drew more."

A key and a raccoon. Two things so far. "Tornid," I said. "That raccoon seems to like it down here. A tunnel is an unusual place for a raccoon."

"Yeah," said Tornid. "But maybe he thought the river he heard gurgling down here, like we did, maybe he thought it was a river lost from the country, like him, and that it would lead him back to his old home..."

"I tell you what, Tornid. That raccoon is a sport raccoon. Not a sport, like an athlete or a good guy, but a sport meaning a creature or a person that behaves in a different way from others of its sort."

"A sport raccoon," said Tornid.

I felt great. What with my pal, Tornid, being with me on the expedition, and with an unhurt, alive, and well raccoon guide, who knows what we would find next? We were not in the Fabian cellar. We were not in some fancy sewer like they have in Paris that you can read about in the book of Jean Valjean—Steve told me the highlights. We were right here in the tunnel I deduced the existence of, thanks to the ESP of Hugsy Goode.

"Yes, boy," I said to Tornid. "We are in a passage under your walk to your back door. Soon we should be in the main six feet high, three feet wide tunnel of the under alley ... I think..."

"Yippee!" said Tornid. "When we turn the corner ... then we will know."

"Yes," I said triumphantly. "And Torny, old boy, old boy. I will mark it here. With this chalk I will name this tunnel the
Tunnel of Hugsy Goode.
"

I so wrote it on the wall with a neat piece of psychedelic chalk my mom had brought home from some weird grown-up party. Tornid has a piece, too.

We made fitting signs over the words with our shillelaghs, meaning it was permanent and so labeled for all posterity.

Then we took our bearings.

"Let's see," I said, studying our map by flashlight, holding it low so Tornid could see, too. "We're here, now, in area T.N.F. We're not going to explore around here right now to see where the T.N.F. office for "their" business might be. We're going to push right on and find out how long this passageway is ... up top it's twenty feet to your gate from your back stoop. Down here, it should be at least twenty-five. Then there should be a bend into the main six feet high, three feet wide tunnel, the top part of the under-alley T. The raccoon disappearing like that means there must be a bend, or..."

"He might be in one of those wall bunk bed places we draw..."

"Might," I said. "And that's what we have to find out."

The things we had to find out! Like whether or not there's a circle at the end, still intact, not carted away. Maybe it was a gathering place for the people, human or smoogman, to hold meetings in, their children to play games in and turn their bikes around in...
¿quién sabe?

So now, business. A pale light from the hidey hole flecked the wall opposite us. And ahead, our flashlights broke the darkness with an eerie beam. We felt scared to go on into the glooming. We felt safe in this section named T.N.F.

"Where's the river?" asked Tornid. "I really was scared there'd be a river..."

"Well, it's gone and gotten itself lost, left just this trickle behind as a clue to tell where it's lost itself to," I said.

"Good riddance," said Tornid. "I'd be scared of a lost river down here."

"Well, it's gone. So now to get ready for us to go, too ... raccoon and river both gone."

I tied the end of a ball of string to the knotted end of the rope we'd left dangling from the hidey hole. If anyone up top came along and tried to pull our rope up, the string would signal me. It was my telegraph system. Me and Tornid didn't want to be trapped down here, not until we fixed it up for us to camp in when we found out all about it. And there's no sense exploring a new tunnel or a maze without string to follow to get you back.

We wanted to tie Tornid's string to something different. We flashed our lights around T.N.F. By cricky! There was the other end of the big round pipe that's in the Fabians' yard on top. It jutted out to the left of our rope, had a hinged lid that was clamped on tightly. We tied Tornid's string around that.

"They must have used this big pipe as a vent," I said. "Tunnel vent..."

"Marked T.V. on top," said Tornid. "Maybe they used it to get people in and out of?" he asked.

"Not big enough for that," I said. "Not for some people, anyway."

"I know. Our moms," said Tornid.

So far, all I knew about this pipe was that it wasn't any pipe dream. It's real like everything else so far in this book. No elves, no little folk, fairies and such. There may be real smoogmen—don't know yet. But we are wide awake, we are not dreaming. This
is
real. We are in a tunnel under the Alley. Why there
is
a tunnel may bug some people. Not me. Just
being
is reason enough for me. But we have to find it all.

So, now, here we are, strings tied, return route assured. Lost river really lost, raccoon not in sight, and us—Tornid and me—on our way into the glooming.

It was a spooky thing to do. We checked everything. We had our flashlights turned on—mine was still attached to my belt around my waist. We had our sacks strapped to our backs. We had our balls of string in one hand, our shillelaghs in the other held high like swords. We were going to use them, not only to fend off
them,
but also as divining rods to locate hollow places in the wall where secret offices might be. We gave one last look back at the pale light from the hidey hole ... no one had closed the entranceway so far so we were still connected with human beings—life—and cautiously we stepped down the narrow passageway into the glooming.

Thusly we went.

At least a raccoon was down here with us. Here's hoping he wouldn't appear suddenly from somewhere—startle us. But, raccoons are friendly ... just curious, that's all ... I think...

"Tornid," I said. "Sport raccoon or not, it is unnatural for that fellow to stow himself away down here in a tunnel, trees being the natural habitat for raccoons. First he spies on us through your window ... then he comes down here. Maybe he reports to
them...
"

"Oo-ooh, yeah," said Tornid. "A smoogman in disguise,
fur
disguise. Hey ... but raccoons do like darkness, probably even sport ones do. Here, it's always darkness. This raccoon doesn't have to wait the way most raccoons do for the sun to set to have it dark, pitch-black darkness all the time."

"I hope you're right," I said.

"
¿Quién sabe?
" said Tornid. He's getting to speak Spanish very well.

We went on slowly, not to trip or fall in a pit. After about twenty-five steps ... I made a note in my notebook ... we came to the end of this ell of the tunnel. We knew it was the end—our flashlights showed just wall up ahead. But, would it turn a corner and continue?

It did. It made a sharp, squared-off turn left. On our right was nothing but wall. We flashed our light down this new corridor. We couldn't see the end of it. But we did see that it was a main three feet wide, six feet high tunnel as described in Chapter 1. It is almost beyond belief that everything is working out exactly as drawn in my guessed-at plan. I really should be an architect when I grow up, or a plumber. Maybe those little men in bunk beds will turn out to be real, too. Also, passageways you have to crawl through like the one to my
PIT
on the map.

Well, if we had felt scared to leave the pale slant of light from the hidey hole behind—our connection with Alley on top—imagine how we felt turning this corner! But we did it. We unwound some string, wrote "entrance to T.N.F." in psychedelic chalk on the wall outside the little corridor, and cautiously went on. No sign of the raccoon, be he friend or enemy in fur disguise, nothing ... no eyes. Lost river still a mere trickle, winding up its affairs. No sign of any bones. Why think of bones, though, in a tunnel created, as far as we can see now, by man as part of the Alley and its twenty-seven houses?

There must be some reason for keeping the tunnel a secret, and bones may be the reason.

Tough on Hugsy Goode! Poor Hugsy had to move away before he could follow up his hunch. If he ever comes back to visit (he's a boy with a beard now, in college now, and gets back and forth to it with a sleeping bag on his back ... neat!), will he ever be pleased to see his name in psychedelic chalk written on a tunnel wall! It's not everyone gets to have a tunnel named after him. Hugsy's dream come true.