The Tunnel of Hugsy Goode (19 page)

Tornid crossed his fingers under his belly and said, "No." This way he knew his lie was a white one and would be forgiven even if today was Sunday. He doesn't lie very well. Even I don't. I only lie to protect my rights ... my rights being Tornid's and my claim to the alley under the Alley with all its skeletons, lost rivers that had really gotten themselves lost, Throne of Hugsy the Goode, even eerie voices, the tunnel with all its mysteries still to be solved.

"They must be deaf," said Black-Eyes. Blue-Eyes was still unable or unwilling to speak. "Deaf as a post," said Black-Eyes, right ear to the ground and piercing me with her impenetrable eyes.

The two new
grils
pivoted around on their elbows and looked at us without any expression at all. Black-Eyes said to one, "Marlene. You hear those words, don't you?"

New
gril,
Marlene, nodded and turned her gum around to the other side of her mouth so the saliva would not slide out with her face turned sideways. That was all.

"What did you hear
it
said?" I asked sarcastically.

"Oh. You can listen," said Black-Eyes. "Maybe
this
time you'll tell the truth. Maybe your ears have cleared up by now."

I was curious. If it was the skeleton-fellow, I had to know so I could recognize his voice if I heard it again, not mix it up with the jump-rope
grils
on top, when we got down there ... if we
would
go down there again. I listened. This was what I heard.

"Testing ... just testing ... stand by ... testing ... Roger ... do you hear ... testing ... Roger
...DON'T SIT IN THAT CHAIR
...for Pete's sake ... Ay ah..." Then, in a deeper, really hollow tone ... "Tee-ornid ... Co-opin ... where are you?...Testing ... testing..."

My eyeballs nearly fell out of my sockets. Tornid had heard, too. Who could miss his own fake name spoken in that creepy voice coming out of the depths? We didn't miss it, neither of us did, but we didn't say ah, yes, or no.

"Well..." said Black-Eyes angrily. "You must have heard all that, didn't you?"

"You've all got bats in your belfry," I said.

"And you've got them in your ears," she said.

"Aw," I said. "You all give me a pain." I gave several of them shoves to show how pained I was, and they all rolled over like dominoes. "Come on, Tornid," I said. "Let us leave the little ones to their little game."

Blue-Eyes spoke. A real tear was rolling down her cheek. She quavered, "What did you do with it?"

"Oh, never mind them," said Black-Eyes. She put her arm around Blue-Eyes and gently led her away whilst whispering in her ear.

"What's she talking about? What'd I do with what?" I asked Tornid.

"I dun-
no
," he said.

We adjourned to the tree house, where we could keep our eyes on the hidey hole and see if anyone came up it or went down it, and where we could puzzle about this new slant. It began to look as though someone else
was
down there, imitating the whole bunch of us,
grils and
me and Tornid, and even saying, "Tornid ... Copin ... where are you?"

Cripes! Our aliases!

Sitting up there in our ... Tornid's ... tree house, puzzling and puzzled, I asked Tornid, "How many
grils
are there in the Alley?"

"About..." said Tornid.

"No 'abouts,' Tornid. Be accurate, cluck! And by
grils
I mean real ones, not tiny future ones like Holly and Lucy."

I counted them up out loud. "Your two sisters, my two ... makes four. New
gril
1 and new
gril
2 ... makes six. Bird, a
gril,
though not often here, but visiting the Fabians because it's Sunday ... she makes seven. And all of them are around the drain right now," I said. "Seven around the drain."

"Like the seven sisters in the sky," said Tornid.

"Yeah," I said. "Except that these happen to be seven sisters of the under alley. The up-top
grils
may not only have aliases like we do, but they may also have other selves,
smoog-grils
that impersonate them.... Or," I said, "maybe the full-grown
grils
up here are training the tiny ones, Holly and Lucy, to slide down our entranceway, go into our tunnel, and squeak up their voices..."

"Like a Fagan ... seven Fagans ... training two little tiny girls to become
grils
..." Tornid said.

"Well, still," I said, "I really don't think so. The
grils
are kindhearted at base toward tiny ones. Besides, Lucy had the chicken pox."

And there was little Lucy, her pale face pressed against the windowpane of her little back bedroom window looking longingly out at life. So, who was making a mockery out of all of us?

At the drain the
grils
began to jump rope again and say the same old chant, which gets on my nerves now as much as the dumb music of the ice-cream man on Myrtle ... diddle-de-diddle-de-dump-de-dump. Yechh! It's enough to turn you against ice cream. You could tell the
grils
were not having very much fun. Often, before the person was counted out, they all plopped down and listened for the voice from below. From our high place you could see one or the other nod her head as though to say, "There, there it is again."

I said, "Torny, old boy, old boy. The
grils
are just as goofed up as we are."

"I'm not goofed up," said Tornid. "I just think they're the voices of the smoogmen. You drew plenty of them ... their offices, bunks, dens, and everything we haven't come to yet. But we will because so far everything is the way you drew it."

I have respect for Tornid's ESP and listened.

He went on. "If there are smoogmen, there might be smoog-
grils
and smoog-moms to cook and keep house. They imitate real good," said Tornid. "They sound exactly like real
grils
above the earth and like me and you."

"Well," I said. "We do have to consider everything ... smoogmen, women and
grils
...space ones. They may have flown a saucerful of them down last night, or even long ago. They may have set up housekeeping then, long ago, in the days when people held tea parties in the under alley, scared everybody out so they'd never come back and they'd have it to themselves and their business. They may be sending messages back to their smoogmen base about things they've heard from on top, like us being on their trail with our shillelaghs and psychedelic chalk; they may study the meanings of all this, whilst all we want is to just plain explore a man-made tunnel and not interfere in the least with smoogmen or the life they lead and their wars, if they war. They may think the
grils'
jump-rope chant is a special signal like we did. They may have eaten the rest of that man, that skeleton, leaving the leg bone for later because probably they eat bone, too.... If I didn't know that Hugsy Goode was alive and a student with a beard at Mich. State, I'd think, I might think that that leg bone ... it's a long bone, and Hugsy, they tell me, is very tall ... might be..."

"Cripes!" said Tornid. "If there are little spacemen or smoogmen down there eating college boys, I'm never going down there again. They may eat small boys, too."

"Don't say 'never,' Tornid," I said. "It's a bad thing to say 'never.'"

Then Tornid said, "Copin. Maybe raccoons do talk after all. He's the only alive thing besides us we know goes down there ... and him being a sport raccoon?"

"Oh, cripes!" I said in disgust. "Same old theory."

Then, suddenly, the way
grils
do, they all hopped up and said, "Bye," and, "See you later." Some went down the Alley to where the Circle used to be. My sisters went into our house, and the Fabian
grils
came into their yard. They didn't look up at us, in the tree house, and we didn't look at them. We kept our eyes on the hidey hole, and they didn't go anywhere near it or even look at it.

They stopped on the top step of the back stoop. Black-Eyes said, loud, meaning for us to hear, "Where do you think your mini tape recorder is, Isabel? It is not in the dray-ain. The Commodore let us take off the lid and feel around, and it is not down there. Yet we hear it from somewhere below. Nicky is bad, Isabel. But, one thing I am sure of, I am sure he would not steal anything as important as a mini tape recorder that you saved up for by collecting all those wrappers from Highlander's Paper Towels, going from this house to that in the Alley getting people to save their Highlander wrappers for you, even asking Miss Hogan at P.S. 2 to change her brand of paper towels and save the wrappers, even though they cost one cent more than some other brands. And all those who do use that brand did save the wrappers for you, and it took you five months to get enough to send away and get your mini tape recorder. No. Nicky would not steal anything as expensive as that. A piece of gum, maybe from, say, me or from Jane Ives's back porch at trick or treat time. But, a tape recorder, a mini tape recorder,
your
tape recorder ... no!" Her black eyes flashed at me in the tree house.

Izzie Blue-Eyes sniffled. Bravely holding back her tears, in quaversome tones, she said, "But who? I loved my little tape recorder so. It would have made a timeless accurate historical record of people in the Alley. I would ask permission to tape a person so I would not get them making bad remarks about someone. I would not be violating their constitutional rights. I was getting real neat things, like..."

Unable to continue, Blue-Eyes groped her way inside, Black-Eyes protecting her from behind, guiding her as one would a person shocked by some piece of very bad news. They made me feel guilty. I didn't know what they were yapping and sniveling about ... they had me stumped. Then they must have changed their minds and got mad at me all over again, because back to the door they came again, and Blue-Eyes, tears running unchecked down her cheeks now, said, "Timmy. Nicky. You stole my nice new mini tape recorder and threw it somewhere, some secret somewhere, and it is going on mini-taping itself, and it will ruin itself and it will ra-a-ain!"

Well, that shook me up. I shouted, "I didn't even know you had a mini tape recorder. So how could I steal something I didn't even know the existence of? Why didn't you show it to us if you have one?"

Black-Eyes, still standing on the top step, arm raised, finger pointed at us, said, "Because we knew you would steal it. And you did!" And she added, "And,
Copin!
(She had heard my alias and used it now to show that 'Copin' was the Mr. Hyde of
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde...
Nicky being the Dr. Jekyll.) We know that you put it in some secret place. We hear it. You heard it, too. Yet you said you didn't. I saw you cross your fingers, Tornid. (She used his fake name, too.) So ... you not only steal ... you do not tell the truth!"

Back into the house Blue-Eyes went to fling herself, I supposed, face down on the divan and let sobs wrack her and tears swamp her and not watch television either.

With one last lethal glare, Black-Eyes wheeled around, slammed the kitchen door and went in, probably to comfort her sister with whom she sometimes disagreed. But not now. The two were united now in hatred of me and Tornid, especially me, being three years older and hated three times as much, leading Tornid into doing such things as taking a mini tape recorder from his sister and going over to Myrtle Avenue that time.

Well!

I said, "Tornid. I didn't even know blue-eyed
gril
had a mini tape recorder."

He said glumly, "Me neither." He was shook up because he had been left out of common Fabian family knowledge.

"So. How could I steal it? Anyway, I don't steal. How'd they get that crummy idea?"

"They just don't think you are any good," said Tornid. "You reapeth what you soweth," he said.

I was shook up and insulted. I don't steal. I earn my money. And I earn my money in much harder ways than minding small children or saving Highlander's Paper Towel wrappers. My money me and Tornid earn, we earn by collecting, saving, and tying up old newspapers. They are heavy, believe me! Everyone, almost, in the Alley saves them for us, and we put them in my cellar, and we tie them up, and once a month we put them in our blue bus and my mom drives us to Goodwill Industries and we get one cent (1¢) a pound for them.

I felt grumpy. I decided to resume calling
grils
"Contamination" loudly, not silently, whether the moms liked it or not. I looked at Tornid. He was staring at his house, and he looked miserable. Maybe even he, my pal Torny, old boy, old boy, suspected me, too. I asked him.

"You crazy? Cluck!" he had the courage to say.

Well, Tornid
knows.
He
knows
I don't go around stealing things, not unusual things like mini tape recorders, especially. Once, a piece of crumbly old chewing gum from Jane Ives's porch, an ancient stick from trick or treat days, and I had to spit the crumbs out because it would not stick together.

Then Tornid said, and he looked me straight in the eye, "You know ... raccoons
are
thieves. They may not talk, but they
are
thieves."