The Tunnel of Hugsy Goode (26 page)

"Oh, no, he isn't," said Black-Eyes. "There he is! He's up in his mussy old nest."

Sure enough. There he was, all right. By the light from Billy Maloon's house, we could see his ringed tail. "Well, we'll fix that hole right now then," said my mom. She went home and came back with the huge piece of slate they'd chucked out of the Engineering School, and she placed it tight against the hole in the hidey hole, Tornid's and my private, until now, entrance into the tunnel. Now, no one could get in, or out—at least for the present. I felt sort of sad.

Tornid's mom said everybody should come into her house for coffee and cold drinks, and she had made a cake that morning. So everybody did. It was as good, better, than the long night of the raging river on Larrabee Street. Better, because then the tunnel was just an idea of Hugsy Goode with just a few chips chipped out of the wall. And now we had found it and named it.

I decided to speak to the
grils
since in the glooming below they had decided to speak to me. "How come," I said, "you knew about Tornid's and my tunnel? How come you waited until Tornid and me were out of sight and then you went down there and spoiled the surprise we had for everybody? No wonder Tornid and me have to call you 'Contamination.'"

"Yeah," said Tornid. "That was sneaky. Not nice..."

"Not sneaky at all," said Black-Eyes. "So there!"

Blue-Eyes, now that she had her mini tape recorder back and it was not broken, spoke more gently. She said, "Not sneaky, really, Copin. Not sneaky at all. While you and Tornid were wherever you were just now..."

"They were finding me," said Hugsy. "And I might as well skip Paterson..."

"Yes. While you were finding Mr. Hugh Z. Goode ... only we didn't know anything about all that at the time ... Beatrice and I came out to cool off in the tree house and look at the stars. I wondered," said Izzy Blue-Eyes, "if I would ever see my mini tape recorder again..."

"Yes, and..." interrupted Black-Eyes, forgetting she hated me, "just then by the light from Billy Maloon's back stoop, we saw the raccoon coming out of the hidey hole, and we were so excited because we haven't seen him in such a long time, and we could see he had something dangling from his mouth, so..."

"So..." interrupted Blue-Eyes. ("It's my mini and I should be the one telling the story," she gently reproached her sister.) "We could not help but say, 'Oh, look! The raccoon! And he has my mini tape recorder ... holding it by the strap in his mouth.... It will get broken..."

"And ... yes," said Black-Eyes. "That startled him and he jumped back into the hidey hole. The mini was saying, 'Coming, Mother.' That was not very nice of you, Tornid..."

"I'll pay for part of a new tape," I said.

"So, we went to the hidey hole and we found the recorder. You could tell where it was by the 'Coming, Mothers,' and we picked it up, still saying these words. We parted the squash vines carefully, but the raccoon was not down there. Still we had just seen him jump in ... where was he? We felt all around ... I hope they don't bite ... but he just wasn't there. Isabel guarded the hidey hole, and I got Mommy and Daddy. And they found the big hole. And then we all got coveralls and went down. But as we went down, the raccoon—he jumped on Daddy's shoulders and went out."

I said, "We, Tornid and me, don't know where he used to go down there. We have only seen him as far as the chair. Shows there is more to this tunnel than Tornid and me have found yet. But Racky may have found it all, gone wriggling through one after another secret crawling-through passage ... maybe over to Mike's art store ... I just know there's a tunnel there ... that may be the one that goes over to Myrtle Avenue. Maybe Racky's found the offices, the business places for the smoogmen, if there are any ... their bunks, their things.... I've lots of plans and mazes..." I said.

We never got to explore again. The tunnel has been closed up tight. No one can get down there any more. They were afraid little children would slide down into it the way Hugsy Goode did, and he is not little—six feet three and only eighteen! So now the tunnel has been cemented up tight, and there is no use your trying to locate it, or our trying to locate the secret dens, if there are any.

But they didn't close it up until the president of the college had made the grand tunnel tour with Tornid and me as guides. He was flabbergasted at the whole idea of being president of a college that had this unique item. He looked at Bone and said he thought it was a leg bone of a horse. He had worked as a veterinarian once to earn his way through college and knew leg bones of horses. He sent the leg bone to the Museum of Natural History, though, for them to ponder and date, if possible. It was just as hard to figure how a leg bone of a horse got down in the Tunnel of Hugsy Goode as it was to figure how, if it had been a leg of a man,
it
got down there.

The president said, on his grand tour, it was lucky the students had never heard of the tunnel. They'd probably draw more than
HA-HA'S
on the walls and giant footsteps on the floor. Then he and the librarian, Mr. Amos Belcher, Mr. John Ives, Professor Starr, the learned Grandby College professor of archaeology, Tornid and me, the discoverers of the tunnel, went down into the library basement, and these men studied old records and newspapers.

Mr. John Ives read something from long ago in a paper named
The Brooklyn Eagle
that told about this entire area. "Jackson's Hole" was the name of it then. "Belonged to a farmer named Jackson," Mr. John Ives read out loud. "Says, 'Jackson lost a mare named Milly down here once in the swamp.' Maybe that was Milly's leg you found in the tunnel," he said to us.

Tornid said, "O-o-oh," because he felt badly about Jackson's mare even though it all happened about a hundred years ago. I didn't feel all that badly. It's a Fabian custom to feel badly about all animals, not a Carroll custom.

Then those four men, the president, Mr. Belcher, Mr. Starr, and Mr. Ives, they all said "Whoopee!" at once. What they'd found now in some dusty box ... Mr. Belcher said it was disgraceful, the condition of the basement, and you could see he hoped the president would not mind, or sneeze—Mr. John Ives sneezed, for he has many allergies and he sneezes loudly even at the word "sneeze"...the reason they said "whoopee" was that they found the architect's original sketches and plans for the Alley and the houses, in fact, for the entire campus, including the tunnels.

"Hm-m-m," mused John Ives. "Filled in Jackson's Hole with lots of tin cans, and that's what we're built on ... tin cans..."

They had used the tunnel for special ceremonies, but they'd had to give that up because the tunnel was not tall enough for the tall professors, especially in their mortarboard hats. Besides, there had been a cave-in..."I told you there would be!" exclaimed John Ives, as though he were alive way back then and arguing then against the whole wild plan, especially in view of the tin-can base. "Just an eccentric scheme of some eccentric architect," he fumed.

"That's people," I said to Tornid. "Never like anything good! We thought it was neat. Even the
grils
did."

Anyway, no matter what we thought, they decided to seal it up after the cave-in, and from then on used only the tunnel that went under Grand Street from the library to Memorial Hall, and that only for processions when it was raining hard out. Mr. John Ives said he'd marched in it for his commencement in 1932!

As time went on, people forgot about the tunnel. Only Hugsy Goode had the ESP to think it up all over again, and Tornid and me to draw the logical plans and, best of all, to find it!

What became of the raccoon, of Racky? The chief zoo men of the city said that since this unusual raccoon was found in Brooklyn and helped to explore a tunnel on land that may be proclaimed a landmark—the landmark Tunnel of Hugsy Goode—his home should be the Prospect Park Zoo in Brooklyn. There he is. Go and see him, if you like. His name, Racky Fabian—since he was first seen looking in the Fabians' window, that's fair—is on his fence. You may not get to see him, though, because he spends much time digging himself a tunnel. There was a picture in
Life
of him doing this. It shows he misses his life in the under alley where it was nighttime all the time.

The Throne of Hugsy Goode? How about that, you ask? Well, they took it up and out through the tunnels and over to the library, and they had it all cleaned up and they put it in the hall of the library, next to the grandfather clock. You can sit in it—it is sturdy. Our—Tornid's and my—hunch about why it was down there was as right as any that anyone else could think up ... that it may have been used by ladies of long ago to sit in if they got tired during the candlelight processions, or even as the throne for the crowning of the Snow Queen ... some ceremony...

The librarian wanted to put a little plaque on the chair saying, "The Throne of Hugsy Goode." But Hugsy did not like that. "What would my friends back in Michigan think?" he asked. "No one calls me 'Hugsy' now."

They asked if they might name it, "The Throne of Hugh Z. Goode." At first Hugsy said no, he thought they only named chairs after dead people. But then he began to like the idea, for he saw that he is a sort of legend of the under alley and of the Alley on top, too. Besides he had a grandfather named Hugh Z. (for Zachary) Goode, and his friends could think it was his old chair. So that's the way it stood. You can go and see it, if you like.

The El? The "save the Myrtle Avenue El plan" or at least, if it had to be torn down like all other els, to turn the stations into international restaurants ... a feast line? This is still being studied by the Landmarks Society of New York City. John Ives, who travels a lot, thought the idea was great and did some investigating. "Bills are still pending," he said. "So ... who knows?"

Billy Maloon was a little jealous ... Connie said this to us ... because Hugsy Goode had a tunnel and a chair in the library named after him and Billy didn't, not so far, anyway, and he was eighteen, too.

Anyway, I wish this bill would get pended before August 4, my birthday and the day of another important event in my life and in life in the Alley. Important? How come? You say, why is August 4 important besides being your birthday? Well, I'll tell you why. We Carrolls, all of us six children, all born and raised here in the Alley, except for that one year in Mexico where Branch was born, are
moving!
To Vermont! Knock me flat! But it's true.

The only people in the Alley who know this big news are Jane Ives and Tornid and his family, outside of my family. My mom said not to tell every Tom, Dick, and Harry, so I didn't ... don't ask me why. Moms and dads just like to keep things quiet. Then when the time is ripe, our mom and dad are going to tell it to the whole Alley, invite everybody in the Alley and lots of people out of it, even people they don't like, to a great big smashing farewell party they are going to give themselves, with pizza, salads, barbecued lamb, and such.

Tornid and me thought it would have been great to have the party in Hugsy Goode's tunnel, but it got cemented up first, and Tornid and I sure aren't going to chip it open again and show the sights down there. No, sirree. Too late, too hot ... and the tunnel's bygone history, now.

I won't write a chapter about the party, when it comes. I'm winding this book up right here. Some other person can write the next annals of the Alley, not me. I won't be living here ... we're moving to Vermont.

Oh sure, I'll miss my pal, Tornid. But he can come and visit me. We are going to have a house with thirteen rooms. There are more trees to climb there, more walks to walk. No locked gates.

I'll miss Jane Ives. I went over to tell her the news. My mom said, yes, I could tell her. I sat at her kitchen table the way I've done at some time every day for years now. It's Sunday morning. I had some sausage, a cup of my kind of coffee. I fixed it carefully the way I like it and I sipped it slowly ... a teaspoonful at a time, and I added a little more sugar. And I reached my hand up from under the refrigerator door and took out an egg when she opened the door ... and...

"What's up, Copin?" asked Jane Ives. "What's up?" Jane always knows when something's the matter or there's been a new twist. It's her ESP.

So I told her. "We're moving," I said. And I told her where, when, and how.

"I know how to make friends," I said.

She said, "I know you do. Get to school early the first day. Then you get to see everyone as they come into the schoolyard, and you don't seem like a new boy, then."

"Oh, I'll be the first one there," I said. "I know you don't go up to a kid and say, 'My name is Copin. What's yours?' That's dopey. The thing is to kid around for a while. Then it comes up naturally. You say, 'Well, so long. Be seeing ya.' And he says, 'So long. See ya.' Before you know it, you have a friend ... you always have a ball in your hand or your pocket, in case he may want to play catch. I already have a friend. I saw a guy the day we looked at our house. He lives next door. He was looking through his window. We didn't look at each other. But we saw each other anyway ... don't know his name yet.

"I'm going to have a room to myself there ... there are so many rooms! Everyone will have a room of his own. You can come and visit ... all the Fabians ... Tornid..."

Jane said, "You'll love it, Copin. But I tell you, I sure am going to miss you and all our talk and your coming in and sprawling out, and playing Beatle records, and drawing, and scaring the bee-jeebies out of John or Connie when they come down to breakfast, hiding behind the television or somewhere, suddenly coming out, shouting ... something ... have them jump and clasp their hands over their hearts or ears. Well, we'll miss you. And the combine, the great combine of Tornid and Copin, the tunnel finders.... These days were great. Gee whizzee whiz whiz!"

Well, it was getting sad. So we were both glad when Tornid came in, hair slicked down, eyes shining, him smiling his wonderful smile.

Tornid said ... he had some tomato juice—without Worcestershire sauce in it ... he'd heard a boy was moving into our house, his name was "Sling." "I'll tell him about the good old days in the Alley when you and me found the lost tunnel," he said, "like the way you used to tell me about the good old days in the Alley when there was a Circle." And he said, "Maybe that guy you saw in that window in Vermont was Pete Calahan, the guy you wrote the ten letters for."