The Tunnel of Hugsy Goode (7 page)

"What's that ... a pipe dream?" said Tornid.

"You don't know what a pipe dream is?" I said.

"Oh, yeah ... sure," said Tornid. "You mean
pipe
dream, new way of getting into tunnels.... You use a pipe to do it."

"Hey," I said. "Your ESP might have sent you a message right then. You might have something there!"

"I might?" Tornid's eyes shone. He was proud to have "something."

"Maybe," I said, and looked at him piercingly through my nonshatterable glasses.

"It's best not to let people—Tornid—know when they—he—have—has hit on something, not to make them—him—conceited. Jane Ives works the other way around. She is all for praising. The least glimmer of an idea—"Great, great," she says even before it all gets out of your mouth (it's because she has ESP). Even some corny idea of LLIB's or one of the C. girls..."Great! Great!" she says.

In Tornid's and my combine it wouldn't work for me to throw out praise. I have to be the one with the ideas. The combine just would not work otherwise. You can't have an eight-year-old having the ideas. Helper to carry out ideas—mine—OK. Have the ideas—his—no!

Well ... Tornid ... he knows it anyway when the idea he passes along to me is a good one because I mull over it. And that's all he cares about ... he doesn't have to be told, "Great, great." He is an anonymous idea getter and giver. Of course, like with pipe dream, Tornid doesn't always know he has an idea. But I sure know one when I hear one. So I climbed out of the hidey hole a minute, and I looked at and studied the round pipe with the flat top on it that the moms set their coffee mugs on while they watch the baby, chew the fat, make each other laugh. I couldn't understand why it was there unless it was a pipe, a vent—perhaps—that was used to air out the tunnel. I marked it T.V. (Tunnel Vent). This would throw people—the C. girls—off the track because they—everyone—thinks those letters stand for television, not tunnel vent. But from up here there was no way of telling if this theory was right. We had to get down to prove it.

So, back into the hidey hole again then, me—Copin Nubsy Carroll—and Tornid—Tornid Nubsy Fabian—ready to probe the secret of the tunnel. We chipped away at the brick wall on the left-hand side of the hidey hole. It was hard work and it was hot work. In case you wonder what it was doing outside, it was being hot. We worked fast because I never know when my mom will blast the cow horn blast—she can blow various notes on it, for she is clever in the use of it—and blast me home.

"She always blows it at the worst time. Doesn't she—my mom—always blow the cow horn at the wrong time?" I asked Tornid.

"I duuno," he said. You could tell he was glad it wasn't his mom had the cow horn, but mine.

As we chipped away at the bricks in the miniature jungle of squash vines, I said, "Hugsy Goode was a prophet. He planted these vines that grow over this hidey hole. He spake the words that there is probably a tunnel under the Alley. This hidey hole that in olden Alley days was a jail is going to be the doorway into that tunnel."

"It is complicating," said Tornid. And he said, "Copin, why are we trying to find the tunnel? It's going to take up all our time."

I just stared at Tornid. I got out my map and studied it. He got out his. He was embarrassed he'd said a stupid thing. We scraped away some more with our chipping tools. A little hoppy toad hopped out and away.

I said, "Your mom ... if she hears us chipping when she's in the cellar ... will think it is the return of that rat she saw once." And I said, "This is the way writers of history get the history they write, Tornid. They find bones, or something, and piece them together and name it whatever they think it is."

"Do you think we'll find
bones
down there in the tunnel?...Cripes!" said Tornid.

"Might," I said. "One day last year a bunch of kids were playing in the rubble where some old houses were being torn down—it was down near Brooklyn Bridge in the Heights. The workers had gone home, and these kids found a batch of skeletons, about forty of them. They left them intact and told the police. Now they're studying the whole bunch of them in museums. They think they might be colonists or Indians, they don't know which ... redcoats, maybe. That was luck for you. Keep your fingers crossed ... hope we have as good a break ... even top the record. Who knows?"

"
¿Quién sabe?
" said Tornid.

Just then the cow horn did blow. "Told ya," I said. "Another minute and we might have made the breakthrough. The wall's feeling pretty crumbly now."

"Yeah," said Tornid. "I know."

We looked through the squash vines on top, to make sure we were not being seen by anybody. Then we climbed out, wiped the sweat from our faces, stashed away our tools, and emerged as the cow horn blew again.

This time the cow horn meant good news. My mom said ... knock me flat..."How'd you like to have dinner at the Fabians' tonight?"

Where's the hitch, I wondered. But I said, "Sure. Did Bayberry (I thought I could begin to call Tornid's mom by her nickname since the glacier was receding), did she invite me?"

"Well, you don't think I did, do you?" my mom said.

Then Tornid came running over. "Mrs. Carroll," he said. "Can Cope ... Nick ... sleep over, too?"

"Who's Copenick?" my mom said. And she said, "Your mother must be out of her senses. You won't sleep ... there might be school tomorrow ... we won't know till late tonight. If there is, you'll be tired."

"Oh, we'll sleep, won't we, Torn ... Timmy?"

So later, there I was then ... knock me flat—I never thought it would happen again ... at the dining-room table in the Fabians' home. This might make you think that Tornid's mom and dad had decided to forgive and forget the Myrtle Avenue El expedition. But I can tell that his mom is still wary of me. I hope someday she'll like me. I'm doing my best to make a good impression, stay seated, not hop up in the middle of the meal, not sprawl, not gulp down my milk or my water, use the right knife and fork and spoon—they lay them all out at each place, regardless of whether you're going to need the whole shebang or not. It is to accustom you to the sight of several forks and spoons. If you should go to a banquet, you won't act like a clod and eat your salad with the wrong fork ... end up for dessert with the dinner one.

I'll give the lineup at the long table.

Tornid and me were sitting with our backs to the windows above the hidey hole. LLIB (Llyeeb, I call him ... he likes it and I'm trying to get in good with all Fabians, beginning at the lowliest), sitting on Tornid's left and beside his mother, at the end of the table where she can get to the kitchen if necessary; Danny on her left, opposite LLIB; then the two C. girls—Beatrice, the black-eyed C. girl (too bad she is opposite me because I don't know where to look ... you can't see into those great black eyes); and next to her, Isabel, the blue-eyed C. girl; and last, at the other end of the table is Tornid's kind dad, about to carve a little roast chicken.

Tornid and me have made our secret sign that temporarily makes us free from the Contamination, and we could even look into Black-Eyes' eyes without fear. I wish I could dig what goes on behind them. But I can't. I fare better with Blue-Eyes who may abide me better ... I don't know.

Well, that makes eight of us at the dinner table, and the dinner was great. That's one good thing you can say about both the moms, they are wonderful cooks. Sasha, the golden afghan with a pedigree that goes back to Afghan the First, is nosing around under the table. There's a ledge that goes around under the top of the table. People sometimes stick their gum there, to save it ... sometimes they forget it and it hardens and becomes part of the table, or Sasha gets it and chews it intelligently; or they put a piece of food on the ledge they don't like and don't want to tell their mom they didn't like it. Nobody wants to hurt Bayberry's feelings, and all kiss her when dinner is over and say thank you and it was good. So, Sasha gets a windfall now and then. But not from this dinner, as good as a Thanksgiving dinner and it's only May.

We were eating the dessert, which was apple pie. I had just a few more bites to go when ... I don't know what made me—I
must,
like Jane Ives and Tornid, have ESP
...
I
felt
eyes on me from behind. I turned around. I saw a little animal looking in the window at us. "Raccoon" at first did not enter my mind, it was so unlikely. "Look at that cat!" I said. But the minute I said "cat" I knew it was a raccoon, though that's a hard thing to prove to some people, yechh.

C. girl Beatrice said, "It's not a cat. It's a raccoon."

"Raccoon!" we all said together.

The C. girls made a low-voiced comment. Since they are polite, they refrained from making a criticism of a visitor in their home, even though the visitor was me. But I could tell what the comment was..."Can't tell a raccoon from a cat..."

I do things faster than most people. I was the only one able to scoop up the last of my pie and, even so, be the first out the back door. But the raccoon had vanished in the misty May air. We searched for a while, though it was getting dark. Me and Tornid jumped in the hidey hole to keep the others from doing the same and came out saying loudly, "Nope, not down here." We didn't see him anywhere.

People who live in the country would not be astonished to see a raccoon looking in at them through a dining-room window. But it is an unusual thing to have happen in Brooklyn, especially the part I live in—the Alley on the campus of Grandby Institute, not near the zoo or anything.

My C. sister, Star, came out. She was jealous when she heard the news because she hadn't seen the raccoon. At first she said, "Aw, yeah..." to me, not believing. But the honest Fabian girls said, "Yes, Star. He really was here, looking at us through the window. Maybe he would have come in if we hadn't moved and if Sasha hadn't been there. He was bee-utiful!" Then Star believed. That is one advantage to being truth-telling like the Fabians. People get to believe you. They'll
never
believe that I meant "raccoon" once I'd said "cat."

LLIB said, "It's lucky it wasn't a skunk." Then he went into a long story which nobody listened to about how, once in Maine, Sasha chased a skunk and well, as I say, phewy! I tried to listen, though, being a visitor in their house.

We all went back in then, including Star, and we all had another piece of pie. They make about five pies at a time there in that house ... they have to.

"There now. That's all," said Bayberry. "You may all be excused."

That's what you do. In the Fabian house, you don't get up and leave the table one by one as you finish. You wait for everybody to finish, have their last bite, everybody turn their knives and forks in the right direction on the plate, not askew, helter-skelter on plate or table, everyone to press the corner of their napkin against their mouths, tap-tap, and fold them, not crumple them into a mess. Then everyone says, "Excuse me."

We did all this. Then we pushed back our chairs, and each Fabian child kissed the Fabian mom and said, "It was delicious, Mom." It is very nice in this home of the Fabians. No wonder the raccoon looked in longingly.

We took one last look out the dining-room windows and the back door. No sign of the strange visitor. So me and Tornid went to bed, not knowing whether there was going to be school or not tomorrow. Tornid slept in the top bunk. I slept in the bottom one, usually Danny's. Danny was sleeping in a spare bunk over LLIB's in the little back bedroom.

Tornid was out like a light. He always does this, goes out like a light, right when I am in the middle of a sentence, discussing the tunnel, maybe, or the El, or the unfairness of life—like them not keeping the swimming pool in the gymnasium open Saturday mornings during vacation time when you need it most, or the unfairness of the guards chasing
us,
who live here, off the Athletic Field ... yechh. In all this interesting unfairness talk, Tornid goes off to sleep.

This bunk bed is hard. Danny may be used to it. But I'm not. How can Tornid just plain go off to sleep with this new development ... the raccoon, the Alley raccoon? He was a beauty, well cared for. Not a mangy-looking lost animal, which we would have liked, too, though. He was spick-and-span ... perhaps a student's pet that got away from his dorm. We do have students here from faraway places. Might be a guy from Michigan like Pete Calahan, that guy I don't know that wrote to me anyway. Well, what I'm wondering while I'm trying to get to sleep in this hard bunk bed of Danny Fabian's is: Will the raccoon be a help or a hindrance in the finding of the tunnel of Hugsy Goode?