The Alley Read Free Page B

Paris, stopping to talk now and then with a fellow artist or a model, sipping an
apéritif
at a sidewalk café, and then sauntering on. Bully Vardeer had a jaunty, swinging sort of stride, wore his hat carelessly on the back of his head, and kept his hands in his pockets. It was Mama who said he looked like a
boulevardier
from the description Papa had given her of
boulevardiers.
Papa knew, having been to Paris in his youth. Mama had not been to Paris. But why go anywhere, living with someone who described things as well as Papa? Connie had thought
boulevardier
was a name—Bully Vardeer—and she called Mr. Joe Below by that nickname. Now, Billy Maloon and Hugsy—all the children and even some of the grownups—called him Bully Vardeer.
    These two houses by the iron gates—the Carrolls' and Bully Vardeer's—had no windows on their red brick Alley side, so their walls were excellent for bouncing balls against—the Carrolls and Bully Vardeer did not like that—and for writing on with chalk—the Carrolls and Bully Vardeer did not like that, either. When the four little Carrolls got a little older, they would probably begin writing in chalk on good places like their wall, too. Then their mother would have to yell at them, not at Arnold and June and Connie and Katy—some of the present chalk writers. "Who likes to read all those white and pink and blue chalk marks, such as the mark of Zorro and others?" Mrs. Carroll demanded. Children did not mind the writing on the wall; in fact, they pored over all the interesting news, as to who loved whom and who hated whom—Arnold had written his in Latin, H.G.
amat
C.I. But the grownups did mind, and once Connie and June Arp had to wash the writing off the Carrolls' wall. This was not fair, because Connie had put only one word on it—"Connie." "But that's life," she thought.
    No one could live in this Alley except people who worked at Grandby College. That was fair, since the houses on the Alley belonged to this college. "Faculty houses," they were called. Everyone in Grandby College pined to live in one of the little houses. But there were not enough for all, and you had to get on a waiting list. Sometimes outsiders, children, looked through the gates and watched the children inside for a while, and then they'd rush away saying, "Poor things, they're locked up."
    "It's as though we're in a zoo," said Connie to Hugsy Goode, age nine, and in P.S. 2, like Billy Maloon. The name of Connie's school was Morrison.
    "Yeah," agreed Hugsy. "Once I heard a kid say—I think he was a Gregory Avenue kid (Gregory Avenue was the name of the street outside the campus that ran along the athletic field)—I heard this guy say, 'There are tunnels under these houses, and they go from house to house.'"
    "You did!" exclaimed Connie. "Do you think that is true?"
    "No," said Hugsy, "because I looked in my cellar and in Billy's for secret trap doors. None! None at all! We tapped every inch. Mrs. Trickman thought we were burglars—called the police..."
    Connie was disappointed about the tunnels. "Are you sure?" she asked. "You know there might be, there really might be tunnels." They both liked to think there might be and that one of them would be the discoverer of a tunnel, leading from Connie's house to Hugsy's, Billy's—or even to outside.
    You might think the Alley was too small a place to have much fun in. That was not so. Ask any of the thirty-three children who lived there, and they would all say that was not so, even Anthony Bigelow, a small, bold new boy. The Alley was big enough for any game, even for sledding. Once, though, Connie had had a flying dream. In this dream she had flown out of her bedroom window, over her garden, over her fence, and down the Alley—not going high, just high enough to clear the grapevines on the Carrolls' fence—and then flying, like swimming in the air, around the corner to the iron gate. But when she reached the gate, she could not fly over it. She tried and