The Tunnel of Hugsy Goode Read Free

whom ... or what?
    Opposite J.I.'s house there is another pit for mechanical equipment ... shaped, perhaps, like an old trolley car. It is under the house of Orville Nagel, an expert on old train whistles and signs and a collector of trophies from torn-down els and retired subway trains. Let's hope the Myrtle Avenue El will never be torn down and be the next to have a bit of it, a sign or a signal, just wind up in this neat man's house. He has red lights and green lights in his house at his front door ... go ... stop. His pit underneath is marked O.N., and when the tunnel is discovered, he will be a great help to fix it up for tours. We figure his pit is used for signaling and computing and sending top secret messages to the other pits. Then there is, at the end of the Alley, the pit marked K.S.—for Katy Starr—perhaps a library or a candy shop ... a school, maybe ... or a restaurant, a motel.
    So far, all this is just guess work. It's a neat time of year to begin our questing ... early in May. Days are long., There's no school. We can stay out later than usual without my mom blowing the cow horn, her newest noisemaker, for me to come in, or yelling, "Nick!" like the crack of a whip.

Chapter 3
Beginning of the Tunnel Quest
    Now you have the lay of the land. Tornid and me are sitting on the big trash can outside of my yard waiting for a chance to collect tools ... pick, shovel, whatever might come in handy ... and get into Tornid's hidey hole to begin our excavations for the lost tunnel of the Alley. All the houses that face onto Larrabee Street have hidey holes. Tornid's is the best one and is historic, having been used as a jail in olden Alley days by the kids in charge then. Right now, we can't get past our moms who are hee-heeing and chewing the fat ("spewing" might be a better word) at the picnic table in our backyard, it being a lovely balmy day and the ninth of May.
    We put the finishing touches on the shillelaghs we had carved for ourselves out of strong branches that tree trimmers had cut off the big tree in Billy Maloon's yard. I put my initials C.N.C. on mine with a jackknife, Tornid put T.N.F. on his. We spit on them and polished them with sand and they were smooth. They are to be our staffs in the under alley.
    "Why don't they go in?" I asked Tornid in disgust. "We have work to do."
    "I dunno," said Tornid. "They like to talk." And he spit on his shillelagh.
    At last, to throw the moms off the track so we could start on Operation Tunnel, I said in a very loud voice to Tornid, "So long. See ya." I gave him a wink that meant stand by in his yard and get whatever tools he could out of his cellar and hide them in the hidey hole while I tried to collect mine.
    He gave me a wink, too, and said, "Bye. See ya."
    I tore past the moms and up the stoop to the kitchen. My mom caught me up short. "Well-ll?" she said. I put on the brakes. "What are you up to now?" she said.
    I kept my cool. "Social studies," I said as quick as a flash, forgetting there wasn't any school anyway.
    This simple reply started the moms off on a new tack, and they didn't hear me go down into the cellar by way of the kitchen. I quietly assembled some tools ... a small shovel, a small ax, a trowel, various chipping tools. That's one good thing about my mom. She has every possible tool ... you name it, she has it. Even an adze.
    Then, at last, it seemed the moms were breaking it up. I watched them through a crack in the bulkhead of the cellar door that opens up on the garden by the picnic table. At the same moment that Tornid's mom went out the back gate which squeaks and my mom came into our kitchen, I opened the bulkhead as quietly as I could and hid my tools under our honeysuckle, making sure the coast was clear. It was. Then I whistled softly, "It was a long day's night" (me and Tornid's usual signal), and I heard him whistle back. De dum-de dum dum dum-m. He came to my fence. I handed my tools over to him. We moved them all to the hidey