Secret Ravens: A Fountain Square Story

Secret Ravens

A Fountain Square Story

By

Robin Lovelace

© 2005 by Robin Lovelace

All rights reserved

There is an actual neighborhood in Indianapolis called Fountain Square. It is a unique little place that was settled by the Irish and later on became home to wanderlust Southerners looking for a better life.

The characters that reside in the Indianapolis and Fountain Square of my story are totally fictitious and do not in any way resemble any person, living or dead.

This is for a few of my favorite people,

Danny, Abbie, Bubs, and Tracy

And for Harry Rosenberg

From its beginnings, Indianapolis has possessed a significant population of natives and former residents of the Upland South--earning the city at one point the moniker of the most southern of northern cities. Since the 1920s, portions of the area encompassed by the Greater Southeast have been identified closely with newcomers from the southern mountains of Appalachia.

The Project on Religion and Urban Culture

The Polis Center - IUPUI

PART ONE

Chapter 1

Stardust Storm

In the year of our Lord 1963, the same year that the Beatles went on their first American tour, Castro went to Moscow, twenty two thousand people were killed by a cyclone in Bangladesh, Bonecrusher Blackwell beat Ox Bunyan to become the Midwest Wrestling League champion, and a stardust storm hit Indianapolis, was the year the big Victorian house that occupied the corner of Spann Avenue and Spruce Street, at the edge of the Fountain Square district was finally sold.

For two long years, from the day the Widow O'Hara abandoned the house for a clean white bed in West Bank Nursing Home, to the time the realtor accepted the mysterious bidder's offer, the house lay empty and fell into deep decline. Glass shattered, shutters unhinged, paint peeled off in fat chips. Pigeons sidestepped across its buckling roof and fluttered from its broken windows. Cats stalked rodents in its backyard and sunned themselves like African lions on its steps. Crickets sang from its tall grasses, squirrels lounged in its single backyard tree. The property became an urban sanctuary, triumphantly reclaimed by an army of neighborhood wildlife.

Next door, Will and his mother lived with Will’s grandma in her dry old house that stood creaking and moaning like a pirate ship. Smaller than the widow’s, but just as foreboding, its hallways were drafty and cold, its rooms tall, its windows were loose and rattling in their frames. Will’s grandma managed to keep her house in better condition than the widow’s, and it was cosmetically correct, but underneath its fresh cheap paint and flower boxes, it was just as old, just as weathered. Every season, without fail, Will’s grandma paid for plumbing repairs or termite control or roof patching. Through her eyes, the sight of the widow’s fallen property was an omen of her own property’s future; a constant reminder of the deterioration that comes with age and modest resources.

Because of this, occupation of the O’Hara house was a major concern to Will’s small family. Most houses in the Fountain Square district were built very close to each other and the narrow streets were lined in long rows of boisterous, big-roomed, second story, wooden Victorians. A few were still halfway kept up, but many were worn down and faded to gray, like weeds taking over a garden of flowers. The O’Hara house was among the worst of the once majestic homes in the district and was a regular and important topic of dinner table discussion; always an irritation, ever the object of disgust.

But in the end, all of Will’s grandma’s complaining, her worry, her angry phone calls to the owner (a befuddled young man trying to handle his grandmother’s affairs), her letters to the Mayor, her sad attempt at organizing a neighborhood revolution, did nothing to change the situation. It seemed the dwelling would be left to destruct at its own frustratingly slow pace. So when the place was finally sold, Will’s grandma was beside herself with relief…for a while, anyway.

On the other side of Will’s drafty, darkly lit home, stood a smaller house which was another source of aggravation to Will’s grandma. The rot-boned house was owned by the alcoholic husband and wife team simply called ‘the Wilkes’ who summoned Saturday night police cars like ordering To Your Door pizza. Always, the wrong drunken partner would be handcuffed and led to the patrol car, the other following behind, proclaiming undying love and bail by daybreak.

And directly across the street from Will lived the Kelly family, a contingent of six tow headed brothers and one sister who constantly fought and grappled with each other like bear cubs. The fourth youngest was named Kevin, a rough-and-tumble kid who liked to hang out with Will and Dallas Cole.

Dallas lived three houses down. He was Will’s best friend. Dallas’ mother Maylin smoked menthol cigarettes and read True Confession magazines religiously. She had been divorced twice and was now living with a man known as ‘Reno’. Dallas spent a lot of time at Will’s house or at the Kelly’s, after Reno moved in.

A city block away, on this side of Sparrow Park, stood Hoople’s variety store. Its owners, a retired chemist and his wife, made most of their profits from the sale of cigarettes and soda pop. They lived in the back rooms of the store.

Occasionally, the sound of muffled explosions filtered into the store, followed by tendrils of strange smells and puffs of blue or green smoke that floated to the ceiling and hung there like stratus clouds.

Once, an explosion was so powerful that it rattled the store shelves and caused Hoople’s wife to fall and hit her head on the hard edge of the candy counter. Hoople appeared, smiling sheepishly, murmuring words of apology as he helped his dazed wife back to her feet.

Strangely, the possibility of being blown up by Hoople didn’t hurt his sales but rather increased them. After an explosion, usually two or three curious neighbors would drop by to see if everything was okay, then would end up buying a can of peanuts or a pack of cigarettes. Hoople kept strategically placed fire extinguishers on the walls of the store and a sign that read Genius at Work.

The rest of the Fountain Square neighborhood was occupied by wanderlust Tennesseans and Kentuckians who migrated to the cities of the Midwest during the late fifties and early sixties to work in factories and spend evenings on front porch chairs drinking beer and talking in southern voices.

It was in this rebel stronghold, this blue-collar domain that the Averys came to live, and it was the Averys who changed Will’s life. It began on a warm, lazy June day in the summer of Will’s twelfth year.

Chapter 2

The New Neighbors

William, do you want fried or scrambled? his mother asked, as he sleepily tripped into the kitchen.

Scrambled.

She turned to the stove and started frying anyway. Will’s mother was like that, always giving him choices then choosing for him. Will was used to it so he didn’t protest. Will ran a glass of tap water, drank it at the sink and went outside to the front porch to read the newspaper comics and wait for breakfast.

Summer was awake, in the street, around the city, singing her sweet song. Will could hear a train horn from far away, the muted sound of morning traffic from State Street, the twirping of a sparrow. He could smell heat and grass and dandelions.

Son of a bitch! a hard voice boomed.

Will almost fell off the step.

I told you, another voice yelled. Watch where you walk.

Will dropped the newspaper and jumped up.

Sure as the devil, you’re gonna need a tetanus.

The voices were coming from the direction of the widow’s abandoned house.Will hurried to the side of the porch. Emerging from the widow’s front door, holding a flashlight was a burly, balding guy, dressed in painter pants and a tee shirt. Following him was a taller man, dressed the same way and limping. Will jumped off the porch and went to the fence to watch and listen.

Sit down. Take off your boot.

The limping man went to the steps, removed his boot and sock. The other man lit a cigarette, stooped, squinted his eyes at the injured foot. Suddenly he looked up at Will.

You want something, boy? he called.

Will shook his head no, backed up a step, then asked, Who are you guys?

We’re the fix it up guys, he answered and took a drag from his cigarette.Somebody bought this death trap and hired us to fix it up.

What happened to him?

Stepped on a nail.

Quit bothering those men, William. His grandma was suddenly behind him. Breakfast is ready.

She ushered Will back into the house, walking quickly toward the kitchen. She sat down at the table, and excited, said to Will’s mother, My God, somebody finally bought the O’Hara place.

The next day the men came back, armed with bigger flashlights and yellow legal pads. Will sat on his porch and listened as they trampled through the widow’s house, talking in bass tones, shining their flashlights on different points of disrepair, spooking pigeons and shooing away cats.

The following week, a platoon of workmen attacked the house with hammers, saws, drills and paint. For thirty days, the air was filled with the sound of rough, rowdy carpenters as they sweated and cursed and worked to prepare the house for its new owners. Then, after the last nail was hammered, after the last brush of paint had dried, and the renovation was finally finished, it rained stardust, as Friday turned into Saturday. After that, the clouds opened up and the other kind of rain poured down and washed the stardust off the roofs and into the gutters and on into the sewers. Some remnants were always left behind and sparkled in the grass and the sidewalks of the neighborhood. But no one ever noticed the stardust showers except for drunken Mr. Wilkes who wandered home from the Four Kings Tavern and fell asleep on the kitchen floor of his weathered weary house and forgot what he saw, and Mr. Hoople, who stood at his back door and watched the stardust sparkle down, as he lit a cigar and puffed out blue smoke that turned invisible in the cool night air. Unlike Mr. Wilkes, Mr. Hoople knew what the stardust meant. That something was going to happen. Something really good... or something very bad.

At ten o'clock on Saturday morning, when the last sparkles were being washed away from a following rain storm, the new owners of the renovated house finally appeared. Mr. Hoople saw the green station wagon with Kentucky license plates, pass his storefront. He knew instinctively that the automobile held the new owners of the O'Hara house, and he wondered if this was the something brought on by the stardust shower, and if it was, would it be a really good something or would it be very bad.

***

Will was playing a game of checkers with Kevin Kelly, the least violent of the Kelly kids. Will had just asked Kevin to king him when a station wagon pulled up in front of the widow’s house.

It had been pouring rain non-stop since before breakfast. Sheets of water fell around the porch like thick curtains. The occupants sat in the car, not moving. Through the rain, Will could barely make out four dark shapes.

Your move, Fishhead, Kevin said, then punched Will in the arm.

Will turned to the game, made a hurried move, and went back to watching the car.

Watch a looking at?

You think that’s them? Will asked.

Them who?

The ones that bought the widow’s house.

Kevin jumped one of Will’s checkers, picked it up, waved it in front of his face and said, Read ‘em and weep, Fishhead.

He tossed it in his pile of captured checkers.

I bet that’s them.

So what, finish the game.

I quit.

Naw, Kevin said. You ain’t quitting. I’m gonna beat you fair and square this time, sonny boy.

I’m tired of Checkers.

Kevin slid his fingertips under the checkerboard and flipped it over, scattering checkers everywhere, then punched Will in the arm again.

Quitter.

I wish the rain would stop so they’d get out of the car, Will said, rubbing his arm.

I hate playin’ with you, Kevin said.

The rain began to slack off.

You got any pop? Kevin asked.

Pepsi.

Go get us a couple.

I will if you pick up the checkers.

Kevin started gathering the black and red disks.

Go, Kevin said.

If they get out of the car, look at ‘em. See if they have any kids.

Yeah, yeah,