The Summer of the Falcon (15 page)

“I’ll swim with you,” she called and sped to her room. She stopped in the kitchen and looked down at the bird in the hood. He was fluffed and warm and still. He heard her presence and gave the soft call of the fledgling.

“Are you feeling better?”

Zander stretched, pushing one foot and the good wing down, down in a line together. Then he shook—and lifted
both
wings into the air.

June spun to his side. Carefully she removed the hood and put her finger behind his feet. He stepped upon it, looked at her and then at the room.

He focused on the door, the highest perch—where falcons like to be. June waited breathlessly to see if he would fly; knowing he couldn’t, hoping he would. Slowly he extended both wings. He gently beat them, testing their strength. He beat deeper and deeper...until he taxied above her finger. He stayed in the air an instant, flapping evenly, and then dropped back. He was tired, and flew to his perch.

June kicked open the screen door.

“He flies! He flies! Zander flies again!”

Rod called, “Hooray!” He came grinning to the kitchen, “Now maybe you’ll help me find the double star in the Dipper tonight.”

“I will. I will.”

Just before dinner June heard a soft knock on her door. Her mother came in with a letter in her hand, an invitation to a dance to be held next month.

“It’s from the group that is going to Belgium. An Albert Reed wishes to take you. Do you want to go?”

“Oh, no, no,” she said. “I despise him—he’s a stupid intellectual—and besides, if I accept the dance it means I’m going to go to Belgium—and I don’t want to!—There’s my modern dance class—and Zander. Who’ll take care of Zander? I just can’t go!”

Her mother looked at June steadily, moving her head slightly to the left. She seemed to be checking June almost the way she checked her jelly—waiting for two drops to come together to form something solid.

“All right,” she said, and knew the kettle should bubble some more.

T
HE HOUSE SEEMED
to be full of noise. Aunt Helen spanked “Rustles of Spring” out of the old piano, and Rod was calling June to come look at an enormous map of the Northern Hemisphere. Above the din June heard the alarm call of Zander, “killie, killie.” It came from the top of the house. She ran out the back door to see in the sky—another sparrow hawk.

She remembered Windy, and that far fix in his eyes when he had flown off. She picked up an apple and threw it to divert Zander. It fell to earth, but as it did the movement caught his eye. Then he saw June. She whistled and called and whistled. He flew in close to her in the apple tree. He would not come to her hand. She had to climb the tree to bring him down.

For the first time in many months she tethered him to his perch. The other sparrow hawk in the sky was a female. It was not the mating season for sparrow hawks; some birds that lose their mates while raising young often go out and find another. No widow was going to lure Zander!

Zander fought the leash, and then resigned himself to the shady perch beside Ulysses. Ulysses was all nobility now. People came from far and near just to see the kings’ bird, head high, chest out, eyes black, patched and beautiful.

June spoke to Zander as she tethered him. “You’ve been catching most of your own food lately. I’ve got to feed you both now,” she said. Ulysses lifted his feathers and bowed to her as he might bow to a mate. “But, I’d sooner do that than have Zander go off with some silly female.”

The falcon larder was low. She went to the house for the .22 and lured Rod into going with her to the barn. He brought the bird net in case the sparrows were flocking in the hayloft.

At the barn they met the farmer who had wounded Zander. He was working at some enormous task involving a bowl and many small paper cups.

“How’s your little bird?” he asked as they entered the barnyard. June reported he was quite well again and flying around. Then Rod asked him politely, to make conversation, what the cups were for.

“Poison,” said the farmer. “I’m just overrun with rats and mice. It’s terrible this year. They’ve nearly ruined my granary and they’re getting into the barn now. I gotta poison them before I starve.”

“Do you think,” said Rod testily, but trying not to be rude, “that it is because you killed all the hawks and owls that were killing the mice, that now the mice are so many they are forced into your barn to find food?”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” he said. “I don’t understand all those wild things, but I know what has to be done. I gotta kill rodents.”

Rod said, “May I suggest you stop shooting the hawks and see if the mice disappear?”

“That’s crazy, boy,” the farmer said. “I’ve farmed all my life and I
know
what devils the hawks and owls are. They take poultry by the dozens. Why they got three of my chicks in one night. And I’m gonna shoot them every time I can.

Rod did not argue. He would leave the persuading to his father.

He and June climbed to the hayloft where they could hear the hundreds of sparrows that were besieging the farmer. Rod said, “I think I’ll be a teacher when I grow up.” He took one end of the net and walked across the yellow-green hay.

June looked at him, slender, eager, handsome. “It seems you have to unteach before you can teach, like the farmer. Plors clay? (True?)”

“No,” he called back. “Mr. Miller is right in the middle of a great big lesson. I’d like to be the kind of teacher that finds the Mr. Millers in the world and demonstrates that nature’s balance has been changed by shooting the hawks and owls. Then Mr. Miller would see it himself. I think that would be exciting.” Clutching a beam with one hand he held up his side of the net with the other. He said slowly, “Even more exciting than inventing a new language.”

June fastened her end of the net to the other side of the barn, then walked across the hay, circling around a flock of chirping sparrows.

She whispered across the dust, “Rod, that language was wonderful.”

“Aw, it was silly nonsense,” he smiled. “I’ve even forgotten most of it.”

The stubble scratched June’s legs and the hot air of the barn dried her throat and eyes. She looked at Rod.

“Oh no, you must never forget the language.”

“Yes, I must; it’s done. Like a broken toy—pooh, you toss it away.”

June was aware of the resonant pitch of Rod’s voice. Impulsively she asked, “Did the language go when your voice changed? Is it part of your squeaky days? Have you outgrown it, Rod?”

“I guess that’s about it.” He thought a moment, then said, “The other day when I shaved a little bit I could not remember how we declined the verb ‘to be.’ Funny thing.”

“I hope you become a teacher, Rod,” June said softly, and bravely “shooed” the birds. Six flew into the net and were caught. They took the birds home without more words.

That night she carried Zander to her room. There she held him under her chin trying not to cry over the lost language.

For three days she kept Zander tethered. The fourth day she set him free. He killied and winged around the yard, displaying his feathers and yellow feet. He was a spectacular sight. She laughed and was pleased that he was hers.

With a flick of his wings he dove on a large black cricket, and proceeded to swallow him whole. June dropped onto her knees and snatched the cricket from her bird.

“No, you don’t,” she scolded. “If you catch all your own food you’ll go wild. I’m not refusing to care for you like the mother in the sycamore!” She scratched the bird between the eyes. He leaned into the movement and closed them in pleasure, as funny noises came from his throat. June jumped up and ran to the icebox for food. Zander was on his perch. She held the food out. He spanked the air with his wings, snagged the sparrow, and sailed to the chimney with it. Anxiously June watched him devour the food high above the house.

“Now, you come back,” she called.

Two days later Zander disappeared again. June tried not to think about him the first day, but the morning of the second she met Jim seining in the meadow and asked if he would help her look for her falcon.

They whistled and walked far across the meadows and fields. Jim found other sparrow hawks, wild ones; he found a young crow, and the eggs of a turtle. Finally he said, “You don’t think he got any of the mice Mr. Miller might have killed with his poison? Dad said that some of those poisons can kill the bird that eats the mouse.”

June spun to look at him. “Oh, Jim, you don’t think...”

They were almost to the mountains. June turned and ran...over the yellow mass of butter-and-egg blossoms...all the way back to the house. She whistled and called as she leaped the hedge and sped to the barn.

She boldly walked to the farmer’s house and knocked on the door.

“Have you seen my falcon around here?” she asked.

“That thing again? No. But a screech owl fell dead right out of a tree beside me this afternoon. Plunk. Dead. Odd thing.”

“What did you do with him?”

“Oh, I tossed him on the compost heap back of the chicken house. Wanna see ’im’”

“Yes. May I?”

“Sure, help yourself.” He pointed the way.

June knew what she was going to see. Her brothers had brought Bobu with them to Pritchard’s one day during the past winter, and Bobu had flown out of the car. They could not wait for his return, so they asked a neighbor to try to catch him. When they came back the following weekend the neighbor reported having seen him every day on the sleeping porch of the Pritchard house, his new red jesses marking him from all other screech owls. School children said he had waited for their bus in the evening and then followed them to their yards and porches. But nobody could get near him.

Then he disappeared completely in January and was not seen again.

One day in June, Uncle Paul saw bright red jesses on an owl near the barn. It was Bobu, carrying food in his beak.

“By golly, that means he’s got young,” he laughed, and returned to tell the boys. They were happy for old Bobu. Rod wondered if his children turned in circles.

As June walked to the compost pile, she thought about the owl’s new home on this farm. But she went on—all the long, long way to the chicken coop, and around it. She stopped at the sweet pile of grass and leaves.

On the very top was a red jesse.

As June walked into the yard she saw Jim reading the funnies. She told him. He turned away and lifted his hands to his face. In the house her mother was sweeping the parlor, Aunt Helen was playing the “Intermezzo” from
Cavalleria Rusticana.
June blurted out her news.

“Bobu is dead. He must have eaten a poisoned mouse.”

Rod heard from the living room. He folded his star map saying, “I ought to get more A’s in school so I can go to college and become a teacher. I do want to tell about the controls in nature. Poor little Bobu.”

Then into the silence June cried out, “And I know Zander has been killed by the poison, too! He’s gone!”

“Oh, not necessarily at all,” her father said calmly as he came to hear the news. “He would much rather eat grasshoppers this time of year than mice. I think his own inner timing and delicate taste has kept him very much alive.”

“I hope so,” she said.

But the next day he was not back. June said nothing more about Zander, just whistled and looked at the treetops. It was a long, tense day.

The next morning her mother urged June to come to market with her. They shopped and poked and bought shoo-fly pies and scrapple and home-smoked hams. They smelled flowers and apples and lingered over the intricate crocheting done by a little Amish lady. Then they crossed the street to the same old brown department store. Her mother wanted to buy a pattern for a skirt.

June still hated that store. She walked awkwardly through its aisles as they went back to the yard goods counter. But when she passed the underwear department she was surprised to see that it was a very tiny part of the store. She remembered it as enormous, and she realized how young and silly she had been two years ago.

Suddenly her eye struck a beautiful color—yellow, cool, bright and fresh. It was like clear daffodils. It was a bolt of organdy. She touched it. She turned the bolt over and moved along the counter. Her mother stood beside her.

“That’s lovely, isn’t it?” she said. “It would make a beautiful formal dress.”

“Oh, it would!” June could see the organdy gathered in bright folds, and the folds falling around her slippered feet. Everyone was staring at her as she tiptoed across the beautiful living room at the Bunkers’ and twirled endlessly with John Doyle.

Her mother snapped her out of the dream as she unrolled a yard and held it against her face. Suddenly it all seemed too real to June. She pushed her mother’s hand away. “...but I don’t need a formal. Goodness!”

“Well, you ought to have one. There will be lots of things coming up this year, and you don’t always find material when you need it. If you like this...”

And so they bought yards and yards and a pattern with a pretty bodice and rolling skirt. June was excited and thrilled but at the same time somewhat resentful. The dress meant parties and “being a lady” and left hands in laps, small steps, deference to elders—it meant all the rules— and more.