The Summer of the Falcon (2 page)

June ached inside as her mother prolonged the dictum. “That’s one thing my husband will not tolerate,” she said to Aunt Helen, “neglect of an animal. I surely hope June sticks to this. She does have her head in the clouds so much of the time.”

An hour ago the words would have hurt, but now, as June lifted the dusty bird again, she felt enormous and strong. She studied the falcon in wonderment. He was beautiful and alive...and hers! He was the first thing she had ever owned completely, and she had a sense of wealth and richness. She trembled to possess such an exquisite thing.

Slowly the porch cleared, the excitement died down and June was alone with her possession. She whispered to the bird, “Dear falcon Zander, you have been taken from your mother, from the freedom of the open sky and the wind and clouds...but I shall replace them all with my love.” And she stroked him. He bit her finger. It hurt, for the beak was powerful, but she only winced. “You’re going to have to learn the rules, little fellow. And when you’ve learned them, then I can let you play free.” She held the falcon close. “They’ve told me a million times that when all the rules are learned and buried in habit, freedom begins. So you’ll have to learn the rules, too.”

Once more she put the bird down. The wind stirred across the porch and dipped into the basket. It lifted a wisp from the immature head and took it circling out and up. June watched the feather blow over the yard and vanish in the bigness of the trees and sky. When she looked again at the falcon, his cap was a little redder where a new feather showed.

T
HE NEXT DAY
June climbed from the brass bed before dawn and knelt beside the basket. The bird was wide awake. His brown eyes fastened on her movements. His blue beak dropped open from the bottom and he sat defensively on his tail. Carefully June touched his stroobly head, and was surprised to discover that the feathers were warm.

Again the blue talons grabbed her. She pulled away, but the screaming bird came flapping along, his talons deep in her hand. He fluttered, let go, and dropped on the bed. Flipping to his back he threw both feet in the air—the reaction of a cornered bird of prey. As June moved back, Zander jumped to his feet, and, too young to fly, lifted his wings and ran across the covers. At the edge of the bed. as if at the edge of the nest, he tidily defecated. June tidily cleaned up.

That done, the falcon let her pick him up and place him in the basket, where he watched as she slipped into her clothes, frightened by every grossly human movement she made. She chattered to him as she dressed. “Your mother was much daintier and smaller than I am, wasn’t she?”

Then June tiptoed to the door and quietly closed it behind her.

She stole past the bedroom where her parents were sleeping and paused at the bathroom door to listen to the honeybees in the south wall of the house. They entered through a small hole under the bathroom window. Occasionally they got mixed up and came inside—to the concern of people
and
bees. But rarely did they sting. So they were not removed from the walls but were left, like the mice in the drawer, to tolerate the people in summer and assume their rightful ownership of the house when the people were gone.

As June listened to the bees she wondered if she should catch some in a bottle for her falcon...she had heard that little falcons like bees and insects. But they seemed a small, hot bite for her young falcon, and she went on with her first plan. For this she needed Jim, Rod’s brother.

The boys were lined along the railing of the sleeping porch on their cots. Cousin Jim was awake the moment she opened the door. He looked at her out of strong brown eyes. Jim, like all the Pritchard males, had a deep love of the birds and beasts and fish and plants around him. In Jim this interest was so intense that it awoke him at five and propelled him into the stream and meadow, to crayfish it among the rocks and water as he searched for nests and dens.

“Jim,” June whispered, “Zander is hungry. I need some sparrows. Come with me to the barn.” And Jim was suddenly on the floor fully dressed. During the summer the brown, slender child rarely got into pajamas. He was so tired at night that he just fell into bed with his clothes on. When his mother complained, he put on his pajamas over his shirt and pants.

Jim poured some cold water from a pitcher into the old porcelain basin and washed his face. As he looked up he said, “Bobu is back from his hunt.”

Above him on the window trim sat a small, gray screech owl. Bobu had been her brothers’ pet for two years. He was so tame that the brothers had never bothered to leash him. He needed only food and affection to keep him close. He would fly away to hunt at night and return to the porch by day, going to sleep when the boys got up. “Musical beds,” they called it.

Bobu had another enchanting habit: he rode the old victrola in the living room. Whenever he came into the house he would fly to the turntable and wait until someone came to wind it. Then, circling, circling, he would spin around and around, making contented owl noises, captivating everyone with his funny, swivelling head. “Wind up Bobu’s amusement park,” Aunt Helen would say when the owl flew into the house.

As Bobu circled his head, Jim said to him, “Where ’ya been?” and the speechless bird chuttered and closed his eyes tight.

“He looks Chinese when he sleeps,” Jim observed as he lifted his hand. The quick movement awakened the half-peeking owl and he flew to the boy.

“Where’s Windy?” Jim asked. Swinging softly, silently out of the dawn light came a creamy-colored barn owl. Windy made seven of Bobu, for he was a much larger species. He alighted on the railing and bobbed his head.

Four years ago the twins had found Windy at the foot of his nest tree in Rock Creek Park and had brought him home. As the funny, ugly owlet hissed and sissed, their mother had said, “You ought to call him Windy.”

Each bird in the family—the falcons, the owls—had its own whistle to which it came like a dog when called, but Windy was the most obedient. When he heard his call he came home from tree hollows far away.

As June greeted the owls she wondered how Zander was going to like them. In the wild, Zander would not meet an owl, for the owls fly by night, the hawks by day. June was a little fearful for her youngest of the birds. Then the owl eyes turned softly upon her and blinked. She blinked back and whispered, “Dear Bobu, you’ll like Zander. He’s little, like you.” The owl blinked again.

By this time Charles had awakened. “Whatcha doing?” he asked. As he moved, Fingers, the raccoon, poked his head out of the barrel under his bed and scratched.

Fingers was a wonderful pet—except that he took all the labels off tin cans, paper off walls, and slept in the sugar barrel whenever he could. Mrs. Pritchard had relegated him to the outdoors, saying, “There
are
limits.”

June told Charles they were going to shoot sparrows in the barn. He decided to come along. Then Don rolled over and got up. He wasted no words. He had no need to. June’s twin brothers were so close that when one started a sentence the other finished it. The same ideas came to them at the same time. They had the same fillings in their teeth, had caught the measles the same day, also the chicken pox and mumps.

It did not matter that most people could not tell them apart. If one was called, both came or either. They moved as one. And they called themselves “I,” never “we.” And yet, each was different.

The twins were crackling motion. As soon as they were up, the porch was aburst with activity. Even the owls moved and bobbed. The quick movements of the brothers motivated boys and beasts and birds...all but cousin Rod. He rolled over and went back to sleep. Bobu saw the sleeper and flew to him without sound. As Rod mumbled and nuzzled deeper in the covers, Bobu ran down the mountain of blankets into the cozy hollow of the warm, dark opening under Rod’s chin. Rod grinned in his half-sleep. The owl, accustomed to the tight closeness of hollows in the wild, enjoyed cozy contact with things and people when in captivity. Rod hugged Bobu as a hollow tree would.

June and the boys returned before breakfast with plenty of fresh food for the owls and falcons. They wrapped it carefully in waxed paper and put it in the left-hand corner of the icebox. This tolerance of fresh-killed sparrows in her domain was Elizabeth Pritchard’s contribution to falconry. She believed in children with projects and she put up with the difficulties such projects might involve.

After breakfast, June proudly carried the basket with Zander to the lawn under the maple tree, where her brothers’ falcons were tethered to their perches.

There were four of these noble birds at Pritchard’s that summer: three Cooper’s hawks and a magnificent duck hawk, the falcon of the kings. The duck hawk was called Ulysses. As large as a crow, he had enormous shoulders, a tapered, streamlined body, and velvety black patches around his black eyes. His breast was creamy rose with ebony dots; his back was slate blue and black and white, and intricately marked; each feather was edged with white. Ulysses was their great pride. But Ulysses was not a “falcon” in the king’s English. He was a tiercel—a
male.
Only the bigger and more powerful
female
duck hawk could properly be called a “falcon.” June had often heard her brothers say that no other bird could bear this title in the days of falconry. But nowadays Ulysses and Zander were known commonly as falcons. Their wings were distinctively pointed, their tails long. June knew them all by the names the scientists had given them and could identify them as they flew. The Cooper’s hawks have long tails and short, rounded wings. The Buteos include the rough-legged hawks and the red-tails. They have broad wings and broad, rounded tails, and they soar in wide circles high in the air. Then there are the eagles. But the highest form of all are the falcons—in North America the gyrfalcon, the prairie falcon, the duck hawk, pigeon hawk, and the sparrow hawk.

She had listened sharply to her brothers when they told her what had happened to the names for birds since falconry began. She admired the regal Ulysses, but was glad for her gentler “lady’s falcon,” and for his daintier size which enabled her to hold him in both her hands.

Suddenly Charles ran out the back door on a trot and handed June some falcon food. “Here are some tidbits for Zander. He’s still a baby so you’ll have to feed him twice a day.”

Don joined them. “He’ll get hunger streaks the way Jess did if you don’t feed him right.” He pointed to his female Cooper’s hawk. On her tail were three fine white lines, straight across every feather, which showed a lack of bone and viscera and other nutrients, marking the days before Don found her.

Jim’s young voice interrupted them, “Aunt Roodie has teeth with marks across them. Are those people hunger streaks?”

“No,” Don answered him seriously, “probably a high temperature.” He slipped on his gauntlet, put his fist behind Ulysses’ feet, and tapped the bird’s legs. Ulysses stepped on his hand to start the morning routine of “flying” the falcons.

As June fed Zander, she watched the process closely, studying carefully the techniques of falconry she would soon be employing. A throb of excitement went through her as she watched Ulysses, tethered to a long cord, fly from the creek to the maple at the sound of three whistled notes. Don fed him small bites of food so that he would remain hungry enough to fly the distance four times. Then he gave the bird a full-course meal. Because the summertime was muggy and was poor weather for hunting, Ulysses was merely being exercised to keep him fit for the time in late August and early September when the nippy air would brighten the bird and he would hunt pheasants.

Charles was struggling with his Cooper’s hawk. “Jess doesn’t even want to eat today,” he said as he held a meal three feet from the hawk. Jess stared at the food but would not move.

“Well, Zander is hungry,” June said, and stuck a bleeding thumb in her mouth.

“That’s a spunky little bird,” Don observed as he brought Ulysses back to his perch. “He ought to make a good hunter—if you can ever get him whipped into line.” He looked at June, knowingly. “It sure takes work and patience.”

For an instant her anger rose. Then Zander fluttered in his basket and cried. She smiled and said solemnly, “I promise to do it right.”

For a week June played with Zander, letting him sit on her finger or chase ants and crickets. And as she played she talked to him—a silent dialogue—in which she confessed that her mother had embarrassed her yesterday when she had flicked her skirts and kicked her heels to show Uncle Paul she could do the Charleston. She said softly, “Oh, Zander!” and sighed. The bird cocked its head at her voice, then took its yellow toe in its beak and bit it gently. June stopped talking to herself and laughed. “That’s marvelous, Zander, I don’t think I could bite my toe.”

Twelve days later Charles touched Zander’s brick-red tail feathers, which were now edged with black and white trim, and announced that the bird was full grown.

“It’s time to jesse him,” he said. “His fledglinghood is over; his training must begin! We’ll start tomorrow.”