The Summer of the Falcon (9 page)

W
HEN
C
HARLES SENIOR KICKED OPEN
the doors to the house, June ran upstairs and put her shoes under the bed without thinking. It was a habit, because she had found it was practical. She could save time by finding them quickly. She walked (last year she had leaped) to the window and looked out upon the creek with joy and excitement. Her world at fourteen was pure sun.

All winter she had been too busy to train Zander; but as she leaned far out and see-sawed on the sill, she promised on the bright water and sun and yellow flowers that she would work with him every day until he was perfect.

And she knew she would. For at fifteen, almost, June was as positive as the law of gravity.

She flew down the stairs and lifted her now brilliantly beautiful Zander from the back seat of the car to carry him across the lawn to the maple tree. Here she placed him on his old perch, wind-torn and insect-ridden. Zander had changed all his feathers during the winter and was richer in color. He was now a mature bird.

He flapped his wings, threw up his head and called “killie, killie, killie,” in the manner of the male sparrow hawk telling trespassers to stay off his land. He remembered the yard at Pritchard’s and was reclaiming it.

As she tethered the leash to the loop June announced to the world, “This summer you’ll catch the king’s breakfast!”

Her father, coming down the yard with new canoe paddles, overheard. “And what will the menu be?” he called.

“Mice tails and cricket wings on toast,” she answered positively...“and you’re the king!”

“Humph,” he said with a smile. “You get that bird to hunt and I’ll eat them.”

“You’ll see. I will.” And June raced from the tree to the porch to her father. She felt like a sparkler bursting in sixty directions, for the summer was just beginning.

“I’m pretty safe,” he said.

Late in the afternoon when the suitcases were unpacked and the fresh sheets spread on all the sun-aired beds, June stood before her falcon holding the lure. She whistled. Zander did not come. She whistled again and waited. It was almost dinner time when the hungry bird finally leaped on the air and winged to her hand to be fed.

“Now let’s be faster tomorrow, Zander,” she said.

The next night and the next night told the same tiresome story. He would not fly immediately, but sat and looked at the robins and bees.

During the winter June had handed Zander his food. Now she had to break him of expecting food without flying for it—and it was boring work. She would bring a pillow and sit in the yard, whistling and holding up her hand until it ached. She was taunted by voices laughing at the creek’s edge and the sound of canoe paddles thumping gunnels. She wanted to run and play, but instead she tried to close her ears and concentrate on Zander.

“Come on, come on,” she coaxed. “Please fly!” But the stubborn bird took his time. He would even lower his body, get ready to fly, and then straighten up and look at a moth in the air. After an hour he would answer her call, as he learned once again that the whistle meant food.

June was slowly understanding that to train a falcon was to play “come and be rewarded.” A whistle is given, the bird flies. He is rewarded. This happens again and again, until the whistle is imprinted in his mind so deeply that when the bird hears it, without thinking “whistle equals food,” he spreads his wings and answers the sound.

But to make this sequence of events possible takes, especially in a bird brain, endless practice and endless repetition—repeat, repeat, repeat, until Zander did not have to think what to do.

It occurred to June as she sat in the field whistling and coaxing that she should have kept at the piano as faithfully as she was training Zander. She thought, I might have trained my hands until they played alone, without my head saying, “here’s the note on the paper, I put it in my head, then my head tells my hands and my hands hit the key.” But last year I didn’t understand what they meant by “practice.” It was just a nasty word designed to inconvenience and punish me. I wonder if Zander feels the same way about me?

After ten long, determined days Zander was back in flying condition. June could set him free, swing the lure, and out of the sky he would wing, to clamp his talons on the bait.

But this was only the first step. Now she must discipline him to hunt.

Charles and Don had been working, too. They made a mouse out of gray felt, and on the day Zander was to start hunting, they tied a bite of beef on it and fastened it to a long string. June tossed Zander onto his wings, then hid behind the maple tree as she pulled the felt mouse. At first the falcon in the sky looked down at June and the strange mouse. He fluttered aloft and circled the house. June whistled, the whistle brought him at once to her fist. She was disappointed that he would not strike the mouse, but thrilled again to the bird’s return to her hand.

Day after day June threw Zander into the sky and pulled the mouse, with little jerky movements, across the yard. Zander tried to understand what was happening, but the routine needed to be done over and over before he could react.

“Pounce on it!” she cried to the bird above her head.

“Close your wings and come down!” The little falcon only waited on until June whistled him down.

“Haven’t you any falcon sense?” she said to him one evening in utter frustration, and she shook him on her fist. He fluffed in pleasure, for her movements were not understood. To him they were the wind rocking a tree.

Then came the day June pulled the mouse across the grass—and Zander’s hunting sense was aroused. He looked down from the sky, cocked his eye and put the felt toy in acute focus. Two eyes give a bird visual distance, one eye, sharp focus. So it was one eye on the mouse, then two; and Zander dropped out of the sky to bull’s-eye the target.

June was thrilled. She had brought the falcon to the bait alone. Her brothers were out fishing and she could only shout to the bird her feeling of glory.

“We did it. We did it. Yippeee yi!”

And again the next day he hit the mouse, and the next. The third day Don and Charles, sitting on the porch watching like coaches at a game, arose, and huddled. They turned to June, “Time to hunt him!” they said with proud grins.

June laughed with joy, and, two-stepping in a circle, she lifted Zander overhead on her wrist.

“Let’s lead the parade,” she said to her falcon, and her brothers fell in behind the triumphant twosome, pleased for them both.

But the curtain on her stage of glory came down with a thump.

“Juuniee, come here at once,” called her mother.

Elizabeth Pritchard was standing in the doorway of the house. Her blue dress trimmed with a white collar made her look as crisp and breathless as an autumn day. “June,” she repeated, “I want to have a little talk with you.”

Last year these words were ominous. They meant, time to talk about sex, or misbehavior, or some weakness of character that should be improved. They made June feel sick and uncomfortable.

This year June felt only that time for talk was time from play. She answered her mother openly, “Okay,” and ran over to her, rushing too fast, nearly knocking her down as she said brusquely, “What?”

Her mother stepped back to make room for the flying girl, then led her into the parlor.

“June,” she said seriously, “your father and I have decided to take a trip together into the South. We’ve wanted to do this for a few years, and now at last we think we can because you are old enough to run the house while we are gone. It’ll be a big job, but it’s time for you to take on a larger responsibility.” She smiled at June and reached out a hand. “There comes a moment in every child’s life when the parent says—I’ve driven far enough, you take the wheel for a while. Now here’s the wheel.” She handed June a week’s menu and smiled again. “Try it—even if you fail. We’ll be cheering for you. And your Aunt Helen will help you out if you run into trouble.”

June had watched her brothers deliver newspapers to pay for a camera when their father had told them he would not finance it. And when they had purchased it they had looked at each other and said with glee, “We can sell pictures to buy a car to go see the West.”

And one or the other had added, “And no one can tell us what to do. It’s all ours.” They had smiled at their new sense of freedom.

Now it was June’s turn. She was absolutely certain she could handle the job; and to prove it she asked her mother to give her a recipe for the family’s favorite orange pudding. She smoothed down her hair and ran out the door.

Two days later her parents got up at dawn. Her mother fixed breakfast for them all and then departed as the purple sky turned blue. With great assurance June watched them depart, waving them down the road. When they were out of sight, she spun-jumped on Don’s back.

“Whoopeee! We’re all alone. What do you want to do?”

“Eat!” he answered.

“Get you to make my bed,” chided Charles.

June rose to the occasion. “All right,” she said brightly, “all right, I’ll make your beds and I’ll feed you.”

She started up the steps, absolutely certain they would not take advantage of her. They followed. She waited to hear “Oh, don’t.” It did not come forth. She walked onto the sleeping porch. Her brothers walked behind her. They sat on the railing. June started to make Don’s bed. Now, she thought, he would stop the game. Surely he would not let her do his work for him. But he said not a word. She worked on.

“Pull the sheet a little tighter, I like it smooth,” he said, almost in an aside. Then added, “Please make hospital corners, too.”

June finished the job and walked slowly to Charles’s bed. She made it. Then with forced gaiety she asked, “Now what do you want to do?”

“Eat!” Don replied with a twinkle. June marched downstairs and made a batch of pancakes. She served them with stiff angry motions.

Charles picked one up, bent it, and as he did, he broke a pencil in his lap.

“This thing is wooden!” he said. “I don’t want it.”

Don put his fork into his, flipped his arm high, and kept the pancake bouncing and bouncing. He laughed, “Help, help, it’s rubber!” Charles curled up in his chair in the pain of laughter—and June threw the next pancake at them.

Charles ducked, told her that was unladylike, and she had to pick it up. He chuckled to his brother. “She’s mad. We’d better help her with the dishes, or we won’t get any lunch.”

“That’s true!” June screamed.

“We’re sorry.” They smiled and patted her head. Then they picked up their dishes, walked out the back door, across the yard, and washed them in the creek.

“They’re done!” they called. “We washed, you dry!” and they hopped into the canoe and skimmed up the creek. The plates sat on the landing. June called out in anger and in frustration, “Bring them back, please bring them back!”

Uncle Paul, who was ransacking the cupboard for breakfast food, stopped his search and walked across the floor. June could feel her shoulders shaking in her fury.

“Well, the first thing you have to learn about housekeeping is to get the human affairs in line. Why don’t you call ‘Thank you’ and then ignore them?” June turned to him, grabbed him, and cried on his arm. Finally, she realized the possibilities of his suggestion and lifted her head. She stepped to the door.

“Thank you very much—for setting the table!” she yelled. “I’ll serve your dinner there!”

“That’s not being quite grown-up,” he said, “but that’s awfully close for an almost fifteen-year-old,” and he chuckled for her side. June felt better, swished hummingly through the dishes and swept the floor.

Hands on hips, she surveyed her domain. “This is so simple,” she said. “Anyone can keep house. I have hours to do nothing...I’ll fly Zander.”

Forgotten were her unmade bed and her parents’; unnoticed were three dirty cups on the table. She felt only as if she had built a pyramid.

Gently she held her hand for her falcon. He stepped on it. She closed her fingers on the jesses, untied the leash at the circlet on the ground and walked to the field with him. The sun was hot, the day so still it seemed ominous, as if a great weather change was on its way. The air was water-filled.

And yet there were only blue sky and barn swallows.

Suddenly there were no barn swallows. They spotted the falcon the moment June stepped into the field. They gave their thin high cry “danger, danger, danger, danger” and vanished from sight.

Far out in the mowed alfalfa, far away from the house and the brooms and the dishes, June threw her bird onto his wings. He climbed the sky.

“All right. Let’s try it. You’re on your own!” she called to him.

She held her arms back and out, placed her feet wide on the earth and watched the falcon fly. He fanned first one wing against a wall of air, then the other, dug into the sky as if his wings were canoe paddles and swept straight up, up, up.

As he climbed, June went with him. She felt the wind in her face, the draughts and gusts of the air avenues, the lightness of her body. As Zander circled high above the field he darted like a wind-blown leaf, stopped, plowed the air with his wings, and waited on! He stood still above her. He scooped the air with the tips of his feathers so that he did not go forward or backward. He stood in the sky, waiting for the game to be stirred.

June stood transfixed in the yellow-green field. With her head back, her arms slightly lifted, she stared at the waiting bird.

What are we doing, beautiful falcon? she said to herself. Are we talking to each other? Why, why, why are you doing as you were told?

June’s world was white and yellow as she beheld with wonder the miracle of what she was about. She too was of the earth. She was part of its green grass, its water to drink, its air in her lungs...and for joy, its wild birds above her head. Like a blade of grass, like a flying bird, June knew she was no less, nor any more, than the earth and the sun that she came from.

And she was glad to be part of it, and part of the bird that waited on. She ran, he followed. She circled, he circled. She went backward, he went backward.