“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 th
e 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.
Realizing that he was depending on her earth-boundness to help him, she rushed through the cut clover and alfalfa to stir a mouse. None skipped out. She circled wide. The bird circled wide. She found a stick and beat. Once she looked up at him. His eyes were riveted to the twist of her hair in the wind, the flash of her feet—to every movement she made.
“What do you see?” she shouted. “The petals on the timothy? The antennae on the butterfly? Is everything very sharp and detailed in your keen, keen eyes?”
The bird moved forward a foot, plowed the air, and waited. June laughed to him. Then she ran back and forth up the hill.
She ran faster and faster. With a burst, a sparrow, feeding in an open spot in the hayfield, shot into the air.
The blue sky streaked with the falcon, coming down so fast she almost missed his descent. He had pumped twice on high, turned his head earthward, and fallen. He dropped toward the life that would die to give him life. Feathers burst from the prey like the dandelion in the wind. And the song of the earth was repeated as one life became another life.
June ran to Zander. He, like other falcons, was covering his prey. As she came closer he raised the feathers on top of his head and moved a shoulder over his food. His actions said, “This is mine.” June respected his feelings, and she spoke to him softly, “I don’t want it. I don’t want it,” then lifted him carefully off the ground and held him on her fist. The warm sparrow breast was against her hand. Zander, at home on the lifted hand, relaxed his feathers, stopped covering, and stared at June brightly.
“There! All on a sunny day we know the secret of life,” she said to the black-eyed, red-backed bird. “Now, if I liked sparrows and clover, you and I could live forever in this field. I would build us a grass hut to protect us from the storms. You would catch food for us and we would need no more.” She paused and added wistfully, “except ...”
“Bravo!” came a cry from the edge of the field. “We saw him do it!”
June spun to see Don and Charles, fishing poles in their hands, running over the hay stubble toward her.
“It was great! Perfect! Beautiful!”
“Don’t feed him but a small bite. We want to get movies.” They ran back to the house, their brown legs bowing at the knees.
During the past winter the twins had become expert photographers with their hard-won camera. They used the birds and pets around them as subjects. National magazines had bought their pictures and their articles as they began at seventeen to work out their careers. Now they were being called upon to lecture with movies, and the story of the first flight of a falcon was just the tale they wanted their cameras to tell. Both came hurrying back to fill the field with tripods, hoods, lenses, cameras—and argument. When Don and Charles worked together they argued, loud, long—as a person argues with himself when he comes to a decision. Their mother often shouted, “Stop arguing,” and they would look up and say, “Who’s arguing? I’m not arguing. I’m thinking out loud.”
For the rest of the morning they worked long and hard.
Zander performed beautifully, catching first a mouse (the film ran out and he had to do it again) and then a shrew. On the second kill he flew right into the camera and flashed the undersides of his wings—black and white—so that the sun bent off them as if they were gems.
As Zander hovered over his food, and the camera clicked out the climax of the young falcon’s first hunt, Don said, “Wow. I’m starved!”
“Oh!” June said. “I’m supposed to be cooking something.”
“Just get some sandwiches,” Charles called as she ran toward the house. “Cook the big meal tonight. We want to get Zander being carried home in his hood.”
She ran all the way to the kitchen, put bread, butter, and jelly together hastily, and ran all the way back. The twins were loading cameras. She passed her offerings. Don bit deep into one, chewed and turned suddenly upon her. “What the devil is in this?”
“Jelly,” she answered, worried. “Why?”
“You’re not trying to get even with us for leaving the dishes at the canoe landing, are you?”
“Oh, no,” she said, and watched in fascination as he slowly pulled his sandwich out of his mouth, spewed the contents, and turned it over for inspection.
“These are pure blue sandwiches,” he said, and thrust the mess at her. The bread was feathery with summer mould.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I’ll make some more.” Startled that her job wasn’t going according to her mental picture of an easy, smooth week, she was eager to run back to the house and try again. But the twins only wanted to get on with their work.
“Never mind, we’ll go down to the store and buy some candy bars,” Charles said gloomily, and reached into his blue jeans, found some change, and led them down the road. He had enough money for ice cream cones as well. They walked quietly back to the field to finish the movie.
When the last of the short story of the falcon was filmed they went to the creek for a swim with Rod, feeling grand for having accomplished something, and therefore loud and silly. They splashed and dived and called to each other.
“June!” yelled Rod. “Get the other end of the seine, and let’s troll the bottom of the creek.” She burst out of the water and joined him.
She was feeling independent now. No one would call her to work. She was happy about her falcon and ready for a treat. The timing on the housework was up to her.
The seine and the bottom of the stream fascinated them. It made them laugh hard and long. And June needed to laugh, she needed a party mood to celebrate her pride in her bird, and the silly stream bottom seemed just right. She took the other end of the net and followed Rod into the meadow where they began their hunt.
In one dip they brought up all manner of marvelous life from the swift waters and the rocks. There were crayfish, hellgrammites, the dragonlike larva of a fly. There were stone flies in cases made from their saliva and tiny bits of sand, and each had a trap door which opened and closed. Rod held one in the swift water until it opened and June giggled at the clownlike face that poked out. Then Rod touched the door and it closed.
“Spil squid,” he commented. June giggled again.
“Spil fors,” she laughed.
“Spil predjow.” They both curled with hysterics.
“Rod,” she finally said, “why are you so wise and foolish?”
“Because I am misunderstood,” he said. “I do not want to grow up at all. I want to grow out.” They laughed again.
June saw that the shadows were long. She stood up suddenly. “It’s late! I’ve got to start supper.” Rod picked up the seine and they ran through the bouncing bets, across the floodgates that carried the water to the flour mill, and home. Aunt Helen was at the edge of the porch calling her own family to the table for dinner. June hurried to her room, dressed and, bright-hearted, stood before the kitchen table.
The Summer of the Falcon Page 7