The Summer of the Falcon

by Jean Craighead George

  “I think I’ll bake a cake,” she said with cheer. One of her chores during the winter was to bake a cake every Saturday. She was very good at it.

  She creamed the butter and the sugar, and was adding the egg and flour when it occurred to her that she ought to have the water boiling for the potatoes. She lit the wick on the kerosene stove, filled a pot and placed it over the fire. Then she went back to the cake. Now, have I put in two cups or one? she asked herself. It looked runny so she added another cup—and remembered, too late, that it needed only half a cup. She added a little more milk.

  She could hear the potato water boiling.

  “I haven’t peeled the potatoes,” she said in disgust, and rushed to the cupboard for them. There was no water to wash them in. She got water and began the job. And then she remembered that a pork roast takes a long time to cook.

  She stopped peeling potatoes and took the roast from the icebox. She found the salt, salted and peppered the roast and ground garlic over it as a good French chef once taught her mother to do. Then she got the oven ready and put in the roast.

  She finished peeling the potatoes, put them in the water which had now boiled low, and went back to the cake.

  She added the rest of the ingredients, greased the pan, and poured the batter, gold and flowing, into the pan. When she had carried the cake to the oven she saw that she could not get both the cake and the roast in the small space. She could feel a wave of desperation break over her and would have thrown herself on the green chair and kicked her heels—except that she didn’t have the time.

  She had to think.

  Knowing that the cake would go flat, she took the roast out and put the cake in. Then she smelled something and wondered if the boys were burning bird feathers. The smell was coming from the stove. The potatoes were burned.

  She peeled some more while she waited for the cake to bake. She peeked in the oven and noticed that it was not rising. She had left out the baking powder. Out came the cake and in went the roast.

  The cake dripped as she poured it in the garbage. She tried to get the burn off the potato pan.

  And then the twins came in.

  “Hey, is dinner ready?” they said brightly and trustingly. “We’re starved.”

  She thought she was calm, but when she spoke her voice squeaked, “No! It’s not ready!” Then in a low tone, she added, “You’d better fly Ulysses or something; it’ll be another hour.”

  Two hours later the meat was roasted, the potatoes were stone cold, and she had not shelled the peas.

  Don and Charles insisted upon eating. “Make gravy and that will heat up the potatoes. We don’t need peas. We’ll eat lettuce.”

  She began to make gravy, adding flour as she stirred. The mixture was too thick. She added water...too thin, added flour. Too thick, too thin.

  Her brothers sat on Aunt Helen’s table swinging their feet and watching, saying nothing, just swinging their feet harder every time she added either the flour or the water. When she finished she had almost a gallon of gravy —as Don observed.

  Said Charles, “That’ll do for a month.” And he curled over and laughed. “Let’s eat.”

  Don carried the roast into the parlor and placed it on the round table.

  As he sat down he asked, “What are we going to eat on? Red gingham squares?” She had forgotten to set the table.

  She ran around the table and put down plates, then ran back to the kitchen for spoons and ran round the table putting them down, next the knives, the forks, the napkins.

  “Can’t you do that from one spot all at once?” asked Don, and took the silverware from her hands and placed it on the table, chuckling to himself. She wanted to dig her elbow in him, but she knew if she did she would burst into tears. She hurried to the icebox for milk.

  Charles sat in his father’s seat and served. He folded his napkin in his lap, helped himself to potatoes, heated them with hot gravy, and passed the lettuce. He flicked his elbows, cut a bite of meat, and put it in his mouth. He coughed and swallowed hard.

  “What is this? Roast garlic?”

  “Oh, don’t tease me now,” said June, “I’m about to cry.”

  “I’m not teasing, taste it.”

  It was awful. Don managed to find enough meat in the very center to get one garlic-free serving apiece.

  Don made some helpful remark about how he’d been taught that a cook could get the right amount of garlic in food by letting the shadow fall upon it. Charles laughed, June looked helpless. They found enough tasty food, however, to “sustain life,” as Don worded it.

  After drying the dishes June crawled up the back steps, feeling her exhausted way to her room. She took off only her shoes and socks, then pulled up the covers and felt the sweet comfort of the pillow.

  As she was falling asleep she heard the sleeping-porch door open, then footsteps along the hall. Don and Charles were sneaking down the back steps.

  “Whatcha doing?” she called.

  “Going down to get peanut butter sandwiches. We’re starved!”

  She was too tired to cry. She just murmured, “And Zander became trained in only three weeks.”

  8. The Flood

  AT MIDNIGHT, her uncle rapped on June’s door.

  “We’re in for a big storm, Junie—wind and lots of water. The hurricane that hit Virginia yesterday is here. Put on your bathing suit and bring in your falcon!”

  June was awake and on her feet. Outside she could see the willows bend and the underside of the sycamore leaves shine silver as the storm tossed them. The night sucked and shook and blew. The earth was on violent terms with itself.

  Everybody was up.

  She dashed into the wind. It snatched the breath from her throat and snapped her hair like whips against her face. Zander, Zander...he could not withstand this. He would be torn from his perch, pulled the length of his jesses, then yanked to his death. She ran across the yard, head down, into the driving, painful rain.

  Her falcon was on his perch. She was amazed to see him, facing the storm, eyes half-closed. She cupped him in both hands and tried to lift him. He held tight. She pulled again, his talons dug in. He could not let go. The more she pulled, the tighter he gripped. He was designed to stay alive in a world of storm and stress, and the harder the wind blew, the more June pulled, the tighter the tendon in his rear toe grasped the perch. She remembered the night her father had told her about this tendon. They were watching Zander as he slept. When he settled down and relaxed, the tendon in the back of his leg clamped his toes shut. Now he stood in the storm because his legs were bent in the position that locked his toes on his perch. She released him, his toes opened, and she snatched him up quickly before he could grab again. She ran into the house, slammed the door and leaned against it. The downstairs hall was in a state of motion as Don came in with Ulysses, Charles with Comet; and Rod called out the door for Bobu.

  Charles saw his sister hugging her wet cold bird to her chest.

  “Spread newspapers at the far end of the living room,” he shouted. “We’ll put the birds on Aunt Helen’s side and the animals on ours.”

  Aunt Helen came down the stairs and sleepily sat on the couch. She watched “the creatures come aboard the ark.”

  “Ulysses looks splendid on the cherry chair,” she observed, as the noble falcon stood straight and drew up a yellow foot. To June the needlepoint on the chair seemed more rich in color for the falcon’s presence. Slowly he lifted his feathers. They ventilated him in the heat and cold, keeping him comfortable no matter the temperature. The feathers puffed out at the bottom of his breast, then stood out like thistledown over his crop. Those on the top of his head, around his ears, his eyes, and finally his nares, were the last to stand softly ajar. He was gentle-looking and exquisite.

  Comet was placed on the back of a dining-room chair nearby. The bird stared at the new surroundings, decided they would not harm her, and relaxed. Bobu, wet and sodden, flew to the turntable on the victrola. He shook.
/>   The two new hawks of the season were tethered to fireplace logs placed in the middle of the floor. They were a red-tailed hawk named Leviticus and a marsh hawk named Ponderous. The red-tailed and marsh hawks would never make good hunters. They were slow, soaring birds; but Don and Charles were raising them because, having learned to train falcons, they wanted next to know more about other birds of prey. They were curious to discover how hawks fit into the scheme of nature, why the woodlot had one kind of bird, the marsh another kind, the seacoast still another.

  When the birds were settled, Don put Fingers, the raccoon, in a barrel on their mother’s side of the house. Then Jim came in with Tabu, his pet of the summer—an un- descented skunk. He was put in a box. The skunk and the raccoon were good friends, they sported and played outside. But this was the first time they had been together in a small space. All watched breathlessly to see what would happen.

  Hardly had Jim put Tabu on the floor than Fingers cavorted, bounced, pranced to meet him. Tabu chuttered a small frightened greeting. The house was strange, the winds had been unnerving. Tabu was not in a mood to play. He threw up his tail to halt the silly creature coming toward him.

  Fingers ducked his coon head, threw high his hind feet, then snatched the beautiful black and white skunk tail and pulled it down. Quickly Tabu turned upon him, horseshoed his body and aimed to fire. “Get that coon!” shouted Charles. And Jim stuffed Tabu in the fireplace and put the screen up.

  Suddenly, they heard a call from the other side of the house. Ulysses had his talons in Leviticus. Don separated them.

  Charles turned out the lights. All the birds sat still, motionless on chairs and blocks of wood, as if they were in hoods.

  But the skunk and raccoon on the other side of the house did not react to the darkness like the birds. They were animals of the night. The darkness awakened them to activity. No sooner were the lights off than Fingers began to scramble out of the barrel and Tabu pushed the fire screen aside. In seconds Fingers landed on the frightened Tabu—and spray arose through the house. Up, up, the steps; up, up, to the top of the high ceilings and through the stove-holes; up, up to the attic went the fumes.

  And then with a shivering blast, the shutters rattled, the storm came down upon a window-shut, blind-fastened house. For five minutes the smell was dreadful. It pained eyes and noses. June felt as if she would suffocate and go blind.

  After a while Don observed wonderingly, “I can’t smell anything anymore. Can you, June?”

  “Phew, yes,” and she sniffed hard, “well, on the second sniff ...no!”

  “It’s so horrible that it seals off the smelling buds in your nose so you can’t smell anymore. It protects you,” said Charles. “I’m sure the house smells but we can’t smell it.” They were starting off to bed when Aunt Helen called, “The creek is rising fast, I can’t see the canoe landing!”

  They burst through the back door and ran down the yard. The landing was there, but under an inch of water, and the creek was boiling and rising swiftly.

  As they went into the house they were overcome by skunk scent, and decided they would endure it by going to bed. It was all right as long as they lived with it. “That’s why a skunk can live with himself,” Rod concluded.

  The next morning June got up at seven, determined to get the day off to an orderly start. She rushed to the dining room, set the table, and served everyone cold cereal and milk. It filled them up, and there were no remarks. Then and there she planned and began the mid-day meal. She peeled potatoes, made hamburger patties, shelled peas, got two pots and one frying pan going, put the potatoes on to boil first because they took the longest, then the peas, then the meat; she looked out the door at the storm and set the table.

  And everything was done and hot at once...at 10 A.M.!

  She found Don and Charles making falcon hoods in the living room with Jim. Rod was spinning Bobu on the victrola and Aunt Helen was playing “Rustles of Spring” on the piano. June walked among them, head high, and said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, “Dinner is served!” There was a stunned silence.

  She added, “And it’s all hot.”

  Charles arose and walked slowly over the newspapers to the door, and across the hall to the parlor. He returned to say, “So help me, it is.” Upon which June burst into tears and ran to Zander. She stared into his ebony eyes and noticed the fine brown lines in his iris. Details seemed important just then.

  Rod, watching from the side of the room, jumped to the floor and said, “Heel squil Aid! Heel bull squirm (I’m starved. I’ve got worms)!”

  He ran across the hall and pounced upon a chair.

  “Whatever he said, I get the idea. I’m hungry too,” said Charles.

  Charles removed Fingers, who had abandoned his barrel for the odors on the table, and was helping himself to hamburgers. He locked him in the pantry and placed himself gallantly at the head of the table. Don joined them.

  They ate almost all morning, jumping up now and then to run around the table and make more room for the next bite; getting the weather map out and following the path of the storm; taking umbrellas and running down the yard to see how high the water was; coming back for another mouthful.

  By noon the dinner was almost gone. Then Uncle Paul, having finished oatmeal and pie on his side of the house half an hour earlier, came over and sat down to a mound of potatoes, peas, and the last two hamburgers. He ate very slowly, and chewed long and swallowed hard. June laughed and cried and hugged him and said, “I love you. You understand people.”

  “But it’s delicious!” he exclaimed and forced down a bite. “And you know how I love delicious food.”

  “Is it?” she asked.

  “It sure is!”

  The creek kept rising. It passed the sycamore and elm. June spent the afternoon in the attic, rummaging through boxes of old books. The attic was lined with sets of Dickens, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Emerson, Thoreau in endless boxes.

  Furthermore, in the attic she could watch the flood, hear the rain beat the slate, and see the mud daubers—slender wasps—build their communal pueblos. And it was here that she had her most private thoughts.

  That night everyone went to bed again still listening to the rain. They awoke to wind and water; but at noon, when June was adding more milk to the too thick white sauce for creamed tuna on toast, she heard Don come splashing over the millstone at the back porch to announce the sun.

  She stopped stirring and stepped out the door. To the south the sun flickered through racing clouds. The rain had ceased. The storm clouds were circling north.

  “Oh, beautiful,” she cried.

  The stream was as brown as gravy and as thick. Sticks and leaves churned in it. Don and June stood enthralled as they looked out on the muddy dashing flood. An expensive canoe landing with benches and green paint leaped along on the waters. It was followed by a chicken coop with two chickens sitting upon it.

  Rod called from his parents’ bedroom window, “What a ride we’d get on that water!”

  “You said it,” Don answered. “We’d go down the creek faster than a motorboat if we jumped in.”

  “Hey, let’s try it!” said June suddenly. Her joy at seeing the sun, her excitement at beholding the mighty river at her door, inspired her to action. She ran back and plopped the lumpy sauce on the table and turned off the kerosene stove. The boys passed her as they ran for their bathing suits, but June changed to hers and still caught up with them at the front door. As she passed the living room Uncle Paul called, “June, wait a minute, did you feed Zander?”

  “Yes,” she answered. She started to run on.

  “Did you?” he asked again.

  She had not. But she couldn’t stop now, she had to get into that fast, exciting water right away.

  “Of course I did!” she answered.

  “Okay then. We’ll unleash him and put him in the ash tree. He’ll stay there since he’s fed. He and Bobu need sun. Their feathers are dull. Besides, I want to clean th
e house of the newspapers and mess the creatures have caused.”

  June moved back to stop him from taking Zander, but dared not. She had to play out the lie she had told. Briefly she was frightened, then remembering how well Zander was trained she called back confidently, “Okay, put him out.”

  The idea of riding the swift flood became more and more irresistible. June joined the high-pitched chatter as the young Pritchards slipped away from the house without telling their uncle of their intentions. At the iron bridge they met Emily and Bill Barnes. They, too, jumped at the idea of swimming in the speeding waters.

  Don started off. He waded out to the submerged bridge, ran up the slanting iron bar to the top and stood there like a mountain sheep.

  “Heck, it’s only ten feet to the water!”

  He made a soaring dive and disappeared under the roiling mud-water. Charles dove in next, then Rod.

  June hesitated a moment on the bridge top as she looked over the countryside at the sea of water that lapped at houses and barns. The dive was more than she wanted to do. Suddenly the whole project seemed ridiculous, but it was too late to let that thought get anywhere. There was really only one choice to make, whether to jump or dive. She jumped.

  As she came up for air she saw the Heffelfinger’s tool shed pass her. Then she saw Emily and her brother bobbing on the flood. Laughter rang out as they churned downstream.

  Suddenly, opposite the Pritchard house, was a sheet of curling water. She heard a voice shout, “The railroad bridge! Duck and go under! You can’t go over! Pass it on!”

  She called to Emily.

  “The railroad bridge! Duck and go under! You can’t go over! Pass it on!” and then dove deep.

  When she was sure she had passed under the bridge she ruddered upwards and came bursting onto the crest that was the dam—twelve feet below. The others followed safely. Then, lifting one arm like a silly clown, June swam thirty feet per stroke. It was marvelous! She stroked again and passed the fishing hole. Arms flayed, voices rose to high C, the creek roared—and life was close to death.