At the sycamore tree where she and Rod had seined the week before, she took Don’s hands. He pulled her out of the water and signaled her to lie on her stomach and reach for the next swimmers.
“If we go any farther,” he shouted, “we won’t stop until Boiling Springs.”
Happily and with gusto they collected all the flood-riders on the sycamore limbs. Don led the way through tree tops to the quiet waters, the shallows, and finally the earth. They jumped on the sod and ran all the way back to the iron bridge to dive again.
This time they were so sure of themselves that they improvised silly strokes and made jokes as they roared along on the flood.
The third time they were nonchalant.
As June gleefully swam past the house at Pritchard’s, she looked up to see Zander above her. Hungry Zander was not sitting in the sun. He had heard June laughing and calling on the flood and he had flown to her for food. He fluttered above her head and as she reached to shoo him back to land, someone called, “Dive under for the railroad bridge!”
She dove, and when she came up at the dam she looked back to see if Zander was all right. Her well-trained bird had tried to alight on her lifted hand, and she feared he might have dipped too low, got his wings wet, and become too heavy to fly. He was nowhere to be seen.
She clutched at a willow and held on. The rush of the water pushed her under, but she struggled to her feet and worked through an adjacent willow to an oak to a maple to the floodgates. There she swam in the quiet backwater, waded ashore, and ran back to the railroad bridge where she had last seen Zander. As she came through the yard she saw her mother and father drive in. She waved but did not stop, for she had to find her falcon. She whistled; there was no reply. She called. She ran up and down the railroad tracks and whistled and shouted. Then she wept, for she knew Zander would come back if he were alive.
But calling and whistling made her feel better, so she ran on and on, nearer and nearer the main channel. And then she noticed a different kind of movement in all the downward motion of the flood. This one jerked. It was on a grapevine near the railroad track. It was Zander, immersed in water, flapping his wings and holding to a twig by the hook of his beak.
“I’m coming!” she cried, and jumped into the water to swim across the bergamot garden to the backwater where Zander held precariously. She picked him up and lifted him high, treading water as she went up the yard to the ash tree. There she crawled out and struggled into the kitchen with the half-dead bird. Her mother and father were talking to her uncle and aunt.
“Hey,” her father said, “aren’t you glad to see us?”
“Yes, of course, of course, I guess. But I almost lost Zander.” She was placing the bird in a soft towel to dry him. He hardly struggled.
Life in a bird is touch and go. A wet body can be death. Her father kicked open the coal stove that heated the water. “Hold him close to the fire,” he said. “He must not lose body heat.”
June crept to the red coals, but Zander was too wet, too stiff. “Give him to me,” her father said gently. “Birds can be motionless and as cold as the grave, and warmth will revive them.” Sobbing so hard her throat hurt, June put Zander in his hand.
Her father blew on the bird, held him to the fire, turned him over, tapped him on the head, and worked with him for what seemed an eternity. Finally June saw the feathers lift. Her father said very quietly, “He blinked an eye. You can take him now. Keep him warm.”
For another hour June held him close to the warmth, drying each intricately beautiful feather, and when supper was ready, Zander was sitting perkily on her finger.
Uncle Paul came over to stroke the bird. “I can’t figure out what happened,” he said. “He was fed. He should have sat still. None of the others went off the tree.”
“I don’t know,” June muttered.
“If you hadn’t fed him I would have understood. You did feed him, didn’t you?” her uncle insisted.
“Yes,” she whispered.
And now a second lie had cut off her next move to help the bird. She did not dare go to the icebox for meat for the dangerously hungry falcon. If she did, her first lie would be out. It was so much simpler to be honest.
“Put Zander outside,” her father said, “and come eat.”
“Please,” she begged. “He needs to be warm. Let me keep him in my room.”
“No, he’s all right now. He’s fine. I want him out of the house.”
“Please, please, please, you must! You must!” And she carried Zander to her room. Even if she was to be punished, she had to do this.
She waited until she knew everyone would be in the kitchen washing his hands for dinner, then she stepped out her window onto the porch roof, slid down the post and ran to the parlor window under which the icebox sat.
She had to move fast. She climbed in the window, went to the icebox and opened it. There was no wild food. She rummaged until she found some uncooked stew meat, snatched a piece, crawled out the window, and ran back to the porch post. But she could not climb it. Her mother was at the back door. And she was angrily talking to Charles and Don about the flood.
“Did June go swimming with you?”
“Oh, sure,” said Don.
“June!” her mother called.
June knew she was trapped. She wondered whether to answer from the porch or her room. She decided on the room and shinnied up the post, ran across the roof, climbed in her window, and called downstairs, “Whattee?”
“What are you doing?” came her mother’s know-it-all-anyway voice.
“Getting dressed.” The third lie.
June heard her mother start up the steps to see what was going on. June slammed the screen on the window, skinned out of her bathing suit, and was at her closet when her mother came folded-armed into her room.
“Now what is all this climbing in and out of windows? What have you done? What’s this meat doing up here?” She picked up the blob June had dropped on the bed when she had hurried to dress.
“Come downstairs. I want to talk to you and your brothers.”
June walked down slowly, dreading each step.
“You hadn’t fed that bird, had you, June?”
“No,” she whispered. “Please let me! Please, please, his wings are drooping, his feathers are lifted as if he’s sick. I did lie. Please, let me feed him.”
She ran back up the stairs, surprised at how simple the truth made her mission. She fed her falcon with easy heart.
“Goodness,” she said, “it’s not that lying is evil, it’s so cumbersome and unworkable.”
The bird gulped. June lifted him to her finger, huddled him against the warmth of her throat. “I get mixed up,” she told him. Zander cocked an eye at her. She carried him downstairs to help her face the next issue—the flood.
There was no getting out of anything now. Her mother and father were waiting. The twins were standing quietly side by side.
Her mother began sternly, “You’ve abused your freedom. You didn’t use your privileges properly. You got heady with the lack of restrictions and endangered your lives. Don and Charles, you’re both older. You should have used your training to think. As for you, June, I shall keep you home and train you further. Now go to your rooms and think about this. Freedom is dangerous, unless you can stand up to its demands.”
Their father, standing on the balls of his feet lightly, looked toward the creek. “We’re glad you’re all alive...including Zander. Please bring your brains and enthusiasm together in more fruitful ventures.”
As June passed him on her way to the stairs she struck out once more, “Oh, I wish I didn’t ever have to decide by myself what to do. I never seem to make the right decisions.”
Her mother smiled at her. “Growing up is a long process of needing things and not needing things, like mothers and fathers and birds. Then finally, one day, you find you can make a big decision happily and with conviction. That’s what we call maturity. Someday, maybe in a summer or two you’
ll come together in one piece—your head and your feelings.” She flicked off the porch light, and her heels snapped across the linoleum.
June stood alone, running her hand over the black-eyed falcon. “What on earth is she talking about?” she whispered to the sleepy bird.
9. The Meet
THE FLOOD WATERS retreated in jerks and starts like a sleeping dog pulling out of the hot sun. By the afternoon of the next day the canoe landing was in view. All the young Pritchards were sent to dig off the gluey mud.
Said Don, “Hey, Dad was really mad at us for riding the flood. I’ve never seen him so angry.”
“Oh, well,” said Rod, “he and my dad are pretty old. They got mad because they can’t do it.”
June thought a moment. “No,” she said firmly, “they were mad because they feel they have to restrict us—they just want to boss!...Whee! It was marvelous.”
They chuckled in cheery comradeship.
“Do you think you’ll ever do it again?” she asked them. “Now that Dad and Mother are so mad?”
They answered as one, “Oh, sure!”
Then Charles said, “Dad did worse things than that when he was young. He ran over the iced creek on a winter day so he wouldn’t have to go to Sunday School—and fell through. He walked under the ice until he came to a hole he knew about and got up. Wasn’t scared a bit for the same reason we weren’t. He knew what he was doing. But now? Well, he’s a father, and you know how fathers are. Their parents got mad at them, so they get mad at us, and I guess we’ll get mad at our children—that’s how it goes.”
June was still unsatisfied. “Well, why did Mother make such a funny punishment for me: stay home and learn to use my freedom by cooking and keeping house? I’m never going to get married anyway. Babies have cereal all over their faces and are much too much trouble.”
“I’ll bet she’s been thinking about that trip to England you could have taken this summer. You know, the one with the bikes and the kids camping from London to Scotland.”
June had forgotten. It had all sounded wonderful until she had thought about leaving her parents, her brothers, and her falcon. Then she grew stomach sick and knew she could not.
“I guess you’re right. She’s trying to make me sensible when I’m on my own.”
“Well, she wants you to stand on your own two feet when you’re off in the world,” Don said.
“But I’m afraid to go, sort of.”
“Why?”
“Well, I’m afraid to be nasty—suppose some man tries to love me—or something.”
“Oh, Junie. The devil with that. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. Nothing. You’re the captain of yourself, and everyone respects the captain.”
“I guess so.”
“I know so. You don’t have to be afraid.”
“Suppose I like it? I’m afraid of that, too.”
“Well, then, you just remember that your body is pretty dumb. It can’t see, and has a short memory—so you turn the decision over to your head. Your head will be planning your future.”
“I see.” She didn’t really, but she was impressed with his wisdom.
Jim came running down the yard. He jumped onto the muddy landing and slid from one end to another, handing Don a letter as he passed.
“It’s from India!” he said in excitement. “For Masters Charles and Don Pritchard, Esquire. Wow!”
Don opened the letter. “It’s from that Indian prince who wrote us last spring. He’s named ‘Bapa.’ That means ‘younger son’ in Hindustani, he told us.”
“Bapa,” said Rod. “What a great combination of sounds. I wish I had thought of that. Bapa.”
“Hey, Junie, let’s call a ‘game’ a ‘bapa.’ I haven’t a word for game.”
“Listen to this!” Don read aloud, “ ‘I have read again of your falcons about which you wrote with great interest in the national magazine. I wonder if you brothers match your falcons in combat as the Rajah, my brother, and I do? Each morning before breakfast we match our best falcons in chase, to see which brings home the most food for our table. I would like to hear which of your falcons wins. I have only thirty falcons and thirty men to train them at this time.
“ ‘God willing, someday you will come to see me or I will come to see you. Your friend, Bapa.” ’
“God willing, we had better go see him first,” Charles exclaimed. “Thirty falcons and thirty men to train them...and me with only three.”
“Four,” June said. “Zander counts.”
“And we’ve never matched one against the other,” said Don. “Yes, God had better be willing to get us to India first.”
“Well, in case He isn’t,” Rod said with great practicality, “maybe we could have a little falcon match here and get in shape for Bapa. I don’t know why Zander couldn’t match Ulysses. You wouldn’t have to count size in the contest, just numbers. If Zander gets more mice than Ulysses gets pheasants, he wins.”
Charles roared, “Yeah, yeah! This will be a new kind of falcon match, an American type of falcon match entitled, ‘To Each His Own.’ ”
“Or,” said Don, “the falcon match to prove that all birds are created equal.”
“Well, let’s go!” said Jim. “I hereby announce the All-American Falcon Match!” He poked a broom into the air and marched off the landing and up the yard. Rod joined him, swinging the bucket, and June lifted the shovel and followed.
Uncle Paul who had been cleaning mud off the tool shed floor, poked his head out and called, “When that landing is clean, you hunt falcons, and not before!”
Rod turned the parade back, mumbling, “My father is nice—BUT.”
That “but” marked the beginning of her parents as real people for June. Rod had challenged the perfection of his father. It was a shock. June lifted her head and looked toward Uncle Paul. He seemed a little less austere. She thought about her own father and mother. Maybe they were right about the flood, and maybe they were not. She straightened up from mopping and grinned to herself. By doubting them, her own faults seemed more tolerable.
So they finished the mud-clearing quickly and carried Ulysses and Zander to the field late in the afternoon.
Their father and uncle followed, intrigued with the idea that two falcons with two different ways of life were going to vie with each other. Charles senior, a naturalist by profession, respected this broadening of his sons’ interest in falconry. Uncle Paul joined the trip because it was another imaginative venture with people and animals. Since Will Bunker’s death, adventure had lost its pranklike aspect for Uncle Paul and had become more “how to learn,” although it never lacked spirit and humor.
Everyone sensed they were off to some high adventure this day as they played an old Indian game with American rules. There was bounce in their steps.
June carried the hooded Zander on her fist, confident that he would catch more sparrows and mice and crickets than Ulysses would catch pheasants and pigeons.
The summer was well into goldenrod and Queen Anne’s lace. As they walked to the field they scared up several groundhogs and two or three rabbits.
“Why are there so many animals today?” June asked her father. They were walking together companionably, June quietly happy in his presence.
“The young animals of the season are reaching puberty,” he said. “They are being sent off by their parents to seek their fortunes and set up new homes. It’s a bad time for the young. A lot of them get killed. They are shoved out of their homes, they don’t know the hiding spots in the new areas, and they blunder. They run in the open because they don’t know the trails, and hawks, foxes, owls catch them. They cross unfamiliar roads, and cars kill them.”
He looked around. “There are wild hawks and falcons here. They know the fields are filled with careless children of the wilderness, and are hunting this easy-to-catch food.”
In the middle of the field, Ulysses was sent aloft. The men kicked through the grasses. Almost immediately two spry young phea
sants of the year burst out.
Ulysses dropped out of the sky and took one of them.
“Hooray!” shouted Don and Charles, grinning with victory.
The duck hawk was retrieved and the bird taken from him. He would be fed later. Now it was important to keep him hungry for the competition.
Next Zander went up in the sky. June did not fear this time that she would lose him. Her only anxiety now was that he might not win.
The young mice of the year, out seeking their fortunes, were as careless as her father predicted. Soon Don kicked up a family, and Zander bulleted out of the sky to tie the score.
“Tallyho!” she shouted.
Ulysses was thrown off. While Charles tried to find him food he suddenly came down on a pigeon flying from the barn to the nearby granary. Again the boys hoorayed, and ran far out in the field to bring back the fleet-winged tiercel.
Zander went aloft and waited on until June feared he would drop of exhaustion. No small birds were flying. No young mice were rushing into openings. Suddenly Zander plummeted from the sky and disappeared into the purple blooms of the alfalfa.
“It counts!” shouted Don. “He dove, and that counts. So it’s Ulysses two, Zander one!”
June was furious. “It doesn’t count,” she shouted. “There wasn’t anything to catch. There has to be something, or it doesn’t count!”
She continued to argue with them as she backed to the spot where Zander had disappeared.
“Yes, it does!” said Charles, siding with Don.
And June continued to shout, “No, no, no!”
With flashing suddenness, a red-tailed hawk appeared overhead. He was winging from the woods at the edge of the field, where he had been watching the contest. He dove, and with horror June saw him plunge on the spot where Zander sat.
The Summer of the Falcon Page 9