The Summer of the Falcon (14 page)

His arm went around her shoulders, awkwardly. “You’ll go too.” And he ran his hand over her short, curly hair.

June walked back to the meadow. She located the sparrow hawk’s nest and watched the mother come and go for an hour. The female brought food to a limb and tore it in small pieces for her young. She called to her offspring softly.

A head came to the hole and a wide opened beak was filled.

“So what?” she said and went home.

That night she flew Zander over the yard, fed him, and he winged to the chimney top and did not come down.

Darkness settled in, the moths came out. June and her mother went to the living room to read before they went to bed. She had no worry about Zander. She knew he would be on his perch in the morning. The perch was his home.

Early the next morning she went back to the sparrow hawk’s nest to see if she could find out more about what Charles meant. If she understood, she might walk up to John Doyle when school started and explain to him why falcons can be trained to hunt and sparrows can’t. He would be so impressed by her insight that he would take her flying on ice skates down the old canal, or across the ballroom floor in some white-flowered home to which they had both been invited.

Suddenly John Doyle vanished. The mother bird had returned. She came to the same limb with the same kind of food that she had used yesterday and once more broke her catch into bits, called, waited for a hungry beak to open, and fed it.

The male circled around, screaming at crows, chasing bigger hawks off his property and defending, but not attending, the young.

The third day June went back to the tree. Once again the mother sparrow hawk came onto the limb and broke up the food for the fledglings.

It’s just like me and Zander, she thought. I’m Zander’s foster mother. I offer him bits of food each day, and make him come farther and farther out of the nest—until he flies. He wants food; he comes. I’ll bet she makes it more difficult each day to get food until it’s so hard, they get their own.

The idea excited her, and she ran home to see if Zander were behaving like the wild ones. He was untethered now and free to come and go. She called, and he plunged down from the chimney where he had been watching bees. He sat on her hand.

She took him to the field and threw him out into the air. He waited on as she kicked in the grass.

A mouse skittered before her. She looked up. Zander did not strike. Instead he went to the apple orchard. There he sat.

“You’re out of training,” she said. And she left him there. She had promised Emily that she would go swimming.

At dusk Zander returned to his perch. June walked to him to see if he had eaten. He had, for his crop stuck out like a pouter pigeon’s.

Once more June went in the early morning to the nest in the meadow. She took a book and stretched out in the warm sun to pass time while she waited to see what the mother falcon would do next.

Presently she brought a sparrow to the same limb, but sat with it in her mouth. She did not break it up but flew to the hole and dropped in the whole bird.

I guess she wants the youngsters to see what they eat, June mused. I guess they learn what they’re supposed to catch that way.

Nothing much happened at the nest for two days. On the third day the female stood on a new limb, far away, gave her funny call, and waited. Two nestlings stood in the door and yelled. It was like Zander’s early training period, when she had stood five feet away, then ten feet...just like this wild mother. June chuckled ruefully to see that she had not trained her bird at all, just elaborated on his childhood. And the wild young were just as stubborn as Zander.

About an hour later, one of the young in the door could bear his hunger no more. He spread his wings and flew shakily out, scooped the air, and plunged to a limb. He grasped it, teetered, spun, and nearly fell off. His wings and tail balanced him with great spreading movements.

His mother flew to him and rewarded him with a bite.

Then a second bird flew, and another, and a fourth. When they were all out of the nest, the female became nervous and busy as she sneaked among the limbs, feeding her babies, and warning them of weasels and foxes.

The young birds were always restless when they saw their mother. They fluttered madly to tell her where they were, opened their beaks, begged, were fed, and then sat completely still, so still that even with her eyes upon the spot June could not see them when they were full and quiet.

The next day she took her falcon to the field and flew him. Again he did not hunt, just waited on, played, dove, then came down and sat on her head.

June picked him off and threw him into the air. “Go get your own food,” she said, and ran across the field. Zander followed. At the road he swooped up into a tree.

That night a storm came up and she decided to bring Zander in. He could find a retreat out of the rain, now that he was free, for his bird sense led him to favorite hollows. But June wanted him to depend on her for at least shelter from storms. She whistled.

He did not come.

She whistled, called, then ran around the house, looking at all the chimneys and lightning rods. He was nowhere in sight.

She asked Rod if he had seen her falcon. He looked up from a map of the constellations he was studying on the porch and said, “No.”

She went to bed.

In the morning she was still anxious. Zander was not on his perch. She tried to reason with her anxiety; he had been gone overnight before. She threw a sparrow to Ulysses (she was taking care of him for the twins in exchange for a .22 rifle) and walked out to the field.

She climbed toward the crest of the hill where she could see wide and far. She climbed higher, and looked down. Her heart leaped into her throat, and she felt sick. There, sitting beside the field, was the neighbor farmer with a rifle across his knees.

Shaking, she ran toward him.

“You didn’t shoot my falcon, did you?” Her voice trembled.

“Falcon? Falcon?” he said. “Naw, I’m shooting hawks. They get my chickens and ducks. I’m getting rid of ’em.”

“But he’s a hawk, a little sparrow hawk.” She showed him with her hands.

“Oh, yeah...” he said. “That was yesterday afternoon. Gee, I’m sorry—but I only winged him. He flew on.”

“Where, where did he go?”

June was crying now, from her head to her toes. The farmer stood up and started across the field.

“Did he have things hanging from his legs?” he asked.

“Yes, yes,” she cried. “He did. He did.”

“Well, gee, I didn’t know he was a pet. You know how hawks are... a farmer has to protect his stock. And there are so many of them birds this year that I had to knock ’em down.”

They hurried across the field. June wanted desperately to tell him he should not kill the hawks and owls, but no words would come.

They stood at the field edge, among thistles and primroses.

“He was sitting on that dead stub,” he said, pointing to a tree in the orchard.

“Yes, of course,” June answered. “He hunts the mice that eat your grain from there.”

“Well, he was sitting there, and I winged him...and, let’s see...he flopped down about here, sort of fluttering, and I couldn’t see where he went so’s I could get another shot. I’m sure sorry. I didn’t know.”

June ran into the grass, whistling and peering behind every plant. She found spots of blood on the leaf of a mullen plant. Her heart beat hard. She called, almost in a frenzy, “Zander! Zander!”

She dropped to her belly and scrambled over the raspberry prickers and through the yarrow and teasel. She searched the brush, ignoring the scratches and thorns.

“Right about where you are,” the farmer called.

But Zander was nowhere.

She stood up to let the farmer see if she was really in the right spot, and as she rose her eyes focused higher in the raspberry thicket. There, three feet off the ground, wing clasped tightly to his side, sat Zander. He made a soft sparrow-hawk noise, the noise, June recalled, of the young answering its mother. “I see him,” she called. And she struggled into the bush. The bird stepped lightly onto her finger. She grasped his jesses and came back through the weeds to the farmer.

“I found him. I found him,” she said, and then, because she could not face the man a moment longer, she tucked her bird in her shirt and ran as fast as she could.

He called after her, “Them hawks is awful on my chickens.”

In rage and anger she turned to him. “Well, coop your chickens up!”

Then she was embarrassed and afraid because she had spoken so defiantly. She returned to the yard, her heart beating loudly.

Rod saw the wounded falcon.

“Sors plum? Sors plum? (What happened?)”

Quickly she told him and pointed to the man. Rod put on a firm face and strode into the field.

June turned toward the house and carried Zander to the kitchen where her tears chugged to a stop. Gently she put him on a block of wood by the stove and waited for her father to come home.

The bird sat very still on the post and held his wing just so. He was glad for the warmth of the fire, and gradually lifted his feathers. She left to get some food for him and came back to find him sleeping.

But when she moved, he quickly awakened and grabbed the morsel. He ate it with eagerness and hunger. She stuffed him; he closed his eyes.

June heard the click of her father’s car door and rushed to the porch.

“Please, tell me what to do. I think Zander is dying,” she blurted.

Her father and her uncle walked together into the big kitchen and bent over the small bird.

“Come on, little fellow,” her father said, and picked him up. Slowly he lifted the damaged wing. He studied it, watched it, and softly closed it to the bird’s body. His nose, almost under the wing, bent the longest primary feather. Then he said, “We can’t put a splint on it. Too high.”

But Uncle Paul lifted her spirits. “I was talking to a man who raises ducks, the other day, and he said birds’ wings heal in about five days. Said he’d had a duck that broke a wing last month, just crawled under a bush until it healed and then he came out and flew away. His mate brought him food.”

Charles senior put the falcon back on his perch. “Junie, I think we should just try keeping him quiet and letting the wing heal without interfering with nature.”

“Will he fly again?”

“Well you heard Uncle Paul. He might.”

Her father got some absorbent cotton and some warm soapy water and gently washed the blood. Suddenly Zander jumped in pain.

“I guess it’s best to do nothing,” her father said. “He can wash himself in the creek when he’s well.”

Her mother came into the kitchen. “That’s the trouble with pets,” she said, “with the joy, there are the heartaches.”

The door opened and Brownie ran in. The fast movement startled the falcon and he jumped painfully to the ground.

“I guess I ought to hood him,” June said. “Then he’ll sit still.” She went to the cupboard and returned to slip the little brown hood with the red feathers over Zander’s head. He became absolutely motionless.

That night June went up and down the steps a dozen times to look at Zander. Finally she fell asleep. At daylight she sat straight up in bed. A coldness seized her. She knew Zander was dead.

She bolted downstairs and with stiff movements opened the door.

The bird was sitting exactly where she had left him, his wing held so that it would heal. She sat down beside him and said softly, “Hi, little fellow.” In the darkness he heard her voice and lifted his feathers. The small noise of the nestling greeting its parent came from his throat.

After breakfast she checked him again. This time she did not fear he would be dead; limp and sick, perhaps, but not dead. So she laughed with relief to see him sitting perkily on his perch, standing quietly under the hood.

She went to the meadows and came back about ten, confident that she would see Zander better. She was getting used to the idea that he would live.

The next morning she was anxious but not afraid.

Three days later she went back to the sparrow hawk’s nest in the meadow.

She watched the mother bird and her young, now hidden on branches and behind leaves. They were hard to see except when they fluttered their wings to attract their mother. It was a slow game, and once again June lay down in the grass to watch them. As she stared up into the tree she suddenly realized she was looking at one of the puffy, pin-feathered, bespeckled fledglings. It was a male, clinging tightly to a limb, just as Zander had clung to her shirt the day her brothers brought him home.

As she watched, the fledgling puffed until his head and body were a round ball. Suddenly the feathers flattened. The head lifted, the wings fluttered. His mother was coming. She must have been far out in the sky for it was many moments before she flashed onto a near limb. The young bird stretched to her. He fluttered like a Japanese fan. She sat still with food in her mouth. The fledgling flapped toward her. Her wings went up. She fell backward off the limb, spread her finger-feathers, and rolled out on the sky.

She carried the food with her.

The youngster dove after her. And then she turned and struck him! He fluttered, zigzagged to a tree, and perched recklessly on a twig. His heart was beating so hard his body shook, his beak stood ajar.

June remembered her father. “She doesn’t want him,” she said in awe.

The young bird sat alone for a long, long time. Then he jumped to earth and caught a tiny cricket. He ate it. He watched the sky. He beat out the “here I am, Mother” call, but the mother bird did not answer. He rotated his head from horizon to horizon as he followed his mother’s flight. She never came back.

“That’s horrible,” June cried; and for no reason she could find, tears ran down her face.

“It’s just as Dad said, he’s being sent out into the world to seek his fortune. His mother won’t help him anymore. It’s horrible to live in the wild. It’s frightening and cold and awful. I’m glad I’m a person and don’t have to go to Belgium if I don’t want to.”

At home Rod was on the canoe landing checking his star map with a reference book. The door opened and her mother stepped out. She was in her bathing suit ready for a swim. June was glad to see her.