The Summer of the Falcon
Jean Craighead George
Contents
1. Pritchard’s
2. The Jesses
3. The Cave
4. Trained
5. The Solo
6. The Falcon Hunt
7. The Housekeeper
8. The Flood
9. The Meet
10. The Nest in the Meadow
11. The Bolt of Organdy
A Biography of Jean Craighead George
1. Pritchard’s
JUNE BURST THROUGH the big walnut doors and ran up the dark stairs to her room. With a hoot she pushed up the window, stood on one foot, and kicked back the shutters. Quickly, before it was all gone, she threw open the closet and smelled the mysterious scent of the bats which had been hanging upside down in the corners all winter. She slid open the bureau drawer and sniffed the too sweet dust of the winter-working, wood-boring beetle. Then she closed her eyes and took in every musty smell, for they told her the routines of winter were done and the summer was beginning.
Downstairs windows were being hiked—long shoves that brought the sashes to the ceiling in that Victorian house. Tight doors were being shouldered ajar, and the sun and fresh air were racing into the tall rooms and dark corridors. Summer came pouring in, and the mysterious smells of a house locked for nine months blew out, clearing June’s head of school.
From her room that looked across the creek she could hear suitcases banging up the walnut staircases and sheets being snapped over beds.
The house was big and gray and sat far out in the country along a dirt road that followed the Yellow Breeches Creek from the Blue Mountains to Boiling Springs. A one-track railroad ran nearby. The house had been built by June’s grandfather for his bride and was an expression of his love. It sang out with the best of its day: rococo trim on pointed eaves, whirligigs on the windows, wooden flowers and leaves on the overhang of the porches—yards of Victorian gingerbread. Green lawns spread out around the house. The creek, wide, and deep enough for swimming, ran past the back porch.
June and her twin brothers knew it was the most beautiful house in the world. Whatever its oddities and drawbacks they did not see them. It glowed in their minds, for here they ran barefooted through rooms, up and down stairs and over the meadows and fields until their mother gathered them in in September and took them back to the city and the dark months of school.
The house was to have been sold after Grandfather Pritchard’s death. It might have been, had not June’s mother looked at the stream, the mountains, the vaulting rooms, and asked that it be kept for the Pritchard children so that they might have a sense of their past by playing on the land their ancestors opened.
Then, knowing other members of her husband’s family would share the house, she said, “and each wife will have her own table, stove, and refrigerator, so the women will not squabble.”
June stepped neatly out of her shoes. Last year she had kicked them off. She chuckled at the memory of how young she had been to do that. One grows a lot in a year, she said to herself as she placed the shoes under the bed. She unpacked her shorts and shirts and dresses and library books. As she arranged her clothes, a mouse in the top drawer circled nervously in its nesting material of old newspapers and mattress stuffings. June did not bother to remove it; each summer a mouse was there, and each summer, annoyed by the opening and closing of the drawers, it eventually moved off to the quieter interiors of walls and floors and wainscotings. Nature had a way, the children learned at Pritchard’s, of accommodating itself to the comings-and-goings of human beings.
June closed her eyes and heard the creek rushing over the milldam. She could hold the happiness no longer. She ran: out her door, down the back steps—two at a time—over the porch, across the yard to the stream. Gathering speed, she jumped off the end of the canoe landing, sailed through the air, and grasped the tree-tied rope. She swung out, kicking, and looked into the green water. She swung back over the land and saw the grass and stones. And she almost hit Rod as he came out of the creek beside the sycamore roots.
“Hi!” he said with an open smile. June dropped onto the grass. Rod sat down beside her. Rod was her cousin, twelve years old. He had tight, curly hair, wide-set brown eyes, and angular knees and elbows. All the Pritchard men were wiry, but Rod was knotty.
He was the most imaginative person she had ever known, and could quickly bring her to anger or laughter as they struggled to live in a friendly way, side by side.
Rod always started the summers nicely. This year he said, “Junie, let’s be friends every single day this year. Even on the day we go home.”
June’s blue eyes stared into Rod’s brown ones as she remembered the parting last summer—fisticuffs and tears. She said, “Are you sure you mean it?”
“Toe four jays!” he answered. She had almost forgotten their private language. Some of their friends spoke pig Latin or had secret passwords to hold them together, but Rod had outdone them all. He had created a whole new language, complete with verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs. He had taught it to June, and she had loved it with envious jealousy, because she so wished she had invented it. “Feet squawl,” was the verb “to be.” It was declined, “toe squal, heel squil, knee squad (I am, you are, he is).”
As June remembered, she slowly translated “Toe four jays.” Rod had said, “I promise forever.” Her heart warmed. She laughed. Summer and good fellowship filled her. “All right,” she said. “Let’s be good friends!”
Rod squinted down on his white toes that had just escaped shoes, and added, “I also promise I won’t smash the next city of Clayforbia we build.”
The city of Clayforbia had begun the day they had discovered a bank of clay in the bend of the creek. They had dug out a bucket of the white slippery earth and shaped it. Rod had made a house. He’d placed it on the bank. June had drawn a road beside it with a stick and had made a neighboring house. Then, street by street, a city had emerged along the banks of the creek as they duplicated the world into which they were growing. Other boys they knew built small railroads, the girls played “house,” even June’s brothers at her age had hollowed out a tree in which they cooked and slept—but Rod and June had a city.
Late in the summer Rod and June began to bicker, then to tease, and finally to fight, not about anything, really, but the squabbling seemed imperative. Finally June got so angry she hid Rod’s bathing suit on a hot summer noon and climbed onto the porch roof where he could not find her. Rod called, looked for her, grew angry. Then he ran to the creek with a croquet mallet and smashed Clayforbia to dust. June saw him from up high. Slowly she came down from the rooftop and walked to the city. Rod stood in the ruins staring at her. The mallet fell from his hand as he stomped away.
So last summer had ended. Now a new one was beginning.
June walked toward the canoe landing. “I don’t think I want to build a Clayforbia this year.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“Well, I’m in my teens now, thirteen. And I feel differently about some things.”
“You do?” he said in awe. “Like what?”
“Well...” she floundered, “well, I must sit nicely now, not hunch over. And I must speak in a low, refined voice, not scream, and...” She could hear her mother’s voice telling her the new rules. She could still see her bedroom door swinging closed, feel the warm air, and feel the indignation as she was told how to behave, not like a child any longer, but like a woman. The only thing that made this bearable was the knowledge that her brothers had been given a “growing-up” lecture by her father, that most of her friends had begun to “learn the rules.” But to June the rules seemed unreal—and unfair.
R
od came toward her with blotter-interest. “Are you getting to be a lady or something?” he asked. She spun off and ran over the railroad tracks and down the cow path into the meadow. She wished for someone to talk to, someone or something that would listen to the loneliness of her confusion.
Rod followed her over the tracks. “Do you suppose, Junie,” he called tentatively, “that this all has something to do with having babies?”
“Go away,” she screamed in rage. “Go far, far away. You’re just awful.” Rod shrugged and turned back. She heard his toes crunch the cinders on the railbed, then his legs catapulted him back to the house. He seemed so free as he ran. Boys were lucky; they could do what they wanted. They also got the exciting things to do, like lawn mowers. Girls got the dull chores, like weeding.
She waded into the creek to watch a water strider fight the current to stand still. Suddenly her foot struck slickness and she reached down to find a new supply of clay. Her anger left. She thought of clay houses and stores, and the cozy walls of Clayforbia.
And then her mother called. June could see a yellow dress shining through the marshmallow bushes as the voice came from the back porch. “Juunieee.”
She called again, “Juuniee!”
June hummed defiantly.
Then came a louder call—her brother Don. “June, where are you? We have something for you!”
June splashed out of the water and ran toward the house. The family was clustered on the porch. There were her brothers, Don and Charles, and her cousins, Jim and Rod; Uncle Paul and Aunt Helen, her mother and her father— all peering at something in a bushel basket. June slowed to a walk and crossed her fingers. She had been promised a pet this summer and her family was smiling as if this were the moment. She whispered Rod’s secret language, “Lee, prod bennet squawl spid et gill.” Translated, “Oh, please let it be alive and young.”
In the basket, braced on a stub of a tail, was a robin-sized sparrow hawk, North America’s smallest falcon.
Her hands cupped the screaming bird and she lifted it to her cheek. A blue talon dug her hand, the other clenched her shirt. The falcon was afraid, and he clung tighter and tighter. June held it close, for she knew that all young life is scared and unsure.
Don gently pried the claws from the blouse, wrapped his palm around its feet, and presented her with the bird.
“Here is a lady’s falcon, for a lady,” he said.
She again took the screaming baby of the wild in her hands. The bird stopped fighting and chirped softly.
June placed him deep in the basket, but as she released him, he shot out a blue foot, broke the skin of her hand, and screamed in rage.
“Fierce King Alexander,” she said. “His name has got to be Zander.”
Her brother Charles smiled in approval. “Soon we’ll ‘jesse’ him and start his training,” then sternly, “and get yourself in a work mood...training a falcon is tedious and demanding.”
Her father raised one eyebrow as he looked into the basket. At times his rigid rules made June sad. She could not always fit them. At other times his rules were the shield she seemed to need. Now she tried not to hear him. “June, you must take daily care of that bird. You’re tending a bit of life. It will be totally dependent upon you for its comfort and existence. If you’re going to neglect it, let it go.”
June ached inside as her mother prolonged the dictum. “That’s one thing my husband will not tolerate,” she said to Aunt Helen, “neglect of an animal. I surely hope June sticks to this. She does have her head in the clouds so much of the time.”
An hour ago the words would have hurt, but now, as June lifted the dusty bird again, she felt enormous and strong. She studied the falcon in wonderment. He was beautiful and alive...and hers! He was the first thing she had ever owned completely, and she had a sense of wealth and richness. She trembled to possess such an exquisite thing.
Slowly the porch cleared, the excitement died down and June was alone with her possession. She whispered to the bird, “Dear falcon Zander, you have been taken from your mother, from the freedom of the open sky and the wind and clouds...but I shall replace them all with my love.” And she stroked him. He bit her finger. It hurt, for the beak was powerful, but she only winced. “You’re going to have to learn the rules, little fellow. And when you’ve learned them, then I can let you play free.” She held the falcon close. “They’ve told me a million times that when all the rules are learned and buried in habit, freedom begins. So you’ll have to learn the rules, too.”
Once more she put the bird down. The wind stirred across the porch and dipped into the basket. It lifted a wisp from the immature head and took it circling out and up. June watched the feather blow over the yard and vanish in the bigness of the trees and sky. When she looked again at the falcon, his cap was a little redder where a new feather showed.
2. The Jesses
THE NEXT DAY June climbed from the brass bed before dawn and knelt beside the basket. The bird was wide awake. His brown eyes fastened on her movements. His blue beak dropped open from the bottom and he sat defensively on his tail. Carefully June touched his stroobly head, and was surprised to discover that the feathers were warm.
Again the blue talons grabbed her. She pulled away, but the screaming bird came flapping along, his talons deep in her hand. He fluttered, let go, and dropped on the bed. Flipping to his back he threw both feet in the air—the reaction of a cornered bird of prey. As June moved back, Zander jumped to his feet, and, too young to fly, lifted his wings and ran across the covers. At the edge of the bed. as if at the edge of the nest, he tidily defecated. June tidily cleaned up.
That done, the falcon let her pick him up and place him in the basket, where he watched as she slipped into her clothes, frightened by every grossly human movement she made. She chattered to him as she dressed. “Your mother was much daintier and smaller than I am, wasn’t she?”
Then June tiptoed to the door and quietly closed it behind her.
She stole past the bedroom where her parents were sleeping and paused at the bathroom door to listen to the honeybees in the south wall of the house. They entered through a small hole under the bathroom window. Occasionally they got mixed up and came inside—to the concern of people and bees. But rarely did they sting. So they were not removed from the walls but were left, like the mice in the drawer, to tolerate the people in summer and assume their rightful ownership of the house when the people were gone.
As June listened to the bees she wondered if she should catch some in a bottle for her falcon...she had heard that little falcons like bees and insects. But they seemed a small, hot bite for her young falcon, and she went on with her first plan. For this she needed Jim, Rod’s brother.
The boys were lined along the railing of the sleeping porch on their cots. Cousin Jim was awake the moment she opened the door. He looked at her out of strong brown eyes. Jim, like all the Pritchard males, had a deep love of the birds and beasts and fish and plants around him. In Jim this interest was so intense that it awoke him at five and propelled him into the stream and meadow, to crayfish it among the rocks and water as he searched for nests and dens.
“Jim,” June whispered, “Zander is hungry. I need some sparrows. Come with me to the barn.” And Jim was suddenly on the floor fully dressed. During the summer the brown, slender child rarely got into pajamas. He was so tired at night that he just fell into bed with his clothes on. When his mother complained, he put on his pajamas over his shirt and pants.
Jim poured some cold water from a pitcher into the old porcelain basin and washed his face. As he looked up he said, “Bobu is back from his hunt.”
Above him on the window trim sat a small, gray screech owl. Bobu had been her brothers’ pet for two years. He was so tame that the brothers had never bothered to leash him. He needed only food and affection to keep him close. He would fly away to hunt at night and return to the porch by day, going to sleep when the boys got up. “Musical beds,” they called it.
B
obu had another enchanting habit: he rode the old victrola in the living room. Whenever he came into the house he would fly to the turntable and wait until someone came to wind it. Then, circling, circling, he would spin around and around, making contented owl noises, captivating everyone with his funny, swivelling head. “Wind up Bobu’s amusement park,” Aunt Helen would say when the owl flew into the house.
As Bobu circled his head, Jim said to him, “Where ’ya been?” and the speechless bird chuttered and closed his eyes tight.
“He looks Chinese when he sleeps,” Jim observed as he lifted his hand. The quick movement awakened the half-peeking owl and he flew to the boy.
“Where’s Windy?” Jim asked. Swinging softly, silently out of the dawn light came a creamy-colored barn owl. Windy made seven of Bobu, for he was a much larger species. He alighted on the railing and bobbed his head.
Four years ago the twins had found Windy at the foot of his nest tree in Rock Creek Park and had brought him home. As the funny, ugly owlet hissed and sissed, their mother had said, “You ought to call him Windy.”
Each bird in the family—the falcons, the owls—had its own whistle to which it came like a dog when called, but Windy was the most obedient. When he heard his call he came home from tree hollows far away.
As June greeted the owls she wondered how Zander was going to like them. In the wild, Zander would not meet an owl, for the owls fly by night, the hawks by day. June was a little fearful for her youngest of the birds. Then the owl eyes turned softly upon her and blinked. She blinked back and whispered, “Dear Bobu, you’ll like Zander. He’s little, like you.” The owl blinked again.
By this time Charles had awakened. “Whatcha doing?” he asked. As he moved, Fingers, the raccoon, poked his head out of the barrel under his bed and scratched.
Fingers was a wonderful pet—except that he took all the labels off tin cans, paper off walls, and slept in the sugar barrel whenever he could. Mrs. Pritchard had relegated him to the outdoors, saying, “There are limits.”