The Summer of the Falcon (6 page)

The last arrangement was made as Charles quickly taught the clarinetist Windy’s whistle. Then the Pritchards crossed the porch and dropped into the bushes to wait and watch. Fingers, the raccoon, was still in a box. He could be released when the punch and cookies were served.

It wasn’t long before Will Bunker stepped through the patio door into the dining room. He was talking seriously to a heavily built man, with a black moustache, several chins, barrel-chest, and enormous cigar. This must be Mr. Sparter, the guest of honor.

Will walked through the dining room across the hall and stepped into the living room. Mort lifted his baton and started the music.

This frightened Zander. He killied. Will turned, Mr. Sparter turned. They looked. They shrugged, they laughed, and then Mr. Sparter, who was behind Will, facing the mantel, stared over Will’s curly hair. He bit his cigar, rocked on his toes, and stared harder. He cleared his throat.

Will sensed his guest’s confusion, thought he’d said something wrong, tried to smooth his error—then turned to see Zander. Other guests were coming in: young men, old men, and women in beautiful gowns. The music soared. Then Ross walked across the room, opened the victrola, and said to Will, “We have some amusing old records for intermission.” He wound the machine and turned it on. Bobu stepped forward in his niche. He bobbed his head up, down, then around and around as his yellow and black eyes focused on the “Bobu Amusement Park.” He jumped on his wings and flew softly over heads, alighting on the turntable. There were polite gasps from the women. Bobu became alarmed, took off, and winged around the room. Cries mounted, voices sounded in alarm until he finally found a door and wheeled into the darkness. From the bushes, Rod called him down.

The clarinetist arose and, tipping back his head, whistled the Windy call. The old fellow on Jim’s fist bobbed his head and flew. He went in the open French door and circled the room. Finally he settled on the back of Mrs. Sparter’s chair. She screamed and before the other guests reached her, Uncle Paul released Spike and Brownie, gave them the scent of the aniseed, and whispered, “Go git it!”

Through the French doors ran Spike, head low, yiping along the trail, passing beaded skirts, going between black broadcloth legs, straight out the far French doors, around the house and back in the front doors again. He was followed by big lumbering Brownie. Will was stony white. He recognized the dogs. He shouted and swished them out, then closed the door after them. But they circled the house and came in the front door again, noses to the ground, Spike yiping, Brownie woofing in his bullfrog basso. They ran to the rear doors, found them closed, jumped on them, pushed them open, and bellowed out into the night again. They circled the house. Now Will threw himself against the front windows and would not let the barking dogs in.

Charles, standing in the bushes, was laughing so hard he buckled over to hold his aching sides.

The “palace” was bedlam. Then Jim slipped into the dining room and placed Fingers on the table. He petted him and showed him the cookies. Fingers wasn’t discovered until a few minutes later when the laughing Mr. Sparter came into the dining room for a drink of punch. He stopped and threw his hands in the air when he saw the raccoon, all four feet in the beverage, chasing the ice cubes.

Will Bunker, tie undone, smudged with dirt, clutched Mr. Sparter’s arm. “Please, excuse this fiasco. This is an outrage. I know who’s done this. Please excuse me, they must be around. I am so sorry. This is unforgivable.”

Uncle Paul liked that. He laughed from his belly.

“Who are they?” Mr. Sparter roared happily and followed Will to the porch.

“Paul!” Will shouted. “Where are you? Come on! Stop! Please stop! I’m sorry about the cave. I apologize again. But this is too much. Paul!”

Uncle Paul, arms swinging freely, moving as naturally as wind, went up onto the porch. June ran around him and dashed for Zander.

As the other birds and animals were gathered, Mr. Sparter followed the children, laughing and shaking his head.

“This is hysterical,” he said, stroking old Windy. “Do you children train all these birds and beasts?” Charles nodded. “Do the falcons hunt as they did in the days of Chaucer?”

“We hope so.”

The other guests gathered around in delight. Then Uncle Paul with his most charming smile called, “Good-night,” and herded his group off the porch. As they packed themselves into the car Uncle Paul said, “My only regret is that I will not hear the women when they discover the fish.” The twins laughed, Rod laughed. But June thought of the music and the fish and for a moment she was sad that so lovely a ball had been spoiled.

Charles was laughing softly to himself, then louder and louder until he said through his chuckles, “And Spike and Brownie going, noses down, around and around ...”

Uncle Paul roared, and Don and Jim and Rod. June tried to remember the beauty, the flowers, the lights...but soon she too giggled, chuckled, and finally rolled against the side of the car and laughed with the rest.

At dawn the boys on the sleeping porch were awakened by a fire cracker being thrown in their midst. They all leaned over the railing to see Will Bunker in his dinner jacket shouting, “All you Pritchards get up! Time to feed the owls, time to feed the hawks. Get up! Everybody get up!”

Uncle Paul came down in his pajamas and tried to hush him, but he could not. Will continued to shout. “I was mad as Billy-be-darned last night; then I found you made my party a success. A great success. Al Sparter was so amused by the hawks and owls and dogs and children that he offered me enough money to double the plants...wants to take everyone to dinner, especially Windy.

“Al’s a big-thinking man, alive and fun and no nonsense. We’re going to go to Africa together. ...to fish and swim.”

The twins climbed down the porch posts. Rod blundered sleepily down the back steps. Jim hung over the railing, as the bright word “Africa” sparked everyone’s imagination.

E
ACH DAY
there was dawn. The orange sun would stand behind the barn—and it was time to fly Zander. June had set this as her hour to work and followed it well for fourteen days, but the schedule was hard to maintain. On the fifteenth day she said to the sun, “In a minute, in a minute.” She felt the cool sheets, the soft pillow...and snuggled deep in the old brass bed.

Hours later her mother called her to breakfast. As she dressed June promised herself she would fly Zander when the dishes were washed and dried.

Don and Charles, coming back from the barn with the day’s supply of falcon food, called to their sleepy sister on the stairs, “Did you exercise Zander?”

“No, I’ll do it after breakfast.”

“I betcha don’t,” Charles said.

“Not right after breakfast!” her mother said. “This is laundry day, and I need you.”

As the last dish was being put away, the front door banged and the dogs barked and Fingers, the raccoon, came running around the porch to climb the maple and hide. The falcons flattened their feathers and watched him in some alarm. Fingers often teased the birds, but never harmed them, for an inner sense and a bad experience with Ulysses told him of the might of the falcon. The birds, however, were never relaxed when Fingers came to the maple. But Spike and Brownie could move between them without flattening a single feather in anxiety.

Then all the birds and the raccoon stared at the porch...they heard Will Bunker before he turned the corner calling, “Anyone at home?” Laughing and happy he strode into the kitchen where he was greeted by the family. He flipped a chair around and sat in it backwards.

After he had inquired about Rod, who still troubled his conscience, he announced with a rock of the rockerless chair, “I’ve stopped by to say good-bye! Tomorrow we’re off for Africa!”

Elizabeth Pritchard turned on him in astonishment. “So soon?”

He nodded. “Al Sparter and I want to see the whale migration off the coast and fish a bit. Mary and Mrs. Sparter will stay here.” There was a hiss at the door. Hungry Windy was on the back of a porch chair, calling to get in.

“Why are you awake?” Charles called to the owl as he opened the door. Windy flew in and perched on the kitchen mantel.

“That’s a great owl,” Will said.

Elizabeth nodded and added, “He’s been acting strange lately, wilder, more distant. I think the twins ought to tie him up awhile.”

Will looked at sleepy June, “And how is your falcon, little cave climber?” She smiled. Suddenly he said, “Hey, what about a falcon hunt when Mr. Sparter and I get back? Your Zander,” and he turned to the twins, “your Ulysses, Jess, Screamer, Bobu, Windy, the whole gorgeous affair. All these falcons, and I’ve never seen one do anything but go up and down the yard on a leash.”

“Well, sure,” both twins said at once. “About the end of August when the weather’s not so heavy. When will you be back?”

“The twenty-sixth—we aren’t staying long.”

“How about the twenty-eighth?”

Will Bunker said “Fine. Fine!” and rocked back and forth on the chair.

Charles nudged June. “You’d better train your bird.”

But her mother said, “June, get the tubs out and put them in the yard. The water’s boiling, and I don’t want this laundry to drag on all day.”

And all day June was “too busy,” and did not fly her falcon.

When dawn came the next day she remembered too well the sweet joy of yesterday’s sleep. She did not awake early the next, nor the next, nor the next. And the twins were right. If the birds weren’t flown before breakfast, life in the Pritchard house became too full to stop.

And then there was Emily Barnes. Emily lived up the road in the old stone house, and although she had been there for years, June barely knew her...

Until the day she came running down the road, head back, eyes crinkled and lit with highlights, to tell June that a band of gypsies had camped in the meadow overnight. At dawn the gypsies had stopped at Mrs. Bunkelbarger’s house and forced her to give them all her egg money—seven dollars. Then they took a drink from her pump and drove away. Emily said, “I must go see where they have been.” And June untied her apron to follow her, for poor, starving gypsies, unloved, unwanted, were June’s idea of the most romantic people in the world. She often dreamed that a band would come to her yard at night and carry her away to sing and dance in the fields and meadows. She smoothed her springy curls with her palms, thrilled to hear that gypsies had been near, and ran out the back door with Emily.

“You’d better fly Zander,” the twins called.

And June called back, “In a minute, in a minute.”

The dust puffed under the four running bare feet, and the minute became four hours.

On Friday night her father came up from the city. She did not run to meet him, for his first question was always, “Well, how’s the training coming?” And what could she say? Almost ten days had passed and she had merely thrown sparrows to the falcon as she and Emily ran off to the meadow to talk under the jimpson weeds about the beautiful world of romance.

To avoid her father June threw a piece of meat to Zander (sometimes when wild food ran out the falcons and owls were fed beef chunks or chicken necks). Then she ran to the creek to swim with Emily. At dinner it was apparent to Charles senior that his daughter had not done much falcon training. He said, “It really doesn’t matter, I guess, except that you’ll lose your bird if you don’t train him. Unless, of course, you just want a tethered bird on a perch—which is different from a bird on wing with spirit.” He paused and added, “But as long as you feed him and are gentle to him, I guess I can’t complain.”

June was annoyed. Her father was telling her again to see a project through to the end. She felt incapable and irritated. She wanted to get angry with him, but did not know how.

After dinner all the Pritchards gathered by the canoe landing to sing and talk. In the middle of a song her father said, “Look at Windy.”

The old owl was sitting on the back of the rocking chair on the porch and was swinging his head in enormous circles. His eyes were focused on the sky beyond the barn. There seemed to be an urgency about him.

“You’d better leash him, Charles,” Elizabeth said to her son. Quickly he moved forward to take the bird’s jesses; but it was too late. The old owl, his eyes on something far beyond human sight, dropped to the ground, ran with wings lifted and took off. He flew east. He alighted in the white pine at the edge of the yard. June watched her brother follow the bird to the tree and start to climb.

Everyone whistled and called, for obviously something was happening to Windy. He seemed neither to hear nor to remember. No one could get to his brain. And then, still not looking back, still seeing only the sky, he took off for the roof of the house just as Charles reached out for him. There he ran across the peak and lifted himself softly to the chimney.

Don ran up the porch post, like a native up a palm, rolled onto the roof and jumped against the wall of the house. His fingers in the whirligigs, toes in the decorative wooden flowers, he clambered up the side of the house to the top of the sleeping porch. Then bouncing, flying, he leaped across the porch roof to the slate peak of the house, and balancing with his arms out, lightly ran to the chimney.