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down are the nearby slabs of peat that lie like cake, the sharp cuts in the brown earth, the lines of wet string that run along the banks, the triangular ricks of earth off in the distance. They miss, too, the wooden turf carts that lie weathered and rainpocked at the side of the road. They miss the angles of the slanes, leaning up against the carts. They miss the rushes grown long on the abandoned roads.
    They bring the Vimy towards the ground. A flawless trajectory. Almost as if they could lean out and scoop the soil in their hands. Here we are. The plane suspends itself a foot from the ground. Their hearts thump in their shirts. They wait for the moment of touch. Skim the top of the grass.
    They hit and bounce. We are down, we are down, Jackie boy.
    But they know straightaway they are slowing too suddenly. A wheel maybe? A burst tire? A snap of tail fin? No cursing, no shouting. No panic. A sinking feeling. A dip. And then they realize. It isbog, not grass. The living roots of sedge. They are skidding across a green bog. The soil holds the weight of the plane a moment and they skid along fifty feet, sixty feet, seventy, but then the wheels dig.
    The earth holds, the Vimy sinks, the nose dips, the tail lifts.
    It is as if they have been yanked backwards by surprise. The front of the Vimy slams into the soil. The back end flips. Brown smashes his face on the front of the cockpit. Alcock pushes back against the rudder control bar, bends it with pure force. A shot of pain through his chest and shoulders. Good Jesus, Jackie, what happened there? Have we crashed?
    The silence, a noise in their heads. Louder now than ever. Suddenly doubled somehow. And then a relief floods up through them. The noise filters down into the rest of their bodies. Is that silence? Is that really silence? The racket of it. Slipping through their skullboxes. Good God, Teddy, that’s silence. That’s what it sounds like.
    Brown touches his nose, his chin, his teeth, to see if he is intact. A few cuts, a few bruises. Nothing else. We’re alive. We’re perpendicular, but we’re alive.
    The Vimy sticks out of the earth like some new-world dolmen. The nose is buried at least two feet in the bog. The tail in the air.
    —Crikey, says Alcock.
    He can smell petrol somewhere. He switches off the magnetos.
    —Quick. Out. Down.
    Brown reaches for the logbook, the flares, the linen bag of letters. Pulls himself up over the edge of the cockpit. Throws down his walking stick and it hits like an arrow in the bog below, stuck sideways in the soil. A burn in the leg as he lands. Hallelujah for the ground: it almost surprises him that it isn’t made of air. A living dolmen, yes.
    In the pocket of his flight suit, Brown has a small pair of binoculars. The right lens has fogged, but through the good lens he sees figures high-stepping across the bog. Soldiers. Yes, soldiers. They seemfor all the world like toy things coming, dark against the complicated Irish sky. As they get closer he can make out the shape of their hats and the slide of rifles across their chests and the bounce of bandolier belts. There’s a war going on, he knows. But there’s always some sort of war going on in Ireland, isn’t there? One never knows quite whom or what to trust. Don’t shoot, he thinks. After all this, don’t shoot us.
Excuse me. Nein, nein
. But these are his own. British, he is sure of it. One of them with a camera bobbing at his chest. Another still in his striped pajamas.
    Behind them, in the distance, horses and carts. A single motorcar. A line of people coming from the town, snaking out along the road, small gray figures. And look at that. Look at that. A priest in white vestments. Coming closer now. Men, women, children. Running. In their Sunday best.
    Ah, mass. So, they must have been at mass. That is why there was nobody on the streets.
    The smell of the earth, so astoundingly fresh: it strikes Brown like a thing he might eat. His ears throb. His body feels as if it