Years later, after everything had passed, Irene’s fingers still turned cold at the memory of that wing. At the time, she was too shocked to be afraid. She saw the wing, saw where it attached to the fuselage, saw that the wheels had partially collapsed and that the other wing had folded neatly against the ground. None of that mattered, though. The only thing that mattered was the cockpit, and the cockpit—the cockpit—she couldn’t see, somebody was climbing on the wing, it was Mr. Rofrano—reaching his hand—grasping—the cockpit—an arm—a cheer, a roar from the crowd—and God save us all there was Sam, Sam Mallory, shoulders straining against an oil-stained flight suit, standing on the wing next to Mr. Rofrano, waving, jumping down to the grass. People started to climb on the wings. Sam shooed them off, but he was still laughing. Irene wiped the tears from her cheeks. He was talking to Rofrano. Another man shook his hand. A trickle of blood came down the side of his face. He took off his glove and wiped it with the back of his hand, went around to the broken wing and lifted it up, and Mr. Rofrano lifted the other wing, a few other men took hold of the wings, the fuselage, and Papillon started forward again on her remaining wheel, headed toward the hangars, trailed by her public.

Sam Mallory had a cut on his forehead and a broken finger, which some doctor in the crowd splinted for him. They stowed the broken Papillon in the hangar, and Irene retrieved Sandy from the crate where they had left her, together with some newspaper and a dish of cream.

“He should have been killed,” Mrs. Rofrano said cheerfully, “but he’s just too lucky a pilot.”

Everyone had gathered in the cafeteria—everyone being the pilots and mechanics, the community of flight that was Rofrano’s Airfield—where the cook served up plates of sandwiches while Rofrano himself poured something that looked like whiskey from a plain, unmarked bottle. Irene had lost count of the number of rounds in Sam’s honor, the old war stories, the strange, overblown laughter that seemed to come not from the whiskey, as that kind of laughter usually did—at least in Irene’s experience—but from something else. Not that the whiskey wasn’t helping.

Irene stuck to coffee and sandwiches. She stared at Sam, across the table, and said to Mrs. Rofrano, “I guess he learned all that during the war. How to land with a broken rudder.”

“How to land with a broken anything, really. Look at him. You wouldn’t know anything had happened at all, would you?”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“What he needs is a real airplane. Not like that secondhand Lockheed he tried to fly to Hawai’i, but a new one with decent engines and modern design.”

“I hear your husband’s designed one.”