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came to a wooden stockade fence, with pointed pickets at the top, over ten feet high. The boundary of Van Dorn’s property. Stanley slapped at the fence. “Fucking Berlin Wall. . . .” About three inches of cedar separated him from freedom.
    He began trotting east along the wall. He saw a rise in the land near the fence. From the top of the rise to the top of the fence was not the impossible ten feet but a more manageable seven or eight feet. He cut back toward the Russian estate to give himself a running start, then swung back toward the small mound of earth. A half-moon had risen above the distant trees and cast a pale light over the long and narrow right-of-way. Stanley looked to his left and saw six Russians and two dogs approach at an angle to his intended path. He knew he had only one shot, if that.
    One of the Russians shouted, “Stop! Halt! Surrender!”
    Stanley yelled back in a steady voice, “Up yours!”
    The Russians released the dogs, and Stanley turned on his last burst of energy and speed. Both dogs lunged, but overshot him, reeled, and came back. Stanley hit the mound running, then jumped. His momentum took him up and forward, and he smashed into the fence but got his arms around the top of the pickets. The dogs leaped at him and one of them got hold of his sneaker. He kicked free. A Russian shouted, “Stop! Stop! We shoot!”
    Stanley yelled back, “Sit on it, schmucko!” He pulled himself up and over the pointed pickets, hung for a moment, then dropped to the ground below, tumbling onto the rocky soil. American soil. End of game.
    Stanley stood, turned, and began trotting away from the fence, laughing then crying, and finally howling in the moonlight and dancing. “I made it! I made it!” He jumped into the air and clapped his hands. “Stanley, you are
the best!
”
    He tightened the flag around his waist and began trotting, then something impelled him to turn back toward the fence. The jagged pickets were silhouetted against the evening sky, and atop the ones he’d just scaled, he could see the moonlit shape of a large man coming over the top. “Oh, no! You can’t do that! Back! Stop! Halt!
Nyet! Nyet!
Private property! America!” Stanley turned and began moving as fast as his leaden legs would carry him.
    The terrain was fairly open here except for a few white birches and boxwoods. Elongated moon shadows lay over the fields of wild flowers and Stanley tried to stay in those shadows. The ground rose, gently at first, then more steeply, then it became almost a cliff. “What the hell . . . ?” He started slipping in some sort of goo. Clay. White clay. The Long Island terrain was mostly flat and benign, but there were parts of the island on the North Shore that had been formed by the Ice Age glaciers’ terminal moraine, some fifteen thousand years ago, and this was one of those areas. And it was screwing him up. There were loose rocks, gravel, and this strange, slippery white clay, which, thought Stanley, was like dog turd. He realized very soon that he had picked the wrong spot to reach Van Dorn’s broad lawn.
    He heard them again, but without the dogs. He guessed they had helped one another over the fence; at least five of them anyway. The biggest lard-ass stayed behind with the dogs. He wondered what was driving them on. He was running for his life. How much could they pay these guys?
    They weren’t calling to him anymore, but he could hear them walking, not behind him but off to the west about forty yards. “Bastards.”
    Stanley summoned up the last of his strength and began kicking toeholds in the resilient white clay, clawing at it with his fingertips. “I’ll sue them. I’ll tell Van Dorn . . . they’re trespassing on American property. Fucking
nerve . .
.”
    He heard footsteps pattering on the side of the cliff to his left. They had found a path and were moving rapidly up on it. “Oh . . .” Directly below, about fifteen feet down the cliff, he heard something, and looked