The mailman continued to dance. He looked extraordinarily thin, and he seemed ghostly in the moonlight, his red hair fake.

“Okay,” Mike whispered, gathering them around. “We’ll spread out in a net, a half-circle. He can’t go down the cliff, so he’ll be trapped.” The policeman looked at Doug, then back at his colleagues. “He’s not armed, but he’s dangerous. If he tries anything, shoot him.”

The other policemen nodded.

“Let’s go.”

The grass and bushes rustled as the men spread out, but the noise was more than covered by the mailman’s chanting. Doug, weaponless, stayed close to Mike. When the policemen saw that they were all in place, he stepped forward. The others followed suit.

The mailman saw them but did not falter in his ritual, continuing to dance without pause, raising his arms toward the sliver of the moon.

“I am placing you under arrest,” Mike announced.

The mailman laughed, changing the words to his chant: “Neither men nor women nor hail of bullets shall keep this mailman from his appointed rounds.”

Mike stepped forward, Doug next to him. The half-circle began to close in.

The mailman danced away from them, across the rocky field toward the edge of the ridge.

“Stop right there,” Mike ordered.

The mailman laughed, leapt, danced, chanted. “Nor dark of night…”

They followed as he led them toward the ridge’s edge, closing in, tightening their trap until they were almost upon him.

The mailman stopped dancing. He was not sweating, not even breathing hard. He grinned at Doug. “Billy is such a nice boy,” he said. “Such a nice boy.”

“Put your hands above your head,” Mike ordered.

“What for, Officer?”

“Put them up!”

“You have no proof.”

“We have all the proof we need.”

The mailman smiled as he looked around the semicircle. “Fuckers,” he said quietly.

“Put your hands above your head,” Mike repeated.

“Fuckers,” the mailman said softly. He moved backward to the very edge of the cliff, darting agilely from rock to rock, moving surefootedly across treacherous stretches of loosely packed dirt away from them.

Mike fired a warning shot in the air, and the mailman stopped. Mike aimed the pistol at him. “If you make one more move, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?”

Doug was not sure whether Mike was serious or not, but the mailman thought he was, and he remained in place.

“Tim,” Mike said, “cuff him.”

Tim nodded, moved forward, open cuffs in hand. “Mr. Smith, you are under arrest for—”