Four Spirits by Sena Jeter Naslund Page A

lay lengthwise with the slope of the hill. “Now,” he said, “let’s lie down.” When they were lying on their sides, their faces ten inches apart, he asked, “Do you like it here?”
    â€œIt’s wonderful,” she said and felt shaky, like froth, like a pink soda was inside her.
    She reached out her hand toward his shoulder, and instantly their bodies clamped together. His hands were all over her back, holding her close, but he only kissed her, over and over, his clothed body straining against hers till they were panting as they kissed.
    Suddenly he rolled away from her, onto his back, gazed up at the moon.
    â€œWhy is this kind of moon called gibbous,” he asked in a low, intimate voice almost a whisper. Such intense trust in his voice, asking something he actually wanted to know, trusting her to be able to tell him. But who was he, and what did she know about him? How different were people who grew up in Norwood from those in the West End?
    She replied softly, “Because its back is hunched, curved like a gibbon, an ape.” She listened to her lips come together and part as she spoke. Sweet little sounds in the still, magnolia air. Like the extra sounds her fingers made on the fingerboard when she played the cello. She had ridden the cello through high school. In college, she’d wanted a new adventure.
    She propped up on one elbow, looked down at Darl’s beautiful moonlit face. His freckles were so close together, just a freckle-breadth of white skin between each dot. Then she saw a movement beyond him, on the other side of the dark magnolia. The sound of moving feet was so slight that she wouldn’t have noticed had she not seen the movement.
    Feet as quiet as fingers scurrying up the fingerboard, but human feet had moved. The sound of a slight scuffling. Someone crouched now under the skirt of dropping magnolia branches.
    She reconstructed the sounds, retrospectively. Feet had brushed quickly over the tops of grass blades. A man had ducked under the skirt of the magnolia, had stopped still upon seeing them, was squatting there now. Waiting. Yes, that was what she must have seen—all of it so quick and quiet, barely lit by the moon, it seemed almost not to have happened. Now the dark man must be quieting his breathing, after running.
    Stella leaned over Darl’s face, as though to kiss him, but her lips went to his ear.
    â€œThere’s somebody hiding under the magnolia tree behind you.”
    â€œWhat?” Darl said, quietly, and began to raise himself on his elbow. How she admired his poise, the forced languor of his movements.
    Then she saw a group of colored men coming up the slope. “Yes,” she said, and stood up. She spoke in a normal voice, “There they are.” And Darl quickly stood up.
    The group of four stopped still, surprised to see them.
    â€œGood evening,” Darl said formally, a formal dignity, neutrality, in his voice.
    â€œY’all taking a walk out here?” one of them asked, just an edge of assertiveness in his voice.
    â€œYes,” Darl said. “We like to come here sometime.” His voice was without emotion, flat, conveying information without affect or clue as to who they were. They might have been monuments, shrubs. Something just there. Like the blank towel, abandoned and silly on the grass.
    â€œThat your scooter parked out by the gate?” another asked.
    They were big; young men really, not boys. Though she was fleet, if she ran they could probably catch her. She said nothing. Stood ready to try to outrun them.
    â€œDid the cops get the bike?” Darl answered, and she knew he was trying to create a mutual enemy.
    â€œNaw, it still there,” one said.
    The young men were constantly moving, restless. She and Darl stood very still. One of them nervously took a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket.
    Another said, “Hey, you got a quarter or something?”
    Without