In
Honor Of Women's History Month- Lucy On The Edge Of The World
From
The Pen Of Frank Jackman
People, ordinary night owls, hung-over refugees from
the now closed bars and cabarets, average vagabond wanderers of the Harvard
Square night, the shiftless, the toothless homeless, coming into the all-night
Hayes-Bickford seeking, like him, relieve from their collective woes with a cup
of weak-kneed coffee and steamed, steamed everything, did not bother Lucy (the
first name Lucy was all anybody ever found out about as far as he knew) sitting
alone at her “reserved” table in the back of the cafeteria toward the rest
rooms. Lucy Lilac (nicknamed by some ancient want-to-be fellow bard perhaps but
like her surname the genesis undisclosed to him by the other regular tenants of
the night when he asked around) spent her youthful (she was perhaps twenty-two,
maybe twenty-three, had just finished college, he had heard, so that age seemed
about right) middle of the nights just then hunched over a yellow legal notepad
filling up its pages with her writings and occasionally she would speak some
tidbit she had written out loud, not harmful out loud like some of the drunks
at a few of the tables, or some homeless wailing banshee cry, but just out
loud.
Some of it was beautiful, and some of it was, well,
doggerel, about par for the course with
poets and other writers, But all of it, whatever he heard of it, was centered
on her plight in the world as a woman torn, as a woman on the edge, the edge
between two societies, between as one professor that he had asked about it
later stated it, two cultural gradients if that term has any meaning, and maybe
she had been but let him try to reconstruct what it was all about, all about
for Lucy Lilac night owl. See he became so fascinated by where she was going
with her muse in 1962 summer nights, about how she was going to resolve that
battle between “cultural gradients” and about the gist of what she had to say
to a callow world in those days that he turned up many a two in morning to try
to figure her dream out. He had more than a passing interest in this battle
since he was also spooked by those same demons that she spoke of.
[Oh, by the way, Lucy Lilac, was drop-dead beautiful, with
long black iron-pressed straight hair as was the style then, alabaster white
skin whether from her daylight hours of
sleep or by genetic design was not clear, big red lips, which he did not
remember whether was the style then or not, the bluest eyes of blue, always
wearing dangling earrings and usually wearing some long dress so it was never
really possible to determine her figure or her legs important pieces of
knowledge to him, and not just to him, in those sex-obsessed days, but he would have said slender and
probably nice legs too. Since neither her beauty, nor the idea of sex, at least
pick-up sex, enter into this sketch that is all that needs to be pointed out.
Except this, her beauty, along with that no-nonsense demeanor, was so apparent
that it held him, and others too, off from anything other than an occasional distant
forlorn smile. ]
What Lucy Lilac would speak of, like a lot of the young in those
days, was her alienation from parents, society, just everything to keep it
simple, but not just that. On that she had kindred spirits in abundance. She was also alienated from her race, her
white race, her nine to five, go by the rules, we are in charge, trample on the
rest of the world, especially the known black world, like lot of the young, him included, were in those days as
well. Part of it was that you could not
turn open a newspaper or turn on a radio or television without having the ugly
stuff going down South in America (and sometimes stuff in the North too
confronting you headlong). But part of it was an affinity with black culture
(the gradient, okay), mainly through music and a certain style, a certain
swagger in the face of a world filled with hostility. Cool, to use just one
word.
Now this race thing, this white race thing of Lucy’s had
nothing to do, he did not think, at least when she spoke never came through, with
some kind of guilt by association with the rednecks and crackers down in places
like Alabama and Mississippi goddams. It was more that given the deal going
down in the world, the injustices, the not having had any say in what was going
on, or being asked either made her feel like she was some Negro in some shack
some place. Some mad priestess fellaheena scratching the good earth to make her
mark. And as she expanded her ideas (and began to get a little be-bop flow as
she spoke, a flow that he secretly kept time to), each night he got a better sense
of what she was trying to say. (He later learned that she was, as he had been,
very influenced by Norman Mailer’s essay in The Partisan Review The White Negro, a screed on what he
called the white hipster, those who had parted company with their own culture
and moved to the sexier, sassy cultural gradient.) And while they both were
comfortably ensconced in the cozy Cambridge
Hayes (well maybe not cozy but safe anyway) and had some very white skin
to not have to James Crow worry about he began to see what she meant.
And Lucy Lilac really hit home when she spoke of how she
had, to his surprise since she gave every indication of being some cast-off
Mayfair swell’s progeny, minus that important race thing, been brought up under
some tough circumstances down in New Jersey. She spoke about being from poor,
very poor white folks somewhere around Toms River, her father out of work a lot
worrying about the next paycheck and keeping him and his under some roof, her mother
harried by taking care of five kids on two kids money, about being ostracized
by the other better off kids, about seeking solace in listening to Bessie
Smith, Billie, and a ton of other blues names that he recognized. And he too
recognized fellahin kindred since his own North Adamsville existence seemed so
similar ….
Yes, those nights he knit a secret and unknown bond with
Lucy Lilac, Lucy who a few months later vanished from the Hayes-Bickford night,
Lucy from the edge of the world, and wherever she wound he knew just what she
meant by the white Negro hipster-dom she was seeking, and that maybe he was too…
And hence this Women’s History Month contribution.
Dennis Lehane does gritty, literary crime fiction with a bloody elegance that just keeps coming. In ‘A Drink Before the War,” “Gone, Baby, Gone,” “Moonlight Mile,” “ Mystic River,” and many more, his crime novels have built a big following way beyond his Boston hometown. Hollywood snaps up his books. He’s written for “The Wire” and “Boardwalk Empire,” too. His latest book goes World War II-era Florida, to old Tampa and Cuba and gangster days. It’s blood and betrayal again. This hour On Point: Dennis Lehane on America now and his new novel “World Gone By.”
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