A Thin Bright Line

by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

  Val went directly to the table spread with potato salad, dinner rolls, collard greens, and a giant platter of fried chicken. Realizing she was famished, Lucybelle followed. She dropped fifty cents in the coffee can sitting on the inside corner of the table and fixed herself a plate. Other guests filling their plates gave her warm smiles and asked how she was doing. She was doing wonderfully, now that she was at this welcoming party. Someone pointed out the drinks table, and Lucybelle dropped a dime into that coffee can and fetched herself a frosty bottle of beer from the ice-filled metal bucket.

  “Aren’t you looking fine.” A slight, brown-skinned man in a shiny blue suit looked her up and down.

  “Thank you.” It was curious how some men could compliment you and it seemed to mean exactly what they said and nothing more, while others could say a sentence like, “Aren’t you looking fine” and mean to reduce you somehow. She liked this fellow right away. He told her that he too had moved to Chicago from New York, having been unable to break into theater there. Someone told him the color barrier wasn’t as bad here, although he wasn’t finding that to be the case.

  “Have you met Lorraine Hansberry? She’s right over there.” The fellow nodded toward a knot of people gathered around a pretty young woman with a wide, warm smile. “I’m trying to get up my nerve to speak with her.”

  “Why not just walk up and say hi?”

  “I heard she’s looking for producers. The last person she needs to meet right now is some aspiring actor.”

  “What if her play makes it big? And you passed up this chance.”

  “I like the way you think,” the fey man said and gave a sweet little shrug. He stared wistfully at the playwright and took a deep breath.

  “Come on. We’ll go together.”

  “Oh, no. I can’t. I don’t know her.”

  “I don’t know her either. But what if this moment is the one that changes your life? What if she said, ‘Look at that face. He’s exactly who I need to play the lead.’”

  The man groaned. “In my dreams, sister.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Joe Mack.”

  “Okay, Joe Mack. I have an idea. Trust me?”

  His expressive face cycled through a series of obvious thoughts: why should he trust; she did look trustworthy; and really, what did he have to lose?

  “Exactly. Neither one of us has a thing to lose.” She set down her plate and bottle of beer and took his hand. He was actually trembling. Oh, Joe Mack, she thought, I like you. She loathed interrupting people, but now she couldn’t let him down. All this confidence because of what, a new dress? They stood on the periphery of the group surrounding Lorraine Hansberry. She didn’t see how anything other than extreme rudeness would get them inside. She needed a strategy.

  “Maybe later,” Joe Mack whispered.

  “I’m a reviewer with the Nation,” Lucybelle said in as friendly but firm a voice as she could muster. It was not a complete lie. “May I have a word with Miss Hansberry?”

  The crowd parted, Lucybelle yanked Joe Mack forward, and there they were, in front of their target audience.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Hansberry. I want to congratulate you on your play and also introduce you to my friend, one of the best actors I’ve had the pleasure of seeing on the stage, Mr. Joe Mack.”

  Joe was indeed a good actor. His fear appeared to have evaporated and now not a muscle twitched in his face as he stepped forward and shook her hand. “Raisin in the Sun is a play I want to be in. Must be in. I can’t tell you enough, Miss Hansberry . . .”

  Lucybelle breathed deeply, happily, pleased to be wearing a pretty dress and helping a pretty man. Maybe she could write a review for the Nation once the play got produced. She’d write her old advisor, Joseph Wood Krutch, tomorrow. The world felt capacious and joyful right then. She looked out over the room full of people—writers and actors of all colors celebrating Miss Hansberry—and that’s when she saw, teething on a chicken bone and laughing at someone’s joke, Stella.

  As rude as a hiccup, she turned and walked away from Joe Mack and Lorraine Hansberry. A second later she stood before Stella.

  “Hey, there!” Stella said with too much joviality.

  Rusty stood on one side of Stella, but she didn’t know the woman on the other side. Since no one introduced her, she said, “I’m Lucy.”

  “Arkansas,” Rusty said.

  “Oh, so this is Arkansas.” A good head taller and several shades lighter than Stella, the woman was gorgeous, her long hair spilling over bare shoulders, her wide mouth rubescent with lipstick, one eyelid drooping sexily, and long sleek eyebrows. Her golden form-fitting gown made Lucybelle’s dress feel like a schoolgirl’s. She put a hand on Stella’s shoulder and said, “Darling, get me another plate of that chicken. Might as well throw on a spoonful of potato salad too. I like how she puts sweet pickles in hers.”

  Lucybelle recognized the dispatcher’s low, sensual voice.

  Stella allowed her eyes to meet Lucybelle’s, ever so briefly, before she took the tall woman’s plate and headed for the food table.

  “I’m Wanda,” she said. “That’s a pretty dress.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Tell you what, don’t let these jokers get to you.” She nodded at Rusty. “I’m from Arkansas too. That’s why they like to carry on about the state.”

  “Which part?”

  “Jonesboro.”

  “I’m from just up the road, Pocahontas.”

  “You don’t say. It’s a small world, ain’t it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Where’s that plate of food? I swear, Stella can’t walk a straight line. She’s got to take a detour every single journey she sets out on, even if it’s ten yards to the food table. It’s a wonder she ever got the business off the ground, back when she was driving.”

  “So you’re the dispatcher for Acme Transport?” She knew she should keep her mouth shut, walk away, let go. But she couldn’t resist her need for absolute confirmation.

  Rusty made a hostile coughing sound.

  Wanda cocked one of those beautiful eyebrows and said, “Dispatcher, bookkeeper, secretary. I even drive fares from time to time, someone out sick.”

  Lucybelle understood that Stella wouldn’t come back with Wanda’s plate of food as long as she was standing there. “I came with a friend. I guess I’ll go see how she’s doing.”

  “Yeah, good,” Rusty said.

  “Nice to meet you,” Wanda said, dragging the words like a body through a swamp. “Don’t let no one disparage Arkansas to your face, you hear? Lots of famous people have come out of the state. Scott Joplin. Florence Beatrice Price.”

  “Johnny Cash,” Rusty said, “might be more her speed.”

  “Come on now, what’s wrong with you, Rusty? Besides, I like me a little Johnny Cash now and then. That new one?” She sang the first couple of lines. “‘Keep a close watch on this heart of mine, I keep my eyes wide open all the time.’ Yeah, I like Johnny Cash just fine.” She winked at Lucybelle and her eyelid stuck shut for a moment.

  Lucybelle managed to say pleased to meet you and walk away. She squeezed past the food table, where Stella was not making a plate for Wanda, and checked the kitchen and even a bedroom in the back of the house, where when she tried to open the door, someone slammed it back shut from inside. A puff of marijuana smoke wafted out.

  A fireball of hurt and anger burned in Lucybelle’s stomach. She was afraid of what she might say to any stranger who tried to speak to her, so when she saw a door leading to the backyard, she took it. Air. Just some air. She landed on a screened-in porch where a group hotly debated the merits of a play currently off Broadway. She opened the screen door and stepped into the warm night sky. A host of mosquitoes jumped on her bare arms but she didn’t care. Let them have me. She saw the end of a lit cigarette in the furthest recesses of the yard and headed for it. She smelled the sweet lilac blossoms, their scent mingling with the tobacco smoke, befor
e she recognized the figure taking shelter next to the bush.

  “Let me have one of those.”

  Stella knocked a Chesterfield out of her pack and lit it from her own. She handed the cigarette to Lucybelle.

  “Your dispatcher is beautiful.”

  Stella nodded.

  “Maybe I misunderstood something.”

  Stella inhaled the smoke, furrowed her brow.

  “You promised not to lie to me.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Don’t.”

  “Okay. I’m sorry. I made a mistake.”

  “You mean taking me to the baseball game.”

  “You know, I don’t really deserve this.” Stella stubbed out her cigarette in the grass and then ground her heel into the butt. “Yeah, we went to a baseball game. I don’t recall asking you to marry me.”

  “I’m not a fool,” Lucybelle said, “and I don’t want you making me out to be one.”

  Stella lit another cigarette. At least she didn’t walk away. In fact, despite her hard words, she looked miserable.

  “I thought we were going to drive to the seashore.”

  “That was just talk.”

  “Of course. I knew that then too. But it was a certain kind of talk.” She absolutely wasn’t going to cry. She thought of how Dorothy had gripped her hand too hard, how unpleasant that had felt. She didn’t want to do that to anyone. She ought to turn, right now, and walk back into the house. Instead she stood there in her hydrangea dress, drenched in lilac fragrance, wanting this woman to kiss her. It was crazy to have that thought. “I knew we weren’t really going to drive to the coast, but I believed in the feeling between us. I knew when you didn’t call that I’d been wrong. But that afternoon, and for a while afterward, I believed.”

  “Lucybelle. Please.”

  “There’s only one thing I have, one thing I can insist on in my life. The truth. That’s all. And it’s a bitch to find. Anywhere.” Now the tears did come, damn it. “You better go get that plate of food for your dispatcher.”

  She’d left no wiggle room for Stella and she was glad. She didn’t even move out of the way, forcing Stella to step around her on her way back into the house.

  Lucybelle stayed out in the backyard, the mosquitoes eating her alive, and composed herself. She’d left the party on Halloween; she wasn’t going to leave this one. If only because they were honoring Lorraine Hansberry, who’d written a play some people said was brilliant. If only because Valerie Taylor had invited her. She’d go back inside, get another cold beer, and find Joe Mack.

  “What happened to you, girl? She took my telephone number!”

  “I’m glad, Joe.”

  “You took off like you’d seen a ghost.”

  “I had.”

  “Old flame?”

  “New flame. Already extinguished.”

  “Oh, honey. Parties can be land mines. Let’s get more food. Simone just brought out another platter of chicken. You’re as skinny as I am. Put some fat on you, girl, and whoever’s troubling you will be sorry he— she?—whatever, don’t matter to me, they’ll be sorry they let you go. Real sorry.”

  They put a couple more fifty-cent pieces in the can and filled their plates, Lucybelle being sure she kept her back to Stella’s crowd, and then she suggested they take their food out to the screened-in porch. She allowed herself to be drawn into the lively conversation and had a lovely time. Yes, she did. Stella, whose last name she didn’t even know, be damned. She’d been a fool to allow her romantic imagination so much leeway. When Val found her an hour later to say she was leaving, Lucybelle kissed Joe Mack on the cheek and said good-bye.

  “Lucybelle Bledsoe,” he said. “I won’t forget your name. And when Raisin in the Sun opens on Broadway, come backstage to my dressing room, you hear?”

  “That won’t happen,” Val said as they weaved through the party guests on their way to the front door. “Broadway isn’t ready for Lorraine’s play. I wish it was, but no way.”

  Lucybelle wished Val would keep her voice down.

  As they stepped off the front porch, someone tapped Lucybelle on the shoulder. She turned to find Rusty’s freckled face inches from her own.

  “Fifteen years,” Rusty said. “Stella and Wanda.”

  “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “My question exactly.”

  Val was barreling down the walkway toward the street. Lucybelle turned to follow but Rusty put a hand on her shoulder, gripping too hard. “I don’t think you understand.”

  “This isn’t your business.”

  “Oh no? My mother and father, my brothers and sisters, none of them speak to me. I was put on the street when I was fourteen years old. You know who picked me up? Trained me? Gave me work? Stella and Wanda are my family.” Rusty’s copper eyes rang with alarm.

  “Your family is safe,” Lucybelle said. “I came to the party with someone and I’m leaving with her now, if you’ll let me go.” Lucybelle nodded toward Valerie Taylor standing on the sidewalk, hands on hips, scowling back at the porch.

  “Go then,” Rusty said, sinking her hands in her front pockets, just a scared kid.

  The warm, buggy walk back to the train station, with Val talking loudly the entire way, was dreadful. So was the jarring train ride all the way back up to Evanston. It had been a doozy of a Friday the 13th, after all.

  Thursday, June 19, 1958

  Lucybelle stopped under the golden dragon topped by the lighted blue ball in front of the Drake Hotel. Friday night’s revelation put her in need of some serious reinforcement, a boost of any kind, and one from her boss— she was thinking a pay raise—would be most welcome. Why else would he invite her to dinner at the swank hotel? Bader had said to meet him in the Coq d’Or bar, so she went inside and ordered a dry martini.

  The place was too dark and woody, the waiter too formal, as if he meant to intimidate rather than comfort the patrons. Of course Bader was late. She’d almost finished her martini by the time he strode in the bar and yanked out the chair across the table from her. He looked startlingly handsome, if a bit disheveled, in his evening attire. He wore black slacks, too short, a white shirt that had been maybe ironed but definitely not starched, and an unconventionally knotted tie. He looked like a man who couldn’t be contained by clothes, and she liked that about him.

  “Bottoms up,” he said. “I’m hungry. Let’s go to the dining room.”

  The maître d’ of the Camellia House pulled a moue at the sight of Bader, but with a show of great indulgence, he said, “Come with me.” They stepped into the coatroom, not at all out of sight, as if this was more a punishment of humiliation than a correction, but of course Bader was far outside any possibility of humiliation. The maître d’ used his hand to brush off, one might say crudely “iron,” Bader’s suit jacket, and then he unknotted Bader’s tie and quickly redid it, patting him on the chest when he finished. As he was being groomed, Bader made funny faces over the man’s shoulder. Lucybelle smiled at her boss.

  Bader ordered for both of them, including another martini for Lucybelle. Then he leaned across the table and said, “Look. We’ve talked about this.”

  “Yes, we have. I told you I can order for myself.”

  “Not that. Drop it, Lucy. The sole is excellent. You want it. But yes, I am referring to the same conversation, the day we discussed terms at the diner in Harlem.”

  So here it came. She quickly assessed her chances of gaining anything by taking the offensive. She could toss out the accusation that he’d hired her for this very moment, so he could extract something from her by means of extortion. She hesitated. The charge would make her seem paranoid. The drinks arrived and Lucybelle took two generous swallows of her martini.

  “I personally couldn’t care less,” he said. “You know that. But the fact of the matter is, you have more information about SIPRE’s doings than anyone else in the lab, including the scientists. They’re focused on the ice, on chemistry and physics and drilling. Everyone kn
ows a little bit, but I’ve trusted you, and that means pretty much every piece of paper leaving SIPRE is seen by you.” His accent was thicker this evening, and she’d learned that this was a sign of emotional discomfort, a rare condition for Bader. Normally he loved the outer fringes of both ideas and feelings.

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “I’m not trying to say anything. Drink your drink. You don’t have to be an editor tonight. What I am saying is that Camp Century is almost there. We’ll be manning it next year. You know I’m not that keen on the military stuff, to put it lightly.” He grimaced and pushed back from the table, having finished his shrimp cocktail. His right knee bashed the edge of the table and all the beverages sloshed out of the glasses. “‘City Under the Ice,’” he quoted in a mock grand voice. “I could be much more enthusiastic if I didn’t think it was a great big waste of the taxpayers’ money. Don’t you dare quote me on that, ever. In any case, it’s going to be fucking fantastic, if you look at it from the point of view of the most elaborate Boy Scout camp ever built.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “You even know the exact location of Camp Century.”

  Of course she did: about 140 miles from the Thule Air Force base in Greenland. She’d edited the site maps. Camp Century, an entire city under the ice sheet, would house two hundred men. Besides dormitories, there were shops, theaters, clubs, a hospital, a library, a nuclear power plant.

  “Sometimes,” Bader said looking nervously thoughtful, “I feel like I’ve made a pact with the devil.”

  “Don’t be dramatic,” she said to make him laugh, and he did, briefly.

  Then he leaned halfway across the white tablecloth and tried to speak softly, but his whisper was a hoarse rumble. “Our sponsors don’t care enough about the ice cores. They can’t fathom the importance of the knowledge we stand to gain. They’re too blinded by their fear of the Russians. Which is why we’re really in Greenland. Moscow is right there, just over the hump of ice.”