Lucille by Enid Baxter Blader
Lucille re-enacts a scene in the movie Cool Hand Luke, where a country girl saunters out of her house and starts washing an old car, as the chain gang looks on from a ditch they are digging. George Kennedy’s character, Dragline, watches her panting and exclaiming “Anything that sweet and innocent has to be called Lucille “… His character fixates on the idea of her innocence as part of his fantasy of purse sexuality. Paul Newman’s character tells the other prisoners, “She knows exactly what she’s doing … she’s driving us crazy and loving every minute of it”. In Lucille, the title character washes a motorcycle, and seems to be creating a self-reflective sexual reverie. Her space is only interrupted by the man with the mirrored glasses (also a Cool Hand Luke reference) at the end of the piece.