Perry Smith

Perry Smith enters the narrative in Olathe as a man whose apparent purpose—joining Dick for a “score”—conceals a more intimate reason for returning to Kansas. A worn map, boxes of books, and the hoped-for reunion with Willie-Jay make him at once a compulsive traveler and someone still pulled back toward a friendship formed in prison.

Identity and Restlessness

At breakfast in the Little Jewel, Perry orders no coffee: his preferred meal is three aspirin, cold root beer, and a chain of Pall Mall cigarettes. He studies a Phillips 66 map of Mexico while waiting for Dick, whose lateness frustrates him because the proposed “score” was Dick’s idea. Their planned destination after it is Mexico, but the map is only one part of Perry’s larger habit of imagining departure.

In his hotel room are hundreds of worn maps: one for every state in the Union, every Canadian province, and every South American country. Travel is not merely a fantasy for him; he has already gone to Alaska, Hawaii, Japan, and Hong Kong. His possessions make the contrast between motion and confinement tangible: a cardboard suitcase, a guitar, and two heavy boxes containing books, maps, songs, poems, and old letters. When Dick calls the boxes junk, Perry defends them by pointing out the value of one book. He has returned to Kansas only four months after swearing to the State Parole Board, and to himself, that he would never cross its borders again. He treats the return as temporary, another interruption before departure.

The map also gives his imagined future particular shape. He has circled Cozumel, Acapulco, and the Sierra Madre, associating them with island freedom, fishing and casinos, and the gold of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The destinations are not interchangeable points on a route: each carries a promise assembled from magazine reading or a repeatedly watched film. His maps register both actual journeys and the places he has stocked with possibility.

The Hidden Purpose of His Return

Perry’s presence in Kansas is not explained by Dick’s invitation alone. Several weeks earlier, he learned that Willie-Jay, a former cellmate he considered his “real and only friend,” would be released from Lansing State Penitentiary on Thursday, November 12. Perry wanted a reunion “more than anything in the world.” He does not intend to tell Dick this reason for violating parole, because revealing it would expose the private motive behind his return and put at risk the one friendship he believed had truly understood him.

That concealed purpose complicates the apparent partnership between Perry and Dick. Dick’s proposed score supplies the immediate occasion for the meeting; Perry’s longing for Willie-Jay supplies a separate, unspoken destination. The narrative places the two motives side by side without making them equivalent: the crime plan is Dick’s invitation, while Perry’s return has already been shaped by a need for personal connection.

Willie-Jay and the Unfinished Question of Faith

During his first year in prison, Perry watched Willie-Jay from a distance. The other man was the chaplain’s clerk, a slender Irishman with prematurely gray hair and a tenor voice that was prominent in the prison choir. Perry, who held religious display in contempt, was nevertheless moved by Willie-Jay singing “The Lord’s Prayer.” The response unsettled his certainty enough to prompt him to approach the chaplain’s clerk.

Willie-Jay, in turn, thought he recognized in Perry a poet who might still be saved. He became determined to bring Perry to God. Perry’s pastel portrait of Jesus seemed to advance that effort: the Protestant chaplain at Lansing, Reverend James E. Post, valued it enough to hang it in his office. Yet the drawing marked the end, rather than the fulfillment, of Perry’s spiritual search. Perry judged his own image of Jesus hypocritical, an attempt to deceive Willie-Jay, and remained unconvinced of God. The episode leaves their bond resting on an unresolved disparity: Willie-Jay saw spiritual promise in Perry, while Perry feared that admitting his disbelief would cost him the friend who had understood him.

A Life Between Departure and Attachment

Perry’s maps and his concealed hope for reunion express opposing impulses. He has crossed great distances and filled boxes with the materials of imagined journeys, but he has also returned to the state he had vowed to leave in order to seek a particular person. The destinations marked on paper promise escape; Willie-Jay represents a relationship Perry does not want to lose. That tension gives the Olathe meeting its deeper shape: beneath the practical wait for Dick, Perry is pursuing a reunion he keeps secret, even as the plan that brought him there threatens to determine what happens next.