Perry Smith and Mrs. Meier's affectionate bond

Perry Smith and Mrs. Meier’s affectionate bond emerges most fully in the aftermath of the guilty verdict: a relationship marked by personal familiarity, unguarded grief, practical care, and a painful parting. Mrs. Meier had little regard for Dick, but she and Perry had come to know one another well; when his death sentence became concrete, the connection showed itself in small acts of touch, food, remembrance, and mourning.

A Bond Revealed After the Verdict

A week after the verdict, Mrs. Meier described the town as quiet again, yet said she still felt bad about what had happened. She distinguished her feelings for the two prisoners: she had never had much truck with Dick, whereas she and Perry had got to know each other real well. Her account presents their closeness not as a sudden response to the sentence but as a familiarity already established before that moment.

When Perry was brought back upstairs after hearing the verdict, Mrs. Meier shut herself in the kitchen because she could not face seeing him. From the kitchen window she watched the courthouse crowd leave. Don Cullivan looked up and waved; the Hickocks were going away. The scene places her at a distance from Perry at the very moment she felt most unable to meet him, making what followed a movement from withdrawal toward direct comfort.

At the Cell Door

After the crowd had dispersed, Mrs. Meier began washing dishes and heard Perry crying. She turned on the radio, not to hear him, but could still hear him crying like a child. She said he had never broken down before or shown any sign of it. The contrast between his earlier composure and this first audible collapse made his distress impossible for her to ignore.

Mrs. Meier went to his cell. Perry reached his hand through the door because he wanted her to hold it, and she did. He said, “I’m embraced by shame.” She considered sending for Father Goubeaux and told him she would make Spanish rice for him first thing the next morning. Perry held her hand tighter. The exchange joins a rare admission of feeling to a simple offer of care: he gives shame a name, while she answers with company and a promised meal rather than an argument about the verdict.

Care, Regret, and Silence

That night, Mrs. Meier and Wendle Meier left for a long-standing engagement. They almost never went out, but Wendle did not think they ought to break it. Mrs. Meier later said she would always be sorry they had left Perry alone. Her regret gives the bond a painful limit: she could be present at his cell, but could not remain with him through the night after his breakdown.

She made the Spanish rice the next day, but Perry would not touch it. He hardly spoke to her and, as she remembered him, hated the whole world. The refusal and silence sharply contrast with the handclasp of the night before. Her care continued, but it could not undo his despair or make the meal a comfort he could accept.

The Photograph and the Empty Cell

On the morning the men came to take Perry to the penitentiary, he thanked Mrs. Meier and gave her a small Kodak photograph made when he was sixteen. He said it was how he wanted her to remember him, “like the boy in the picture.” The gift made their goodbye an act of deliberate remembrance: instead of leaving her only with the condemned prisoner being taken away, he offered an image of himself as a boy.

Mrs. Meier called the goodbye the bad part because she knew where Perry was going and what would happen to him. His absence was also registered by the squirrel that had been his companion. It kept coming to the cell looking for Perry; Mrs. Meier tried to feed it, but it would have nothing to do with her. As she put it, “That squirrel of his, he sure misses Perry.” The animal’s repeated return turns the empty cell into a visible measure of loss, while its refusal of her food underlines how particular Perry’s companionship had been.