By Hunter Perez

The cell was around eight or nine feet in both length and width, with an unusually high ceiling, but it seemed cramped due to the presence of an oversized bed placed up against a wall in the middle of the space. The bedframe was crudely carved out of wood and its mattress was thin. A ratty brown blanket was crumpled at the head of the bed, which was covered in a dirty stained sheet.

The bed was obviously custom made – if not very well made – for the XL-sized occupant of the cell. Merrifield sat at the right edge of the bed and stared into the bars that kept him imprisoned. I guessed he would be either six-foot-five or six-foot-six if he were to stand up.

He sat slightly slouched over in a motionless manner. I had to stare very hard to notice the slightest clues of life when he betrayed an occasional eyelid blink and when his upper chest rose and fell in micrometers while breathing.

His shoulders were broad to the point of being ridiculous – I didn’t know someone could have shoulders of those dimensions. His prison shirt was tight and clung to his large, solid body. The shirt’s sleeves were rolled up, which emphasized the thickness of his arms. His hands were just as oversized and meaty, and he cupped them in his lap. I noticed he was barefoot – I spied the shoes under the bed and wondered if he jettisoned them because they were too small.

I studied his face and started to get nervous. He was handsome – his dark blond hair was uncombed and perhaps a bit too long, his lantern jaw carried the crescent of a scraggly beard and his eyes were dark and penetrating. But it seemed as if some malevolent force left the attractive shell and pilfered the soul within. His expression was inscrutable – it offered no clue of whether he was trapped in pain, resignation, fear or something that I couldn’t decipher. His gaze stayed fixed on the prison bars. He showed no signs of being aware that I was in the cell, even as I inched closer to him.

“I hope that I am not bothering you,” I said, sheepishly. “Sergeant Holmgren said I would be staying with you.”

Merrifield said nothing and did not move. I stepped back and looked around the cell, noticing a bucket in the far corner with a few rags beside it – unfortunately, it seemed that I turned up before the prison had indoor plumbing installed.

I began pacing back and forth near the bucket, hoping the olfactory assault from its contents could jolt me into thinking what to do next.

“How do you communicate with somebody who doesn’t communicate?” I mumbled to myself. “That nutcase sergeant said he thought Merrifield smiled when he sang, but he wasn’t sure.”

I paused over the bucket, inhaled and yelled, “Shit!” This was not because I was verifying the aroma from the container, but because I thought I knew how to reach Merrifield. “It’s Sloppy Lou to the rescue!” I exclaimed, laughing too loud.

His name was Louis Albert Joseph Milano, and for one cold but happy winter we were in love. He was a dumpling of a guy with an infectious laugh, a lust for living and a heart large enough to deserve its own ZIP Code – he always produced sunflowers when he called on me, for he knew they were my favorites, and he always carried a bottle of champagne because he felt every day was worth celebrating.

He was a musician who fancied baggy clothes and rumpled hats, as if to emphasize his chubbiness, and he created an act where he’d sit at a piano and yell “Sloppy Lou to the rescue!” before taking his listeners on rollicking musical journey.

Poor Sloppy Lou tried so hard to catch a break in show business, but he always seemed stuck on its fringes – becoming a musical clown at birthday parties, tinkling the ivories in the piano lounges of hotel lobbies, and working feverishly on scores for student films that rewarded him with blink-and-you-miss-them credits. When he landed a gig in an amusement park in the South, he moved away and never came back to New York City. Despite an initial flurry of social media messaging where we kept reminding each other of our love, we fell out of touch. When we would be together, he would joke about wanting to tie me up and keep me as his sex slave. Looking back, I rued that he never got around to keeping his kinky word.

One afternoon I played hooky from work and accompanied him on a gig. He did music therapy sessions at old age homes, where he would set up a portable electric keyboard and entertain the elderly residents with yesteryear’s standards. It was heartbreaking to see his audience being gathered – many were in wheelchairs, some seemed to be lost in their own worlds, others shuffled in weak steps while grasping walkers. But when Sloppy Lou started to bang his keyboard and sing at the top of his lungs, his infirm audience became alive and animated, sometimes clapping and singing to the music, and nearly everyone was beaming from this jolly burst of energy.

I commented on his effect as we packed up his equipment and the words he said to me resonated within my current surroundings: “Music appreciation is never supposed to be a passive happening. If the music doesn’t make you smile, sing along, dance, clap your hands or warm you in any concept of warmth, then you’re doing the music wrong.”

I looked back to Merrifield and wondered. “Maybe Sergeant Holmgren had the right idea but the wrong approach. It worked the old folks when Sloppy Lou came to town – they responded so beautifully. Let me remember how Sloppy Lou did it.”

Some nights when we decided to stay indoors, Sloppy Lou took it upon himself to give me singing lessons. I had no desire to be a performer, but he wisely observed that my work as a real estate broker required a lot of talking and he felt he could help strengthen my voice to become a viable sales tool. I recalled the breathing methods and vocal exercises from his tutoring, and for my work with Merrifield I did a quick session to get my vocal cords in shape. None of this generated a response from my new cellmate.

But then I had a new problem: what do I sing? Ideally, it would be something that would encourage Merrifield to sing along, but I didn’t know what was on the top of the charts in 1875. The only thing I could call up was “The Bear Went Over the Mountain,” but I did not know if that ditty was current. Also, the song was over and done in less than a minute – I needed something much longer. I decided the best approach was to pick a sing-along tune that I enjoyed as a kid when my family went on long drives – perhaps my enthusiasm could become contagious with Merrifield. Hoping for the best, I walked over to the bed and sat down next to my audience of one, keeping about a foot of space between us.

“Hey, how would you like to hear a song that hasn’t been written?” I said to Merrifield. I cringed, for that really sounded dumb. I tried again: “It’s a great sing-along song. Give it a listen and if you like it, I can teach it to you.”

I inhaled deeply, exhaled with greater force, inhaled again as if trying to suck up the air from world and remembered Sloppy Lou’s mantra of “vibrato, decibel, energy” before launching into my song.

“Hey Juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude. Don’t let me dooooooooooooooown. Take a saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad sooooooooooong and make it betteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer,” I sang, in a voice that offered more enthusiasm than talent. Sometimes keeping my eyes closed and sometimes gazing out through the cell bars into the empty corridor, I sailed through the Beatles classic without know where I was going. With each stanza, I ratcheted up the volume of my singing and stretched the limits of hammy vocalizing to the point that nearly every other word was being giving acute emphasis. By the time I hit the “Na-na-na-na” segment of the song, I was clapping along with a religious frenzy.

When I finished, I felt that I made a complete and total fool of myself. I plopped back on the bed and stared at the ceiling, knowing that Holmgren’s hare-brained experiment was yet another victory in his endless humiliation of me.

And then, I heard something. It was a small, eggshell-fragile voice that seemed to race quickly, as if it escaped from another dimension for half of a second. It said, “Again.”

I sat up anxiously and looked around. Were there ghosts in the cell with us? Was this cell within one of those haunted prisons that you hear about in cheesy television shows? I looked at Merrifield and I could see that he was shaking slightly – the stonelike façade that maintained began to tremble ever so slightly.

“Merrifield, do you want me to sing it again?” I asked.

Without looking at me, he nodded his head stiffly. I wondered how this could be happening, but I coughed and patted him on his back.

“Okay, pal, here’s an encore,” I said. “Now listen to the lyrics – maybe we can get you to sing with me?”

After some quick deep breathing exercises, I stood and faced Merrifield, looking directly at him. He didn’t return my eye contact, but it didn’t matter.

“Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey Juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude!” I sang in a much louder voice than I offered earlier. Although I was singing to someone sitting a foot from me, I felt that I was playing to the last row in the balcony of a grand old theater. My performance was even more ridiculous than before, complete with jazz hands, exaggerated pronunciations of the lyrics and a shouting of the “Na-na-na-na” segment as if I was calling to the angels for a one-on-one conversation.

When I finished, I dropped to the floor and put my chin on Merrifield’s knees, looking up to him for approval. His eyes moved slowly – so terribly slowly – but he made eye contact with me. His lower lip quivered, and I saw his mouth shape out “Again” while his voice seemed a bit bolder, if still frail.

I cupped my hand over my mouth and looked out through the cell bars to the empty corridor. “This can’t be happening,” I thought to myself. “I’m in an 1875 prison singing a Beatles song to a Civil War soldier and that’s getting him out of shell shock. How?”

I pulled myself together, stood up, did more breathing exercises, and proclaimed, “Live from Jefferson Prison, it’s Saturday Night Live!” And then I went into “Hey Jude” once more, chewing at the lyrics and melody with the ferocity of a wolverine devouring a rabbit’s carcass. My voice was so loud that I hated myself for creating such noise pollution and my presentation of the gentle lyrics could probably qualify as the musical equivalent of homicide. When my act was over, I sat down next to Merrifield, completely exhausted but eager to get a response.

And then, I got the response that I couldn’t believe – he turned his head to my direction. His lower jaw quivered again, but this time his voice was more solid and secure. “Once more, please.”

“Okay,” I said softly. “Just one more time. Just for you, Merrifield.”

I have no idea where I found the power to repeat this absurd, over-the-top burlesque of a show-stopper, but I tapped it. Poor Jude went through the musical ringer with this fourth go-round, complete with semaphore arm movements, skyward eye searching for heavenly intervention and a “Na-na-na-na” segment that should have crumbled the prison walls from the fury of emotions. When I was done, I crashed against the cell bars and looked at Merrifield. He looked back to me with his stoic expression, and he said in a clear but somewhat rusty voice, “Thank you.”

I staggered to the foot of the bed and collapsed. I was exhausted for trying to be the pop star I was never supposed to be and baffled that my idiotic posturing could make a mute man speak and bring life back to someone who was given up as being lost in his own body.

I remained on the bed until I heard the tinkling of spurs and the tap of footsteps in the corridor beyond the cell. I sprang up and pressed myself against the bars – it was Holmgren, taking his time sauntering down the corridor to our imprisonment. I stuck my arms through the bars and beckoned him to move faster.

“I wanted to let you know that supper will be a little late,” he called out from down the corridor before arriving at the cell’s exterior.

“I need to speak to you,” I whispered.

“You’re speaking to me,” he said. “What is it?”

“Not this way,” I said, impatiently. “Not through prison bars. I have to speak to you in the corridor.”

“We’re not in high school where we can hang out in the hallway and chat,” he said, displeased. “What’s so important?”

I breathed heavily before I could find my voice again. “He spoke. Merrifield spoke to me. He turned to look at me and spoke to me.”

Holmgren’s facetious smile disappeared as his face turned ashen. He nervously looked around and fished into his pocket, extracting a keychain. He opened the cell door, grabbed me by the arm and yanked me into the corridor, forcing me into a corner that would not be visible to Merrifield in the cell.

“What did you say?” he demanded. “When and how and what?”

I recounted what took place, explaining why I took that approach and what I did to generate Merrifield’s response. Holmgren pounded his fist on his forehead before holding it to his mouth, looking at me with what I perceived as terror.

“He can speak,” Holmgren said in a barely audible voice. “Oh, my God, it happened. I knew it could happen.” He then looked at me and began to regain his composure. “I hope this is not a fluke. This is unexpected – so quickly, too – but this could be the break we needed.”

“Can I get a bottle of water?” I asked. “My throat is killing me. I’m not used to singing ‘Hey Jude’ four times in a row as if I’m playing Madison Square Garden.”

Holmgren rolled his eyes. “Dude, it’s 1875. We don’t have bottled water. Here, drink this.”

He fished his flask from his jacket’s inner pocket and thrust it into my hands. I opened it and smelled its bourbon contents. “Ever since I got here, all I’ve had to drink was bourbon,” I complained. “Before this night is over, I’m either going to die from a heart attack, a stroke or an advanced case of alcoholism.” I took a healthy swallow of the flask’s contents and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “And you said dinner is coming? What are we having?”

“What the other convicts are having, beef soup and hardtack – that’s a biscuit,” he said.

“What the fuck?” I yelled. “I’m knocking myself out for you and you’re giving me some soup and a biscuit. I need food – I’ve not had anything to eat since eight in the morning in the year 2023. How about some burgers and fries, or maybe some fried chicken?”

Holmgren got angry and pushed me into the wall. “What the hell do you think I’m running, a restaurant? And we don’t have burgers and fries and fried chicken. Can’t you remember where you are? And if you ask me for a pizza, you’re back in the pillory.”

At this point, I lost complete control of my emotions. I physically pushed him back and pointed an index finger into face. “Look, you, I can’t take this anymore. You’ve taken away my freedom, locked me in a prison cell with a catatonic soldier and demanded that I bring him back to health, even though I have no skills or training for this kind of work. I’m getting nothing for my work – not the promise of my freedom or even a penny of compensation. If you want me to do your work for you so you can get a promotion and look good with your boss, then feed me. And not with soup and biscuits. I need a proper meal – and, for that matter, so does the big guy in that cell. I don’t care if you have to get on your horse and go out to hunt buffalo – you move your fucking ass and get us real food. And don’t waste my time with threats – I don’t care if I spend the rest of my life in your stupid pillory, I want a proper meal for me and Merrifield. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Holmgren’s face dropped as he bit his lower lip. He nodded, like a naughty child berated into a surrender. “It will take a little longer to get something put together,” he said, almost in a whimper. “I’ll get you something. You can hold on to the flask, if you want it.”

“I don’t want it,” I said, thrusting it back into his hands. “Bring a pitcher of water.”

Holmgren nodded and looked down the hallway, as if searching for someone to rescue him. “I’ll speak to the cook and have something put together for you and Merrifield. Just please go back in the cell and keep doing what you’re doing. And … and … and, I do appreciate what you’re doing.”

I walked back into the cell like a conquering hero, although when Holmgren clicked the cell door lock I suddenly didn’t feel so heroic. I watched Holmgren sulk away down the corridor as I sat next to Merrifield.

“Merrifield, my new friend, Sergeant Holmgren is getting us a very different dinner than you usually get,” I said to him, draping my arm across his broad back. “I hope you’re not too hungry because it will take a little longer to prepare, but I think it will be worth the wait.”

I said a silent thank you to Sloppy Lou and prayed that he was happy wherever he was.

“You know, Merrifield,” I continued. “Today is the craziest day of my life. It started off well, then it got bad, then it got really weird, then it went completely out of control. But since I met you, the day has become wonderful. Whenever I find myself finding myself coming out of a bad scene, I like to hear a certain song that reminds me that there is no such thing as a permanent crisis. I will share it with you, and tell me if you like it.”

Eschewing the maudlin theatrics of my earlier performance, I began to tap my hands on my lap before launching into a softer offering. “I can see clearly now the rain is gone. I can see all obstacles in my way.”

As I sang that wonderful reggae tune, Merrifield slowly swayed into my direction. When I began to sing how I’m “gonna see a bright, bright, bright sunshiney day,” I could see a tear escaping from the corner of his eye. I impulsively kissed his cheek and laced the fingers of my right hand into the fingers of his left hand.

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