neighbors considered him an able and hard-working hand. When threshing time came, Eddie was often hired on as one of the crew. Slight as he looked, he had the strength and endurance that come from a lifetime of manual labor. Floyd Reid—who worked alongside Eddie many a time, on threshing crews and at the local lumber mill—was one of those who regarded Gein as “the most dependable person in the county.” And unlike some of the other men, Eddie never used cuss words or spoke out of turn. He was always quiet and well mannered.
Take the way he behaved during dinnertime. When a farmer got together a threshing crew to help harvest his crops, it was his wife’s responsibility to provide the workers with a solid midday meal—roast beef, baked beans, mashed potatoes, pickles, relishes, hot bread and rolls, freshly churned butter, homemade cottage cheese, jellies, preserves, and assorted fruit pies and cakes, all washed down with fresh milk or iced tea or strong, steaming coffee. As the men filed into the house through the kitchen door, brushing the dust off their heavy bib overalls or mopping their faces with the faded red kerchiefs they kept knotted around their necks, Eddie would hang back, waiting until the last of the crew was seated before finding himself a place.
Often, when the meal was finished and the other men had all stepped back outside to stretch out in the grass for a while, relax, and have a smoke, Eddie would linger at the table, gazing fixedly at the farmer’s wife and daughters as they bustled about the kitchen. Many of the females—even the very young ones—felt a little disconcerted by the way Eddie sat there inspecting them, his lips twisted into that strange little leering half-smile of his. But they also couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for him. His life was so terribly lonely. And he never seemed to mean any harm or disrespect by the looks he gave them. In fact, if one of the girls were to stare back at him, he would immediately jump up from his chair and carry his plate, utensils, and drinking glass over to the sink—a courtesy that none of the other men ever saw fit to perform. More than one farmer’s wife, touched by Eddie’s politeness and by the awful solitariness of his existence, resolved to bake an extra batch of holiday cookies for the forlorn little bachelor come Christmastime and deliver it herself to his home.
Not many of the farmers, though, shared their wives’ sentimental view of Eddie. Indeed, though they considered him a capable enough worker, some of the men treated Eddie as an outright chucklehead, the perfect patsy for a good practical joke. Generally, after the day’s harvesting was done, the crew would unwind with a tub of iced beer. On a few occasions, one of the fellows would hand Eddie a bottle that had been half filled with brandy. Eddie would guzzle it down without noticing the difference, and, before you knew it, his droopy eyelid would begin to sag even more.
Then there was the time someone planted a smoke bomb under the hood of Eddie’s pickup. Even those men who didn’t approve of such childish doings—men like Floyd Reid, who felt sorry for Gein and regarded his oddness as the inevitable consequence of his sadly disadvantaged upbringing—couldn’t help but smile at the look on Eddie’s face as he came tumbling out of his truck when the smoke bomb went off.
For all the stamina he displayed on the job, there was something distinctly, even gratingly, womanish about the shy little bachelor—“weak-acting,” Gyle Ellis called it, whereas Otto Frank tended to think of Eddie as “another Casper Milquetoast.” Eddie claimed, for instance, to be squeamish about blood, and—though he commonly hunted rabbit and squirrel, often in the company of Bob Hill and other local boys he had befriended—he would never kill a deer, he said, because he couldn’t stand to see it dressed out.
Eddie’s professed aversion to bloodshed was peculiar not only because
Take the way he behaved during dinnertime. When a farmer got together a threshing crew to help harvest his crops, it was his wife’s responsibility to provide the workers with a solid midday meal—roast beef, baked beans, mashed potatoes, pickles, relishes, hot bread and rolls, freshly churned butter, homemade cottage cheese, jellies, preserves, and assorted fruit pies and cakes, all washed down with fresh milk or iced tea or strong, steaming coffee. As the men filed into the house through the kitchen door, brushing the dust off their heavy bib overalls or mopping their faces with the faded red kerchiefs they kept knotted around their necks, Eddie would hang back, waiting until the last of the crew was seated before finding himself a place.
Often, when the meal was finished and the other men had all stepped back outside to stretch out in the grass for a while, relax, and have a smoke, Eddie would linger at the table, gazing fixedly at the farmer’s wife and daughters as they bustled about the kitchen. Many of the females—even the very young ones—felt a little disconcerted by the way Eddie sat there inspecting them, his lips twisted into that strange little leering half-smile of his. But they also couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for him. His life was so terribly lonely. And he never seemed to mean any harm or disrespect by the looks he gave them. In fact, if one of the girls were to stare back at him, he would immediately jump up from his chair and carry his plate, utensils, and drinking glass over to the sink—a courtesy that none of the other men ever saw fit to perform. More than one farmer’s wife, touched by Eddie’s politeness and by the awful solitariness of his existence, resolved to bake an extra batch of holiday cookies for the forlorn little bachelor come Christmastime and deliver it herself to his home.
Not many of the farmers, though, shared their wives’ sentimental view of Eddie. Indeed, though they considered him a capable enough worker, some of the men treated Eddie as an outright chucklehead, the perfect patsy for a good practical joke. Generally, after the day’s harvesting was done, the crew would unwind with a tub of iced beer. On a few occasions, one of the fellows would hand Eddie a bottle that had been half filled with brandy. Eddie would guzzle it down without noticing the difference, and, before you knew it, his droopy eyelid would begin to sag even more.
Then there was the time someone planted a smoke bomb under the hood of Eddie’s pickup. Even those men who didn’t approve of such childish doings—men like Floyd Reid, who felt sorry for Gein and regarded his oddness as the inevitable consequence of his sadly disadvantaged upbringing—couldn’t help but smile at the look on Eddie’s face as he came tumbling out of his truck when the smoke bomb went off.
For all the stamina he displayed on the job, there was something distinctly, even gratingly, womanish about the shy little bachelor—“weak-acting,” Gyle Ellis called it, whereas Otto Frank tended to think of Eddie as “another Casper Milquetoast.” Eddie claimed, for instance, to be squeamish about blood, and—though he commonly hunted rabbit and squirrel, often in the company of Bob Hill and other local boys he had befriended—he would never kill a deer, he said, because he couldn’t stand to see it dressed out.
Eddie’s professed aversion to bloodshed was peculiar not only because
Similar Books
