Back in the USSA

by Kim Newman

  Later, he told me he'd smelled the burning fuse, though. Just in time for him to get himself behind a bale of hides.

  With my good eye, I watched the barn turn to a ball of flame and matchwood.

  Moments later, Ed emerged in a daze. The explosion had stripped Ma of every last stitch of clothing, but like a motorcyclist's leather jacket, the old lady's tanned and toughened hide had protected Ed from the worst of the explosion. I caught myself admiring the intricate stitchwork and thinking what a shame it was that such a well-made garment was now covered in burn-marks. Then I unslung my rifle.

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  Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman

  I cocked the gun. Little wisps of smoke rose from Ma's frizzled hair. I aimed for between the eyes, blinking inside the slightly too-large holes in the mask. I squeezed the trigger.

  Nothing.

  The goddamn rifle was jammed.

  Desperately, I tried to clear the breech, but a round had stuck fast in there and there was no way my fingers were going to remove it. I should have known. Plenty of boys had died in the War because of dud ammunition.

  Ed was coming towards me, still trying to shake the grogginess from his head.

  I didn't have a sidearm, and given the nature of my last experience at the Gein Place, I figured it best to make myself scarce.

  I hadn't gotten rid of him, but one of the first things you learn when you set out to work with lethal weapons, is that you don't just need a plan, you need a fall-back plan, too, and I had one.

  As soon as I got back to town I got Lou Ford to run around and call a posse together. While out riding, I said, I'd heard an explosion from the Gein Place. A dozen of us drove and rode out as fast as possible.

  Ed was wandering in a daze around the remains of his barn. He was still wearing his mother's hide and cradled the chainsaw in his arms like it was his baby. I made sure everyone got a good look before setting Lou to work on him with the First Aid box. Then I told the others to search the place thoroughly for any "evidence" as to who might have done this terrible deed. I wanted our townsfolk to stare Citizen Ed's calling in the face.

  I also made sure we took a good look around the house. Just a regular timber house, it was. Only in the parlour, instead of cushions, there were masks made from human faces. Upholstered chairs were backed with human skin; you could still make out strips of fat on the undersides. There were lampshades and a waste-paper basket, made of human leather, too; all painstakingly sewed and tooled with pretty flower patterns.

  Up in Ed's room, the four-poster bed had a human skull at each corner. Slung on a chair next to his Sunday-best pants was a belt studded with what appeared to be nipples. On the nightstand was a bowl of dried flower petals made from the top of a skull. In the wardrobe, someone found a shoebox full of strange shrivelled objects covered in salt. Nine of them. I believe the medical term is "vulvas".

  Back in the USSA

  Then we came to a room that had been nailed shut. Most of the guys had already taken one or two trips outside to throw up, so there was only three of us set about battering the door down. Surely nothing in there could be any worse than what we'd already seen.

  It was Ma's room, left just as it was when she was alive. Just a regular old lady's room—bed, chair, closet, nice old cedar chest—all covered in a thick layer of dust.

  Back outside, I called everyone together and announced that since Counter-Revolutionary elements were obviously at work in the area, it would be for the best to take Ed into "Indefinite Protective Custody" for his own safety until the miscreants were rounded up. Having had a good look around, everyone agreed. We gently helped Ed out of Ma's skin, and one or two of our number—the ones who'd maybe found bits of their relatives among Ed's trophies—took a mind to making his case for protection more convincing by kicking the shit out of him.

  And that's how I got to keep Citizen Ed in the slammer for three glorious years. The posse told their families and neighbours in hushed tones about what they'd seen out there and we all happily connived in telling one another the big lie that we had to protect Ed the Socialist Hero from the great White Yank conspiracy or recidivist conspiracy or Counter-Revolutionary Plutocrat conspiracy that was out to get him. Truth is, we didn't get TV round our way until the mid-'60s, so cooking up conspiracies became one of Plainfield's favourite ways of passing the evening.

  Ed was a model prisoner. He'd sit in his cell all day talking flapdoodle at anyone who'd listen. Once or twice a week, more in winter, three or four armed men would accompany him out to his place, where the barn had been re-built with Party money, and watch over him as the did the butchering. For three years, no corpses got dug up and no old ladies disappeared.

  The only people who weren't happy with the arrangement were the local Party hacks. For the simple reason that their meat supplies weren't as good as they used to be. More seriously, Ed's production figures were falling, and the higher-ups wanted to know what was going on. Gutman leaned on me some to find the phantom Counter-Revolutionaries and let Ed go home, but try as I might, I just couldn't find any of the varmints anywhere. The best I could do was run Elmer the town parasite in and out of jail. Elmer didn't like

  Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman

  this as much as he used to. Said that being in a cell next to Ed gave him the wim-wams.

  Finally, in the Spring of'56, I was told that the FBI were despatching an expert to take over the Drive. I was ordered by Gutman to co-operate in every way with the big city hotshot.

  "We'll get some results, my boy," he said. "Now that the professionals are on the job. We'll get some real action."

  What we got was Special Agent Erskine Cooney.

  I reckon Cooney was about as pleased to see me after 12 years as I was to see him. My shoulder still hurt whenever I thought of the Bulge, though it had a bit of competition from my burst eye and missing toe.

  The Captain had come home from the War and landed a cushy job as one of J. Edgar Hoover's brightest and bushiest purge-meisters. He'd been compiling lists of names, cross-referencing the testimony of thousands of informers, and just plain making up stuff to fill in the gaps. He probably killed more people than Ed, and never had to leave his office before Hoover got so sick of his face that he sent him out to Wisconsin to do some honest-to-Marx field work.

  He turned up in his Party car, with papers that meant he could get unlimited gas; wearing his sharp-shouldered city suit, which came with two pair of pants; and lots of stationery and folders with which to compile his lists of subversive elements. Gutman turfed me out of my office to make room for him. He spent near on an afternoon watching Lou Ford shift his goods into the office.

  After that, he was so exhausted he had to go to his motel room and sleep off the work.

  The next morning, at the crack of eleven, he showed up and called me and Lou Ford in for a conference, "to get the lie of the land." I was reminded of those Hollywood movies indicting British imperialism: Cooney wanted to treat me and Lou like those colonial exploiters treated native bearers...

  "So, to sum up your efforts to date, you've done nothing. The subversion has continued unchecked, and no real progress has been made."

  I looked at Lou Ford and decided I'd have to take pity on the Special Agent and tell him what was really going on.

  "There is no subversion, comrade. Nothing bad has happened here for three years. The only problem we've got in Plainfield is Ed Gein, but we've got him under control at the moment."

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  Back in the USSA

  Cooney looked in one of his files. "I have a string of Party commendations for Gein. He appears to me to be an asset to this community and an ideologically-sound citizen."

  "Cooney, he's killed at least five people. You can come out to his place and see the evidence. Ed Gein is a mass-murderer That's the only fact that means any damn thing."

  "Director Hoover has proved mass murder does not exist in the USSA. It's a societal impossibility."

  "Impossible or not, there'
s a farmer in the cells and I've got him marked down as connected with at least five homicides and several more grave robberies."

  Cooney smiled at me. "I see your error, Costa. As ever, you allow your admirable emotions to blind you to the larger situation."

  Not for the first time, I regretted omitting accidentally to roll a grenade into Erskine Cooney s foxhole when I had the chance.

  He ordered me to release Ed at once.

  "What has obviously happened here," says Cooney, "is that the subversives have recognised Edward Gein as a loyal servant of the Party, as one of those rare paragons who embodies entirely the ideal of American state socialism, and have orchestrated a cunning and fiendish campaign to blacken his name. I detect the involvement of insidious foreign powers, and it would take at least a dozen home-grown traitors to manufacture the mass of evidence you've stumbled over. I'm ashamed, Joe, that you've failed to see through such obvious deception, and have allowed a good man to suffer unjust accusations rather than pursuing the real traitorous elements."

  Cooney, tired out by all his reasoning, decided he should go home and lie down. Meanwhile, I was to get on the job of tracing all these conspirators.

  Cooney had a parting shot, though. "You know, Joe, if it weren't for the fact that I know you from the War, I'd have thought you swallowed the Gein frame-up too easily and been forced to conclude you were yourself one of the counter-revolutionary elements involved. Now, let Comrade Gein go home and let's see you get some results for once."

  It occurred to me that I could compile a list consisting of the entire Party Committee for Waushara County, bulked out with a couple of now-grown-up kids who had beaten up on me in High School and a few girls who had laughed in my face when I asked them out. If I turned that list over to Cooney, he probably wouldn't do any checking

  Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman

  before having them all rounded up and put on a train for an Alaskan rehabilitation centre.

  "Ayup, Sheriff Costa, Deputy Ford," said Ed as we sent him on his way. "Mighty obliged to you for your hospitality. I'd better be getting back to Ma."

  Sure, I could give Cooney a list of anyone I wanted, but the problem was that Ed Gein would continue doing what he did, and eventually we'd be back where we started, with a bunch of major atrocities and the need to pin them on someone. Eventually, I knew it'd be me.

  To this day, I don't know if Cooney was stupid enough to believe what he said or just going along with policy. I can't decide which would be the worst.

  A week after he hit town, and once he'd had the chance to get bored, Cooney hit on Elmer's file.

  Every place has a town parasite. Physically awkward and a bit slow, always half-drunk on moonshine from some backwoods still, sitting around on porches shooting the gab, occasionally doing odd jobs badly, cadging scraps of food and tobacco. Elmer was exactly like that. It was sort of comforting to have him about the place. Not a one of us doesn't occasionally think Elmer might have the smart idea, just taking life as it comes and not being beholden to Party or person.

  Cooney had Lou Ford haul Elmer out of the cell where we usually let him sleep in the Winter, march him round the back of the jailhouse, and blow his brains out with a shotgun.

  "Don't clean the wall," he said. "That red patch is a stop light for subversives."

  Elmer's brains were a scatter on the wall. They spread on the snow about five feet all around the slumped corpse.

  I saw other red patches. Other slumped corpses. On the snow of the Bulge. Another notch for Killer Cooney.

  "We ought to leave the scum there," Cooney said. "As a warning. Of course, he'd go off."

  "I believe Ed Gein has some experience in taxidermy," I said.

  Cooney was on the point of taking the suggestion seriously when he worked it out. Scowling, he went home to have some more sleep.

  When the Special Agent was out of sight, I took off my gloves and beat Lou Ford senseless. I broke all the knuckles of my left hand on his chin, and had to shove them into the snow to deaden the pain. I got

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  Back in the USSA

  frostbite. My fingers still don't unbend properly, and they got arthritic a few years later. I've got a permanent, useless fist. But I broke Lou Ford's jaw, and he can't inform clearly to this day.

  Killing Elmer satisfied Cooney for a while. The whole town turned out for a meeting, and took turns getting up to accuse Elmer of all manner of posthumous crimes. A lot of petty stuff—some of which Elmer might even have been guilty of, who knows?—got shifted off the books.

  Cooney sat on the stage beside Gutman and Flagg, modestly accepting all the fulsomely-worded tributes to his daring and cunning. I hung back and tried to keep my stomach settled. Lou Ford was still excused from duty while his jaw knit back together.

  Cooney read out a message of congratulations from Director Hoover, commending the whole community for its valiant achievement in ridding itself of the last traces of poisonous subversion. Everyone applauded warmly.

  Afterwards, they all tucked into a buffet of Ed's famous smoked meats.

  I went outside and puked.

  I straightened up after emptying my stomach into the snow, and saw people spilling out of the Party meeting hall.

  Ed, wearing his check cap and his mama's house dress over dungarees, smiled thinly at me as he walked past. I never knew what went on inside his head. Whether he was Ed or thought he was his Mom. It's a mystery.

  Even Cooney, a newcomer, could look at Ed and not see anything odd about him. It got so he was a kind of blur, looked at sideways. When he was wearing his human skin face-mask and women's clothing, people thought there might be something a bit odd about Ed today but could never put their finger on it.

  It was just the same as the way we could go without food for three days and listen to Walter Winchell praising Wisconsin for its food surpluses, and then turn round and give each other pats on the back because it was us Walter was talking about. Our bellies told us one thing, but we believed the radio.

  I almost got to the point where I gave in. If everyone in the world tells you snow is red, you start to question your eyes. Maybe you've got some rare condition that makes you see red as white. Maybe the white you see is the same thing everyone else sees as red.

  Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman

  The day after Cooney lit out back to Debs D.C., the freshest grave in town was emptied. Ed was back in business.

  If you weren't around back when Capone was running the show, I guess you'll find it hard to understand why the townsfolk, who all knew perfectly well what was going on, didn't just get together and march on the Gein Place with burning brands and a noose and just hang him from the tallest tree. Put simply, it was because Ed had friends in very high places. Agent Cooney was rumoured to be one of Hoover's personal bed-warmers, which is about as high as you could get in Capone's United Socialist States of America. If anything bad happened to Ed, something super-bad would happen to Plainfield. That's why we all of us wilfully ignored what he got up to.

  I have another theory, too. A lot of people still believed in socialism back then. Some of the older, poorer folks would tell you how things really were better now than they had been before the Revolution. Younger people tended to think that while the regime in Debs D.C. might be corrupt, socialism was still the best route to a perfect society. Lot of people believed—hell, I still believe—that guys like Joe Hill and Eugene V. Debs really were heroes. And the point about socialism is that it rejects superstition, meaning that when you die, that's it. So people weren't as worried about their relatives' corpses disappearing as you might think. Leastways, not worried enough to risk their own living hides by stiffing Ed Gein. Fact is, if you don't believe in the Resurrection, you've got no need of your cadaver, have you?

  "Course it wasn't just cadavers he was taking. He was still killing people, too. Not many, but enough.

  One winter night, I woke up with an itch in my right foot. I reached down to scratch it, and touched a wet,
jagged end where my foot should have been.

  I realised I had been woken up by a thudding sound.

  Ed Gein, grinning through his mother's shrivelled lips, stood at the end of the bed, holding a bloody cleaver in one hand and my right foot in the other.

  Then the wave of pain crashed over me.

  "Ayup," said Ed, "better hop to it, Sheriff Joe."

  Screaming, I crawled across my cabin and jammed my ragged ankle against the stove.

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  Back in the USSA

  By the time I'd unclenched my teeth from my tongue, my midnight visitor had departed.

  I never saw my foot again. If you ask me, I think Ed ate it. Productivity went up and up. No one ever asked how come Ed slaughtered more animals than were taken out to his place.

  I got used to my new tin foot a lot quicker than I'd anticipated. Only thing was, every time I saw Ed Gein, or even just thought about him, it hurt like there was a nine-inch nail being hammered through it. More phantom pain.

  The disappearances of corpses and people continued through the rest of the 1950s. And a hell of a lot of animals just upped and vanished, too, or showed up dead and mutilated. There was a lot of noise from the Gein Place, but that was what you had to expect when production records were being set. Weirdly, it was the animals people noticed: from the purges of the '30s, everyone was used to people suddenly not being there any more, leaving behind houses with kicked-in doors; however, even at the worst, Al Capone never had the FBI pounce on hog-pens or cattle ranges and hustle pigs and beeves into a four-door saloon to be taken to a cellar and tenderised with rubber hoses.

  There was some muttering, especially from those who lost relatives, but that ended when Gein stood up to the local Committee and insisted that from now on he would take on his mother's old role and decide who got the products of his slaughterhouse. He came to town, in a dress and his mummified mask, and made a speech at a meeting, saying that from now on the people of Plainfield would get to live off the food they produced, not pass it on to fatcats in the cities. People got over the shock and cheered him. From then on, Ed personally ensured that every family in town got their share of his meats.