Deviant Read Online Free PDF Page A

good living to be made from dairy cows and rye. And she had another motive, too: she would be getting herself and her family, particularly little Eddie, far away from the evil influences of the city.
    Late that year, the Geins moved to a small dairy farm in the lowlands near Camp Douglas, forty miles east of La Crosse. For unknown reasons, they remained there for less than a year. Perhaps Augusta, always on the lookout for a way to improve the family’s fortunes, saw an opportunity to purchase an even larger piece of land. Or perhaps she felt that even at that distance, they were still living too close to La Crosse, which, in her burgeoning religious mania, she had come to regard as a latter-day Sodom.
    Whatever the case, in 1914, the Gein family made the second— and final—move, to a one-hundred-ninety-five-acre farm in Plainfield known to the locals as the old John Greenfield place. At a time when property ownership was almost entirely in the hands of men, land records show that the Plainfield farm was purchased by and deeded to, not George, but Augusta Gein.
    Augusta was happy with the new homestead, and, in truth, it was a substantial place, particularly by the standards of that underprivileged area. The house itself was a trim two-story affair, an L-shaped white frame building with a parlor, a kitchen, and a pair of bedrooms on the first floor and five more rooms upstairs. The outbuildings included a fair-sized barn, a chicken coop, and an equipment shack. There was also a shedlike summer kitchen that had been built onto one end of the house, with a connecting door opening into the regular kitchen.
    Augusta promptly set about arranging the rooms with the sparse but solid furnishings she had gradually acquired during the years of her marriage. The best pieces were reserved for the parlor, which contained a handsome cherry bureau, its breakfront decorated with a simple leaf design; a stout wooden rocker with elaborately carved arm supports; a small pine bookcase, its five narrow shelves neatly stacked with leather-bound volumes; a large Oriental carpet, slightly threadbare but with a rich geometric pattern; and a number of pictures on the walls, including family portraits in heavy gilded frames and (Augusta’s favorite) a reproduction painting of Christ gazing skyward at an angel.
    Augusta was, of course, a fastidious homemaker who insisted that her house be kept, as she put it, “as neat as a pin.” She was fiercely proud of her perfectionism. There might be richer people in the world but none who maintained a tidier place. The Gein home wasn’t a mansion, but it would never look anything less than absolutely clean and orderly—not, at any rate, as long as Augusta was alive.
    There was another feature of their new homestead that Augusta grew to appreciate as the Geins settled into their new lives: its extreme isolation. The farm was situated six miles west of Plainfield village, a significant distance in the days of dirt roads and wagon travel, when farmers rarely ventured from home and the monthly trip to the general store in town was a major event. Their nearest neighbors were the Johnson family, whose farmhouse was located a little less than a quarter-mile down the road. Otherwise, the Geins were surrounded by nothing but meadows, marshland, scattered clumps of trees, and acre upon acre of pale, sandy soil.
    The remoteness of her farm suited Augusta just fine. It hadn’t taken her long to conclude that the religious and moral standards of Plainfield were scandalously low. In her increasingly warped vision, the decent, hard-working, God-fearing townsfolk were a disreputable and untrustworthy lot. Augusta felt herself far too good for them. The less she had to do with them, the better. Since Plainfield boasted a Catholic, a Methodist, and a Baptist—but no Lutheran—church, there was even less reason to mingle with her neighbors. She herself would handle her sons’ moral and religious training. On those rare