A Talk About a Stone

A Talk About a Stone

(Written by Edward Gein)

It’s quiet now. Quieter than it ever was on the farm, even in the dead of winter. Where I am, there’s just a long, gray stillness. The memories play over and over, of course. Mother’s voice. The squeak of the shed door. The cold.

But sometimes, a new sound makes it through the quiet. A whisper from your world. That’s how I heard about the fella named Shane Bugbee.

The whispers said he came out to the plot, where I am, where mother is, and he took my stone. Dug it right up. It was a peculiar thing to hear. All my life, folks wanted to get away from me. This one, he came lookin'. He went to all the trouble of takin' somethin' of mine. Something heavy.

I got to thinkin'. I used to go out at night, lookin' for things to take, too. Things to bring home. And I had my reasons. So I figured this fella, this artist, he must have his. I wanted to know why. A man don't go diggin' around in a cemetery for no reason.

So I called him here. To the quiet. To have a little talk. To see if the reason he went diggin'… was the same as mine.

What you're about to read is the conversation we had.

The Interview

Question 1

Ed Gein: Well now... they said you took it. My marker. The stone they put over my plot next to mother. That's a heavy thing, a tombstone. Must've been an awful lot of work for a fella. Tell me... what did you want with it? What's a man like you gonna do with another fella's stone?

Shane Bugbee's Answer: I wanted it as the ultimate serial killer collectible. It would also serve my publishing company, Michael Hunt Publishing in gaining publicity I couldn't normally afford. There was also the idea that it might also hold an energy, maybe even your energy, perhaps your mothers too.

Question 2

Ed Gein: When you brought it home... that stone with my energy, and maybe mother's too... where did you put it? And do you ever talk to it?

Shane Bugbee's Answer: I hid it in my publishing delivery van for a long time, then I moved it into my art studio on a dolly with wheels. How could you know or what would you think I spoke to it? To answer, I did. Most of the times it would sound like a joke, but I did think I might be channeling you or your mama. Did you ever hear from me when I did speak to your tombstone?

Question 3

Ed Gein: You put your ear to the stone, so to speak. You listened for us. What did mother say to you?

Shane Bugbee's Answer: No, I had never heard anything consciously at least.

Question 4

Ed Gein: So, if you didn't hear her with your ears, Shane... what did she make you do? What kind of art did you make after you brought her home?

Shane Bugbee's Answer: I didn't bring HER stone into my studio, it was YOUR stone, your tombstone. I don't think your mother made me do anything, I did produce a lot of art others would call dark, probably inspired by my own mother who, as I think about it, was a lot like your mother and is probably why I was so attracted to your story. My mother isn't dead yet, but she certainly haunts me.

Question 5

Ed Gein: All that art you make, the stuff she inspires... are you making it to please her, or are you making it to get rid of her?

Shane Bugbee's Answer: Ooooo. Great question, I suppose both, I’m making it to get the attention she seems to never be able to give, and that’s the part I want to get rid of, the mother who doesn’t have the ability to love or pay attention to her childrens needs, sound familiar?

Question 6

Ed Gein: So you're doin' it all. Making your noise to get her attention. Making your dark things to get rid of the hurt. You're pleasing and you're killing, all at the same time, with your paint and your books. That leads to a crossroads, Shane. When you finally figure out you can't ever really do either one. So my question is... what do you do when you realize the art isn't enough?

Shane Bugbee's Answer: I think art is everything, it is my religion. It gives me the life that I think you sought when you killed others, it fills me, and if I don't do art I’m deflated, so it’s, like I said, a religion or maybe a drug I’m addicted to. I think your art gave you a long and happy life, are you telling me you weren’t happy when you made a dead kin mask and danced by the light of the moon?

Question 7

Ed Gein: You think your art is a religion that saves you. That it fills you up. So here's what I need to know, Shane. What happens on the day your religion fails you? What do you do when the drug stops working and the haunting is still there?

Shane Bugbee's Answer: I suppose I heard about you dancing under the moonlight in a skin suit from a book or film about your story. art hasn't stopped working, more so, life overtakes my interests and I must scramble to pay bills and survive, so that keeps me busy, but not happy. Art makes me happy for the most part, or it's at the least a release much like an orgasm.

Question 8

Ed Gein: We're at the end of our time now, Shane. We've talked about your mother and mine. Your art and my work. Your stone that you took and the pieces I kept. It all comes down to one last thing, I suppose. My story on earth ended a long time ago. Now there's just... the talkin'. So my final question is this: When your story is over, Shane… who's gonna want to steal your tombstone?

Shane Bugbee's Answer: Who says I'll have a tombstone or even a burial, perhaps I'll be buried in a paupers grave. If you're speaking of legacy, I've lived an interesting enough life and gathered acclaim from historic movements and figures and built a large body of work that my legacy will live beyond my life, I think having a legacy is more important that a tombstone, the only thing we leave behind is our reputation. do you agree?

Ed Gein's Final Response

I listen, my head tilted, with the kind of patience one might give a sermon on the radio. When you're done, I don't answer right away. I just sit there in the quiet for a long moment. A hole's a hole, son. The worms don't care what you call it.

I look at my hands, turning them over as if seeing them for the first time. Legacy. Reputation. Acclaim. Those are... big words. City words. They're like smoke. You can see 'em for a bit, but then the wind blows and they're gone. Just air. I never had a reputation, not 'til the end. I had a farm. I had a house. And I had mother. That was the whole world. The only 'acclaim' that ever mattered was whether her voice was quiet in my head. It never was.

You think a reputation is what you leave behind. You think it's more important than a stone. No, son. I don't agree.

I look up from my hands and meet your eyes. There is no smile. There is no sadness. There is nothing but a flat, calm certainty. Stories change. People forget. A reputation is just a ghost. What's real is what you can hold. What you can keep. The only thing you truly leave behind is what you make with your own two hands.

A Final Thought from the Quiet

So that was the artist. The fella who took my stone.

He makes a lot of noise. All his talk about art and legacy and religion… it's like a boy bangin' on a pot with a spoon to scare away the dark. He thinks he’s so different from me. He thinks his hands are clean because he uses paint and paper instead of… other things.

But I saw it. He thinks he stole my stone, but he didn't. He was just borrowin' a mirror. He looked at my grave and saw a story about a boy and his mother, and it felt like his own. The haunting was familiar. He took that stone thinkin' he was takin' a piece of my story, of my energy. What he really did was carry a piece of his own house to a cemetery. He was lookin' in a hole in the ground for a ghost that's still alive and sittin' at his kitchen table.

The stone don't matter. It's just a rock. He can have it.

He says his art saves him. That it's the thing that keeps him on the right side of the line. Maybe so. For now. But he’s haunted all the same. He’s spendin' his whole life buildin' a house to keep his mother's ghost in. A house made of books and pictures and noise.

Just like mine was a house made of skin and bone and quiet.

In the end, it’s all the same house. He just ain't finished buildin' his yet.