MYTHOLOGY: PLASTIC MAN

by Steve Katz For Harry Rogan

Some people have all the money, some have all the luck, and some have all the brains, and those who have all three have luck, money and brains. I can't say it matters to me now because I'm too old, but for some people every door opens on wealth, fame or power and every road bends toward success. It's a good thing there is a different type of person too because I'm one of them, and that's a comfort. I can't say that I've had nothing, because I've had a bit; that is, I've lived this long and I've rarely been hungry, though I've been scared. The best thing to do is to keep moving, which I do, because then I don't have to pay rent, not that I mind paying rent if I like the place I'm at. I just don't like to pay it to Plastic Man, but that's the other end or the story, and we'll cross over to it when we've picked around a while on this end. I'm a prospector, you see, and that keeps me moving. I look for just about anything and sometimes I have a little bit of luck. That's not always so lucky, as you'll find out, as I found out too late in the game. At first it was just my "love of the great outdoors" and who cared if I found nothing or not? I was young. I could look time in the face and tell him to brush his teeth. I'd do it on foot, or take a horse and a couple of mules, stuff the packsaddles and go. I could stay as long as I had grub, and then some. That living went on for a while at a great rate, but whatever a guy is doing, there always comes a time when he figures if he's putting so much in he ought to be getting something out. That was when I first began to see the sign on the desert. I was crossing this wide, arid valley, nothing growing but sage and tumbleweed, bronco grass, crested wheat, chaparral, rab bit brush, mahoganies on the mountains, willows in the canyons and chokecherry by the springs. Suddenly a whole mountain sat in front of me that looked heavy with minerals, sparkly outcroppings on it, and a slide the color of doeskin. The sight of it yanked at my feet and told them to step up. Then I saw the old sign nailed to a wooden stake. It was quite faded, and looked insignificant, so I didn't pay any attention to it though I noticed it said: ALL THIS BELONGS TO PLASTIC MAN. I thought that was amusing, probably put there by someone with a sense of humor, who read comic books. I pushed on into the hills and stooped at a spring to fill my water bags and water my horse and my mule. When I cleared the gravel off an old piece of tin that lay there in the spring I noticed there was some printing on it, almost rusted out. ALL THIS BELONGS TO PLASTIC MAN, it said. The thought "perhaps this is a remnant of the ridiculous lost city of Ult" crossed my mind, while the thought "This isn't a Shoshone landmark" crossed it from the other direction, leaving me without a thought. Nobody owned that country, because nobody could need to own it, it was so barren and so big. Hardly a road crossed it. Well, I crossed the ridge and prospected for a few days and was surprised to find, though I ranged pretty wide, that same sign poking up here and there. I just went on with my prospecting. What I finally found was some outcroppings veined with high-grade cinnabar. I picked out some samples, staked three claims, and figured on heading for the assayer's and the land office in a couple of days. I'd take the samples and my map, get over the red tape, and come back as fast as I could. The morning I was to leave I took an early walk around my claims and noticed a fresh sign tacked up on each of the stakes. ALL THIS BELONGS TO PLASTIC MAN. Someone had come in the night, without my knowing it and had slapped up the signs. From where did they come? What did they mean by PLASTIC MAN? I decided to solve that mystery when I got back.

"Did you ever hear about Plastic Man?" I asked at the land office. They looked at me as if I'd eaten locoweed.

"Did you ever see the signs he put up all over the
it desert out there?"

"Never been out there," said the land office man, and he looked for something in his drawer.

I registered the claims and took a couple of days to get rigged with powder, hand steels, fuse and grub and then I started back. I didn't expect I'd be leaving till the first signs of snow. It felt good when I saw again where I was going, like a home, except there was something peculiar about it, a kind of dull glitter from the distance, like a film of mucous over my claims. About a mile away my horse got jumpy and so did I, but not the mules, so we kept going. It seemed impossible. All three of my claims, from edge to edge, every rock, every bit of sage brush was covered with a film of clear plastic so slick and hard even the mules couldn't get a footing on it. The big sign in the middle said, ALL THIS BELONGS TO PLASTIC MAN. Well, I thought, let's see. I figured I'd drill a hole to blast the plastic out of there, but my hand steel wouldn't even scratch the surface. I put five sticks of powder on the surface with a two-minute fuse and took shelter down the hill. I still don't know what happened to the grub, my horse, the rest of my outfit, or to the plastic. I never woke up till I don't know when and after I did I wasn't anywhere I knew about. It was brand new, whatever it was, and it smelled like a room, and was slick and slippery wherever you touched it, and I was inside. Pretty soon a piece of it pulled open like a door and a man in a gummy suit told me that I had to get ready to meet Plastic Man. He was in a bigger one of those chambers with softer walls and everything there had the special glitter my claims had before I lost them. Plastic Man was bent over like a U bolt stuck in the ground. "Why is he bent over like that?" I asked a man in a gummy suit. "Plastic Man can't straighten up," he said. I sized up that situation and then asked for an iron, a heating pad, or anything hot. While he went to get it I rolled up my sleeves. Plastic Man didn't seem to be in pain. He winked at me between his legs like the son of a bitch that he was. "You see what happens when you're made of plastic," he said. They brought me a kind of heated rolling pin, and I began immediately to roll it over his back. Pretty soon he straightened out just like a bean sprout, and he wrapped each of his arms around me three times as if he couldn't have straightened out himself if he had wanted to. He apologized for what he had done to my claims but told me I should have read the signs. I told him I did read the signs, but that I didn't believe in Plastic Man, so I paid them no mind. He laughed at that and asked if I believed in Plastic Man now. I laughed at that. We chatted for a while over fancy sardine sandwiches and lemonade and then he could see I was getting ready to mosey on. "Here you are, have a glittering trinket for your glove compartment," he said, handing me a glittering trinket. "There is no glove compartment on my mule," I answered. "Well, keep it for an hour, then give it to your kids." He shook my hand.

"Why don't you," he said, just before I moseyed along, "go in with me fifty-fifty on developing that property. Fifty- fifty."

"Thanks, Stretch," I said. "But no thanks." And maybe that was my big mistake, but I didn't want to have any thing, nothing, to do with Plastic Man. "I'll just be on my way. I'll mosey along." Now, he didn't try to stop me from moseying, but since then things have never been the same. I keep moving, but everywhere I go, far or wide, there's a sign that says, ALL THIS BELONGS TO PLASTIC MAN. Every little prospect I try to develop never works out any more. He doesn't cover my claims with plastic like he used to, but this is what happens. Usually when I'm ready to put in my first round I suddenly feel his long arm wrap around me- gently-and I'm back having some fancy sandwiches and a Pepsi and the same conversation with Plastic Man. I don't know if he'll ever give up, but it's nothing doing for me. I'm not one of those. So I keep moving because I don't want to pay the rent to Plastic Man, and though it can't possibly ever come out right, I hope to edge out of it some day.