SUPERWORM
'193
in a corner, pulling his coat around him, ducking his face behind
his shoulder to ward off blows. The wen drops his razor and clutches
a bottle of Jeris hair tonic to his chest, presezving what he can of his
life and property. The corporate man has rushed into the street at
the first stirrings; he is calling for the police but has attracted so far
the attention only of a Meter Maid who is in the process of ticketing
the getaway car. The shine boy grabs up the ten-dollar bill and
bounds to the top of the shoeshine stand, from which he pelts the
masked marvel with cans of shoe polish. Recovering from the pain of
his bruised boil, the pimpled lad, fully in tune with the spirit of fun
he perceives to have swept over the barbershop, announces, thus
christening our hero: "Oh man, it's Super Spoon. Oh wow. Oh
zonk! "
The cowled crime fighter, now as King Kong, beleaguered as
that other great hero, by not pursuit planes but now screaming mur–
derous cans of shoe polish, leaps. He leaps. The great leap. Cape
spreading in the wind. The athletic champion of justice, the super
culture-hero - everybody's dreamboat - the leaper upon cringing,
craven villains, leaps. The great leap to set things straight.
But he has failed to free his feet from the tangle of trousers
about his ankles, and the gymnastic leap that would, if successful ,
have brought the caped and cowled super-hero lightly on his toes to
a confrontation with Fat Salesman, has instead plummeted a middlc–
aged, crazy exhibitionist in wormy Halloween costume head first into
the table of girlie magazines.
Tips and rolls. Tumbles among the torn and birdlike flapping
magazines. A few bottles crash fragrantly to the floor in their astonish–
ment. Brass spittoon rings. Can of Kiwi black caroms off his head and
through the door. A shatter of glass.
He rises slowly and straightens his woolly cap and mask,
sittin~
in his confusion and tangled trousers, stunned from his flaming crash
dive. While the customers laugh, the owner groans, the shine boy,
whom he has saved, shouts taunts of Brother! Brother! Brother! at
him, and the Meter Maid arrives to ask: "What's going on here?"
Sitting on the floor at the foot of the villainous salesman whom
he had leaped to quell, the Worm tries to 1) answer, and 2) get up.
But his mask has fallen across his face making speech difficult, and
his feet are caught up in his trousers.
