| abstract | - Originally Donald Merwin Elbert, the Trashcan Man was born in Powtanville, Indiana as the youngest child of Wendell and Sally Elbert. He had two brothers and a sister whose names are not known. Donald's father had experienced a worsening of his mental stability for a number of years. One night Wendell snapped; he got into a barroom argument where he shot and killed the bartender. Returning home, Wendell then proceeded to kill his three oldest children. Sally managed to flee the house with five-year-old Donald; intent upon killing them as well, Wendell kept firing until his cheap gun exploded and disfigured his face. Finally Sheriff Greeley arrived on the scene, shooting and killing Wendell when he refused to stand down. How much of young Donald's resulting mental illness stems from this early trauma, and how much of it was hereditary via his father, is not known. But within a year or two Donald had "started lighting fires in people's trashcans and running away", eventually giving him a nickname for life. Shortly afterwards Sheriff Greeley married Sally, which only caused Donald's pyromania to escalate. Finally at age eleven, Donald set fire to an abandoned house which burned to the ground. Despite Sally's threat that she would divorce him (which she promptly made good upon), Greeley had Donald institutionalized at a facility in Terre Haute, where he remained for two years. Due to extensive electroshock-therapy treatments, Donald suffered permanent damage to his memory and cognitive abilities, and was an academic failure upon returning to school. At sixteen he dropped out and went to work at a car-wash, where he was subjected to jeering, taunts and physical abuse by the residents of Powtanville. Within a year he snapped again and set fire to the local Methodist church. Now an arsonist with a criminal record, Donald was sent to juvenile detention and, when he turned eighteen, adult jail. Strangely, despite dealing with hardened inmates and nightly unpleasantries such as prison rape, Donald found life on the inside preferable to that in Powtanville. He became a prison "trusty" by the time of the superflu outbreak, and was sent to care for dying prisoners in the infirmary. Once the entire staff and population of the prison were dead, Donald simply wandered free and went home.
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