A Tourist in Mayberry

1/7) From my Diary Journal: Meanest Man on Earth

Protagonist - hero of the story

Antagonist - an opponent or adversary of the protagonist

I told you all about my stepdad so I can explain better about Magdalena's dad. They are not the same kind of mean. Magdalena's dad takes evil to a whole new level. There are reasons we are plotting his demise.

This is the truth about bad people. They are not usually rotten to the core. Somewhere in their lives they have someone they are good to or someone they love.

This is not true of Magdalena's dad, Randall Michael Wall (most assuredly one of many names he uses in his life of crime). He is rotten all the way to his inner soul. He is evil incarnate. Magdalena's fear of him is palpable. You can taste it. It tastes like a big gulp when you have a sore throat so bad it hurts to think about swallowing, and you do not want to do it, but the more you think about it, you have to swallow. And then you do, and aaahhh. When you finally do swallow, well, that is how bad her fear is. It is as bad as a dreaded sore throat swallow.

Magdalena's fear is warranted. Not only is he an unborn baby killer, Randall Michael Wall once threw a chair at Magdalena's mom while she was holding a baby sister. Magdalena's mom broke her arm protecting the baby while Magdalena scooped the baby up and ran.

Magdalena is brave. She has an innate, inner steadfastness and proudness about herself. She is on the surface absolutely unshakeable. To the untrained eye she is this way around her dad, but I know her and I can see the thin bead of sweat on her forehead when we are hiding under the trailer underpinning, and he is yelling for all to hear, "Come here you little cunt." Let me say here - it is not uncommon for him to call her cunt or bitch or whore right in front of her mama or company. He does the same thing to Magdalena's mom and little sisters too.

When Randall Michael Wall wants something, he demands Magdalena and her sisters wait on him like he is a king. When she's the maid, Magdalena steadies her quivering hands by tucking her elbows in to her waist as she carries him his drink. It is crazy, but Magdalena seems to be ashamed of being afraid of her dad, and I don't let on I know she's afraid of him, though he is Freddy from Nightmare on Elm Street to me. I do believe Magdalena's dad knows that she is as afraid of him as her mom and sisters, but he also respects she doesn't let him see it. Somewhere, probably in his childhood too, someone was mean to Randall Michael Wall, and they did a superior job of passing their nastiness on to him.

The worst thing about Magdalena's dad is he does not need to be drunk or high on drugs to be mean. He drinks sometimes, but he does not do drugs. Terrorizing comes natural to him. He is not like a villain in a great book, like a Hannibal Lecter or a Follet's Eye of the Needle killer who has you rooting for him before you realize it. He has no redeeming qualities to inspire an adoring audience.

Some believe there is no black and white when it comes to people, that people can be gray. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. I have said it myself, but Randall Michael Wall is the exception to the rule. He has no gray area whatsoever. He is black through and through. Word in the trailer park is he killed more than one person, and the reason he has escaped notice is the people he killed have no one left who care about them, including the police.

Though he has no real friends, Magdalena's dad does have "associates" who don't know the worst about him. It is told that 500 dollars is all it takes for Randall Michael Wall to kill someone he never knew, and he will travel as far as California to oblige the boss. The killing money buys him nice things. He dresses nice, too nice to be living in a trailer held together by rust and some type of unidentified mold. Randall Michael Wall is quite the dandy, while my friend and her little sisters go without winter coats.

His employment status is all conjecture, no one knows what Randall Michael does for a living. He says he is in maintenance and lawn care, but his fingernails are pristine. He brings home cash and stays gone sometimes a week at a time which fuels the rumors and speculations. Everyone in the trailer park, including the adults and punk teenagers and the owners, the Shadey's, are afraid of him. Mr. Shadey never collects the rent when Randall Michael Wall is at home. Mr. Shadey, notoriously heartless when it comes to money owed him, has never threatened to kick the Wall family out when the rent is a month or more overdue.

Magdalena's home is a home of feast or famine. A home where school pictures are not paid for or returned and field trip fees are paid for by well meaning, anonymous benefactors, otherwise known as teachers. Lunches are free and there is no extra money for a treat. And yet, daddy always dresses like he owns the fancy clothes store.

Whether all the rumors about Randall Michael Wall are true or not, it is true he is known to be paid in cash. He comes home with this cash and is careless with it and can leave a Hansel and Gretel trail of hundred dollar bills throughout the house. Magdalena's mom picks them up and stashes them. He never misses the money. Magdalena's mom never takes it all, and she always cooks something special and says things like, "I got that brisket you wanted," to distract him. She was almost caught once though when one of the younger sisters kept trying to pay for ice cream at lunch with 100 dollar bills. Luckily, Magdalena intercepted the phone call from the school so her mom's pilfering could continue. My point - the man has so much extra cash in a normally cash-strapped house where it is "root little pig or die" that he does not miss the cash when a five-year-old decides she needs ice cream to make her day and then takes $300 to school to buy an ice cream sandwich.

Randall Michael Wall is mean in a way a pop song or movie can not describe because, while it is true words can hurt your feelings and your self-esteem and maybe even make you crazy enough to grow up and shoot the school up, words do not leave you with a broken arm, or burn marks on the backs of your legs in the perfect shape of a cigarette, or the complete understanding you are not safe, no matter how many times the department of social services visits your house.

The knowledge your existence rests in the hands of a man who is not only your father, but a madman, keeps you up nights, and it keeps best friends up too.

I would never be allowed around Magdalena if my mother knew anything about her home life, but long days at the nursing center mean my mom is exhausted and clueless. Besides, she adores Magdalena as much as I do, and most of the time, Magdalena is with me instead of the other way around. I am not dumb, and though I think studying him might help me with some character development when I need a despicable person in a short story (I am, after all, going to be a writer), I avoid Magdalena's dad as much as possible.

While we hang at my house some, we also like to go with my mom to work. Mom's bosses do not care because we keep the old and lonely from being lonesome and malcontent. When we first started going there, Magdalena and I mostly hung out in the nursing center part of the retirement community where my mom worked. That is where we met Mr. Matthew Jenkins who came to see Miss Lacey several times a day.

Magdalena's dad was especially a jerk one day and decided she could not hang out with me.  This lasted for about a week. I grew a little bored with the residents at the nursing center, and decided to follow Mr. Jenkins around. I was discrete and incognito for all of about 30 minutes. He was a purported spy and hired killer, or so the local retirement gossip bunch reported. That week was when I started noticing some strange things about Mr. Jenkins and his friends, known throughout the community as The Wild Bunch.

As it turned out and I later learned, rumors at Riverview Retirement Community were often based on facts.

Author's Note:  I got the idea for the kindergarten, hundred dollar bill story from something that happened at a school I worked at once.