"Did you ever hear that lonesome whippoorwill? He sounds too blue to fly. The midnight train is winding low. I'm so lone- I could cry. I've never seen a night so long, when time goes crawling by. Did you ever see a robin weep. He be-gins to die ...." Danny Apache sang off key the song that was intermingling with the laugh ricocheting inside his head. While lying on his motel bed with his new bought - NRA no check background - rifle by his side, he recalled his wife Linda Ann's angry words: "You just get the hell out! I can't take it anymore. If you're not walking about wearing a little black cape and Lone Ranger mask and carrying that big stone in one hand waiting to ask anyone to smash your head, you're saying I'm cheating on you like your first wife did!" He attempted to squeeze pity from her: "I can't help it. It's all the bad things that happened to me. Did you ever see a lonesome whippoorwill?" "Don't start singing to me again. Listen Danny, our cleaning business was doing damn good. In the first five years we bought a home, two cars and had money in the bank!" she said using her sweet central Florida drawl; born in the town that tried to cleanse itself of niggers in the nineteen twenties resulting in one on the worst massacres since they got rid of the "red niggers" a century before. "I guess it all went the way of the winding train," he said. "Sure it did! It went with that laugh you say is stuck in your head. Go! Get the hell out of here and have one of your episodes someplace else! If you do it here again falling on my furniture - I swear I'll call the cops and they'll take you back to that second home of yours and this time I won't sign you out. Me and the three little boys have had enough!" "Linda, did you ever see a robin weep?" .... It seemed when Danny did take his lithium the laugh did become a little fainter but it still remained in his brain and so he decided to stop swallowing them and cure himself. Danny awoke that Sunday morning thinking of his father after whom he was named but dropping Al so becoming a Danny and was determined to become Chief like his father had been called and who left them after he was killed by the carpenter - who was building their dream house after finding him on top of his wife in the back seat of their car which made Al stagger away to a far off California forgetting his four young children huddled in the foundation of the home that was never built and their mother took them to the orphanage where they remained for a year and a half and then they came home to her parties that had men lying on their parlor floor; getting up to the word "Next" and climbing onto a light from their mother's bedroom and fall into her laughter. What he needed he told himself was a stiff drink. He left for Orlando Town wearing his cape, mask and carrying his large stone that was as big as his head. After his fifth whisky, he told the guy standing next to him that he was going to be Chief to his people and inherit fifteen hundred acres of orange groves like "A Big Fall By Tripping" did. He had read the name in a magazine article. The man made an attempt to move away but Danny held his arm firmly and then asked: "You ever been behind a tractor with a pretty woman." He often became confused with time thinking he was with his first wife Dixie who had had a habit of going behind tractors with Mormon cowboys. The man looked down and saw the big stone Danny was playing footsie with and said, " No sir. I work on them though." "You work behind them?" Danny said as he lifted the big stone onto the bar. "No sir but that's a good one," the man said pushing his wide-brimmed hat back as he gave off a nervous laugh. "You know what Apache means?" "Can't say that I do, mister." "It means enemy people! Any you bastards been behind any tractors?" Danny shouted while hitting his head and the laugh with a closed fist before picking up the stone to place it against his temple. The whole bar cleared out within seconds. The bartender standing cautiously five feet away from him said he wanted no trouble and if he left peaceful like, Danny wouldn't have to pay for his drinks nor would he call the sheriff. "Much obliged," Danny said pushing up his mask and waded past the many people standing awkward postures outside and just outside of town he came upon an orange picker and he asked him, "Hey, mister can you smash my head with this?" Only after the migrant worker jumped from his ladder and began running - cursing loudly Christopher Columbus for discovering a land going into a nervous breakdown - did Danny sit on the ground and begin to cry. END
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