Chapter 1

My name is Daniel Bellagambas. They called me Lt. Dan while I was in the Marine Corps and it stuck when I got out. I was the first in my family to graduate college and the first officer in a long line of Marines. So Lt. Dan, that’s me.

I had spent 10 months walking around just south of the DMZ doing my job. You know, making widows and orphans and breaking things. The Marines call it ‘Search and Destroy’. The job of the infantry.

After 3 years I returned to the farm in Mississippi. My mom had died of breast cancer when I was in the eighth grade and my father had never re-married. Hell I don’t think he ever even dated. He just worked harder.

We have a nice place. Big modern house and lots of pasture for our 300 head of registered Angus cattle. We have a sale once a year and do pretty well. Well enough that he put me and my sister thru college. I joined the Marines just like him and his father before him. But I am hoping the tradition ends with me. These political wars now-a-days never end well and just make money for corrupt politicians. If I had been in charge I would have dropped a nuke on Hanoi. Sure there would have been worldwide outrage and protests. But 50,000 American boys would not have died and another half a million wounded. Right about now you are glad I was not in charge. Right?

Back at home I married my college sweetheart, Beth, and settled down thinking I would raise beef cattle and kids. Mississippi and this old farm was paradise to me. Remember I had just spent 10 months in hell.

For two years everything was perfect. My sister graduated nursing school and married a doctor. They moved to Miami so he could join in his dad’s practice. Then our dad had a heart attack and died. He left me the farm and Sis a pile of money we did not know he had. The Doctor and Sis were happy with that because they had no interest in farming.

Then my wife broke her back in a fall. She was riding her horse and it stepped in a hole and threw her off. The horse had to be put down and she ended up in a nursing facility. Oh shit, I forgot to mention we had a three month old baby boy at the time. His name is Brian.

Now here I am, running a farm, my wife in a nursing facility and me trying to take care of a baby. My parents are dead. Her’s are divorced. I never met her dad and her mom is remarried to a real asshole and living in Wisconsin. My mother in law came and stayed a week to help me but had to get home because that ‘asshole’ she married is fucking his secretary or so she thinks.

The insurance started giving me hell not wanting to pay for the nursing home. I could cannot afford to keep her there so I brought her home. She is bed ridden and cannot move around much at all. I need help and fast.