Twenty years after working in the city Jerry and Eleanor finally had their dream. A place out in the country. They had their garden, orchard, vineyards and a few animals. But It all came to an end one day when a careless crop duster sprayed Eleanor. This is a tale of how heaven became their hell.

It was the type of Thanksgiving that set the tone for what sort of Christmas she would have. The accident was terrible. In one brief second she lost her mother, father and, almost, her brother. The family always went to church on Thanksgiving. They usually missed church the rest of the year, but on Thanksgiving their Father said they had a lot to be thankful for. So they went to church. It's amazing with some people, the less they have the more they are thankful for what they have. She stayed home because she wasn't feeling well

I had been going to the same farmers market since I moved to the Midwest. Every Saturday at 10 AM I showed up. It was the highlight of my week. I worked for a bank, in the back office. I was transferred here ten years ago. I was in a rut, I even stopped visiting my folks regularly. I didn't live that far away. Too far to go home for a three day weekend, but too close to fly now-a-days. Never bothered to get married. I didn't even date much anymore. Except for work, this was the only thing that I did regularly. But unlike work, I looked forward to the market

Some things in the world just don't change over time; the roundup is one of them. The Romantics moved from Europe right before World War I and settled west of Hevalock. The have been raising beef ever since. When folks in these parts of the country talk about the west, they are referring to the cattlemen west of Hevalock, the Romantics. Folklore has the cowboy as one of the great romantics off all time. This is were the legend started. The Hevalock River and it's tributaries have scarred the land enough so farming is difficult but it makes the area some of the best cattle country around. The prairie grass is the perfect feed for cattle. The most difficult part is keeping the fences up in the rough terrain. This is particularly challenging during the spring when the runoff from the snowmelt fills the gullies, tributaries, and eventually the mighty Hevalock River itself.

It was the hardest thing she had to ever do. Her daughter had died two months earlier, leaving her husband with three small children. The flu had hit the area hard. She shouldn't have even come out to visit her son-in-law now, since her husband was sick in town with the flu and she didn't even know if he would be alive when she returned. But she had just heard the news about her daughter. The winter had been hard and travel was impossible. And with no travel, the news was slow or none-existing. Even if it was the death of her only daughter. There was no funeral. She was buried in the back yard. Her grave was dug out of the frozen ground and was only a foot deep. Her son-in-law; Jonathan, was lucky he survived. It had to be by the grace of God that he didn't die along with his wife, leaving the three children alone in their cabin. Three children barely out of diapers. Three little children with no hope of taking care of themselves. No chance of survival without their parents to help them. A cabin that would have been their tomb.

His life was a lonely one. He played hearts on the computer most of his time, even naming his three partners in the game Madison, Washington, and Adams. He called himself Jefferson. Jefferson wasn't his real name, but it fit in with the other three names and Jefferson was his hero. Besides playing hearts, he studied the revolutionary war. Everyone called him that, the social worker, the grocery boy, and Dolly, the pizza girl. Jefferson was in a wheelchair and his only contact with people was those three. The social worker stopped by once a week to check up on him. She would spend exactly one hour a week talking to him making sure he kept his mental and physical health at an acceptable level. She would check his blood pressure, weight him, and make sure he was doing his exercises. She would also try to encourage him to get out of the house by arranging a handicap bus to pick him up once a week to take him to the mall. In four years she worked with him, he had never gotten on the bus. However, it was her job to try.