by George Stone III

Created on: August 08, 2008

June, 2005

Evergreen Gardens was a nursing home near the town of Goose Creek, Minnesota. Tucked away among the pines it likely appeared to be a residence of high standards to those who passed by. But if you were to ask Calvin Smart, that appearance was deceiving, mostly due to the main road being a half-mile off. He and his son Joey rode in relative silence during the sixty-minute trip north from St. Paul, Calvin choosing to watch the pines go by. As they approached Evergreen Gardens, Calvin watched the illusion people saw from a distance melt away as the Ford Explorer advanced on the rambling structure.

Joey eased the truck to a stop. Calvin, making no move to depart the vehicle, sat in the passenger's seat and sized up the place: paint peeling off the building's facade, the tousled grounds, a gaggle of attendants in blue scrubs, smoking and joking around a weathered picnic table. He turned to Joey. "How can you do this to me?" he said. Even though Calvin knew the fix his boy was in, he needed someone to blame.

"It's just for now, Pops," Joey had said. "Things get better, we'll get you back home. In the meantime, I'll come up every Saturday, bring the boys too." Joey grabbed a suitcase from the back and came around to where his father sat and rapped a knuckle on the window. "C mon, Pops," he said.

Snarling at his son, Calvin stepped from the truck and snatched the suitcase from Joey's grip, saying he could carry his own damn bag. They headed up the soiled walkway toward the entrance, passing beneath a tattered awning with bent uprightsCalvin several steps behindand through the double doors and into the lobby, so dissimilar to the full-color brochure Joey had placed in his father's lap, Calvin refusing to take it in his hands. At sixty-five years old, Calvin's sense of smell had deteriorated some, yet the acrid odor of human waste and Lysol was unmistakable. At that moment Calvin was convinced: Evergreen Gardens was not the placid domicile depicted in the doctored literature, where loving sons and daughters left their aging parents in caring hands. No, to Calvin this looked more like a dumping grounds where adult children, calloused by intolerance or indifference, surrendered their elders, like so much refuse, to those who dared call themselves caregivers.

February, 2008

Calvin finished his breakfast and pushed the tray to the side. He dressed himself in polyester pants worn to a shine and a blue work shirt. He stepped into his lone pair of shoes with the rubber

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