“Burn these images!” the Director says sternly, holding out his cigarette lighter. “Burn them!” I light the negatives like I was lighting one of his cigarettes. The kids – they are all “kids” regardless of age – are outside in a fenced-in area for a bit of fresh air, when a man dashes out of the woods. He’s middle-aged, needs a shave, and is dressed shabbily in a dirty, ill-fitting, rumpled suit. “Which one is my son?” he asks furtively. “What is his name?” I respond. He tells me, and I point to a young boy. “I haven’t seen him in five years. I come every five years, you know. How’s he doing?” I tell him, and the man in the dirty, ill-fitting, rumpled suit dashes back into the woods. Zack – I don’t remember his real name – is sitting in a red plastic chair against the far side of the day room. He is dressed in a baggy hand-me-down suit from God knows where. He stares intently at the exit door opposite, some fifty feet away. It is Christmas. His parents come every Christmas to bring him home for the day, to be with his brothers and sisters. He sits in the red plastic chair all day – some fifteen hours – staring, just staring, just staring at the door opposite. His parents don’t come, or call. He screams, and screams, and screams – with an out-of-this-world cry – and throws the red plastic chair through the large day room window, shattering glass all over the floor. I remember the sights, the sounds, the smells. Mostly it is the smells, the smell of antiseptic and feces that I remember most, and the screams, and the odd almost animal-like noises of the most profoundly retarded. The large state institution is now closed. “The swamp has finally been drained,” says its former Director. Gone except for the sights, the sounds, and the smell of antiseptic and feces.