In a modest home in Franklin County, just outside Robertsville on Highway N, Mary Watts, 74, sat at her kitchen table, poring through mounds and mounds of letters and documents. "I think it's in here somewhere," she'd say whenever I'd ask to see a particular document.

The papers concerned her husband, Johnnie Watts. He is 80. He was born in the Delta country of Louisiana. His parents, Joseph and Hannah, were sharecroppers. He was one of nine children. "Johnnie got up in the morning and milked two cows before going to school," Mary said. She said he did well enough in school to earn a scholarship to the Southern Christian Institute of Louisiana.

While he was in school, his folks moved to St. Louis to look for work. Joseph found a job cleaning offices. So the family was living here when Johnnie got drafted out of school. He was sent to Korea. He was a machine gunner in M Company of the 15th Infantry Regiment.

He was home from Korea and visiting St. Louis on a furlough when he met Mary. She had grown up in Alton. They dated when he got out of the Army. They were married in June of 1954. Johnnie got a job with the federal government as a cartographer. He and Mary had three children. Life was good, but not perfect. Johnnie had nightmares.

They moved to the country in 1970. The house on Highway N was a long way from St. Louis, where Johnnie worked, but he liked the solitude. He especially liked working in the large garden behind the house. Mary figured it was a therapy of sorts. "I always told him not to feel bad about the nightmares. We weren't intended to go around killing people," Mary said.

Johnnie retired from his job at the Defense Mapping Agency in 1984 at age 55. He had worked for almost 30 years. He received a monthly pension of a little under $2,000. That was not a lot of money, but when things got tight, the Watts refinanced their home.

Eventually, his mental condition began to slip, Mary said. I asked if she had a timetable. She dug through her papers. She handed me a letter from a psychiatrist in Washington, Mo. "The patient was initially seen in my office on August 20, 2001 and at that time presented symptoms of severe depression and anxiety. He had two courses of electroconvulsive therapy with some transient improvement in his mood."

So it was eight years ago? "I noticed it earlier," Mary said.

In addition to the therapy, the doctor prescribed medication, but Johnnie was not good about taking them. He ended up in a nursing home. Then he came home. He was by then diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He went on a spending jag, ran up the credit cards. It was out of character. Mary needed help. She heard about the Missouri Veterans Home in Warrensburg.

"It was so much better than the nursing home," she said. She dug through her papers and handed me a fact sheet from the home. "No veteran is denied admission due to inability to pay," the sheet read. It stated that fees were set on a sliding scale and the maximum monthly cost was $1,800.

He entered the home in August 2007.

The next document was from the regional office of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Johnnie had been granted "disability pension benefits" of $1,408 monthly as of Sept. 14, 2007. Somebody at the home in Warrenburg had filled out the necessary paperwork. Mary was thrilled. She could start paying down some debt.

But the next document she showed me was a letter from the administrator of the Missouri Veterans Home to Congressman Lacy Clay regarding an inquiry from Clay's office. The letter explained that the $1,480 pension was really a "hardship pension" meant to cover Johnnie's cost at the home, and the checks had been sent to the house on Highway N because that was Johnnie's official address. The home contended it was supposed to receive the money.

Needless to say, that led to a dispute. Mary took Johnnie out of the home in early February 2008. The home said she had only paid $900 and owed an additional $4,899.

The next document in Mary's stack was a letter from the Missouri Attorney General's Office indicating that the office was representing the veterans home in this matter. That letter demanded that Mary send a cashier's check or money order in the amount of $4,899.

Finally, there was a letter from the U.S. Department of Treasury announcing that it was dunning 25 percent of Johnnie's pension, which had grown to $2,119 with cost-of-living increases. The loss of $528 a month represents a significant drop in the family income. Mary gets $108 a month in Social Security.

So where do things stand now? Mary has put Johnnie in a nursing home. An application for Medicaid is pending. Mary is two months behind on her mortgage.

She showed me two other documents I found interesting. One was from a doctor at the home in Warrensburg from September 2007. Among the conditions he wrote that he was treating Watts for was "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder with Frequent Flashbacks." The second document was from the regional office of the Department of Veterans Affairs a year later. It was denying Watts' application for disability for post-traumatic stress disorder.

"I don't understand any of this," Mary said.