One Hour Before Death

Mr. Smith was dying. He knew it; he had no regrets. He was 97.

He was the only resident in this barren room at a nursing home in a Chicago suburb, lying on a spongy bed, lightly covered by an unzipped sleeping bag. There was no mattress; the nursing home was struggling on a shrunken budget.

The damp, stale room smelled of fresh disinfectant and stagnant water. Mr. Smith was lonely, but he didn't mind it. He never had a wife or kids. Perhaps he was always too busy and too popular with the ladies to consider getting married.

To start at the beginning, he was born in a small Midwestern town that no longer exists.

His mother died when he was two weeks old of what his aunties whispered about behind closed doors, but they said nothing more to him directly. He never found out what his mother died from or who his biological father was, but he never wondered about it much.

In the years following his birth, Mr. Smith bounced from one auntie to another, never excelling in any formal education.

He eventually discovered his vocation, though. He was a magician when it came to fixing things. Even now, when he glanced about this room, he noticed things that could be mended.

There was something about the process of taking something broken and making it work again that he loved.

Once, on a road trip, he found himself with a flat tire. He was only fourteen at the time and it was pouring out, but that didn't stop him from pulling over to the side of the interstate and then spending all night outside in the rain tinkering with his spare tire until he finally got it fixed.

He was just sixteen years old when he discovered his two subsequent passions: world traveling and ladies. That was how he found himself on a lifelong journey that appeared to be coming to an end in this room.

He gazed around, sighed, and shook his head as if to clear it.

Then, he sat up slowly-his body creaking as old wood-and gazed at his scruffy hat, which was sitting on a small table in the corner.

He'd been wearing it when he fell and hit his head. He didn't remember hitting his head; he remembered slipping on something wet, but he wasn't sure what.

The old memories that he was trying to get a hold of, slipped through his fingers like beach sand, but he caught some.

He was lucky with ladies from the start. Perhaps it was something to do with how he was always self-reliant. He was never awkward or nervous around them from the get-go.

Even now, in his late nineties, he had a youthful vitality about him. He wasn't strong anymore, but he was lithe and flexible and his thinking was still quick and agile.

"Are you alright there, Mr. Smith?" asked one of the nurses as she walked by his room and stopped by. He'd seen her around but never took the time to remember her name or even ask if she was married. He thought her name was Alice, but he could be wrong. She was young and sweet, like the ones in hospital soap operas (he didn't watch them, but still).

"Yes," he replied.

"Well… you need anything?" she asked smiling and he noticed she had a tiny nose and freckles that felt like beacons, guiding him to the harbor of her big blue eyes.

"I'm good," he grunted and she turned around and went back outside into that other world he couldn't access any longer.

His mind quickly explored all possible scenarios that would involve him asking for her for something and her actually doing it for him and each one ended in a dozen of missed opportunities in which he could say something nice and maybe even make a move.

That thought made him snicker and push himself up upon the pillow.

He thought of animal preservation in South Africa where he lived for a year. He'd been hired as a handyman for the wildlife park and took a liking to the large cats in particular after his encounter with an enormous white lion.

Then there was a girls' orphanage in India that he helped to restore, and how that story didn't end well because he was surrounded by too many adolescent girls vying for his attention and he had to run away in the middle of the night.

He thought of his years living in Mexico City where he drank tequila, built toy cars that ran like real with kids on the street, and then got into a brawl that almost landed him in jail.

Was that before Nora? That, he couldn't recall.

Ladies. Ladies…

Suddenly, he saw very clearly Angelina, his first, - the willow little sister of his next-door buddy Fred. She was just thirteen when he saw her for the first time gliding in their backyard in her shimmering knee-length tutu.

That made him want to see a skit - a dress, any kind of dress.

He always loved long flowing dresses. There was something about them that made him feel alive. He liked the way they swished as the women moved; he liked the lingering sound of their rustling as it spoke to his manhood.

Even now he moved in the bed restlessly as he thought about it.

And then there was always a scent. He always loved the heady scent of a woman's body. He loved to bury his nose in their necks and breathe in the fragrance of their hair…

And the hands and legs and arms and everything else that accentuated the feminine curves of a woman's body. He loved to kiss all those parts…

He glanced at the clock on his night table, which was shaped like a heavy brass sculpture of a barn owl with a large LED display on its front. It read 1:38 AM.

The owl looked at him. His big round eyes served as nightlights, illuminating the room with their eerie, green glow.

"I've always have been busy living," he said to the owl.

The owl didn't answer.

"What about you?" He asked the owl as it stared at him without blinking.

"I never imagined it would be like this. I always thought it would be more to life than the sum of its daily events. But here I am just another man who couldn't think of a better plan than simply to live."

The owl seemed to nod. Mr. Smith chuckled.

"I never thought I would be here talking to a brass-clock owl. Of all things."

The owl stayed still as if time itself had now stood to attention.

"Did you see that nurse?" Mr. Smith paused and fell silent as if listening to something - the faint staccato of the rain came from outside.

He always loved rains. He loved the way trees looked with all that water running over them - and how it smelled after a heavy downpour.

"Thum, thum… Thum, thum," he heard the rain pattering on the window.

It was getting harder for him to speak. His voice was coming out of his throat more and more sluggish with each word.

"This nurse makes me…"

He looked at the owl, smiled wistfully, and… his head fell to the side.

The monitors' beeps sped up and became erratic. The sound of squeaky shoes came rushing from outside his door, quickly followed by the nurse who burst inside just in time to see Mr. Smith's eyes wide open, unseeing, staring at the ceiling.

Outside, the sky brightened and fizzled back into the deep night, and the deluge against the glass began. Within the room, there was only the rhythm of falling water as the blizzard kept the window panes white and opaque.

. . .

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