Are You Experienced? (19 page)

Wow,
I thought.
His brother truly is worth more to him than his Martin
.

I took the guitar out, and strummed a few chords. Amazingly, it was in tune despite the humidity, so I started playing songs right away. I sang the most soothing old songs I could think of. David didn't miraculously sit up and recover or anything, so I kept on playing song after song.

Then I thought of the saddest and most beautiful song I know, Jimi Hendrix's “Angel.” It's also incredibly tough to play, but I thought maybe it would bring some kind of strange good luck. I mean, it's all about an angel coming down from heaven to rescue the singer. Which was kind of what I was trying to be, but also what we all needed.

I played and sang my heart out. At the end, my throat was raw, and my fingers ached from the stretches it took to reach all the notes. Jimi Hendrix had huge hands; I don't. When I stopped, David rolled halfway over, so he was looking straight up at the ceiling. He didn't say anything, though. Michael did. “Wow, what was that? It's beautiful, man. Haunting.”

“Oh, it's a song called ‘Angel.' It's on a Jimi Hendrix album called—”

A quiet, shaky voice rose up from the cot in the corner. “That song's never been on any album. And, well, I think I would know if it had.”

The form on the cot threw off its blanket, sat up, and spoke. “Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is James. But, you know, my friends call me Jimi.”

 

MESSAGE TO LOVE

SUNDAY, AUGUST 17, 1969

 

I nearly dropped Michael's guitar. “Uh … uh…” I said.

Michael was a little smoother. He managed to say actual words. “Hendrix. You're Jimi Hendrix!”

Jimi, who was wearing a fringed white leather jacket, and sporting an earring and a fluorescent pink bandana over his Afro, looked rather sheepish about our shock. “Yes, I am,” he said softly.

“But … but … you were sleeping!” I exclaimed. Because, you know, rock stars don't just sleep. Or because I'm an idiot.

Jimi said, “Well, man, I was tired, you know. It's crazy backstage, and everybody wants something from you all the time. And, well, I may have swallowed some, you know,
recreational pharmaceuticals
, so things were feeling a little tripped out. So I just kind of wandered in here and asked the nurse if I could crash for a while. Where is she?”

“She went looking for a doctor and some Thorazine,” Michael said. “My brother, David, here ate some mushrooms, and now he's having a bad trip. He won't even open his eyes. She said if David doesn't wake up, the doctor's going to shoot him up with it, call our parents, and send him to the hospital. And our parents are going to kill us. Our father isn't … Well, he's not the kind of father you'd want to have. I mean, if you had a choice.”

“Wow, that's too bad, man. I know all about that scene.”

“You do?” Michael asked. “But—”

“But what?” Jimi asked, again in that gentle voice.

“But you're a rock star. You're a hero of mine. You're, um, I mean, this sounds stupid, but you're the whole reason I wanted to come to this concert. Why would you have a bad trip? Everything in your life is a dream, right?”

Jimi smiled, but he didn't look happy. “Just because my life is your dream doesn't mean it's mine. What's your name?”

“I'm Michael and this is Gabriel.”

“Michael, don't mind me, all right? I'm just really tired, and too many people want me to be too many things, you know? Everybody
wants
something. Sometimes I wish I could just curl up and hide away for a year or so. But I can't.

“And your dad … I know all about fathers. Trust me. So, Gabriel?”

“Uh, yes. Sir. Yes, sir.”

Jimi laughed. “I left the army a couple of years ago, Gabriel. I don't think anybody calls lead guitar players ‘sir.' You know what I'm saying?”

I nodded and gulped.

“Anyway,” he said, “how did you know my song? It has
not
been on an album. Plus, you changed the lyrics around. I've recorded a couple of demos, and the lines are a little bit different from how you sang them. Tell me again where you heard it?”

Oh, boy. I had really screwed up. This was probably the most awkward moment of my life. No, the most awkward moment of anyone's life. Now that I had a moment to think, I was pretty sure the “Angel” song was on an album of previously unreleased material that had come out after Jimi Hendrix died.

Try explaining that one. “I, well, uh … Michael, can I speak to Jimi alone for a minute?”

Michael looked at me like I was crazy. So did Jimi. And maybe I was crazy. But somehow, thinking about the note Jimi was going to write me, I felt like I could tell him more of the truth than I could tell my uncle. After a long pause, Michael said, “Okay, I'll just sit by my brother here.”

Jimi gestured me over to his cot. I handed the guitar to Michael and walked over. Jimi said, “All right, little brother. Tell me about the song.”

I tried to say something, but no sound came from my throat.

“Please?” he whispered, licking his lips. “It's important to me.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I
know
where you came from,” he said.

I felt sick. Who knew how badly this was going to mess everything up? “What do you mean?” I said.

“I heard you, Gabriel. When you were talking to David. I heard the whole thing. You talked about the future. And how you might not get to be born. And how you needed to get back to your own time. Then when you played ‘Angel,' I knew—you're a time traveler! I've been waiting for you to come, you know.”

“What?”

“That's right, brother—I've been waiting. Have you ever listened to my song lyrics?”

“Sure. I'm a huge fan. But—”

“But nothing. Why do you think I'm always singing about flying saucers and aliens and angels? And mermaids? And traveling through time? You were the only one I was still waiting on, man!”

“You mean…?”

He grinned. “Everybody else already showed up, man.”

My mouth dropped open. He had to be joking. But then again, I was a kid from the future, so why couldn't there be flying saucers and aliens? Aliens? Angels? “Really? Seriously?”

He nodded, an extremely serious look on his face. “Mermaids?” I asked.

Jimi raised an eyebrow and giggled. “All right, I'm kidding you,” he said. “No, I'm not. Yes, I am. No, I'm not. Yes, I am.”

“Wait, which is it?”

“Really,” he said, “if you want to know God's honest truth, I'm a little bit high.” He giggled one more time, and it dawned on me that Jimi Hendrix—an incredibly famous rock star—sounded nervous. “And, well, an old fortune-teller lady over in Europe gave me a guitar, and told me I was going to meet a boy from the future. So, Gabriel, are you the one?”

I inhaled deeply, then nodded. “Yes.”

“Wow,” he said. “I always thought you'd have some kind of, I don't know, silver clothes or something. Your hair is pretty cool, though. Does everybody have hair like that where you're from?”

“No, my hair was black until two days ago. Then I played your white guitar, and, well, it zapped me back here. Somehow, the time change bleached my hair.”

“You played my white guitar, huh? Well, that makes sense. The gypsy lady laid a whole big trip on me. She said I would play a song this year that would change everything for my country, and the guitar I played it on would become—what did she say?—the symbol and center of these three days. That guitar was the one she gave to me.”

I nodded. I knew exactly what song she meant. After all, it was the most famous scene in the Woodstock movie.

“So, I just got my new band together for this festival, Gabriel, and we're still not really tight, you know? What song am I supposed to play that's so important? I hope it's not ‘Angel,' because these boys don't even know that one!”

I licked my lips. Holy cow, I could completely change the future by not mentioning “The Star-Spangled Banner.” When Jimi Hendrix had played that song early on Monday morning as Woodstock drew to a close, he reclaimed America and its anthem for a new generation. It was huge. I mean, I wasn't sure I fully understood it, but my mom had once said that that moment showed the world for once and for all that you could be patriotic and still hate the Vietnam War. She even thought it had helped make the war end sooner.

“‘The Star-Spangled Banner'.”

“Oh, really? I've played that one before, and it hasn't been some huge deal or anything.”

“Well, tomorrow it will be.”

“Tomorrow? I'm playing tonight.”

“Nope.”

“You're kidding me now.”

“Nope.” Hey, this was kind of fun.

“Because of the rain?”

“Yup.”

“Wow, far out. So, I just, like,
give
you my white Strat, huh? And how does it become a, you know, time machine? Does everyone in the distant future have a special time cube in their flying saucer that lets them triangulate back from an object to its source, or whatever you want to call it?”

No,
I thought,
but that would be really freaking cool.
“I don't know about the distant future. My time is only forty-five years from now. That kid lying on the cot over there? The one that's not moving or anything? He's going to be my dad. Michael's my uncle. I, uh, I came back to save Michael.”

“Wait a minute,” Jimi said. “You have to tell me about the guitar.”

“Okay, you have to give it to Michael after you come offstage tomorrow morning, with a note that tells me what to do. And what I have to do is play your chord.”

“My chord?”

“You know, the E seventh chord with the sharp ninth in it, like in ‘Purple Haze'? Or ‘Foxy Lady'? You're going to give Michael the guitar, with a note that tells me to play the chord for a three-day pass.”

“What happens at the end of three days?”

“I don't know yet.”

“Wait a minute, you're saying that fifty years in the future, people are still going to know my songs?”

I thought about this. Jimi was going to die at age twenty-seven in 1970, but obviously he didn't know this. So in fifty years, he'd only be twenty-six plus fifty, or seventy-six. That wasn't even so old. “Sure,” I said. “You'll be playing concerts and stuff, and you'll be on TV all the time. It'll be really—”

“Gabriel, I know I'm going to die soon,” Jimi said. “You don't have to lie to me about it. The gypsy lady told me, but I've always known anyway. My mother died young, and she was the only person who ever really cared about me. That's what the song ‘Angel' is about, right? It's about joining my mother again in the sky someday. So you don't have to pretend for me. I've been waiting for you to come so I can find out whether my life has made a difference. I want to know people won't just forget me right away, man.”

“Forget you? Are you kidding me? You're huge in fifty years. You know how you said, ‘When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace?'”

“Yeah, so?”

“That was, like, everybody's favorite Facebook status in seventh grade.”

“Everybody's favorite
what
?”

“It's, uh … it means that … well, everybody is going to have little computers in their phones, okay? And they're going to carry the phones around. And when seventh-grade girls are trying to sound smart and deep, they're all going to type your quote into their little computer-phone things for everyone else to see.”

“Far out.”

“Yeah. And your music. Guitar players are going to study you in school the way classical players study Mozart and Bach. Please trust me: You don't have to worry about your legacy.”

“They're going to study me? Really? I don't even know how to read music, man.”

“You know how to play it, though.”

Jimi looked down at his feet. “Can I ask you something else?”

“Sure. We have to hurry, though. My father—”

“I know. I really need to know this, though. When I die … Do you know … Will my family come?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean … listen, this hasn't been in any magazine articles or anything, but my father didn't let me or my brother, Leon, go to our mother's funeral. I've had nightmares about it ever since. Nightmares about my mother trying to reach me and ask me why I didn't come to her, and nightmares about my father and Leon not coming to stand by me.”

Jimi swallowed before continuing. “So, uh, do they? When it's my time, do they come and stand for me?”

Oh, man. I knew the answer to this one. “Mr. Hendrix—Jimi—when the time comes, your father and your brother will be there. They won't leave you. I read a book about your life, and I know this. Your father will stand over your casket, and at the funeral, in front of everybody, he's going to reach down and rub his knuckles over your head again and again. He's going to say, ‘My boy, my boy, my boy,' until someone leads him away and they close the coffin. Your father won't leave your side until you're in the ground. And then he's going to spend the rest of his life running a museum dedicated to you.”

Tears ran down Jimi's face. “Thank you,” he whispered. “Ever since I was a little kid, I've been so worried I'd be alone when my time comes. But for the first time now, I'm not afraid. It won't be so bad, going, if I know my father will be there for me. That's true, right?”

I nodded.

“You promise?”

I nodded again.

Jimi Hendrix leaned back and smiled. I looked over at my own father, who still hadn't moved an inch. Michael was rubbing his shoulders and whispering to him, but it didn't appear to be working. I felt a lump in my throat. Jimi Hendrix had been abused and neglected by his father his entire life, and his greatest relief was that once he was dead, his dad would mourn him. My dad was alive and breathing across the room, and I was alive and breathing right here.