Are You Experienced? (23 page)

Then he segued right into his biggest hit, “Purple Haze,” and again I realized I had been holding my breath without knowing it. The crowd cheered. Jimi looked at me and smiled. Maybe he had been holding his breath, too.

Fifteen minutes later, Woodstock was over. When Jimi and his band finished playing their encore, Michael and I grabbed everyone else's hands and made them rush backstage with us. I was afraid that somehow Jimi might get whisked past us by his managers, and then I would be stuck in 1969 forever, but he made his way straight to me. “You were right, Gabriel. I could feel the power running through the guitar when I played the ‘Banner.' Almost like it was playing itself, man! Now, let's plug this thing into an amp and get you home. I … I'm pretty wasted. I really have to crash, you know?”

His eyes were incredibly bloodshot. I knew he had been up all night, and I had seen him smoking pot and drinking wine. Plus, who knew what else he had been taking? Thinking about all his talent, and how little time he had left, I just wanted to stand there and cry or something. I must have stood there too long, because he said, “Let's go, Gabriel! We have to do this—before the band splits without me.”

Yeah, we had shared some moments, but the guy was still a mega rock star.

Behind his band's amplifiers, there were a few other amps left over from other bands that were still plugged in. Jimi gestured to my father and my uncle, who were chatting with Jimi's drummer and rhythm guitarist. “I'll tell them you—let's see. I'll say you got a ride out with my manager in a helicopter. All right?”

I wanted to say good-bye properly to Debbie, Tina, Willow, David, and—especially—Michael. But really, nothing I could say was going to make any sense. No matter what I said, the Woodstock bubble was about to pop. My eyes stung as David peered at us between the amplifiers and shouted, “Hey, Mr. Hendrix, can we get a quick picture with you and the guitar?”

Jimi plugged the Strat into one of the amps and said to me, “Now or never, brother. Don't worry, I'll give Michael the guitar, and you'll go tell your father what really went down with his brother.”

“My uncle's still going to die, right?”

Jimi said, “It's history, man. I'm history.”

“So did I make any difference here?”

“You made a difference for me. Now you have to go back home and make a difference for your
own
self, you know what I'm saying? Come on, now. Play my chord.”

And with that, the most famous rock guitarist in history handed me the most famous guitar in history.

I looked over the amps at my father and my uncle one last time. Then I got down on my knees and played that chord.

 

VOODOO CHILD (SLIGHT RETURN)

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2014

 

I woke up in the hospital, with tubes running in and out of me, and immediately had a seizure. The next thing I knew, my father was sitting next to the bed, crying to my mother about Uncle Mike's death. Everything hit me at once then: who I was. Where I was. Where I had been—and what it meant that my father was telling this story.

Jimi had been right. My trip to Woodstock hadn't saved any lives.

“Dad,” I said. Well, I tried to say it. My mouth was incredibly dry, my lips were cracked in about a million places, and my vocal cords felt rusted in place. Basically, I said, “Gah.”

My mom heard me though, and shrieked. “He said something! See, I told you he was waking up before. We're right here, Richard. Can you hear me?”

I attempted to make another noise, but my throat had seized up. This was the most warmth I had felt from my mom in years. Truthfully, I felt like bawling.

Dad even piped in. “Can you hear us?”

“Yek.”

“Marianne, I think you're right! He did say something. I'll go get somebody.”

Classic Dad—fleeing as soon as he might have to interact. I couldn't remember the last time I had actively wanted to be in my father's presence, but this time I didn't want him to go anywhere. We had so much to talk about. I cleared my throat—which was a really painful move—and forced myself to enunciate as I said, “Dad. Stay. Please.”

A little bit caveman-esque, but it did the trick. Mom said, “I'll go,” and her footsteps tapped their way into the distance.

“What is it, Richard? Is something hurting you? Do you need something?”

Suddenly I was crying, harder than I ever had before in my life. “I'm sorry, Dad,” I choked out. “I'm so sorry. I tried. I tried, but I guess I couldn't change anything!” The tears actually lubricated my eyes enough that I could get them open, but I couldn't make anything out at first because (a) I was sobbing too hard, and (b) the whole world was blindingly bright. Eventually, I could make out a shadow looming over me as my father sat on the edge of my bed and put his hand next to mine. He didn't touch me or anything, but he made a somewhat-more-than-half-assed paternal effort.

“Richard,” he said softly, “are you talking about the things you said to me on Friday night? Or the damage to the electric guitar? Or the arrest? Or the fire in the basement? We can discuss all of that later. Right now, we have to concentrate on getting you well, all right?”

Fire in the basement? Damage to the electric guitar? I felt another sob course through me. I forced myself to breathe deeply, though, and said, “No, Dad, I'm sorry about Uncle Mike. And Jimi Hendrix. They were both so…”

I couldn't even finish. I closed my eyes, and all I could do was picture my father at fifteen, smiling eternally, onstage with his brother and Jimi.

“What are you talking about, Richie? I know you've been through a lot. In fact, the doctors weren't sure you would even wake up. Maybe you'd better rest a bit. I'm sure your mother will be back any minute with somebody who can help us understand what's going on, and then we can—”

I tried to sit up, but all the wires and tubes stopped me. It hurt. “Dad, you're not listening to me. You never listen to me!”

“What do you mean, Richard? I'm listening, but you're not making any sense. You're talking about your uncle Michael and Jimi Hendrix, but you never met either of them. They both … passed away long before you were born. So, um, maybe you had a dream about meeting them? I know you were asking me about your uncle on Friday night, not too long before your … accident.”

Just then, I had a crazy thought. I closed my eyes again for a moment and tried to concentrate on my right hip. My entire nervous system was beset with pain signals, but I forced myself to wriggle around in bed and attempt to determine whether the hip was still sore. I was fairly sure it was.

“Dad,” I said, “I know this sounds crazy, and I know you pretty much think I'm insane half the time anyway. But could you look under the covers at the front of my right hip bone?”

“Richie, why would—”

“Please, Dad. Can you just trust me for once?”

I couldn't tilt my neck down far enough to look at my hip, but I felt cold air as my father pulled the blankets away from my torso. Then he gasped.

“Do you see it?” I asked.

“S-see what?”

“The Cadillac hood ornament?”

“Yes. But—”

“Have you seen a scar like that before?”

“Yes. But—”

“When was the last time you saw this scar, Dad?”

“Umm … I—”

“I'll tell you, and you can tell me if I'm right, okay? I think it was August, 1969. I think it was on a kid named Gabriel. I think your brother, Michael, hit him with your father's Cadillac. Check out my hair, Dad. Haven't you been wondering why it's a completely different color now?”

“Richie, I don't know how you know all this, and I don't know when you found the time to put on this … this … tattoo, or whatever it is. But you should know better than to joke around about Woodstock with me. As for your hair, I'm not sure what you mean about a different color, but it got pretty badly singed when you got electrocuted by the Stratocaster, and what's left isn't really much of a color at all.”

Great,
I thought.
On top of everything else, my hair is crispy-fried. Whatever. I still have to prove this to my father, or I won't be able to tell him the real reason his brother died
.

But my throat was absolutely killing me. “Can I have a little bit of water, please?” I asked.

“We should probably wait until a doctor says it's all right.”

“Come on, Dad. There's something I really have to tell you, and it's waited forty-five years already.”

He adopted the father-knows-best smirk that had made me want to strangle him for approximately half my childhood, and I knew my water was not forthcoming. I swallowed whatever meager spit I could force myself to work up, and launched into my big speech, anyway.

“I'm Gabriel.”

Dad laughed, a single bark that hit me in the gut like a round of buckshot, but I kept talking.

“Listen. You were in the backseat. Willow and Michael were in front. It was Friday, August fifteenth, and there was music on the radio. I appeared out of nowhere, and the car hit me. I flew into a ditch. Thanks for the clothes, by the way. Does this sound familiar so far?

“You all invited me to come along with you to the festival, so I did. On Friday night, we met Debbie and Tina. Tina was tripping, and she threw up orange juice all over you. Remember?

“On Saturday morning, you and I went down to the pond to wash off, and I'm pretty sure we started the skinny-dipping craze at Woodstock.

“On Saturday night, we accidentally ate some mushrooms and—”

“Richard Gabriel Barber, be quiet for a moment and listen to me! How do you know all this? I haven't told a single living soul about most of it. Your mother doesn't even know about Tina, or the skinny-dipping, or—oh, Lord!—the mushrooms. Did you meet Gabriel somewhere? Has he contacted you over the Internet? I've heard about these Web predators. He didn't seem like the type back when we were teenagers, but then again, I also didn't think he'd disappear for half a century. We met so fast, and then became so close so quickly. He was like my best friend or something, but then he disappeared so suddenly.…”

“Behind a wall of amplifiers…”

“Behind a wall of … Richard, that doesn't prove anything. He could have told you that, too.”

“All right, Dad. Why don't you ask me some questions? Things so specific that only Gabriel himself could possibly know the answers?”

Dad nodded slowly. “I still don't believe any of this, Richard. But maybe some questions will help to set the record straight. Who made me a treat for my birthday, and what was the treat?”

“Willow, and it was mushroom brownies.”

“Whom did we meet at the nursing tent?”

“The first time or the second time?”

Dad looked surprised for a second, then recovered. “The first time.”

“John Sebastian and Janis Joplin. They played ‘Me and Bobby McGee' for us, even though her version of it didn't come out on a record until after she was dead.”

“What did we have for breakfast on Sunday morning?”

“Easy. Granola, with tea. And you loved the drummer from Santana the most of all, and you were so excited in the car on the way to the concert that I didn't think you'd ever shut up, but it was really kind of amazing because you never get that excited about anything anymore. We sang ‘Dance to the Music' in harmony. You were so … alive.”

“Richard.”

“I'm sorry, but it's true. Anyway, I met such incredible people! You were really nice to Tina. I'm going to miss Debbie. Willow was so beautiful that it almost hurt every time I looked at her. Jimi Hendrix was, I don't know, haunted. And Uncle Mike was the coolest person I've ever met in my life.”

Dad turned away from me without a word and walked out of the room. I braced myself for a door slam, but my father surprised me; he just let the door swing shut with a hydraulic hiss. For a few long minutes, I could hear the heels of his shoes clacking past as he paced up and down the hallway.

When I thought I would go insane from either the suspense or my thirst, Dad came quietly back into the room and did something that was an all-time first in our relationship. He put his hand on my shoulder. “This is completely impossible,” he said, but it almost sounded as though he was talking to himself. Then he looked me right in the eye and said, “Gabriel? You're really Gabriel?”

I nodded.

We sat there for the longest time, not saying anything, and I kept expecting my mother to come bursting back into the room with an entire medical team in tow before we could finish having this strangest of all interludes. Then I looked past Dad, and saw that Mom was watching silently through the little window from the hallway. I guess even she recognized a moment when she saw one.

Finally, Dad giggled. For a split second, I saw the fifteen-year-old David, high on mushrooms, superimposed on my sixty-year-old father.

“What's so funny?” I asked.

“I just realized something.”

“What?”

“Well, when we were trying to come up with a middle name for you, your mother suggested Michael, but I was dead-set against it, because I worried that my brother's name might bring bad luck. So I tried to pick out the name of the one person I had trusted the most, aside from your uncle Mike. In the end, I thought of my old friend Gabriel. So, Richard, as things turned out, I named you after yourself.”

 

LONG TIME GONE

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2014

 

The doctors swarmed over me for a couple of hours, marveling over my miraculous return from vegetable-ville. As far as they knew, most of the damage to my body had been done when I had touched the strings of Jimi's guitar in our basement on Friday night. Dad said sparks had flown everywhere, and I had jerked spasmodically for a few seconds as my hair started smoldering. Then Dad had pulled the plug from the wall, and I had fallen down hard and hit my head on the bare cement floor of the cellar. Nobody was sure whether it was the electricity or the concussion that had rendered me unconscious for the long weekend. I had a feeling my mind had just been … elsewhere.