by Lewis Shiner
Monika was back at 10:24. I was wound so tight that I jumped to my feet when I saw her. I hadn’t meant to say anything to her but now it was too late. She froze and stared at me as I ran across the street to her.
“You again,” she said.
“When you go back to bed, please, please make sure Jimi’s okay. If it looks like he’s been throwing up, come get me. I know what to do.”
“I only gave him the two pills. Like you said.”
“He might have gotten up in the night and taken some more. Just check him, please.”
“I will check him. Now please go.”
I nodded and walked away so she wouldn’t call the cops. She went downstairs, I circled the block, and sat on the curb again. Worst case, the ambulance would be here at 11:30. It was a long wait. I spent it in weird, violent fantasies in which I fought the ambulance attendants for Jimi’s life.
Eleven-thirty came and went, and I started to breathe easier. By 11:45 I was light-headed, ecstatic. By noon the fatigue caught up to me. I walked back to Notting Hill Gate and found a bakery with sweet rolls and orange juice and lingered over them as long as I could stand it.
At one P.M. I made a last pass by the flat. All was quiet. No ambulances, no police, Monika’s car parked where it had been.
Jimi was alive.
I had a long, deep sleep, then went down to the lobby, where there was a television. There was nothing on the news about Hendrix, just train strikes and the ongoing hostage crisis in Jordan, where three hijacked airliners had been blown up. A newsreader asked if we had entered the Age of Terrorism and I didn’t want to be the one to tell him yes, we had. The fedayeen, the men of sacrifice, were sharing their sense of helplessness with the world. Just like the rest of the starved and desperate people picking up guns and knives in Southeast Asia and Latin America. Could Jimi Hendrix change that?
I walked down Southampton to a nice Italian place I’d found. It was a beautiful evening, too beautiful to spend giving myself the third degree. Hendrix could do as much good as anyone, and I’d given him some time to do it in. It might take him weeks to come up with a final mix of the album, and I would hang around until he did.
I lingered over dinner and took a cab to the Speak after midnight. There was always the chance that Erika would show up, or somebody else that I might want to meet. I was ready for something. The room was crowded, and Rod Stewart and the Faces were playing loud enough to rattle the glasses on the bar. I got a lemonade and let the movement of the crowd take me toward the stage.
I wasn’t too surprised when I saw Jimi holding court at a row of tables down front. He saw me on the sidelines and beckoned me over. “Heyyy,” he said, shaking my hand. “My man. Future man. What did you say your name was?”
“Ray. Ray Shackleford.”
“Ray. Cat that knows his drugs. That shit of Monika’s, like, I took a couple and I was laying there, thinking, ‘Man, this is not happening,’ and I was gonna get up and take some more and then remembered what you said so I just lay there awhile longer and then pow; it just laid me out. Hey, you got to meet my people. This is Mitch, and Sly Stone, you know Monika, this is Devon and this is Eric Clapton. Next to Eric there is the Queen of Sheba. Yes, the Queen of Sheba, thank you very much.” Actually it was Patti Boyd, still married to George Harrison. Clapton would write “Layla” for her next year in Miami.
I shook hands all around and somebody brought me a chair. I’ll never forget the next two hours. Part of it was the glamour, of course. They were all beautiful and rich, talented and famous. None of that was as important as the way music mattered to all of them. The conversations were hard to follow, three or four of them going at once, Eric earnest and adamant, Sly full of revolutionary fervor, Jimi laid-back, saying, “Well, you know, like, dig, brother,” while the music blasted all around us. Like in a song, the words didn’t matter as much as the feeling, the community, the warmth. Jimi seemed renewed. Maybe things had gone well in court, maybe on some level he knew he’d cheated death. Maybe all he’d needed was a good night’s sleep.
After the Faces finished, Jimi and Eric got up to jam. Jimi wanted to play “Sunshine of Your Love” and Eric didn’t. Jimi started it anyway, laughing and saying, “Oh come on, don’t act like you don’t know it, it goes just like this here,” and they ended up trading solos for ten minutes while Ron Wood and Kenny Jones backed them up. They did “Key to the Highway” and then Sly got up and sang “Land of a Thousand Dances.” A part of me knew that it would never have happened without me, and it was all the thanks I needed.
The jam broke up a little after two. It could have gone on forever and been all right with me. Monika and Devon, still jockeying for position, went backstage. I stayed and talked with Patti Boyd, mostly about her sister and Mick Fleetwood. She was surprised I knew so much about the band, since they hadn’t really broken in America yet.
Jimi and the others came out carrying guitar cases. I stood around with them and when I had a chance I asked Jimi about New York and the tapes.
“Oh, yeah, for sure, man, I talked to Chas this afternoon. He’s got me a flight over on Monday and then I’m going to come back and we’re going to see if we can do a thing with them. He’s really groovy about it, I think it’s going to happen. Listen, when I get back, you should really come down with us and hear what we’ve got.”
“I’d like that,” I said.
I guess I wanted him to give me addresses and phone numbers on the spot, and it took me a second to realize he was only being polite. “Sure, man, you can like come by the studio or something, it’ll be real nice.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks.” I shook his hand. I didn’t want to leave, but the time had clearly come.
Jimi felt it and let me off the hook. “If you’re not doing anything, you could come along over to this party. Probably be some, I don’t know, like free booze or food or girls or something.”
It’s the kind of thing he must have done all the time, one more little act of kindness, like all the others that had eaten him up, chipped away pieces of him until there was nothing left. At that moment I didn’t care. I was grateful for the piece he’d offered me. “Yeah. I’d like that.”
The group moved slowly toward the stairs. Jimi handed me his guitar case while he put on a trench coat. One more thing to make me feel like I belonged. Monika kissed him quickly and went ahead to get her car. We went upstairs into the cold light of Margaret Street. There were only a few people left on the sidewalks.
“Christ, we’ll never get a cab,” Eric said.
“I’ll go ring one up, shall I?” Patti said. She moved in close to him and he put his arm around her. It made me lonely to look at them.
“Give it a minute,” Eric said. “Something will turn up.”
Some kid with shaggy hair over his ears and collar came up to talk to Jimi. I couldn’t hear any actual words, but the rhythm was American and sounded harsh and unpleasant. Jimi stood there with his hands in the pockets of his trench coat, guitar at his feet, smiling and answering the kid’s questions. I looked away for a second, trying to spot Monika or a cab.
When I looked back the kid had a gun.
“Look out!” I yelled.
I started to run toward him. Jimi was looking at the gun. He didn’t try to run or knock it away. There wasn’t time. The kid fired five times, point-blank, into Jimi’s chest.
c h a p t e r 8
VOODOO CHILD
(SLIGHT RETURN)
I was on the floor of my workshop. My jeans had dried stiff where I’d pissed in them. I hurt all over, mostly in my head and my stomach. I tried to stand up and took a chair over with me when I didn’t make it. Mostly I was embarrassed. I didn’t want anybody to see me this way. I didn’t want to end up in the hospital again and have to explain what it was that put me there.
I crawled downstairs, headfirst, on hands and knees. I realized it was a bad idea when the blood rushed to my head. I lost all feeling in my hands and feet, and I slid the las
t dozen steps on my chest.
The linoleum at the foot of the stairs felt cool on my face. I thought if I put something in my stomach I would be okay. I pulled myself into the kitchen on my elbows, like when I was a kid playing army.
I got a half gallon of milk out of the refrigerator. I hoped it was still fresh. My brain couldn’t process the information from my nose. If I knew what day it was it would help. I held the milk carton to my chest with one hand and scooted into the living room on my ass. There’s only a secondhand armchair where the sofa used to be. I dragged the cushion off the seat and leaned against it and turned the TV on with the remote. According to the preview channel it was two in the afternoon on Sunday, July 16. I’d been unconscious just under two days.
I drank a little of the milk. My hands shook enough to make it hard. Then I put the milk down and thought, this is not so bad. I’m lying here, watching TV, like anybody else. Then I threw the milk up all over myself.
I was freezing. It didn’t occur to me to turn off the air conditioning. Instead I took off my shoes and emptied my pockets and crawled into a tub full of very hot water, clothes and all. I rested there for an hour, adding hot water every few minutes. After a while I was able to get out of my clothes, which I heaped in the sink.
Drowning began to seem a greater danger than the chills. I scrubbed myself down and got out and wrapped myself in towels. I found that I could walk, provided I held on to something. I staggered to the kitchen for a Coke and that gave me enough energy to put on dry clothes. I rested for a while and then drank another Coke and ate some peanut butter on toast.
Then I got into bed in my clothes and slept for fourteen hours.
There were messages on the machine from Elizabeth and my mother and a couple of customers. I called my mother and told her I was in L.A., that I was with Graham, and asked her to call Elizabeth for me. I’d cast off all lines and I was headed for the open sea.
I drank a lot of juice and ate whenever I felt like it—cereal, frozen dinners, cookies and ice cream. The rest of the time I lay on pillows on the living room floor, under an afghan that my grandmother had knitted, surrounded by Hendrix books, which I read again front to back.
Charlie Murray’s book says they put Hendrix on his back in the ambulance. David Henderson’s says he was sitting up. I read somewhere that Hendrix and Joplin were both killed by the CIA, because of their anarchistic influence, but now I can’t find it. The kid who shot Jimi was American. Could he have been with the CIA? The mob? The Klan?
There was a mention of Erika in Norm N. Nite’s Rock on Almanac, under “Deaths in 1971.” “Erika Hanover (photographer), Wednesday, February 10 (drug overdose; 41).” It was so final. I thought about what she’d said to me in the hotel room. That it was too late for her, that there was still hope for Jimi. I thought, I’ll save you too if I can.
I watched my Hendrix videotapes over and over. I replayed the jam session at the Speakeasy in my mind until I couldn’t tell whether I was remembering details or making them up. When I least expected it something would slip sideways into my consciousness: the warm, dry touch of Jimi’s hand, the husky sound of Erika’s voice.
Mostly I replayed that final scene on Margaret Street, with tiny changes. Maybe one of the bouncers walks us out, heads the kid off, maybe even frisks him and takes the gun.
Maybe Jimi stays downstairs in the club long enough to put a coin in one of the slot machines. He hits the jackpot. He leaves all but one of the coins on the bar, laughing. “It’s like I really don’t care about the money, you know. It’s the luck I need some of.” When he goes up into the street Monika is already there with the car. He brushes past the kid fan who doesn’t have time to say anything, and he gets in the car and drives away.
Maybe Jimi flies on to New York that night instead of going to the Speak. Once he’s there he decides he wants to finish the album at Electric Lady. Maybe Chas flies with him. New York feels safer to me somehow. In London and California the dream is dying, in New York it isn’t quite as obvious. I can imagine Chas and Jimi there, in the cool, subterranean darkness of the studio, as they bring everything together.
I couldn’t hear it.
I was too weak, I couldn’t throw myself into the vision. I needed to rest somewhere, maybe lie in the sun for a few weeks.
Yeah, great idea. How about Cozumel?
I couldn’t even face the sunlight that came in the windows. The blinds had been drawn for days. I’d finished all the frozen dinners and the canned soup and the bread. For dinner I had plain spaghetti and the last of the olives and a can of pork and beans and a glass of water. The refrigerator was empty except for the cans of Budweiser, all ten of them, which I would not touch. To relapse into alcohol at this point would be crazy.
The only food left is a can of tomato paste and some rice and flour. I don’t want to go to the store. I might run into somebody I know. Maybe even Elizabeth. What would I say then?
If it was 1970 in New York, though, I could be there with Jimi. We could finish the album. There are lots of good places to eat in New York. I could eat there. The longer I think about it, the more sense it makes.
To go to the grocery store I would have to shower and shave and dress. I would have to go outside, and I would have to take my father’s pickup truck. I haven’t used it in weeks and it might not start. And then drive all that way, and have to deal with all those people. My leg doesn’t even feel strong enough to work the clutch.
It’s easier to go to New York. I don’t have to get up. New York is here in my mind, here in front of me.
Right here on Sixth Avenue, outside the curved brick entrance to Electric Lady Studios.
I knew Jimi would come out any minute. I wished I’d had a chance to shave. I must have looked a little shabby, hair not brushed, jeans not especially new or clean, white T-shirt with a couple of holes in it, navy blue blazer from high school. Jimi wouldn’t mind. Appearances were never that important to him. He was like Brian that way, he knew it’s what’s inside you that counts.
I’d never been to Greenwich Village before, never been to New York other than a few hours at Idlewild, before it was JFK, on my way to Africa with my parents. I’d seen it in movies and TV shows enough to know what it looked like. It was late afternoon, the sun just going down, not quite dark enough for the cars to put their lights on. The weather felt timeless, warm enough to walk around in shirtsleeves, cool enough not to break a sweat. The street was full of bright yellow cabs and there were people on the sidewalk across the street, but there was nobody within a hundred yards of me. It seemed only natural and expected.
Jimi came up the stairs from the studio. Chas Chandler was with him, and a couple of the studio’s guards, huge black men in full motorcycle regalia. Jimi stopped when he saw me. “Hey, Ray,” he said. “I didn’t know you were in New York.”
Jimi was wearing glasses, round ones, with wire frames. I knew he’d always needed them but was too vain to wear them. It was why he was such a terrible driver, because he couldn’t see.
“I didn’t know I was going to be here,” I said.
“Hey, you know Chas, Chas Chandler?”
“Pleasure,” he said, his Newcastle accent more Scots than English.
“So like what are you up for, Ray? Maybe a hamburger or a pizza or something?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’d like that.”
Chas said, “I best get back to the hotel. It feels like midnight to me already. I don’t know how I used to manage this all the bloody time.”
We said good-bye to him and walked down Eighth Street into the heart of the West Village. The sky was deep blue, laced with pink from the setting sun. It was the most beautiful, heartbreaking color.
“How’s the album going?” I said.
“I don’t know,” Jimi said. “It’s like I can’t see the shape of it yet or whatever. Was it Michelangelo or maybe Bob Dylan who said there’s this thing already inside the marble and all you have to do is get rid of all the other stuff
that isn’t supposed to be there? So I’ve got all these marbles and I’m not sure which ones I should shoot and then sometimes I just think what it is is I’m losing my marbles altogether.”
Jimi stopped and said, “Listen, Ray, man, I got an idea. Let’s go on up to Harlem, we can get some real soul food. Go to the Palm Cafe up on 125th Street. Check out the band, see what’s going down. You ever eat any real soul food?”
I shook my head.
“Man, you like all those colored singers, but you never lived the life. You got to see where it is all that music comes from.”
“When did I tell you about the kind of singers I like?”
“In London, man, I don’t know, sometime. You like Marvin Gaye and Sam Cooke and Otis Redding and all like that, right? That’s what you told me.”
“Yeah, but…”
“But what, Ray? Come on, brother, spit it out.”
“I can’t go to Harlem with you. I’m white.”
Jimi looked at me over the tops of his glasses, like he’d never noticed before. “You don’t have to worry, you’ll be with me and everything. These are my people up there, they’ll take care of us. Hey, man, it’s not even dark outside.”
We got on the A train, like in the Ellington song. Once past Columbus Circle I was the only white face on the train. Maybe I should have been scared, but I never felt like I was on the outside of anything. There was the same distance between all of us. All the faces I looked into seemed to have stories to tell. A middle-aged man in a dark suit, wiping his face with a red bandanna, a tiny teenage girl with a crying baby. Nobody recognized Jimi in spite of his flashy clothes, the necktie knotted around his head and his weird patchwork jacket.
The train car made a sharp turn, the lights flickered, and Jimi said, “So, you feel like you’re getting anywhere?”
“What do you mean?”
