Chapter Twenty Nine

I let my eyes scan the room with the same reverence and wonder that a dung-beetle would receive the floor of an elephant cage. They were all there in one room. All of my idols. The next table over was Frank Zappa talking with Jim Morrison and George Harrison. Janis Joplin was standing at the jukebox with Billie Holliday. John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, and Willie Dixon were playing poker for a million dollars. Duane Allman sat on a stool with his back to the bar laughing across the diner at all the dead guys from Lynard Skynard. It was rock and roll Eden.

"Move the crushed velvet down, Hoodoo." Said Stevie Ray Vaughan to Jimi Hendrix as he elbowed him to scoot towards the wall in order to make more room for me. "Plant it here Marty." He patted the open seat with his muscular hand. "Have some fried!"

"I didn't mean to crash your party." The truth is I would've crashed this party in my underpants.

"No big thang." Stevie laughed a raucous howl and slapped me on the back. "We were hoping you'd find us soon, we have been waiting."

"Hey I dig the groovy head ornament M! I never would've thought of such a trademark when I was alive." Hendrix spoke in such a sweet and polite tone, not the crazy monster that his guitar playing might lead you to expect.

Stevie took Oprah while I dug into the plate of delicious chicken. I tried speaking with my mouth full and what came out was a mish-mash of gobbledy-gook. I took a drink from the stein of beer that Robert Johnson scooted my way and tried again. "I guess you know how I got the scar?"

"Oh the story is a legend here, like the Wizard of Oz." Jim Morrison called out from the next table. "The tornado, the fried chicken leg sticking in your skull, the operation, it's totally ridiculous and we love it!"

"Didn't the souls of Indians jump inside your body when you were young? That's interesting!" I replied.

"It was all Bullshit Marty. I invited them in, but they had better places to visit in the Happy Hunting ground." He gave me a black stare for a moment and then laughed a loud and evil sounding howl. "It was all part of the act. I was a singer, poet, and most of all an actor."

"Give it a rest for a couple of decades Jim, you're going to wear it out." Zappa responded in a deep, television announcer voice. He took a large bite from a plate of nachos.

"Freak me out Frank!" Morrison's mug moved close to Zappa's face when he said it in a mousey, nasal voice. Frank found it so unexpectedly funny he shot cheese out of his nose. "Freak me out!"

Stevie Ray wiped my chin with a napkin. "Marty, there are so many things we need to talk about, you have been running around like a chicken with it's head cut off. You are in need of guidance. That's why we told George Rogers Clark to bring you here."

Jimi lifted his hat and scratched his afro. "Do chickens really do that? I think that's just a wives tale."

Robert Johnson straightened his thin black tie. "Oh, thet is no waaves tale Jimi! A chicken can run around with no head. You see this applies directly to Marty here." His eyes turned to me, his demeanor calm and direct. "Marty, a chicken's brain stem contains all the information he needs to survive. Under the right conditions a headless chicken can last for a very very long time."

"Like an hour?" Hendrix asked.

"17 months." Robert said with a blink and a smile. Stevie picked up a fried wing and stared at it closely.

"How does that apply to me?" I bit into a leg.

"Marty, you've got about a year left." Robert replied coldly. "At the outside."

"What are you saying?" My mouth was full, but there was no doubt what I was asking.

Stevie put the wing back on the plate." Robert is telling you that you're living on borrowed time and you need to straighten out a few things if you want to make it to heaven.

"I saw heaven, I talked to God, I learned all there is to know."

"Really, what did you learn? What did God look like? Was Red Skelton there?" Zappa asked.

Robert Johnson saw the sad and dumbfounded look on my face. "I sold my soul to Red Skelton at the crossroads so I's could play de blues." Jimi and Stevie high fived.

"But I saw it! It was Eden."

"It was a club Med Marty." Morrison grabbed some chicken. "It's a resort that makes you feel as if you're the wealthiest of Kings....until the bill comes."

"Wipe off your hands Marty." Steve said as he handed me his number 1, Fender Stratocaster. "You have a song you need to play for us."

I was never a great guitar player even though I prayed I could be. Taking a page from Jim Morrison I had even begged the soul of Stevie Ray to jump into my body like him and the dead Indians.

"Marty, you are like a scuba diver. You have tunnel vision, seeing the beauty and majesty in front of you, but there are all kinds of ugly, dangerous creatures swimming right next to you. Having just a piece of your brain in the afterlife is like being a one-eyed man at a 3-D movie. You're missing all the important crap." Zappa could always explain things in a way I could understand.

Steve Ray held up his hand and the conversations stopped. "Play." He commanded.

I nervously moved my fingers toward the satiny strings and they pulled toward them as if magnetized. With no amplifier in sight the room filled with a perfectly round and expressive note. Just one note, and Jimi shed tears that streaked his face. My reticence turned to confidence and I began to play. I played a melody that sounded like a full orchestra blending into a jazz concerto. The song was coming from my heart and transmitting directly into that beautiful guitar. As I played, the notes came faster and although complex, each note retained it's own luster and identity. The instrument was not playing itself, make no mistake, it was coming out of me and was driving the axe to its limits. My eyes could not remain open, I tried, believe me. I saw the light of eternal life and the textures of the universal fabric. I needed no more answers because the questions were no longer relevant.

"You were always my favorite musician. I always wished I could play like you." said Robert Johnson. I couldn't see him, but I knew he was smiling and crying like Jimi.

Later when I became the most critically adored guitarist in history, people would say that the accident removed the part of my brain that told me I couldn't play like a virtuoso. There is no truth to that.

People like to say that a human only uses 10 percent of their brain in an entire lifetime. This is not true. Science has proved that you use pretty much all of your brain all of the time, even when asleep. I contend that you only use 10 percent of your soul.

Before I awoke back in my bed at the Holiday Inn I remember Stevie Ray Vaughan saying to me. "You'll find exactly what you need at Barbara's gift shop.....I think it's called Barbara's..It's over there by the Memorial....It opens at 10....You won't need to be there much before noon...And Marty.....You're not a womanizing sex maniac...Not yet anyway....Haaaa!"