"Weird," he said to himself.
As he absorbed his unfamiliar surroundings, a storefront so quaint, it should have been on a postcard caught his eye.
Dean's Books, the sign above the red and yellow canvas awning read.
'Plain enough,' Jacob thought as he opened the door. A tingling bell announced his arrival.
He stood in the entrance-way for a moment marveling at the place. It was a hipster's paradise. Shiny, vinyl records lined the walls and lay in stacks a foot deep on tables as well. He'd never seen so many in one place. The Beatles were singing about starting a revolution on the overhead speakers and an old timey cash register sat unattended on a counter near the door. He glanced around the store in search of a proprietor or another customer, but saw no one.
He shrugged and picked up an album of top of the stack in front of him. "Long Live Spaceman by New Millenium Falcon Crest?" he said aloud, staring at the psychedelic image of a giant frog leaping into the air with a grotesquely long tongue capturing an eagle from the sky on the cover. "WTF?"
He had never heard of the band Left Switch Pony or The Greatest Hits of Marshall Pavaloni either. It wasn't until he came to the tenth record down that he found a performer he was familiar with. He stared at it for a long time, trying to figure out if it was someone's idea of a joke or some strange tribute. The album's title: Wanderlustscapia, was written in large, bubbly candy cane red and white letters across the top. But the picture and name of the artist below it sent chills down his spine.
It showed a gray haired Jimi Hendrix with a giant afro jamming passionately on his guitar. Bubbles of every color sprung from the instrument. Jacob picked up the album, half fearing the strange thing would shock him on contact. He turned it over and searched the fine print on the back for a year.
"2000?" he said to himself. None of the tracks were familiar to him: Fine Devil Woman, Rainbow Parachute, Snake Eyes in the Dark. He saw no price tag, but this was something he had to have; for the novelty if nothing else.
"Find something you like?" a man's voice asked from behind him.
Jacob yelped and dropped the record back on the stack. He whirled and nearly bumped into a man who looked nearly as strange as the album he'd just held. The top of his head barely reached Jacob's chest. He wore a tie-dyed shirt, a threadbare pair of khaki cargo shorts, equally worn Chuck Taylor tennis shoes with no socks and a tie-dyed shirt. But his most prominent feature was his goatee. It must have reached four inches below the man's chin and looked sharp enough to cut steak. There was more hair on his chin than his head. All that was left of it there were a few scraggly white tufts concentrated around his temples.
"Dylan Dean," the man said, offering his hand. "Are you a Hendrix fan?"
"Jacob," he answered. "I am, but I've never heard of this album." He handed it to Dean.
The man seemed to hold it reverently as he admired the cover art. "I have indeed," he said. "Just saw the man in concert about a month ago in Chicago. Would you believe Lennon made a cameo on the keyboards during the last set. The crowd went so wild I was afraid they might riot."
Jacob laughed, but Dean didn't crack a smile.
"How much do you want for it?"
"Oh, nothing in this store is for sale. You might say I'm selective about my customers and when I see one I like, I give them what they want for free. That cash register you see doesn't even work. I just like how it looks."
Jacob laughed again. "That doesn't sound like a very lucrative business model."
Dean smiled without parting his lips. "Don't worry, young fellow. Money's no object to me. You're going to love that album. Take it home and listen to it right now."
"Seriously, sir. How much do you want for it?"
"I am serious, Jacob. It's yours. And you know what else? I think your lady friend will love it as much as you. But don't hurry off. I might have some other selections you'd like. Stay and browse awhile."
The place was as fascinating as its owner, but something about the fellow and his establishment creeped Jacob out. He did search the album titles with his eyes long enough to think he saw a jazz album with a grandmotherly Janis Joplin on the cover and a photo of a gracefully aging Jim Morrison posing with a komodo dragon. Chills ran down his spine and for a moment when he turned back to Dean, he thought he saw the designs in his tie-died shirt swirl. It was only with an effort that he tore his eyes away.
"Is something wrong?" Dean asked in a paternal voice.
"Oh, no. Just had something on my mind."
"I see. Well go home and listen to Jimi. He cures what ails you I've always found."
"Okay. I'm going to lay this twenty on the counter here. I just don't feel right taking it for free."
"Suit yourself, Jacob. Things will work out with Kiley. You'll see."
Jacob got out the door as fast as he could. He tried to tell himself he hadn't heard him say her name. When the door closed behind him, he walked as fast as he could, not daring to look back.
'He looked like a demon hippy troll or something,' he thought. He'd walked a quarter mile before realizing he was soaked from rain. He worried that the Hendrix album would be wet and ruined before he had a chance to hear it. But somehow, as he recounted the experience, he doubted it.
When he reached his apartment, his cat, Pandora, greeted him at the door. He stroked her under the chin as she wrapped herself around his legs purring like a thunderstorm.
"At least you still want to be with me. 'You really don't have any idea how good looking you are.' Do you remember when she said that? Or 'I love how you're always trying to figure out the big questions. You're the most fascinating guy I've ever met.' Then last night, it turned into, 'you know what, Jacob, I don't think I can be with you any more. You love books more than me. You seem so weird sometimes. My friends think you might be autistic.' I don't think wanting to learn all the knowledge you can soak into your head means you're autistic. Do you think that, kitty cat? I guess it's just as well.
I'm not the kind of guy who needs a girlfriend anyway."
Six months they'd been together, he thought as he opened his turntable. He was twenty-five years old and six months was the longest he'd ever had a girlfriend. The only girl he'd ever been in love with too. He knew he was a strange guy, but she'd known that going in. He wondered why it had taken six months for it to bother her.
He took the record out of the cover and took a moment to admire it. It appeared to be in perfect condition. The vinyl gleamed in the light as he turned it in his hands. 'That guy was crazy,' he thought. But Savannah was a city suited to crazy people and sometimes crazy people were the ones who saw things best. Jacob loved music like moths loved nightlights. He knew he had a great singing voice too although he had no intentions of ever singing for anyone but himself. He shared it with Kiley a few times.
"Oh my God," she said the first time he'd sung for her. "You should be on American Idol. You would freaking win."
He remembered he'd sung Peaceful, Easy Feeling by The Eagles. He guessed it was corny, but she really had made him feel that way.
He put down the needle and in a moment, Hendrix's voice came pouring through the speakers. There was no doubt in Jacob's mind that it was truly him. The voice was as distinctive and haunting as ever, but mellowed and more precise than in his youth. His guitar playing too was undeniably Hendrix, but infinitely more polished than anything he'd played in the sixties. Jacob lay on his back and let the music wash over him. He dreamed of chasing Dylan Dean and Kiley in circles around a psychedelic sky, or were they chasing him? He couldn't tell.
When he woke some hours later, the record had finished playing. Outside, he could still hear the rain. The clock on the wall told him he'd been sleeping for nearly four hours. To make sure he wasn't crazy, he opened his laptop and Googled Hendrix. He'd died in London of a drug overdose on September 18, 1970. Jacob shook his head. 'Maybe it's some secret, unreleased stuff or something,' he thought. And how had that strange joker known Kiley's name? He didn't want to think about it.
Unconsciously, he reached into his pocket and felt two items. One was the twenty-dollar bill he'd left for Dean. He had no memory of the man returning it to him. He must have been a reverse pickpocket or something. The other was a folded pieced of notebook paper. He unfolded it and saw lyrics of a song written across the page in madly loopy, but exquisitely neat script. It seemed pure nonsense the first time through, but something about it compelled him to read the song over and over. Something clicked in his subconscious and the song's significance became clear. The words became ingrained in his mind. He began to hum them softly and soon a melody came to him. He began to sing with all the power his voice could muster. It swept him away. His voice and the song's lyrics seemed to comprise his total existence. He wondered who could have created it and why Dylan Dean had given it to him. It was the best gift he'd ever received.
He was thinking of telling Kiley about it before he realized he couldn't speak to her any more. He'd gotten in the habit of telling her almost everything on his mind and now it seemed that had been a mistake. She didn't care what he thought about any more. But the song understood his pain. It understood everything. It transcended everything. Singing it, he felt a hot rush through his brain that spread through his body. In his life, he'd never tried a drug stronger than pot, but he guessed this must have been what hard drugs felt like. But the feeling of well being that drugs elicited were an illusion. This was genuine. It was all the awareness and knowledge he'd sought in his lifelong habit of reading and thinking delivered in a compact package.
Awakening. Nirvana. That's what he had found. That's what the crazy bookstore owner Dylan Dean sneaked into his pocket. He realized his heart was racing and sweat was dripping from his face. The trip to and from the store and his memory of the man itself seemed to have a dreamlike quality now. But he still held the man's paper in his hands and Jimi Hendrix's impossible record still spun on his turntable. He walked across the floor to see it, needing to reassure himself again of its reality.
He picked the record off the table and read the label in the center of it. Jimi Hendrix. Are You Experienced? Recorded 1967. He closed his eyes tight, sure he was misreading it. But the same words awaited him when he opened them. With a trembling hand, he placed the needle on the record again. It whirred for a moment and then Hendrix's guitar broke out with Foxy Lady. He let the song play halfway through before switching it off. This was a record he'd owned for years. He knew every track by heart. It wasn't the same one he'd heard earlier: the impossible one sung by a man forty years older than he'd been the day he died.
"Am I going crazy?" he asked himself.
The paper with his magical song was still in his pocket. He unfolded it and saw the words still there in the same overly flourished script. It was proof enough that something profound had taken place today. For a long time he stared at the words, absently humming them as he did so. He felt like the words of the song were so large, so powerful, that they were more than his brain could contain.
"I've got to tell someone about this," he said to Pandora, who watched him warily from her perch atop the windowsill. "If I don't, I will literally explode."
He took his cell from his pocket and dialed Kiley's number. She answered on the third ring and he could tell she'd been sleeping.
"What do you want, Jacob?" she said.
"I've got to tell you about something that happened to me," he said.
"Okay," she said. "But make it quick. I've got to work in the morning."
He told her about walking through downtown Savannah in a haze until finding himself in an unfamiliar place, of entering the odd store and meeting Dylan Dean, the strangest human being he'd ever met. He told her about the Jimi Hendrix album with his too-old face on the cover, his older mellowed voice and more precise guitar riffs on the album, and of the miraculous song in his pocket. Then he told her how he'd looked at the record a second time only a moment ago, and seen it was not the one he'd purchased from Dylan Dean at all, but the same Hendrix record he'd owned for half his life. He told her how the song possessed him, how it was all he could think of, of how its lyrics defined everything he'd ever sought, and how he wanted to share it with her now so that she could feel its power too. He spoke in a rush, not because she'd told him to hurry, but because it was the most intense thing he'd ever discussed with anyone.
"That sounds like you had some crazy-ass acid trip or some shit," she said.
"No. It wasn't. I've got the song right here. I want to sing it to you."
She sighed. "I know it wasn't an acid trip. I just said that it sounds like one. But seriously Jacob, do you really think I can believe a story like that?"
"No, but I believe you can hear the truth in the words of this song."
She sighed again and something about the way she did it told Jacob that she did love him after all.
"Go ahead. You act like you're going to spontaneously combust or something if you don't."
He began to sing and didn't stop until he'd finished the last note. His voice sounded purer and stronger than it ever had before to him. When he was done, he wiped tears from his eyes.
"That sounds like something you'd write," she said. "Don't get me wrong. It's really good. But those sound like your words, not those of a weird stoner looking dude from some bookstore on The X-Files."
"No, Kiley. I can't take credit for it. I'm telling you the truth. It was this dude who slipped it in my pocket somehow. That and the twenty bucks I gave him too. I'm being dead serious."
"I know you are, Jacob. I really do. You know what I think? I think you had some kind of weird freak-out episode because I broke up with you. You dreamed or hallucinated all that shit and while you were in the midst of it, you sat down and wrote that song."
"But the handwriting isn't mine, Kiley. You should see it. It looks like how Satan would probably write."
"Is it all loopy, but straight up and down almost like some weird calligraphy?"
"Yeah. How'd you guess?"
"I saw you write like that one time. Remember we got really drunk making rum daiquiris and you wanted to play this spontaneous poetry game. That's how you were writing then. It kind of freaked me out, but then you passed out a couple of minutes later."
"I remember that night. Most of it at least. But I don't remember writing poetry. I remember waking up puking the next morning though."
"Yeah, I kept those poems. I liked them even though they didn't make a bit of sense. Kind of like that song you just sang except that's something else. It does sound like something out of this world even though I don't think I quite get it like you do."
He thought about what she said, trying to process it. "Okay," he finally said. "If everything you're saying is true, then something's really wrong with me. I'm bipolar or schizophrenic or something. On top of that, you tell me I seem autistic. So I guess I'm fubarred about ten different ways."
She laughed. "Hell yeah you are. It's okay though. You're kind of cute that way."
"It's okay? I'm certifiably crazy and it's okay?"
She didn't answer and the silence hung so long between them, he thought she'd hung up on him.
"Want me to come over and let me hear that song in person?" she finally said.
"Now? I thought you said you had to work tomorrow."
"I was lying."
He thought about it. He wasn't sure he would sing to her if she came over. The song that had consumed him so completely a few moments before now seemed of secondary importance.
"If you come over, are we still broken up?"
"Probably not," she said.
When she got to his house, they sat up most of the night. He didn't sing the song for her, but they did listen to Jimi Hendrix as they made out on his couch. When the sun was rising the next morning, he watched her sleeping in his bed, and thought of how only the day before he'd been so sure it was a sight he would never see again. Outside, he could hear the wind whistling. He threw on a pair of shorts and left her sleeping. He took the paper with his song off the night table and stepped outside. Although it was a clear morning, he couldn't recall another day when the wind had howled with such fury.
What you hold so dear in the dead of the night, let it go in the morning light.
That was a line from the song. He walked to the edge of the street with the paper in hand and when a particularly strong gust struck his face, he let the it go. He watched it swirl higher and higher into the air until it was out of sight.
"Dylan Dean will find it," he said to himself. Then he went inside and snuggled close to Kiley.
The song was still in his mind. He hummed it until he drifted off to sleep.
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