SAMMY

by
STEVE ELY

Extract from the poem 'JerUSAlem'

“Thank you very kindly, ladies and gentlemen.”
Applause gushed and crackled like storm-shower
run-off, spilling over gutters and splattering
onto the street. The ‘whoos’ and ‘yeahs’ of drunks
embellished the ovation. The broads in the front row
were clapping so fast, their hands were pink blurs.
Their beaming faces could’ve lit up the Strip.
Sammy grinned and ate it up. He turned and took a sip
from his bourbon and coke and mopped his brow
with a monogrammed hanky, one of five hundred
he ordered from Gucci. The appreciation
diminuendoed to a ripple, highlighting laughter
and clinking glasses over background
conversation roar. Sammy put down his glass

and bent into the crowd. He spoke into the ear
of an oh-my-God blonde. He flashed her a wink
from his wandering eye before bouncing
back into the spotlight, leaving her to gush
to her friends. The piano ran a trill
and the drum-kit stuttered. Sammy looked over
at his conductor. “George. There’s too many
white guys in the band.” That was my cue, too.
Birth of the Blues, last number, fifth encore.
I exited the wings to open up the rider
as Sammy did his thing - “They heard the breeze/through the trees.”
Broads clapped and shrieked. Drunks yelled ‘whoo’ and ‘yeah’.
I pictured them dancing, climbing on tables.
I pictured Sam’s bouncers throwing them out.

Frank was effusive. “Great show, Sammy,
you knocked ‘em dead .” Sam flashed his porcelain veneers
as I peeled off his sweat-soaked cabaret-ruffle.
“Thanks, Charley. You were pretty good yourself.
Best opening act I ever had.”
I towelled him down and slipped him into a bathrobe.
“One for you if you need it Charley.
A white one just like mine, hung there in the closet.”
Frank looked sheepish and stared at his shuffling feet.
“No thanks, Sammy. I’m OK as I am.”
Commotion sounded on the corridor, down from
Sammy’s suite. The casino manager appeared
in the doorway, flustered and flushed. “Mister Davis,
there are some people insisting they see you.

I told them you’re busy, but ...” Sammy cut him off.
“That’s OK, Howard. I’ll see them, show them in.
Charley, could you top off Frank and set up
some hospitality for the party coming?
I uncovered the canapes and popped the champagne.
The cork went bok and blasted out a bulb
on the make-up mirror. “That takes me back.”
Jack Kennedy walked in, dabbing his hand
on the back of his head. Sam Giancana
followed him in, grinning all over his face.
“Hey, don’t look at me, you Irish cazzo…”
They walked through Frank and over to Sammy,
who had sprawled in a green leather chesterfield,
Pall Mall in his right hand, Cristal Rose in his left.

Kennedy got there first and bent to embrace him.
“Knock-out, Sammy, a real swinging show.”
Giancana grabbed his hand and concurred.
“Sam, you sure still got that old black magic.”
Sammy raised an eyebrow. “Careful with that race stuff, Mo;
you only just made it from Westside.
You can go back just like that.” He clicked his fingers.
Giancana stammered. “Hey, Sammy, c’mon …
I didn’t mean it like that ... it was just a great show …”
Sammy cut him dead. “Take it easy Mo.
Just go easy on the slurs.” He rose to greet
the suits who were hovering at the door,
waiting to be invited in. Giancana slunk off,
stood muttering to Sinatra under his breath.

Sammy did the meet and greet, “How ya doin’ guys?
Glad you could make it,” offering his hand
to the supplicants in turn – Harrys Cohn
and Belafonte, Johnny Formosa
and Martin Luther King. The refrain was the same –
Great Show, Sammy. The guys schmoozed and swapped stories
until Howard arrived with a whispered message.
Sammy jumped right up. “OK boys, skedaddle,
I got to take care of business.” In thirty seconds
the room was clear. He hooked his thumb
and gestured to the exit. “You too, Charley.”
A door hinge creaked: that downstairs stage-side blonde
slipped in from the adjoining suite and tippy-toed
to his bedroom. It was Kim Novak.

Her baby doll nightie caught on the door handle
and tore clean off. She put her hand to her mouth
in smirking mock horror, before scuttling off
and diving into the bed. She left the nightie hanging,
a peach lace ‘Do not disturb’ sign.
Sammy walked me out. I could hear Kim giggling
as she wriggled in the sheets. He handed me a roll.
“Hit the tables, Charley. I need some private time.”
The elevator was on its way up.
The doors whirred open and Ava Gardner
pushed past me and trip-trapped down the hall.
Frank was on his knees, blubbering under the buttons.
Ava stopped at Sammy’s door, stuck out her rack,
and walked right in without knocking.

I crapped out in record time and hit the bar.
I remember downing scotch and soda
with Garland and Crawford. Those broads were putting me
under the table and Joan was getting fresh.
Howard bailed me out with a call from upstairs.
I made my excuses and left Joan licking her lips.
The nightie was gone and the bedroom door open.
I could hear hissing water and a girl’s voice
singing from the shower. Sammy strode in
from the bedroom and opened the drapes.
Sunlight streamed in. Was tomorrow. “Bad news, Charley.
I had to drop Frank and Ava for a time.
Ride over in the wagon with the cops, will ya?
Make sure it all goes smooth.” I’d seen it comin’.

Sure, paradise is a swingin’ joint, but no-one
here gets hurt. But Ava and Frank still trippin’
on power games, ‘specially with each other,
Ava playin’ Frank for a love sick chump,
Frank lashing out or chopping his wrists.
Sammy got me up to speed. Last night at the tables
Ava told Frank he’s a midget with a pencil dick;
she wants to fuck a big guy for a change.
Frank swung a right; she ducked and the pit boss
caught it. She made it to the elevator
with Frank in hot pursuit. She kicked him in the balls
and left him down, ’fore runnin’ to flash her goodies
at the foot of Sammy’s bed, Kim still in there,
scratching her head, thinking, what on earth?

It all went to fuck. Ava wrestled with Sammy
then went toe-to-toe with security
before they cuffed her up. Frank OD-ed
on Nembutal, got stomach-pumped at Cedar Sinai.
They had to go. Couple years in Westside
ought to straighten ‘em out. The paddy wagon
was waiting outside. They were shackled tight,
each flanked by eight foot cops. I told ‘em
let’s go and the driver pulled off. Hungover-haughty,
Ava looked at me like I was shit,
then eyeballed my crotch and raised her eyebrows.
Frank snivelled and asked if there was anything I could do.
I shook my head and told him he’d got out before,
he could do it again. He whined and grimaced.

We dropped them off on the wrong side of the tracks.
I didn’t look back. Back at the ranch,
Sammy was talkin’ on his cell phone.
“Look baby, I don’t care who he was
or who he thinks he knows. You tell him from me,
the more he’s complainin’ an’ workin’ the angles
the less he’s repentin’ and makin’ things right.
He don’t realise that, he won’t never cross over.”
He put down the phone and shook his head.
“That schemin’ fool Dick Nixon. Told the warden
he’s tight with ‘Sam’, if he’d let ‘Sam’ know,
then ‘Sam’ gone spring him. He keep on like this,
‘Sam’ gone have him locked down.”
“You were tight with him once, boss, right?

I seen the picture.” Sammy opened his wallet.
“You mean this one?” Onstage at some convention,
Sammy was embracing a smiling Tricky Dick.
I nodded. “I was tight with everyone then.”
I liked to rub up to power. You see the same thing
here with me. People are like that.” He flopped back
on a sofa and crossed his cubans
on a inlaid mahogany coffee table.
He opened a golden Dunhill case and broke out
the Pall Malls. “Tommy, bring glasses and a bottle.
I feel like kickin’ back.” I brought Coke and Wild Turkey,
spread out in an armchair over the table
from Sammy. The bourbon’s morning-after burn
felt good. “How’d it happen, Sammy? Why you?”

Sammy blew out a lungful, wreathed himself in smoke.
He shook his head and a thin smile came.
“I ask myself that all the time; I still can’t believe it.
Nob’dy ever told me. It just sorta happened
and I knew what to do.” He crushed out
his cigarette in a gold and onyx ashtray and lit up
another. “Back in the other life, I got throat cancer.
The quacks said they could cure it
by cuttin’ out the larynx. I told ‘em fuck you;
I’m gonna do Harrah’s like Marcel Marceaux,
with tap shoes and a cane? I put all my chips on chemo
and came up snake-eyes. The prognosis was grim;
I wanted to live, I had to lose the voice-box.
I screamed - cut it out, cut it out.

I gave up on showbiz and clung to croaking life.
Death scared me. Afterlife scared me more.
I knew I was deep in sin. The more I thought,
the more I believed it. I was hellbound, Charley.”
“You kill a guy, boss?” Sammy laughed and threw back
his head, stretched out his arms along the top of the sofa.
“No baby. That’s the one thing I never did.
But I did plenty. Rabbi Shneerson said,
‘The evil inclination is with man from his youth.’
And I did my dam’dest to prove him right.
Take women, Charley. I married three times,
only once to a woman I loved. Loray I married
on the bounce from Kim Novak, running scared
from Harry Cohn’s goons. I shoulda stood up to them.

Kim was ready to fight, but not me. Always running,
lookin’ for the easy way out. Loray I hardly knew.
I cut her loose as soon as I could.
Altovise was black and beautiful and that’s the way
the world was turnin’. She knew what it was for
and didn’t cramp my style. May I loved.
All the same, I musta fucked a thousand chicks
the eight years we were married. All that time,
the kids seen me at breakfast once. I was too busy, see.
I had coke to snort, bourbon to drink,
mobsters to schmooze, hookers and showgirls to screw.
My schedule was a bitch …” He paused to light
two more Pall Malls and top us off from the bottle.
“I used ‘em up, Charley, all the broads.

They were jerkwads for this playboy nigger.
But that’s not the half of it. Here, check out
these snaps.” He bounced to a closet and pulled out
an envelope. I flicked through the glossies inside.
Man, that was some sick shit. A spread-legged blonde
tied down to an altar; Sammy drawing blood
with a sword between her breasts; cloaked Sammy
erect, climbing on top; Sammy pouring on the pork
in a torchlit circle of robes. I looked up at him,
incredulous. He arched his eyebrows
and laughed. “And you thought I was Jewish!
Church of Satan, Charley. One o’ my kinks
from the swingin’ seventies,” Anton Szandor LaVey.
Man, I musta pissed off all the gods.

I nixed Elvera’s Catholicism, Sam snr’s,
Southern Baptist and flipped for the chosen people,
takin’ in the Devil on the way. How d’ya figure
I got outta that? Beats me too! All the things I done …”
He tailed off, shaking his head. I was gonna butt in.
talk some more ‘bout this Satan shit, but he waved me still.
“Ambition. Crude ambition. Selfishness,
self-absorption. Neglect of family, friends.
Wanting to be white. Ashamed of being black.
Opportunism. Cowardice. Hedonism.
Porno, white pussy. Eating Frank’s shit.
Eating Frank’s shit and lovin’ it -”
I cut off his monologue. “I get the picture, Sam.
You weren’t no choirboy. But nobody died.”

“Maybe. But who can know the mind of God?
All I knew, soon I was dead and I needed
the scales to tilt in my favour. I started turning up
to Temple; Max was pleased to see me.
I donated to the B’nai B’rith;
I was commended in the newsletter.
I sent off checks to everyone I hurt;
I emptied the IRS account.
I prayed day and night, listened to tapes
of the Torah, Burt Lancaster narrating.
I recanted, repented, made my peace with God.
I felt better, but the deal wasn’t clinched:
no visions, no voices, no feedback forthcoming.
For a time I worried I’d backed the wrong pony.

I hedged a little, confessed to a Padre
burnt joss-sticks to the plaster Buddha
Shirley placed on my sick-man’s bedside table.
One morphine night I dreamed. The ghost of Will Mastin
shook me from my slumbers. I surprised myself -
the spook didn’t scare me; I was glad to see
the old man smiling. I sat up and hugged him,
then pushed him off so I could take a good look.
He looked sharp in his hair-net conk and pencil mustache.
He was tuxed and top-hatted, twirling
Bill Bojangles’ cane. ‘Lookin’ good, Uncle Will.
You still treading the boards in heaven?’
He nodded. ‘Tha’s right, Sammy, me and your Pa.
And you gone be up here wit’ us soon, don’t sweat it.

We’ll get the trio back together,
jus’ like the ole days.’ I fixed him a playful
gangster stare: ‘You still gonna be takin’ 20% off the top?’
Will grinned again. ‘It’s my name on the marquee.’
‘It’s me they’ll pay to see.’ ‘Ain’t life a bitch
fur a vaudeville nigger?’ We laughed together
and some dream shit came and went and then
he was sayin’, ‘You lived and then some, Sammy.
You made more mistakes than anyone I heard of,
hurt folks a-plenty, not least yourself
but there ain’t a bad bone in your body
and people, they know that. They’re mentionin’ your name,
Sammy, something big’s going down. Don’t rightly know
what it is, but we’re all so proud of you, son.

Maybe it’s time to take some pride in yourself.
So long, Sammy; don’t hang up. Some fellas
here to see ya.’ Will faded out and the room
started to rumble like a jet was flying low overhead.
My bed leapt and rattled like the one in The Exorcist.
Drips toppled and smashed. Buddha hit the carpet
and split. A figure materialised through a cloud
of dry ice -‘Daaaaay-ooooo! Da-aaaaaay-oo!’ -
Harry Belafonte, riding that Banana Boat
right to the side of my bed. It caught me off guard -
‘Motherfucker, you ain’t dead!’ ‘It’s a dream, Sammy;
suspend your disbelief.’ Was Doctor King, Sid Poitier
smilin’ beside him. I was bewildered, baby.
I looked from one to the other ‘fore blurtin’,

‘You field bucks come to muscle the house Tom?’
Sid tried to reassure me. ‘Just some old friends,
Sammy, coming with help and advice.’ King chipped in.
‘That’s right, Sammy. You’re crossing over soon,
we want you to make it. You’re a sweet guy
Sammy, but there’s things you gotta put right
if you’re want to land soft on the right side
of the tracks. We’ll keep it short and sweet.
Harry, you start.’ Harry cleared his throat,
revved up the baritone. ‘Sammy, we all love you;
how can we not? You’re generous
and funny and you marched in Alabama,
when we needed you there. You’ve done
more than most in our struggle for rights:

You dazzled white America with your
shining African talent, opened Vegas
for negroes through celebrity power,
the brute force of box office appeal.
You desegregated Broadway,
dehonkified TV. That’s some record Sammy,
but I’ll cut to the chase. It was incidental.
You did it on your own. You did it for yourself.
You made it wannabe white. Sammy got his piece
of the white man’s world and now we’re all invited.
Good ol’ Sam. But Sammy, you’re a black man.
Demand dignity as such. Don’t be the white-man’s
monkey mascot. Don’t be Smokey, that nigger weasel,
that one-eyed darkie, that mau-mau kike.

Don’t smile in the dark so they can see you,
Sammy, don’t be a gift from the NAACP.’
I could hardly believe it. There I was,
propped up on my deathbed’s dreaming pillow,
and these gatecrashing spooks barge in, start fucking
with my self-esteem. I got riled and bounced
right back. The line came easy and pat –
Don’t call me monkey, Belafonte. Ain’t it you
‘dem and desin’’ for whitey’s banana?
But my voiceless mouth worked air. Nothing came out.
King saw my frustration and told me relax.
Just listen. The message was hard. The message
was true. The message was for my own good.
He took up where Harry left off.

‘We’re not saying we can’t move in both
black and white worlds, but we’ve got
to stand upright in both. When Sammy Davis jnr –
negro superstar, the greatest, most famous
black entertainer of all time - accepts slurs
from whites as the price for acceptance,
it’s a price that all blacks have to pay.’
Brothers told me that before and it always hurt.
Sometimes it happened, I just couldn’t see it –
a joke’s a joke, right? Other times, the pain cut deep
and scarred; I just figured it came with the turf
and laughed it off; the show must go on.
Dr King took hold of my limp left hand
and held it tight in his. ‘We’ve all been there, Sammy.

It’s the price they extract, they can’t help it.
They can’t get beyond the color of our skin.
We shrank from the indignity, chose the company
of our kin. You chose to stay. You paid
their price. You ended paying ours.’
The room went cold and desolate as death.
I could hear my feeble heartbeat. I could hear
the raw wheezing from the hole in my throat.
A tear ran down my cheek. The brothers brooded,
empathetic. The darkness of the desert hills
closed in. Sid’s English elocution broke the silence.
‘Sam, you had a blast. But who paid? Kim?
Loray? May? Your kids? The showgirls
and starlets you fucked and threw out?

The kids you drugged with fame and cocaine?
Sammy Davis jnr? What was the cost
to him, of a life devoted to the pursuit
of pleasure, sensation and excess?
Christ, you were scared to sleep, you thought you might
miss something. You could never be alone;
you needed another to reflect your performance
back at yourself, confirm your existence.
What was the void you were filling with ‘action’?
Who are you Sammy? Deep down, who’s the real
Sammy D?’” Sammy broke off the memory.
He shook his head. His brown eyes glistened
and he bit his lip. “It’s true, Charley. I lived
my whole life onstage, even when I was off.

I was always actin’, giving the audience
what they wanted until they ate me up
and I didn’t exist no more. How could it ever
be different? I started, I was five years old.
My identity was formed in the approval
of strangers. All my life I’ve been whoever they wanted -
the dancer, the mimic, the crooner, the swinger;
I aimed to please. Say I’d throw a party:
I’d book the top floor of the Warwick Hotel,
crate in Chivas and Cristal Rose. I’d lay out coke
in kilo bowls, book John and Marilyn for a floor show.
The place would look like the Playboy mansion,
guys pulling trains on hippie chicks and hookers,
everyone flyin’, stoned outta their gourds.

Come mornin’, I’d comp ‘em with Dunhill lighters
or twenty four carat medallions,
these best friend strangers I only just met.
‘Swingin’ party, Sammy, the best.’ ‘Sammy,
you the greatest.’ I’d just grin and soak it up;
they said it, it must be true. But then the joint
was empty. Now what? Catch some shut-eye?
Drive to a diner, read the papers over ham and eggs?
Go home, watch cartoons with the kids? Fuck that.
I’d call Frank or Peter Lawford – Hey Charley,
what’s happenin’ …” He tailed off.
The ash on his burned–down cigarette broke
and fell. He tapped it in the ashtray
and drained the dregs of his drink. I poured us another.
He took a sip, regained his rhythm.
“I looked up at Sid and told him, ‘Everybody paid.
The one paid the highest price was me’.
I broke down, Charley. Silent tears poured down
my cheeks. Tears for the black-faced negro child,
finding love in mere applause.
Tears for the starstruck black kid, dreaming
of Sinatra. Tears for the vaudeville genius,
gonna wow the drop-jawed world - finding out
he was just a nigger. Then my eyes
rolled back and I’d gone. Those dreaming fools
killed me, Charley. I was an eighty pound
cancer corpse, clinging on to life.
Their hardball critique prised off my fingers.

I fell. I vortexed through blackness, crackling static;
voices wheeled and swerved, whipped off to whispers,
opium echoes; lights popped and burst
in pin-prick kaleidoscope blackness; needles
tracked backwards, surging compressor roar,
an instant, infinity. I jerked awake,
rigid with voltage, stiffened to a starfish
on sweat-drenched cigarette sheets. Horse-eyes
bulged bloodshot, ketamin-moniscus swollen
with terror. I fought for air, breath retching
and ripping like the paper-dry, dirt-thin
bedclothes on which I slammed and twisted,
before I saw myself in the yellowed
ceiling mirror and knew I was alive.

I was young again, classic Sammy -
Ocean’s Eleven, under the Sands’ marquee.
But this was no five star, fully-comped suite.
The sixty-watt bulb hung on its string
and dim-lit the cockroach feng-shui. Table.
Closet. Two ring hotplate. The ceiling paint
was flaking, grease grimed the walls. Mould and damp-stains
oozed and furred. Fiery darkness burned
through threadbare drapes. Stairs stomped, cats mewled,
brats squalled; turned up TVs blared and vibrated
through balsa wood walls. Out on the street
drunks roared and puked, gonna cut their bitches
and fuck up one another. It dawned on me.
The door swung open. ‘Welcome to Hell, Smokey.’

Was ‘61 Frank with ‘52 Ava.
They looked good. Ava pouted and looked me
up and down. Frank tossed me a hand-me-down
Celano sharkskin. ‘Get dressed, Smoke. You’re opening
for me in thirty minutes.’ An hour later
I was halfway through the set and the crowd
was getting restless, some wise guys starting
to heckle. In the opening bars of Bye Bye Blackbird,
I almost made the usual joke, before
thinking better of it. Frank picked up a mike
stage left and cracked, ‘You don’t get this crowd
warmed up soon, it’ll be Bye Bye Black Boy.’
Guffaws from the crowd. A voice piped up
from a stageside table. ‘You tell that nigger weasel, Frank.’

I dropped the mike, strode into the audience
and socked the bastard. He went down
like a sack of shit. His no-neck pal
went to pull a piece from his waistband
and I decked him too. I couldn’t believe it.
I was hitting like Sonny Liston.
Frank rushed into the crowd and tried to drag me away.
‘Jesus fuckin’ Christ, you stupid nigger bastard,
that’s Sam Giancana.’ I grabbed Frank by the throat
and walled him up, ‘Don’t ever call me nigger again,
you cocksucker. I quit. Now pay me up,
I gotta get outta this joint.’ The room
was nine-tenths stunned, but applause broke out
from a table out back, next to the kitchen and rest rooms.

Frank’s bottom lip wobbled. He fanned out some bills;
I snatched them and strutted out down the centre aisle,
staring down the assholes. I took plaudits
from the brothers at the back, recognised
Marvin Gaye. Then I hit the streets, in search of bourbon,
hookers, cocaine. In thirty seconds I found a dive
set me up with all three. I lay back on the bed
threw back some shots, tooted some lines
and waited on Annika. Girl came in,
she’s black as the Ace of Spades. Charley,
I’m expecting Scandinavian here. I musta looked
disappointed - the girl burst into tears. ‘Don’t you
like me, Sammy? What is it with you and black girls?’
Man, I can’t explain it, my heart just swelled.

I saw she was beautiful. I held her all night.
We fooled around some, talked mostly.
Real name Lashonda. Got a baby boy age five.
She wanted to make it as a model, get off the streets,
give her boy a chance to make it on the right
side of the tracks. I gave her a break,
tipped out my billfold - put a portfolio
together, kick start Antoine’s college fund.
She was grateful for the dough but couldn’t
understand why I didn’t want to fuck her.
Was out of respect, not taking advantage
of an African woman trying to make it.
I gave her a peck on her sleeping cheek
and checked out into a smouldering hellfire dawn.

The soot-smeared rising sun was yellow
as a high-price Harlem whore. Smoke-soaked drizzle
greased up the surfaces, clotted up the air.
Ash floated and fell over boarded up store-fronts,
settled on litter strewn lots. Wailing sirens
and ringing alarms poured pointless into the gloom.
The potholed streets were empty. I walked under
streetlights for hours, just thinking - that was my life,
this is my death. I came to the buzzing neon
of the club from earlier on. Copacabana
flickered and tripped. I heard cries and shouting,
scuffle-thuds and foot-falls, coming from
the parking lot behind. I felt a sixth sense twitching.
I bent to gather a two-by-four and sprinted to the fracas.

I arrived in time for a Mexican stand off.
Three black guys wielding trash-cans were fending off
peckers packin’ toothpicks and wrenches.
Was the brothers from the show, the Jim Crow
seats out back. Marvin looked up. ‘Help us brother.
They got us two-to-one.’ I piled in swingin’,
put two crackers down, before this toothless crankhead
strode out from the shadows and a nine barked
in my face. I fell into chloroform numbness.
Cold white hands were running under my shirt,
turning out my pockets, pulling off my shoes.
I had one ounce of strength, maybe ten seconds left.
I pulled down a face by the ears,
bit off its lips. Then I died a second time.

Flash bulb lightning whited out world
to a blinding cocaine snowscape.
Blizzard-light tunnelled and swirled, whorling
to a wormhole. My star-soul floated and spun,
charged with crackling plasma that webbed and rippled
over my skin like embryo capillaries
threading through the yolk of an egg.
The cosmos coursed through me like the jolt
from a speedball. Glaucoma sin-scales
fell from my eyes. The star-spangled Universe
wobbled and poured, brilliant as burning
magnesium, the glittering galaxies
flaring as one. Tracers of light
spilled from outer darkness, like sparks thrown

from a Stilh saw, and melded with the flame.
I learned I was God. I couldn’t believe it.
I said Jesus fucking Christ. I learned that God
took the Lord’s Name in vain. The vision
expanded. I saw angels singing psalms
to e=mc2. I saw orbiting electrons
prostrate themselves in prayer. I saw a black man
on an emerald throne, judging the quick
and the dead. Guffaws blurted. I learned that God laughed.
I saw he was a nigger. I soared and smiled,
alternately nodding and shaking my head,
surfing the luminous vortex like a butterfly
riding a hurricane’s eye. Split-second infinity passed,
the Universe opened like a peacock’s tail.

I saw. I understood. Then something clunked
and the speedball jolt chopped off.
Equations and formulae scattered and popped.
Cherubs and seraphim fled. Shapes formed
from whiteness - filmy, ectoplasmic at first,
then blurring to colour and substance.
People? Trees? A rubber ball bounced into focus,
a big yeller dog bounding after.
I petted the mutt, threw the ball back
to the tousle-haired kid running out
from the woods. He whipped his hand from the grip
of his shoulder-slung carbine and snatched it
from the air - Thanks Mister: c’mon Striker! -
and dematerialised into dry-ice swirl.

Faces, places. Shnorrers shmoozing
round a table, Wolfie’s on Collins/Twenty First;
Meyer Lanksy, Jimmy Blue Eyes, Rabbis Zalman
and Shneerson, raising their voices and waving
their arms, slurping hot coffee, snarfing bagels
and whitefish. Rabbi Z saw me watching
and leapt from his seat – this is the guy! –
heads-swivelled, jaws dropped; amazed eyes
locked on to me: interference patterns
crackled it out. Woozy tumbleweeds tuned-in,
blowing down the main street of western town.
Tell Sackett rode in at the head of a shorthorn herd,
bouldered beef like a river far as my eye
could see. Tell looked up at me and grinned.

Draw, pilgrim. I beat him to it. I didn’t
even know I was packin’. Tell turned to Phill King.
Reckon he’s the man after all. He turned to face me,
started to speak and blew away like sand.
Storm clouds rumbled, a drum roll roaring closer,
ovation on a live track fading in.
I felt dazed, like I was coming out of a coma.
I blinked, and the vision warped to world.
I woke up somewhere real - the foyer at Caesar’s,
thundering with applause. Man, the place
was jammed. I looked to left and right.
Was a beaming tux and ballgown sea.
Those cats were clappin’ and rattlin’ their jewellery.
Hoots and hallelujahs echoed to the ceilin’.

A chant started at the back and rippled
to a roar - ‘Saa - mee, Saa-mee’ . I took backslaps
and handshakes, Show ‘em Sams and Way To Gos .
A broad broke decorum and wrapped herself
round me, kissed me slap bang on the lips.
It felt gooood. I savoured the moment
‘til she peeled herself off and merged
with the masses, her room key nestled
in my inside pocket. As if on some invisible cue,
the crowd hushed and parted. The red carpet snaked
up a marble stairway all the way to a pinnacle throne.
I took my seat and the room exploded.
Light prismed from me and bladed through the hall
like a nuke had gone off overhead.

The crowd prostrated to a cringing pile
under the scouring phosphorous flashover.
In a second it was over. The god-blast frittered
and the technicolor world tripped back in.
The patrons got to their feet, patted off the dust
and looked to right and left, confirmed they still existed.
They saw me seated on a cloud of dry ice
lit in the spotlight’s nimbus. The Vandellas
and Supremes hosannahed either side.
The room understood. It put it hands together
in sonic boom applause. I surveyed
the shining faces. Like that, I knew them,
everyone. There was Sid and Harry and MLK,
stamping and whistling from their A-list ringside seats.

Joe Smith and Vicki Weaver, speaking in tongues,
clutching the Book of Mormon. Bobby and Jack,
flashing summa cum laude bridgework,
waving miniature American flags.
Charlton Heston and Thomas Jefferson,
whooping it up, waving copies of the Bill of Rights.
Malcolm X was there, with James Byrd
and Mike Donald, embracing Bernard Goetz
William Stummp, Alan Berg. I let it roll
for seventeen minutes, until I beat my record.
Then I raised my hands for hush. I said
the only thing that came into my head;
‘Thank you very kindly, ladies and gentlemen.’
The room salaamed as one.

Man, it was a good fuckin’ crowd.” Sammy broke
from his monologue and finished his drink.
He gestured toward me. “Keep ‘em comin’ Charley.”
I fixed up the booze. “That’s some story Sammy.
But it still don’t answer my question. Why you?”
He leapt up and shadow-boxed over,
feinted a left to my head. He seized me
by the shoulders and grinned. “Charley, don’t you know?
I’m the incarnate American Dream,
the beating heart of this New Jerusalem.
The swinger’s life I lived ‘s the warts ‘n’ all Tao.
It ain’t Yom Kippur and chanting mantras,
kneeling to Mecca and Sunday in church.
It floats your boat, sure, go ahead baby;

coach little league, take up hunting, get yourself a boat –
‘s on your own time and nob’dys business.
But it don’t count for shit in the American hereafter.
Me, I’m a self-made man, a semi-literate
Harlem nigger, hauled himself out of the ghetto
by guts and talent and vision and drive.
All my life, I never held out my hand,
wanted welfare from the world; I took it by storm,
earned the right to its riches – the houses
in Malibu, Beverley Hills; Caddys ‘n’ Benzos,
Dunhill and Cartier, cocaine, Chivas
and Cristal Rose. Man, you never know
you’ve had enough until you’ve had too much.
And Charley, don’t sweat it - this cat’s insatiable.

But it ain’t just ambition and independence.
You gotta have a good heart. You gotta wrestle
with the evil intention. All my life,
I never went out to hurt nobody.
I liked my ego-massaged, not pumped
with power, with the blood and abasement
of others. What was it Rabbi Hillel said? –
never do to anyone else what you wouldn’t
like done to yourself. By accident, sure,
who doesn’t? Life don’t come with no
collision damage waiver – you pay the price,
make it good if you can. Then move on,
don’t sweat it. You gotta be a tough guy;
the Universe got no time for snivelling.

I’m not talking ‘bout fistfights – someone
askin’ for a smack, see that he gets one –
but resilience, persistence. See, every time
I got kicked in the teeth –and I got kicked plenty –
I bounced right back. Sure, I snivelled a little,
took the odd bath in my own self-loathing
spent dark nights blubbering, sickened with fear;
but the show went on. You can’t complain
about shit that comes down. You gotta roll
with the rough and tumble. You gonna live your life
offended? You livin’ free bro’; you give it
and take it and let the other guy deal with what’s comin’.
That’s my creed, Charley. I always stayed true.
Perfect in weakness, fickle chameleon me,

Sam starfished on the sofa and closed his eyes,
drained by the reminiscence. The stratospheric blue
of the cloudless desert sky framed him
through the window. I aped his shape,
ran some memories of my own. Bare feet in red soil,
sharecrop Alabam; chitlins, collard greens,
poverty’s soul food, our virtue of necessity.
Stage door hustlin’, bootblack Muscle Shoals;
then a signed dotted line and a ticket to Chicago,
wide-eyed window shoppin’ on Michigan’s golden mile.
Ed Sullivan called, the big time broke,
falsetto last dance crooning, I only have eyes for you:
Baby, I’m a star! But the supernova flared
and dimmed, the Billboard bubble burst.

The Dear John from my agent kicked in my future;
haulin’ my C-list, Motown-reject ass
coast-to-coast round bars and lounges;
endless strip-mall mileage, two a.m. coffee
in vinyl diners, Jim Crow bullshit
from racist desk-clerks in night after night
of cheap motels. And then not even that.
I hocked my stuff, lived off TV dinners.
Then a fat guy called, said the Limeys loved me.
I got on a plane and eked out a living,
under the tower at Blackpool, fleapit digs
in a backstreet terrace in a drizzle-grey
seaside summer. A weekly succession
of Northern crackers hauled suitcases in and out

neighboring rooms - who’s that blackie?
That nigger supposed to be famous? They smiled
and said Good Morning on the stairs. I put ‘em at ease –
it keeps rainin’ like this it’s gonna wash me white/
sure, your kids can touch my hair. It come to this.
Three shows a day in the asshole of the Universe,
kissin’ redneck ass. Washed up and washed out.
Tired. So damn tired. Sammy stirred. “You do it again?”
Guy been tuning in. That pissed me off.
“Man, you know what happened next. Is that any way
for a man to die? Was that any way for a man to live?”
“You chose it baby. S’pose you coulda stayed
in Vinegar Bend, farmed that red dirt,
watched those pretty crosses burning on your lawn.”

I looked him over. There was the faintest smile
in the corners of his mouth. “You gave it your best shot
Charley, but you weren’t good enough,
or never got the breaks, whatever.
You had your moment in the spotlight,
TV, radio, screaming bobbysoxers,
all that glorious shit, then, BOOM! - it’s gone,
and you spent a whole lifetime trying to get it back.
Sure, you had to hustle, sometimes you had to eat shit,
but you made a living, saw something of the world.
What was it stopped you from throwing in the towel,
watching sunsets from the swing seat on the porch
in Vinegar Bend?” I thought about it.
“I always believed I could get back up there -”

Sammy leapt up and shook me by the shoulders.
“That’s it, Charley! And don’t we all! A good agent,
the right song, the right place, the right time –
if only, if only. That’s what kept you goin’, Charley,
showbiz dreams. Even when you were eating cold pizza
and whacking motel roaches with your down-at-heel Cubans,
you were thinking next year in Jerusalem -
Motown, Soul Train, sold-out at Caesar’s.
I grabbed his lapels and locked onto his eyes.
“I was good enough Sammy. All I needed was a break.”
Sammy smiled a mile wide. So, burnt-out loser
with your hole in your head, your wall-to-wall roaches
and microwave pizza: would you?” I smiled right back.
“Brother, you know I would.”

---

Glossary

Alan Berg – Jewish disc jockey and baiter of local neo-nazis, assassinated by the Bruders Schweigen outside his Denver apartment in 1984.
Anton Szandor LaVey – founder and leader of the Los Angeles based Church of Satan. Sammy Davis jnr joined the Church of Satan for a brief period during the 70s.
Baal Shem Tov – ‘Master of the Holy Name’. Israel ben Eliezer, the founder of Hassidic Judaism.
Banana Boat – Harry Belafonte first came to prominence in the mid fifties, scoring a hit with the Banana Boat Song. Belafonte, along with actor Sidney Poitier and Martin Luther King, applied considerable pressure to Sammy Davis jnr to use his fame and influence in the fight for Civil Rights.
Bernard Goetz – Jewish New Yorker, ‘the subway vigilante’ who gunned down four black youths who tried to rob him on the #2 subway train in 1984.
Cazzo – prick.
Charley – name applied indiscriminately to ‘in crowd’ males by those associated with Sinatra’s ‘Rat Pack’.
Charlton Heston – veteran actor and President of the National Rifle Association.
Jimmy Blue Eyes – James Alo, Genovese mobster and associate of Meyer Lansky.
Joe Smith – founder of the Mormon religion.
Kim Novak – actress and fiancée of Sammy Davis jnr in the late 1950s. The relationship broke up after Davis was threatened by gangsters acting on behalf of Columbia Studios boss Harry Cohn, who feared Novak’s box-office appeal would be diminished were she to marry a black man.
Meyer Lansky – Jewish mob legend.
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson – former leader of the Brooklyn based Lubavitch Hassidic group, thought in his life (and by some, after his death, in 1994) to be the Moshiach.
Randy Weaver – white separatist, Vicki Weaver’s husband.
Sam Giancana – leader of the Chicago mob in the 50s and 60s, thought by many to have been involved in the conspiracy to assassinate JFK.
Shneur Zalman – 19th Century Russian Rabbi, founder of the Lubavitch Hassidic movement.
Smokey – derogatory racial epithet applied ‘affectionately’ (and with his tacit acceptance), to Sammy Davis jnr by Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and other Rat Packers of the early 60s.
Tommy – Tommy Hunt, c-list soul singer and latterly Northern Soul journeyman.
Vicki Weaver – white separatist Christian Identity survivalist, shot dead by FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi in 1992.
Westside – before desegregation, the ‘negro section’ of Las Vegas– in the afterlife, Hell.
Will Mastin – for the early part of his career, until the mid-sixties, Sammy performed as part the Will Mastin Trio, along with ‘Uncle Will’ and his father, Sam snr.

© Steve Ely